What’s Wrong with the World

I thought Ed Oakes did a great job of stating the Thomist position against ID and unconstrained Evolution in a past First Things.

I may be reading you wrong here, but it seems that you're throwing away Natural Law. Natural Law depends on ID, a non-material agency. And science is now wrapped up in natural Law arguments part and parcel such as idiotic Darwinism supposing selfish genes, altruistic genes, got to pass on my DNA at all costs genes.

Mark,

Natural law -- or at least, for my money, any natural law worthy of the name -- does not depend on ID, but rather on immanent teleology of the Aristotelian sort. Indeed, ID accepts a basically mechanistic or non-(inherently)-teleological conception of nature which is incompatible with (classical) natural law.

If I wanted to be crass, I'd mention that my book The Last Superstition deals with this issue (among many other things), but since I don't want to be crass, I won't.

I am a little surprized by what I read here.
Clearly one can, if one wanted, formulate ID in such a way that it indeed appears to assume an Enlightenment model of scientific knowledge, and there probably are any number of ID writers who appear to do this. And, clearly, a particular proponent of ID can formulate it in such a way as to presume a basically mechanistic or non-teleological conception of nature (as Edward puts it).

But none of that has anything to do with what ID intrinsically is.
ID is simply the idea (no pun intended) that we can know in a logically rigorous and scientifically/philosophically respectable manner that a certain outcome is best explained as the result of direct and deliberate intelligent agency rather than natural or efficient causation. None of that strikes me as having anything obvious to do with the background metaphysics and general schema of knowledge you adopt. It seems quite independent of that. Even within an immanent teleological schema of the Aristotelean sort there are going to be things best explained as the result of regularities in nature (efficient causes), such as the tides of the sea or the orbits of the planets, whilst others are best explained by reference to actual mental states (desires/intentions/goals/plans) of agents, such as my writing these very words right now. Whichever way you go, you are going to have to have a schema whereby you can discern which belongs to the former and which to the latter. The ID movement has attempted to articulate that schema, and in this it has done a service to the intellectual community whatever the underlying metaphysics you happen to adopt, independently of whether you think this is the best way or not with which to oppose naturalistic atheism.

Isn't it, just maybe perhaps, the desperate desire to avoid being lumped with naive creationists that makes so many people dismiss even that which is good and proper and right about ID?

I haven't the time to get myself involved in a long debate about the merits of ID, but I'm with Francis Williamson. The only caveat I would add is that (as prominent ID people knew some years ago but as hasn't been widely known since I've been involved in the blogosphere) I have strong disagreements with Dembski's neo-Fisherian version of how the distinction Williamson draws should be made. I favor, rather, a Bayesian or at least likelihoodist probabilistic model of such inferences, as of a gazillion inferences in areas that have nothing whatsoever to do with ID. But evidence is evidence, and the question is quite simply one of evidence. Much as this will probably shock and horrify some of my blogospheric readers, and much as it has already annoyed some in past posts (such as the one about how it's okay for God to push around molecules), it seems to me that the evidence available favors the involvement of an intelligent agent in aspects of the world that could not have been man-made, particularly the biological realm. If this be Enlightenment rationalism, make the most of it. :-)

Isn't it, just maybe perhaps, the desperate desire to avoid being lumped with naive creationists that makes so many people dismiss even that which is good and proper and right about ID?

People cling to neo-darwinian evolution in order to be socially acceptable, not because there is good reason to believe it.

In point of fact we have no idea (or at least had no idea when I was taking graduate biophysics a few years ago), as a matter of specific explanatory causes backed up by empirical data, how prokaryote-world disappeared and gave rise to the present. It isn't so much that ID falls into the category of legitimate science as that neo-darwinism doesn't. Or more accurately, however we define "science" as an epistemological scoping of a kind of knowledge both ID and neo-darwinism fall into that scoping. Furthermore, understood as an unequivocal and falsifiable theory neo-darwinism has in fact been falsified: again, mutation accumulation does not lead to new cell types, tissues, organs, or species.

According to many scholars, the practical consequence of “Ockham’s razor” is that claims about a thing’s nature, purpose, or intrinsic dignity—universal properties it shares with other things of the same sort—are “unnecessary” for our scientific investigation of the world because they don’t add anything of explanatory importance to our direct empirical observations.

It seems to me that the ID movement has done a good job of showing that naturalistic explanations are NOT adequate in explaining everything (whether it's all of the features of living organisms or the features and structure of the universe). Thus the use of Ockham's razor by metaphysical naturalists is just simply fallacious.

The ID movement has attempted to articulate that schema, and in this it has done a service to the intellectual community whatever the underlying metaphysics you happen to adopt, independently of whether you think this is the best way or not with which to oppose naturalistic atheism.

Oppose atheism?

You mistakenly presuppose that the intelligent agency that ID has in mind within its scientistic framework is that of a supernatural designer; however, this is not at all the case.

Even advocates of ID point out time and again how the fact that the universe itself contains elements of design does not require the designer to be supernatural.

Further still, it appears you & your advocate, Lydia, have mistakenly neglected the fact that it is not algorithmically possible to even do so when, in fact, the supernatural designer Christians actually believe in cannot be mathematically modeled in the first place due to the very essence of His supernatural nature.

To actually believe that this is possible assumes not the Supernatural Designer Christians actually believe in, but in an entirely different intelligent agency other than one that is actually supernatural. For the Supernatural Designer Christians believe in is one beyond mathematics.

Why?

Because -- for those who have neglected their Christian heritage -- a mathematical description of a Supernatural Designer would, by definition, be Impossible!

Therefore, Christians who actually endorse ID are not Christians at all (by admitting even the validity of such a theory, you have already compromised the Christian belief in a Supernatural Designer!); hence, such persons can no longer be properly called Christians as they have compromised the very essence of their Christianity in the First Principle in order to accommodate what is, in all actuality, an overreaching theory that posits a non-supernatural designer; for it is only an intelligent agency as the latter that can actually be quantified & mathematically described!

Francis W., Lydia, and Zippy,

I can assure you that I have no desire to "cling to neo-darwinian evolution" (as Zippy puts it) and I think anyone familiar with my work knows that there is little in it that evinces a desire "to be socially acceptable." I am also perfectly happy to acknowledge that ID theorists have made some important points, that their treatment by their Darwinian critics has been disgraceful, and that the latter are themselves interested in preserving a secularist orthodoxy rather than pursuing truth.

My problem with ID is that it is not nearly radical enough – or, perhaps I should say, that it is not reactionary enough. Insofar as it concedes the mechanistic picture of nature, it fails to challenge the central metaphysical error of modernity. The whole approach effectively forces its proponents into a lame "God of the gaps" footing and distorts our understanding of the relationship between God and the world. We get Paley's Masonic architect (as Christopher Martin has aptly labeled him) rather than the God of Aquinas's Fifth Way, and are put on the path away from classical theism and toward what Brian Davies has called "theistic personalism" -- an anthropomorphic conception of God, made in our image (on "analogy" with us).

In short, the trouble with ID is not that it is insufficiently "up to date" and "scientific," but rather that it is modernist. It is, within theology, what paleoconservatives accuse neoconservatives of being in politics: a dangerous attempt to take on board modern assumptions in defense of traditional conclusions, which ends up only distorting the conclusions and needlessly conceding ground to the enemy.

Foolish me. I thought ID was just another way of saying, God created the universe and all that's in it.

So much for my "clarification" clarifying anything. Sheesh!

I love you guys, but you're shadow boxing with a straw man. I didn't say that ID arguments should be rejected even if they worked (contra Lydia). What my footnote was suggesting is that the attempt to isolate a portion of nature to detect design empirically (ala Behe) is not where the action is. It is in the overarching assumption that its all a matter of empirical detection. If Behe's argument works, then more power to him. But what I want to argue is that the degree to which the mind is able to extract patterns, know universals, and make judgments about normative ends is itself "evidence" of design. But it is not empirically detectable, i.e., scientific, but rather, a philosophical claim on which the entire scientific enterprise depends.

In my judgment, that's a much stronger way to go.

I will link to the article when it comes out in a couple of weeks. In it I critique Hitchens, Dawkins, and offer a philosophical argument for natural rights grounded in the divine. Of course, ID advocates, just as Aristoteleans and Seventh-Day Adventists, will like what I'm doing. But one need not be an ID advocate in order to accept the argument. My point is to provide my reader with an intellectually respectable way to reject Dawkinian atheism without having to embrace ID.

One more thing: I strongly encourage the WWWtW readers to pick up Ed Feser's book, The Last Superstition. Here's my endorsement:

"There have been largely two types of critics of the `New Atheism.' One type grants the empiricism of the atheists and then tries to show that belief in God is consistent with it. This approach gives away the store by removing God from the realm of the knowable. The second also grants the atheists' empiricism, but argues that it leads to the detection of design in the universe and thus the existence of God. This approach gives away the store as well, by limiting knowledge to the empirically detectable. Professor Feser offers us a third approach, one that is far more effective in defeating the New Atheism. He provides persuasive arguments that show that God is knowable and that what is knowable is larger than the set of that which is empirically detectable. This is a tour de force that should be in the library of every thinking citizen, believer or unbeliever."

I thought ID was just another way of saying, God created the universe and all that's in it.

Mark Butterworth,

If that's what you and other folks here think, you don't know what ID is really all about.

Apologies, but my beliefs are in the tenets of Christianity rather than in scientism!

Like I said in the above:

Even advocates of ID point out time and again how the fact that the universe itself contains elements of design does not

Further still, it appears you & your advocate, Lydia, have mistakenly neglected the fact that it is not algorithmically possible to even do so when, in fact, the supernatural designer Christians actually believe in cannot

To actually believe that this is possible assumes not the Supernatural Designer Christians actually believe in, but in an entirely different intelligent agency other than one that is actually supernatural. For the Supernatural Designer Christians believe in is one beyond mathematics.

Why?

Because -- for those who have neglected their Christian heritage -- a mathematical description of a Supernatural Designer would, by definition, be Impossible!

Therefore, Christians who actually endorse ID are not Christians at all (by admitting even the validity of such a theory, you have already compromised

Mark Butterworth,

Of all the interlocutors here, comments made by Dr. Edward Feser sums it best here:

In short, the trouble with ID is not that it is insufficiently "up to date" and "scientific," but rather that it is modernist. It is, within theology, what paleoconservatives accuse neoconservatives of being in politics: a dangerous attempt to take on board modern assumptions in defense of traditional conclusions, which ends up only distorting the conclusions and needlessly conceding ground to the enemy.

Are we disagreeing, or just talking about different things?

Professor Feser's last comment rocks, and I'm looking forward to Professor Beckwith's article.

Very kind, Frank, thanks. Thank you too, Zippy -- and as you say, I'm sure we aren't really disagreeing, but just focusing on different things.

I do get tired of anti-Paley-ism. As far as I'm concerned, Paley rocks, and he worships the same God that Aquinas worships. He does so now, of course, but he did so while he was here on earth and writing, too. :-) I really can't apologize too heartily if this marks me out as a "modernist."

And by the way, God is empirically detectable. He said so Himself, "That which we have seen with our eyes, and our hands have handled, of the Word of Life."

I don't mean to sound snarky. I'm writing in a bit of a hurry, and I'd love to think that we are all agreeing. But I'm a little worried that we're really not, and that the desire to push anti-modernism is motivating Frank (and maybe Ed, but I'm not sure) to underestimate the importance and value of empirical argument.

Aristocles,

Can you explain to me why you think the inability to construct a mathematical model of God is somehow a strike against ID? I'm not really following your argument at that point. Why can't we make an inference to a supernatural being even without having a mathematical model of that being? Note that this is not a god-of-the-gaps argument (which is where I have to respectfully disagree with Edward) but rather an inference to the best explanation.

Aristocles: I would point out that the Christian God is also "beyond" philosophy, not just mathematics. Are we supposed to conclude from this that there are no philosophical arguments that proffer evidence for God's existence? Given your reasoning above, you seem to be committed to a "Yes" answer.

In sum, it seems to me that many in this thread are saddling ID proponents with a straw man. I take ID proponents to be saying, roughly, with respect to set of empirical evidence E, the existence of a designer who, minimally, has properties P1 - Pn, is probable, given reasons R1-Rn. Accepting such a basic line of thought does not in any way commit one to saying that E is the only evidence that bears on the existence and nature of the being in question. The properties one can justifiably attribute to the being in question are, no doubt, going to be more sparse with respect to a limited domain of empirical evidence. But what's wrong with noting what can and cannot be inferred from a limited range of empirical data? Should ID proponents really be faulted for not offering a cumulative case argument? Why not recognize that their project has limited objectives? Observing that the most we can say about designer D given E is not to say that E is the only evidence to consider when trying to come to a final assessment of the nature and existence of D.

Aristocles: I would point out that the Christian God is also "beyond" philosophy, not just mathematics. Are we supposed to conclude from this that there are no philosophical arguments that proffer evidence for God's existence? Given your reasoning above, you seem to be committed to a "Yes" answer.

In sum, it seems to me that many in this thread are saddling ID proponents with a straw man. I take ID proponents to be saying, roughly, with respect to set of empirical evidence E, the existence of a designer who, minimally, has properties P1 - Pn, is probable, given reasons R1-Rn. Accepting such a basic line of thought does not in any way commit one to saying that E is the only evidence that bears on the existence and nature of the being in question. The properties one can justifiably attribute to the being in question are, no doubt, going to be more sparse with respect to a limited domain of empirical evidence. But what's wrong with noting what can and cannot be inferred from a limited range of empirical data? Should ID proponents really be faulted for not offering a cumulative case argument? Why not recognize that their project has limited objectives? Observing that the most we can say about designer D given E is not to say that E is the only evidence to consider when trying to come to a final assessment of the nature and existence of D.

What I've noticed, however, is that the materialists in power seem to have no fear whatsoever of Aristotelian/Thomistic refutations of their position. The ID arguments, on the other hand, drive them into hysterical panic.

This is not surprising since today only science based on empirical observation is considered real science. Philosophy is not thought to be science at all.

The reason the materialists hate and fear the ID proponents is that the latter are making reasonable inferences from empirical observations and, more importantly, are showing that the former are drawing ridiculous conclusions from the empirical data.

Furthermore, I see no reason at all to accuse the ID proponents of either denying the value of metaphysics or prejudicing its method. On the contrary, their empirical analyses are so amenable to the notion of substantial metaphysical reality, that they are seen to be engaging in a version of metaphysics themselves, which they are not.

Lastly, don't forget: Your enemy's enemy is your friend.

This is war.

Wow, George R. and I are ending up agreeing. A banner day. I think the farmer and the cowman shd. definitely be friends on this. The argument from mind, the cosmological argument, etc., _and_ empirical arguments from design. Bring 'em all on. I haven't much hope for Anselm's ontological argument, but if someone thinks he can make it work, more power to his elbow, too.

I just finished Dr. Feser's TLS, and of all the myriad of things there to recommend it, the standout feature of the work is that it is a terrific short history of modern philosophy with a view to a Thomist-Aristotelian diagnosis of the contemporary situation, an explanation of why the mind-body problem is a pseudo-problem, and an explanation for the subsequent flight back into philosophical materialism. It's a real pager-turner.

Lydia,

The point is not that empirical premises are not necessary -- Aquinas's Five Ways all have empirical starting points, after all -- but rather that the significance we attach to any empirical premises necessarily presupposes certain philosophical and conceptual commitments. Hence scientism, phenomenalism, and Aristotelianism (to take just three examples) all appeal to empirical premises, but that can hardly settle anything between them, because their true disagreement is philosophical, not empirical.

The trouble Aristotelians and Thomists have with IDers is that they essentially concede, at least for the purposes of their arguments with Darwinians, the scientistic methodological assumptions of their opponents and then try to accomodate within those assumptions a case for a designer. They agree on the premises and just differ on the conclusions. Part of the problem with this is that the premises themselves are false. The modern mechanistic philosophy of nature is (among other things) ultimately incoherent, for reasons I develop at length in The Last Superstition.

But another problem is that the theological conclusions also become distorted, because a god conceived of as an empirical hypothetical posit is simply not the God of classical theism, and not the God whose existence is demonstrated (not proposed as a "best explanation") in the Five Ways. E.g. the former is anthropomorphic, the latter not; the former is a being among other beings, the latter Being Itself; and so forth. Again, Brian Davies is very good on this -- I recommend the first chapter of the latest (third) edition of his book An Introduction to the Philospohy of Religion.

John Fraser,

A "best explanation" god is a "god of the gaps." To argue for such a being is effectively to say "Sure, it is possible that a non-theistic explanation is correct, but just not likely" which of course always means "not likely given the current state of the evidence."

Arguments in the classical theist tradition are not like this at all. They are attempts at strict demonstration, and the God they arrive at is necessarily one, omnipotent, omniscient, all-good, the whole ball of wax. No farting around with "probabilities," extraterrestrials, demiurges, or whatever else IDers concede might be all they can manage.

A "best explanation" god is a "god of the gaps."

Ed, I'm afraid I couldn't disagree much more strongly with this statement. "Ed Feser" is a "best explanation" Ed Feser, but this doesn't make him an "Ed Feser of the gaps." And the same for "Lydia McGrew" vis a vis Ed Feser. What I mean by this is that we have *positive evidence* for each other's existence, *good evidence*, that this does not mean that we have a demonstrative argument leading to metaphysical certainty of each other's existence, that our argument for each other's existence is explanatory, but that this is no problem. Paris (which I have never seen) is not a "Paris of the gaps" because its existence is supported by way of the fact that it is the best explanation of the evidence I have, and so on and so forth. For that matter, as an indirect realist, I would say that the very chair I'm sitting on is the best explanation of my evidence, but that this is no denigration of my argument for it in any way. Nothin' wrong with IBE. IBE is what most of our empirical knowledge is made of. Maybe all of it.

I'm sorry -- I forgot how ID itself (that its very purpose) is specifically Christian and the fact that "Terrestrial life/the universe we see around us shows elements of design" automatically renders the verdict that the designer in question is supernatural.

(Note, please, how several advocates for ID in various secular communities themselves have expressed opinions to the contrary: that the theory of ID does not require a supernatural designer and, indeed, should not.)

Of course, the very endeavor itself which seeks to construct a true mathematical model of the cosmos that incorporates a designer is entirely feasible -- just not the designer which happens to be supernatural.

As I've said in my original comments, folks here mistakenly presuppose that the intelligent agency that ID has in mind within its scientistic framework is that of a supernatural designer; however, this is not at all the case.

The designer that ID seeks to quantify and mathematically describe is not the supernatural designer Christians, in fact, believe in; but in one that can be so quantified and described accordingly.

Here's another interesting philosophical point, Ed: Supposing there to be absolute demonstrative proofs of the existence of God, more than one road can lead to Rome. (No pun intended.) Think of the analogy of a mathematical object. I'm not a good enough mathematician to think of a really cool example, but we could imagine some mathematical object described as "the solution to the equation _______" or something of that sort. Now, a truly great mathematician could prove the existence of that object. There might even be a controversy over whether the equation were strictly unsolvable, and then somebody could come along and prove that the solution _exists_, that the equation _is_ solvable, even though he doesn't have the solution. Or something like that. (Alex Pruss would do a much better job at coming up with a good example here.) But there could be other ways of getting evidence about that. For example, there could be partial proofs, or proofs that a conjecture holds up to a particular number. Or even, if one knew the mathematician who proved the existence of the solution, one could know that there was such a solution because of the reasons one had for trusting him as a reliable source. The fact that one's reasons were thus indirect or non-deductive wouldn't change the *nature of the mathematical object* one believed in. So I don't see that it follows from the fact that one has an argument for the existence of a designer, whom one has (let's say), independent reason to believe is, in fact, God, that the God one believes in has a different nature from a God one might believe in (or that someone else believes in) by way of a demonstrative type of argument.

The trouble Aristotelians and Thomists have with IDers is that they essentially concede, at least for the purposes of their arguments with Darwinians, the scientistic methodological assumptions of their opponents and then try to accomodate within those assumptions a case for a designer.

FWIW, I drew a little sketch a few years back in an attempt to show why I think the "God of the gaps" characterization itself rests on a false epistemology. If nothing else the drawing and subsequent discussion demonstrates the dangers of turning an engineer-turned-entrepreneur-turned-corporate-weenie loose on philosophy.

Ed,

Given that all theories are underdetermined there are always going to be gaps in any theory as well as more than one possible explanation that fits the evidence. I think that's just necessary given the nature of inductive reasoning. You could just as easily point to the gaps in Darwinian evolution (and they are not hard to find) and say it’s an “evolution of the gaps” argument. Darwinian evolution is an inference to the best explanation but it’s only the best of all naturalistic explanations – not of all possible explanations. Naturalists want to disqualify ID from consideration by invoking a “rule” like methodological naturalism, but this is just stacking the deck. I think we get too cowed down by the god-of-the-gaps label which is why it’s important to force the issue of IBE. It’s not god-of-the-gaps because IBE utilizes abductive rather than inductive reasoning. It’s a question of how the argument is formulated.

I’m not sure I agree with your characterization of classical theistic arguments if you mean that they are all attempts at proving God with deductive certainty. But even that’s true, so what? Are we stuck with using the same types of arguments that were used 500-1000 years ago? I think we should be striving for arguments that are both sound and persuasive. You could have a perfectly sound, deductive argument for God’s existence (say some version of the ontological argument) that never convinces anybody. In that case what good is it? I don’t think our goal should be to find one single knock-down argument that’s going to persuade everybody.

Finally, I’m a little nervous about this distinction between what you call “the God of classical theism” and the “anthropomorphic” God that you say results from ID. For starters I guess I’m more interested in the God revealed in the Incarnation as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. That’s a pretty “anthropomorphic” view of God don’t you think? By contrast you seem to be leaning more toward the transcendent God of Greek philosophy. You talk about anthropomorphism like it’s a bad word. I guess I don’t see why that should be the case given the revelation of God in Scripture. I realize I only have your comments here and I haven’t read your book, so my broad generalizations may be off the mark.

Well, I suppose I'm not getting all these gradations of semantics which seem incoherent to me. IDer's use science and reason to attack atheistic scientific materialism and this somehow makes ID's metaphysics suspect? ID strikes me as classic theism and first cause.

"...the very endeavor itself which seeks to construct a true mathematical model of the cosmos that incorporates a designer is entirely feasible..."

What? Who in heck thinks they can construct a "true" mathematical model of the cosmos? What the heck does that even mean?

The fact is that Intelligent Design is self-evident and it takes a diabolical act of will to deny it.

I don't know what in the heck a number of you are arguing about. People are fighting for God and using what tools they can to cut through absurd secular pieties, and get trashed for it. Makes no sense to me. More fool me.

Lydia and John F.,

By a "God of the gaps" argument, I mean an argument that starts with the claim that there is such-and-such a specific phenomenon within a given scientific domain (physics, biology, or whatever) which has not been adequately explained in terms of the existing body of theory generally regarded as correctly describing that domain (quantum mechanics, the neo-Darwinian synthesis, or whatever). In other words, it is claimed that there is an explanatory "gap" in the existing account of the domain in question. It is then suggested that a deity might plausibly be appealed to in order to fill this gap. I think this is a pretty standard usage of the expression "God of the gaps."

Now the background assumption both "God of the gaps" argument proponents and their critics either consciously or unconsciously bring to bear on discussion of the issue is that the modern mechanistic (i.e. anti-Aristotelian, anti-Scholastic, anti-teleological) understanding of nature is correct. That is to say, they are agreed that there are no formal or final causes immanent in the material world. Intrinsically the world is composed of meaningless particles (or whatever) interacting in lawlike patterns, and while these particles sometimes take on more or less complex configurations, this has nothing to do with their taking on Aristotelian substantial forms or the like, so that the more complex patterns are always at least in principle reducible to simpler ones (as they would not be, even in principle, on an Aristotelian view).

Now, given this framework, skeptics insist that appeal to a divine intelligence sits poorly with the general anti-teleological spirit of modern science. They will concede that it is possible in principle for some external intelligence to interfere with the system and make it serve a certain end, but they hold also that since in general this is not what happens -- as evidenced by the fact that the mechanistic picture of its very nature implies that such an intelligence does not generally intervene but instead that the material world is basically on autopilot -- there is good reason to suppose that the burden of proof is against such an outside intervention in any particular case.

Defenders of "God of the gaps" arguments reply that while this general picture of nature and our understanding of it is correct, there are certain cases where the phenomena in question are (say) so statistically improbable but similar enough to the sorts of results an intelligent being might produce that it is at least probable that an intelligence has intervened. It is admitted by such defenders that this might not be so, that at least in principle an unintelligent process may be responsible after all, but they nevertheless maintain that the odds are against this supposition. In other words, they acknowledge that the mechanistic picture of nature puts the burden of proof on anyone who wants to claim that an outside intelligence is ever involved in anything going on in the sytem, but they think that in at least some unusual cases that burden can be met.

OK, so that's the picture. Now, other than resting on a bad and ultimately incoherent philosophy of nature (as I have claimed it does), and providing at best probabilistic arguments that fall well short of the demonstrative power the arguments a classical theist like Aquinas would put forward, what is wrong with this picture? In particular, why do I claim that the conception of God that results from it is objectionable?

Well, for starters, insofar as the picture represents the world as a kind of machine that more or less operates independently of God at least in principle, it departs from the classical theistic understanding of God as necessarily sustaining the world in being from moment to moment. Given an Aristotelian-Thomistic understanding of nature, it is metaphysically impossible that the world should continue to exist even for an instant without God sustaining it. God causes the world, not in the sense of having wound up the machine billions of years ago, but in the sense of keeping it in being at every instant. To reject this picture, as the mechanistic philosophy of nature does, is both to open the door to atheism by allowing at least the possibility that He is not sustaining the world after all -- which makes the claim that He is sustaining it, or even that He caused it at some point in the past, at most a matter of mere probability -- and also to distort our understanding of how He relates to the world even if He does exist.

For example, God comes to seem generally "hands off," intervening only in special cases, as opposed to the classical idea that everything that happens is a manifestation of his action. The way is opened to deism -- which of course historically did indeed follow upon the adoption of the mechanistic conception of nature.

Furthermore, God's knowledge of the world comes to seem a matter of observation, from the outside, of an independent reality, rather than (as for the Scholastics) something He necesarily has in the very act of contunuously creating the world. This in turn opens up puzzles about how he knows the future (which in the independent mechanistic world of nature hasn't happened yet and thus cannot be observed by Him), especially given that it is very hard to get via "God of the gaps" reasoning to a God who is outside time. The idea of God as a kind of super-calculator who infers from the present becomes hard to avoid, and the idea of omniscience becomes severely attenuated.

All of this is exacerbated by the fact that the "God of the gaps" method, since it is a matter of empirical hypothesis formation on the basis of analogies with human intelligence, tends to start theorizing about God by proposing that he is "a person without a body," kind of like us only with the limitations stripped away. The end result is a highly anthropomorphic conception of God, one that is of course less crude than the anthropomorphisms of mythology, but which, since it models God on human persons, nevertheless tends to lead to a mitigating or even rejection of the doctrines of divine immutability, impassibility, timelessness, and simplicity. "Open theists" and the like are OK with all of this, of course, but from the standpoint of historical Christianity, and certainly of Catholicism, it is heretical.

(None of this has anything to do with denying the Incarnation, BTW. It has instead to do with understanding what sort of God it is Who became incarnate.)

I think Mark B. makes a very good point: The IDers are beating back the neo-Darwinians and their secular pieties, and they are doing so on the neo-Darwinians' home court. More power to them. That doesn't make them metaphysically suspect. But then, metaphysics is not the point.

If anything is suspect, it's the Aristotelian reconstruction of the universe, which is a giant step removed from Biblical theology. It pulls revelation through a foreign and distortive grid, and which, through its distortions, has given rise to multiple theological errors.

You haven't reached the God of the Bible when you've reached the uncaused cause, the prime mover, the first lawgiver, or even that than which no greater can be conceived. Biblical theology is not mere monotheism. The God of the Bible is Trinity, and no philosophy ever gets there, ever gets to the real God who is. Nor does any false religion. Just as the God of Aristotle is not the Trinitarian God who is, neither are Baal, Allah, and Ra. Like it or not, they and Aristotle fall afoul of the commandment against making false gods.

Jesus insists that seeing Him is seeing the Father. Jesus does what He sees his Father do; He says what He hears his Father say. He and his Father are one, he says -- and no, not metaphysically one. They are one in character, purpose, affection, and action. No one -- no one -- He says, knows the Father except the Son, and those to whom the Son reveals Him. That revelation is not Aristotelian or Platonic; it's historical. That means if you don't start with the historical incarnation of God in Christ, you don't really start at all, even though you mean to start, and even though you think you have. Jesus is an ancient, peripatetic, Jewish rabbi talking to other ancient Jews in words and categories they understood and used, not an Aristotelian philosopher. The God revealed in Christ is revealed in terms of his character, not in terms of his metaphysical characteristics, which is one of the chief failing of Aristotle's view of God.

Aristotle just doesn't understand that unless you meet God in history, you don't meet Him at all. The God and Father of our Lord is seen best in Christ, and second best in the history of Israel: God is the One who makes and keeps his promises, God is the One who delivers his people from bondage in Egypt; God is the One who raises the dead. In other words, "God" is a Christologically, that is a historically, defined term. As has been famously said, the God of the philosophers is not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

I may be able to say more about this later, but I have to say, Ed, that your reconstruction strikes me as not showing a lot of familiarity with IBE (inference to the best explanation) or with various probabilistic reconstructions of it. Perhaps I'm wrong. And I'm pretty sure, given everything else you say, that you would dislike the argument for design even if you did see more clearly the difference between your reconstruction and a true inference to the best explanation. This is because of your dislike (which I find puzzling, to tell the truth) for analogies between human and divine intelligence and also because of your opposition (which I also find puzzling) to any attempt to make a distinction between things best explained as a result of regularities in nature and things best explained by the direct involvement of an agent/designer. As Francis Williamson says above, better than I could:

Even within an immanent teleological schema of the Aristotelean sort there are going to be things best explained as the result of regularities in nature (efficient causes), such as the tides of the sea or the orbits of the planets, whilst others are best explained by reference to actual mental states (desires/intentions/goals/plans) of agents, such as my writing these very words right now. Whichever way you go, you are going to have to have a schema whereby you can discern which belongs to the former and which to the latter.

What is there to disagree with in that?

What sort of metaphysic--if indeed he believes a metaphysic is possible or even desirable--would an ID proponent endorse? If, as Prof. Bauman has said, one simply does not meet God outside of the context of Christianity--a revealed religion, not a philosophical system--then mustn't the whole philosophical enterprise be a vain thing?

What sort of metaphysic--if indeed he believes a metaphysic is possible or even desirable--would an ID proponent endorse?

If, as Prof. Bauman has said, one simply does not meet God outside of the context of Christianity--a revealed religion, not a philosophical system--then mustn't the whole philosophical enterprise be a vain thing?

If, as Prof. Bauman has said, one simply does not meet God outside of the context of Christianity--a revealed religion, not a philosophical system--then mustn't the whole philosophical enterprise be a vain thing?

I would say that the shoe is probably on the other foot. If I'm understanding correctly the sheer strength and thoroughness of Ed's objection (which I don't know if Frank Beckwith shares) to making any sort of analogy between God and man, then there would be a problem, it seems to me, with concluding that a revelation is from God. For example, Moses at the burning bush, if he believed that it's wrong to use analogy between the human mind and the divine mind because God is strictly "other" than man, would have had to treat the voice of God as uninterpretable. "It _sounds_ like he's talking my language, but God is completely Other than man, so who knows if he would mean the same thing by words that I mean by words?" Now, I realize that neither Ed nor Frank nor anyone else in this discussion has said anything like this about Moses. But it seems to me that if you attack design reasoning on the grounds that we mustn't reason about God by analogy to man, then this very strong view (which certainly was not Aquinas's) would undermine a great deal more than ID.

Zippy,

Both answers are about what I would have said. I don't yet see ID as incompatible with an Aristotelian-Thomist metaphysic, and although a classical realist could defend ID, I can't much see why such a one would have any need of it. There is certainly something to be said for meeting the materialist on his own ground. Even the Aristotelian meeting the materialist in debate works from shared premises. The question remains whether or not the ID theorist in the end gives too much to the materialist. It was Hoyle, I think, who famously invoked the 747-in-a-junkyard analogy. It comes from the common sense view that intelligent beings can discern signs of intelligence. While this may not be logically demonstrable, even as Dr. Feser alludes in TLS (although he doesn't defend Paley in detail) Paley's design argument isn't nearly so bad as atheists generally suppose when they caricature it. Even Christian biologists worry about ID infiltration into the the discipline because they think that the result will be bad for science--that it will put a damper on teh enthusiasm for studying certain features of the world. "Well, God must have made the eye by direct intervention, since its obviously too complex to have evolved. Therefore, lets stop trying to discover how the eye could have evolved." Something like that. At least I've heard this expressed by a few Christian biologists I know.

But it seems to me that if you attack design reasoning on the grounds that we mustn't reason about God by analogy to man

Perhaps I missed something, but I didn't pick up that this is what Ed was doing. Certainly a Thomist claims to know God rationally and by analogy. It's the univocal and equivocal senses of words/concepts that the Thomist denies when speaking of God.

"Well, God must have made the eye by direct intervention, since its obviously too complex to have evolved. Therefore, lets stop trying to discover how the eye could have evolved." Something like that. At least I've heard this expressed by a few Christian biologists I know.

It is more than a little ironic given that modern science grew out of Western man's motivation to discover how God did things; but now, suddenly, "God did it" is supposed to destroy all motivation for studying nature.

Right. After thinking it through a bit, I have come to think that the motivation is mixed in with a desire to protect the prerogative of evolutionary theory in academia. I can understand this sentiment. If you are a Christian in a biology department, how tough a row to hoe is it to be generally skeptical of evolutionary theory? All references to 'Expelled" aside (I didn't see the film), one orthodox Anglican biologist I know, a tenured, senior member of the faculty at an "Ivy League of the South" university, says he wouldn't give Behe the time of day. I thought this is a bit harsh and revealing, although I didn't say so to him, of course!

But another problem is that the theological conclusions also become distorted, because a god conceived of as an empirical hypothetical posit is simply not the God of classical theism, and not the God whose existence is demonstrated (not proposed as a "best explanation") in the Five Ways. E.g. the former is anthropomorphic, the latter not; the former is a being among other beings, the latter Being Itself; and so forth.

No farting around with "probabilities," extraterrestrials, demiurges, or whatever else IDers concede might be all they can manage.

All of this is exacerbated by the fact that the "God of the gaps" method, since it is a matter of empirical hypothesis formation on the basis of analogies with human intelligence, tends to start theorizing about God by proposing that he is "a person without a body," kind of like us only with the limitations stripped away. The end result is a highly anthropomorphic conception of God, one that is of course less crude than the anthropomorphisms of mythology, but which, since it models God on human persons, nevertheless tends to lead to a mitigating or even rejection of the doctrines of divine immutability, [emphasis added]

Byronic, these are Ed's statements that I had in mind in my comment. One must either allow that we can understand revelations from God and specific manifestations of God's acts by to some degree analogy to our own actions or not. If we do allow it, there is nothing any more theologically wrong or suspect about thinking of God as a designer/engineer/planner as we are than about thinking of God as a revealer-of-himself-by-language as we are. The latter is absolutely necessary in order for people who hear even the voice of God audibly (like Moses or the prophets) to conclude that they are in communication with a person whom they can understand and obey. If we criticize ID on the grounds that it is "anthropomorphic," then I think we must criticize all revelation interpretation on the same grounds. If we can't reason probabilistically that a biological entity was made deliberately by God, because there is something theologically wrong with doing so ("anthropomorphism"), then why can we reason probabilistically that a linguistic entity, a communication purporting to be from God, was in fact sent by God and is the word/voice of God? For all we know, God (being so radically different from ourselves) might use what sound like words to mean something totally different from what they seem to mean, so we must remain agnostic even about a direct voice speaking to us. Or to take another example, when I argue that a particular event in history was a miracle, I am using a likelihood comparison. That likelihood comparison on the "miracle" side involves giving a "decent" probability to the evidence we have if the miracle had occurred. But if we work from a theological commitment that God is so far removed from ourselves that we are not allowed to reason to his actions probabilistically, because it would be "anthropomophic" to think of him as in any sense like ourselves, then I think we would have to treat this likelihood as strictly inscrutable--something that, in fact, the skeptics would very much like us to do.

Lydia,

I wasn't presenting a characterization of IBE per se. I was only characterizing "God of the gaps" reasoning specifically.

I am not saying there are no analogies between God and human beings, though as Byronicman rightly points out, "analogy" here has to be understood in Aquinas's sense rather than Paley's. The problem with Paley, ID, etc. is that it applies terms to both God and human beings in a univocal sense rather than an analogical sense. That's why anthropomorphism results.

Having said that, I am also not saying that arguments of an ID sort simply must lead those who endorse them into a distorted conception of God. Hence I do not disagree with the remarks of Francis Williamson's that you quote. The problem is that there is a tendency to lead to a distorted conception because of the nature of the sort of reasoning used by ID, Paley, et al. and because the mechanistic assumptions are left unchallenged. Again, it is no accident that deism followed upon the mechanistic revolution, even if one could theoretically endorse mechanism without being a deist.

Michael Bauman,

Well, sorry, but I simply don't buy all this "the God of the philosophers is not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob" stuff. Suppose, as I imagine you'd concede is at least possible, that some of the classical arguments for God's existence work. Then just who is this being that they prove exists if not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? If you say "Sure, there might be a prime mover and first cause, but he's not the same as the God of the Bible," then you're effectively endorsing polytheism, no?

Re: Aristotle, we need to distinguish Aristotle's own personal views from what Aristotelian premises actually imply. What Aristotle himself thought about the prime mover is a matter of controversy, but that doesn't ultimately matter, because what his basic metaphysical assumptions actually lead to, whether he realized it or not, is perfectly consistent with the Christian conception of God. And while it is true that they don't lead to Trinitarianism -- which we can know only through revelation -- that does not mean that what they do lead to is false, only that it is incomplete.

Anyway, as Zippy points out, for a Catholic the idea that "the God of the philosophers is not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob" is absolutely out of the question. There can be no such radical split between faith and reason.

Ed,

I'm certainly no advocate of Open Theism. But I would deny that ID has any tendencies towards that sort of god anyways. ID just doesn't say anything about the designer - but far from being a weakness, I see that as a strength. Naturalists have used Darwinism to argue that there's "nothing left for a creator to do." ID says "hold the phone." There are features of the universe that just can't be explained by natural causes. I think you're watering down the ID position by making it sound like these things just seem to be a little bit too improbable to have happened by chance. No, the features ID calls attention to are ridiculously (or as one nameless philosophy professor who happens to married to Lydia once said) "scandalously" improbable. I'm not at all deterred by the fact that Aquinas never used the language of inferences or probability - he didn't have those tools at his disposal.

I don't see ID as an argument for what kind of God we're talking about - rather, it's to show that the features of the universe are consistent with the God of the Bible and inconsistent with metaphysical naturalism. It's really not a god-of-the-gaps. I see that as more of slogan that naturalists have used to frighten off design argument proponents. I fear they have been highly successful in some quarters. I think the reason why many Christians try to avoid any argument which could be called god-of-the-gaps (which would include any design argument) is because of the fear that someday science may come up with a fully naturalistic explanation for phenomenon X which we’ve postulated as evidence of God. I think there’s a tendency to want to shift the argument to somewhere where it feels safer. But this whole idea of the inevitable progress of science and how science will someday explain everything is itself the product of Enlightenment rationalism. I think we should challenge that thinking.

Mark Butterworth:

The fact is that Intelligent Design is self-evident and it takes a diabolical act of will to deny it.

I don't know what in the heck a number of you are arguing about. People are fighting for God and using what tools they can to cut through absurd secular pieties, and get trashed for it. Makes no sense to me. More fool me.

That's where you (as well as others) keep going wrong --

You seem to think that since ID is an endeavor for intelligent design, it must, therefore, be an endeavor for (and in support of) the Supernatural Designer; that is, the Christian God.

You couldn't be more wrong.

But this whole idea of the inevitable progress of science and how science will someday explain everything is itself the product of Enlightenment rationalism. I think we should challenge that thinking.

Whatever the merits of ID may in fact be, it is most certainly not the only way to challenge, in the words of Ed Feser from TLS, the "promissory note" that materialists never seem to be able to cash, the promise of rationalistic scientism to one day explain everything. Aristotelian-Thomist realism is a systematic framework for dealing with reality. ID is, again whatever its merits, rather in the end ad hoc, isn't it (I'm happy to be corrected on this point)? Or at least ID is "designed" to address one specific claim by materialists. I think what one wants is a complete metaphysical system that stands on its own two feet. This is why I say that Aristotelians just don't seem to require ID, whatever its merits. For the Thomist, ID is superfluous at best.

I don't know what in the heck a number of you are arguing about. People are fighting for God and using what tools they can to cut through absurd secular pieties, and get trashed for it. Makes no sense to me.

But surely any stick isn't good enough to beat atheism with?

But surely any stick isn't good enough to beat atheism with?

Not if it's a bad argument, certainly. That's why (sorry as I am about it) I'm on record as opposing the fine-tuning argument. I don't think it works. But I am bothered very much by attempts to oppose design arguments in an a priori fashion rather than by showing that they are bad arguments.

****************************
John,

No, the features ID calls attention to are ridiculously (or as one nameless philosophy professor who happens to married to Lydia once said) "scandalously" improbable.

I just want to emphasize again, though, the _comparative_ nature of the model of the design inference that that nameless (grin) philosopher and I have always advocated. It isn't as though, once the probabilities on non-design get scandalously low, pop!, up comes a design inference. The advocacy of comparative modeling was our greatest difference with what had (more or less by historical chance) become the standard, Dembskian, modeling of the design inference as a purely eliminative one.

Other than that, I just should say, go John! :-)

Zippy (and Dr. Bauman):

There have been a number of Church Fathers who hold out hope for universal salvation (St. Gregory of Nazianus, par example), who also grant salvation to pagans (St. Justin Martyr on Socrates) so there is nothing novel about that in Catholicism than a return to the original spirit of the early Christians. So the knowledge of the existence of people of good faith who are not even Christian is not new at all, and I think it is very hard to say we have an advantage over the Early Fathers in this respect.

Consider the words of St. Iranaeus: “There is only one unique and the same God the Father, and his Word has been present to humanity from all time, although by diverse dispositions and manifold operations he has from the beginning been saving those who are saved, that is, those who love God and follow his word, each in his own age.” (Against Heresies, IV, 28, 2) And again: “Christ did not only come for those who, since the time of the Emperor Tiberius have believed in him, nor has the Father exercised his providence only in favor of people now living, but in favor of all without exception, from the beginning, who have feared God and loved him and practiced justice and kindness towards their neighbors and desired to see Christ and hear his voice, in accordance with their abilities and the age in which they were living.” [ibid, IV, 22,2 (SC bis, p. 688.,)

“Christ is the first-born of God, his Logos, in whom all people share. That is what we have learned and what we bear witness to. All who have lived in accordance with the logos are Christians, even if they have been reckoned atheists, as among the Greeks, Socrates, Heraclitus and the like. ” Justin Martyr, Apology I, 46 (PG 6, 397)

St Allbert the Great; “Examining the teachings of pagan philosophers in the light of sound reason, he demonstrated clearly that they were in fundamental accord with the tenets of the faith.” From the second Nocturn of St. Albert the Great, Nov. 15. )(Breviary Pius X). One could provide many similar quotations from the saints.

St Thomas Aquinas held with St Ambrose that all Truth, no matter where it was found had the Holy Spirit for its author, and further that extrinsic proofs could be used in support of the Catholic Faith. Indeed his Summa is full of quotes from extrinsic sources.

There have always been Christians who've recognized the presence of Truth outside Christianity (since God, after all, is Truth).

You would do well to remember the Words of St. Paul in Romans 2:14-15:
14 For when the Gentiles, who have not the law, do by nature those things that are of the law; these, having not the law, are a law to themselves.
15 Who shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness to them:

Ed,

Christianity is not generic theism. It's Trinitarianism. Trinitarianism is irreducible to, and irreplaceable by, generic theism, regardless of how some folks might wish to conflate them. Regarding Trinitarianism: we set it aside, or ignore it, or treat it as somehow irrelevant to our purposes, at great peril to Biblical faith. Aristotle's god is far more compatible with Islam than with Christianity, and with the Summa Contra Gentiles than it is with the historical Incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity. You're doing away with the fundamentally historical nature of revelation, and replacing it with metaphysics -- a path which neither the apostles, the prophets, nor Christ Himself chose to follow (hence my invocation of Pascal's comment). We're not talking about having just one God -- the prophets of Baal, like Aristotle, had that, and it wasn't good enough. We're talking about the God who reveals Himself in history -- in the life of Israel and in Jesus of Nazareth, a God Whom, according to Jesus, is not knowable in the ways by which you wish to proceed. I'll say again what I said earlier: Yahweh is Christologically defined and Christologically accessible. Just because you are talking about one god does not mean you are talking about the Father of our Lord.

You did not answer a single point I made in the previous posting -- not one. You simply re-asserted the pretenses of classical philosophical theism.

Yes, I know the RCC is committed to Aristotle, unlike either Testament or Jesus Himself. But I much prefer the religion of Jesus than a religion about Him.

But I much prefer the religion of Jesus than a religion about Him.

I take it the religion of the early Christians was not a religion of Jesus then.

See my November 12, 2008 1:05 PM comment.

Ari,
Universalism is not an endorsement of Aristotelian philosophy, but of the saving love of God that transcends even our most persistent errors.

Paul, in Romans 1 and 2, is not saying that natural religion saves. He is saying that it does not. He is saying it leaves people without an excuse. You'll recall that when he addresses those with Aristotelian-style natural religion in Athens, he addresses them with regard to what he considers their "unknown God." He makes their "unknown God" known to them, not by referring to nature or to philosophy, but by explaining to them about Jesus and the resurrection -- just as you'd expect from a historically minded Jewish rabbi turned Christian, but not as you'd expect from an Aristotelian metaphysician.