Designed to Adapt?

There is a fourth option: We are now at this particular place and time, and we need to decide what to do next. We can gather all the knowledge we can but time moves forward nonetheless, so we need to decide what to do now and then do it, see what happens, adjust, do something else with the new reality at the time.

@TimothyHicks

I agree that life is “designed to adapt.” The biggest problem here is that Being is not seen as mutable and changing. If God is immutable and perfect, what do life and humanity have to do with God? This is a good question.

If we are designed, we want to be changeless, both believers and non-believers, rather than be eternal and changeable.

Because the universe is constantly changing, because it is physical and limited, life must adapt and change if it is to survive and flourish. There is not eternal law that says the life will adapt and flourish, so there must be a design that allows flora and fauna to do so.

Sadly Darwin did not nail this design, although science seems to think do.

@Patrick

I’m sure there are infinitely many options! Some more aligned with reality than others, to be sure. And others (maybe not the same ones optimized towards truth) more effective towards … well, that may not be a simple thing to decide – even with religious insight and imperative.

If you’ve got a clear mission down for yourself and know what you need to do, count yourself blessed among many, even if you can’t see or acknowledge the source of such blessing provided that what you think you need to do is actually toward some righteous end.

As for me, I stay firm with my faith that the ends oriented towards clearest Truth are the same as the ends that are the wholesome pursuits we should be undertaking. Apart from faith there is no reason to suppose those two optimizations coincide with each other at all. But the God I serve gives me good hope that understanding toward his creation such as what science helps provide should not be bad thing.

@GJDS: You wrote:

It may be helpful to consider what we mean by chance in these discussions, and then discuss what may be random.

Indeed. And what I mean by chance is only the phenomena which defy our human predictions in the particulars, but which follow our stochastic expectations in general –or over large sample sizes. What I do NOT at all concede is that “random” for us is identical with philosophically / metaphysically random – meaning random even for God. Since I do accept omniscience across all time as something God must have, then nothing would be truly random in the sense we mean it if we were to imagine the omniscient perspective.

Random is used in an odd manner within the biological sciences, often synonymous with automatous or implied in the very odd phrase “the blind watchmaker” by Dawkins.

Which is why Dawkins doesn’t have a clue about these things in any theological or philosophical sense. If biologists (or creationists!) are taking their metaphysical or theological cues from Dawkins on this, then that is to their own confusion and loss. The only “clarity” Dawkins brings to these discussions as far as I’m concerned is to showcase the embarrassing poverty of the materialist approach. After that, he offers nothing on these questions, making it astounding and appalling that so many creationists have taken their cues from him or Krauss.

I often think it means events that are within a poorly defined system, and until we can better understand such systems, we will inevitably think such events are random (unpredictable and not sufficiently analysable).

It could mean that the system is simply beyond our measurement/calculation power. For example, we understand the effects of air pressure/friction, momentum, and gravity on a flipping coin. And even if these were the complete set of all factors influencing that coin, we still have specificity and computational challenge to know the coin’s and its environment’s state to sufficient precision to predict if it will be heads or tails. So all the phenomena could be well enough defined in concept, but just not in specificity. And it can also be true that there are hidden variables in the system up to and including metaphysical variables (though the possible inclusion of that last item is the crux of much curiosity – and I don’t mean (not here yet anyway) to insist on its inclusion or exclusion).

@Gregory : you wrote:

If you really want to challenge TEs, you first need to get over the facile argument that they are ‘mainly Protestant evangelicals.’

Rest assured I have never recently labored under any such illusion. In fact I’m under the impression that resistance toward evolutionary thought has been a largely Protestant phenomenon. What I do confess ignorance towards is if there is much or any difference between western or eastern orthodox churches in current thought and attitudes towards all this.

You gave a brief quote from St. Thomas Aquinas:

“Divine providence does not exclude fortune and chance.” – St. Thomas Aquinas

and as Eddie makes clear, I won’t pretend that a single quote does justice to the full expression of all Aquinas’ thoughts that could be brought to bear. But it does touch on the important (to me) subject at hand, and draws out my curiosity for what all Aquinas does/would think about chance today. I do agree with you, Eddie, that we should at least acknowledge a potential distinction to be made between God using chance, and between God making things by using chance. It may be that we treat of it only to end up disposing of that distinction, but the distinction as you have put it stands for now just the same.

To say that Aquinas’ approach is in no way or form amenable to current evolutionary approaches seems a bit facile to me since he, of course, had no reason to be in his time, and you conceded as much I believe, Eddie. But I would want to know much more about his attitudes towards chance in general before attempting to extrapolate his probable inclinations on this issue today, and in that regard I’m open to listening to evidence either way.

As for my chosen subject itself: chance, it seems to me that a significant part of our issue is already behind us if we already agree that “chance” is a legitimately recognized tool in God’s toolbox (again --not “chance” to God, but chance to us.) Because even agreement on this may not be trivial in all quarters. But I seem to sense it here. The next thing I want to address (barring any interesting rabbit trails) is your distinction, Eddie, between chance as being merely used for ongoing phenomena, vs chance being used to actually create things.

“You gave a brief quote from St. Thomas Aquinas” - Merv

Well, actually I gave 5 quotations from both medieval and contemporary Christian thinkers. You focussed only on 1 of them.

“As for my chosen subject itself: chance” - Merv

If your deepest desire is to talk about ‘chance’, then why not start another thread focussed on it instead of rabbit trailing away from the OP?

Repeat for Merv: If you have any natural scientific evidence of what “God has to do with the evolutionary process,” please share it here. Do you?

I doubt that you do, but perhaps you have the humility to openly say so. And you’re welcome for the Heller reference to his book “Philosophy of Chance”, Merv. :wink:

“Gregory who is a big fan of Feser (at least, when he thinks Feser is opposed to me!)” - Eddie

My appreciation of Feser’s thought has nothing to do with you or IDism, Eddie. Please don’t flatter yourself. It is unbecoming of a self-proclaimed (but unaffiliated) ‘theologian’.

Feser is a well-respected Christian philosopher (who, like most mature Christian philosophers, happens to reject IDism). National Review called him “one of the best contemporary writers on philosophy.”

Vincent Torley is pretty much only known on the hard core IDist and anti-BioLogos blog ‘Uncommon Descent’. His approach differs from the DI’s ‘strictly scientific’ rhetoric because Torley properly capitalises ‘Intelligent Design’ and admits that he is referring specifically to the Christian God. He is Australian, currently an English language teacher in Japan. He holds a PhD in philosophy and was completely outclassed and ‘thrown down’ by Feser when they interacted on-line. By his own admission, Torley hasn’t published a single paper contribution in an academic journal in his life.

Feser (Pasadena City College), Beckwith (Baylor) and Tkacz (Gonzaga) otoh are credible, well-published Christian scholars, e.g. Feser’s “The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism” (St. Augustine’s Press, 2008).

If you’re curious, Merv, again, please be very careful and wary if you choose to entertain the IDist propaganda. There are other more credible options: Edward Feser: ID versus A-T roundup

“I particularly like his anti-modernism, where he and I are very close together and quite far from you” - Eddie

There goes Eddie again, speculating! :wink: I was born in the post-modern epoch, Gen-X, that’s admitted. While you are a ‘baby boomer,’ right, Eddie? I have critiques of some aspects of ‘modernism’ but am not hyper-anti-modernism. Feser writes about post-modern themes and is not afraid to engage with the present via his Catholic ‘thermometer.’ It is not surprising that some Protestant evangelicals reject Catholic scholars.

“special creation of man and the higher animals” - Eddie

You are reaching the outskirts of your proper ‘theologian’ territory, Eddie. TE is logically consistent with “special creation of man and the higher animals,” cf. Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis. But TE rejects ideological ‘creationism.’ The IDism you support via the DI is both retrograde and documented as duplicitous on this topic.

Beckwith and Feser, as Christy already pointed out, are not obliged to answer to every accusation a person may make as a blog commenter.

Evidently, I’m just not so ready and willing to accuse people here of ‘intellectual cowardice’ as Eddie. Perhaps it’s my post-modern ethics compared with his supposedly ‘superior’ pre-modern yearnings. :wink:

The point is that I don’t reject Torley as a man. He is undoubtedly a Christian thinker, evident from the way he properly capitalises ‘Intelligent Design’.

It seems that Eddie may be finally coming around to see the logic of capitalisation (but don’t hold your breath for him to admit this at BioLogos). Nevertheless, Torley is sorely deficient, rather low-brow and simplistic in his defence of IDism. I’ve read his “massive and detailed discussions of Aquinas and Darwin” (so Eddie’s ‘suspicion’ is yet again wrong) and his rather backwards conclusions. Why would Feser take precious time to respond to sub-par English teacher IDist accusations?

If you’re holding up a never-published English teacher as an example of ‘significant IDist thought,’ Eddie, it seems your ‘camp’ has rather little of value to offer. And Behe’s fantasy ‘poof!’ is no better.

“,I do accept omniscience … as something God must have …” than nothing would be … random … to Him (my insertion) …"

I want to change this perspective slightly, and instead state that a central tenet of the Christian faith is that God has created everything from the beginning. This act of creation has resulted in what we can access via our senses and intellect - the creativity of God, if we use this phrase, provides us with seemingly inexhaustible possibilities to human intellect, and science is one activity that enables us to further explore the Creation. Philosophical musings may come before many scientific insights, but these are all part of the intellectual effort. The real mystery is therefore, how we can access the Creation, or to a theist, how God has ensured human beings can understand His creativity to the extent that we can act as agents of change (both good and bad) within the Creation.

Eddie

Can it really be true that an academic presented “occasionalism” as meaning “intervening occasionally in nature” and was taken seriously by other academics??!! If so academia’s in even worse shape that I thought. Sheesh.

On that level, “conservationism” is to do with God favouring green politics, “concurrence” is about him going with the flow and - on a quite separate matter - “concordism” is something about him travelling by supersonic jet.

It’s tragic because understanding those three approaches to divine action well is absolutely crucial to dealing with the matters raised on this thread. Fortunately, apart from my own modest treatment on the Hump of the Camel, it’s clearly explained in the Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy, or by the same author here (with direct relevance to the Deistic versions of evolution so commonly embraced today).

There’s no real excuse for ignorance on such matters in these days when authoritative sources are just a click away.

I suspect that Eddie’s miffed because he didn’t get any traction in the comment section of Feser’s blog.

It was excellent reading. I’m especially captivated by the Peter Geach analogy Feser highlights in Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide:

That captures the theological vacuity of ID beautifully.

[quote=“Eddie, post:48, topic:2615”]
Vincent Torley does hold a Ph.D. in philosophy, i.e., the same degree as Feser.
[/quote]I don’t see how that negates Gregory’s point that “By his own admission, Torley hasn’t published a single paper contribution in an academic journal in his life.”

The ratio of PhDs (in every field) that have published nothing other than a thesis to those who publish in journals is very, very high. And I would apply the same notion to those who stop publishing in professional journals in favor of polemics, equally to Behe and Dawkins. This doesn’t apply to my opinion of the relative quality of their polemics.

GJDS, would it be too much to ask you to try to refrain from equivocating between “the biological sciences” and “Dawkins”? Dawkins retired from science long ago for a second career as a polemicist.

Merv, see my request to GJDS above. Is it reasonable? Isn’t GJDS (and by piling on, you) practicing the same shallowness he accuses Dawkins of practicing?

43 posts were split to a new topic: Does Quantum Mechanics Disprove God?

My mistake/confusion. We’re good on theory.

That’s right, anything I talk about is the real natural world. The non-natural world doesn’t exist for me.

@Joao

Joao, I’m not afraid to give Dawkins his due. I’ve read and learned much from some of his work. And I’ve read just enough of his “atheological” work ("The God Delusion) to be confident that he shines as a much brighter bulb on the science side of things. If I’ve sold him short on the philosophical side, then I would love to stand corrected!

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