Welcome to the conversation here. I don’t think it’s unimaginable, there just isn’t a current scientific model for how cells came into being. RNA world is a whole productive realm of research though. Even if scientists were to establish a model for how cells came into being (abiogenesis), it wouldn’t somehow disprove that God created them. Christians believe God is sovereign over and works through natural processes to accomplish his will. We don’t need to be afraid that scientific knowledge will somehow erode God’s role in the the world. Science can’t explain or model how God does or doesn’t interact with nature.
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These are all subjective assertions of personal preferences and feelings. It doesn’t make them wrong but it undermines the argument for knowable, independent, objective standards. It suggests one would choose an standard because of need rather than because a rule is objectively correct. Basically, functionality based ethics. And in the end, I think that’s how things actually work, in practice, in the world.
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I have directly engaged with several of the serious thinkers in ID, studied Dembski’s methods in particular, and while I agree they are creative, fun, thoughtful, intelligent, etc., they have yet to produce any working science. In all the ID literature the only example that comes close to a testable hypothesis is The Dependency Graph (Ewert, 2016), and that idea hasn’t exactly taken the world by storm. We are left with creative and fun ideas that don’t actually accomplish anything. Science is in the business of producing material results, so if ID is ever to be any sort of science then it is completely fair to ask that it produce material results. Isn’t it time we recognize ID as an apologetic claim and get on with more practical matters?
… but it looks like you’re getting your data from ID haters.
I have engaged more than my share of haters, and am continually disappointed that the serious thinkers in ID do nothing to reign them in. I could go on at great length detailing the many problems, but that’s not the point. ID is it’s own worst enemy in any effort for ID to be taken seriously. From all appearance that is all that ID was ever meant to be.
Watch Bechly’s testimony and tell me he’s insincere or trying to shut down science:
It’s too late to ask poor Bechly what he really wanted, and I think it best to leave him in peace. If I need to see people trying to shut down science I can read today’s news.
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From time imamorial people have looked around and decided that creation must be the result of a creator. Why? Because they see intrcassy and beauty that belies chance. Id is just a continuation of that. The fact is that to have an ID you need an I(ntelligence).
Science is notorious;y aetheistic. God cannot be a part of the scientific method as long as He remains invisible, by design or no. ID will therefore never be a part of science, but to claim that makes it inpractical or irrelevant would seem to be not just atheistic but anti-God and derisory to religion and faith.
Regardless of my personal convictions about God, there is a vast community of people who find religion and faith beneficial at least. Perhaps there needs to be a little tact, from both camps? Instead of making blanket assertions that enforce one view or the other.
Richard
No argument there. I think people will always be in awe of the intricacy and beauty found in nature, and some of them will interpret that in support of faith. My point is that it should be recognized for what it is; an apologetic claim. There is no crime committed in doing so.
Science in a methodology which can be equally applied by anyone no matter their beliefs. God cannot be part of the scientific method because it would require a material definition of God, which is (as I understand it) a theological atrocity. It would also require cooperation from God in providing material evidence of their own existence. For whatever reason, God does not do this.
There really shouldn’t be any problem with the idea that we can’t have a scientific hypothesis for/of God, and for most Christians it is no problem at all. What value is there in asserting a controversy which, by definition, cannot exist?
Oh certainly, there is obviously great value in faith. I can even make an entirely secular argument in support of this. But one can have faith without resorting to bad-faith arguments. And ID has a long history of bad-faith arguments that do nothing to support the value of faith, whatever you define that value be to. If one has real faith in a Creator, then (IMO) there is nothing to be gained from the fallacious arguments so common in ID literature; Quote-mining, Poisoning the Well, Bait-and-Switch, Begging the Question, Equivocation, bad math, etc.. Where is the tact in any of that?
Above I wrote that I could go on at great length about this, and I can, but I don’t think it necessary. It is far simpler, far more peaceful, far more honest, to simply recognize ID as the apologetic argument that it is. And apologetics are no more a crime than is atheism.
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Both ID and IC suffr from the fact that they were either coined or promoted by extreme Biblical Christians using it to justify their beliefs. It is a shame that ad hominum rears its ugly head so that any legitimate claim is lost because of who said it rather than taken in its own right.
Richard
Who said we can’t discern objective morality? That is presumptuous. That people cannot agree on every rule (or if even describing morality as a list rules is even the best way), does not mean there is no way to discern what is moral. In fact, I’d say that such a view is entirely inconsistent with Orthodox Christianity. While I think God is a most excellent judge and will judge people fairly in light of their backgrounds, upbringing and what they knew and so on, I think most of us believe God’s law is written on our hearts, that God holds us accountable for sin and expects us to do what is right. If we can’t possibly know what is right then I am not sure how God could ever expect us to behave in such a fashion and hold us accountable for not guessing correctly what is right and wrong. I am not sure how Christianity can be true and morality viewed as just a subjective guessing game. Does God only punish people if they do things they thought were wrong? That runs into counterexamples galore that are troubling such as genocide the Holocaust, abortion, etc. And if objective morality does not exist at all, this problem becomes a lot worse.
I also disagree that “good science doesn’t exist in a world in which the most esteemed scientists disagree about the most basic facts.” First off, morality wise, there are many universally agreed upon or very common things such as the golden rule and reciprocal altruism. Most people have empathy and are willing to help others. So your analogy is poor in that the “most basic facts” are generally agreed upon in the moral world. So I think my analogy still stands.
But even despite that, your argument would still not follow in my mind. Good science can exist even if most scientists disagreed with its conclusion. It may be the case that only a small percentage of them do science well and that may not include the esteemed ones. Imagine if YECs took over America and in 50 years only a small handful of non-seminary schools existed. Much of what passed for science would be “bad science” according to us and the few schools left would be doing “good science.” In fact, if the majority of the population were YECS, they would be the “esteemed ones”. I reject the notion that scientific truth or good science is a popularity contest. Outside of some universal themes, I’d say, neither is morality to be honest, as countless examples show. Consensus is a good place to start but it’s not synonymous with truth. I realize many people on this forum love appealing to consensus (how convenient it always happens to always be in regards to the stuff they agree with) and we all utilize experts and consensus testimony, but good science doesn’t need to be a consensus position. But it’s more than that. When experts disagree, the necessarily correct conclusion is 100% not: " none of them are right" or “there is no way for anyone to know.” That absolutely does not follow. What you can say is not that good science doesn’t exist, but that it is difficult for impartial observers who are not trained experts to know what good science is or who is doing it correctly when experts disagree. It just does not follow that because experts disagree, even significantly, there is no such thing as good research or science.
But being moral generally does not require a doctorate so the objection fails here as well. Science and morality are vastly different. Spiritual forces, fleshly desires and sin might easily prevent one from possessing an objective moral sense of the world on some issue. Doing objective science seems much more neutral and, on the face of it to me, less susceptible in its practical operation to sin and earthly desires getting in the way of it. In other words, objectivity is easier.
Not to mention, and maybe some here would be happy by this, but it seems to me you could also turn these types of arguments against Christian faith. Well, so many people believe in different religions, there couldn’t possibly be one that is objectively true and there is no way to know. That does not follow to me. Maybe you espouse a blind, subjective faith or maybe you do not. I do not. For me, neither my religions beliefs nor my moral views can be adequately described as subjective guessing games. I actually think my views are correct. I wouldn’t hold them otherwise. Diversity of belief does not mean there is isn’t an objective truth. It just means people disagree on what it is and even if you happen to be in possession of it, convincing others of it will be difficult. Denying the existence of objective morality just means there are no moral truths or oughts that anyone is obligated to follow because doing so is simply the right thing to do. It’s all just opinion. Oddly enough, many here think inserting God into gaps is quitting or giving up. What on earth is denying objective morality because some disagree with one another?
I’ve always believed, whether homosexuality is right or wrong, God is more concerned with how two individuals treat one another in a relationship than on what the genders of the two individuals happen to be. But that opinion is about as relevant to this discussion as the one you just articulated. And that is to say, not very much. I actually agree with you 100%. I think we can cite James on “true religion”, Jesus talking about the little ones, Him on his brothers and sister doing his will, Him never knowing people who prophecies in His name and got facts correct, CS Lewis on people making use of different upbringings and so on and on. But that is not the issue being discussed here. I am only arguing that modern day materialism is not consistent, as a worldview and philosophy on life, with objective moral values. Whether or not we could even exhaustively know what is objectively true or not doesn’t even matter to this point. I would simply say, there is no point in looking for something that doesn’t exist. But if something does, you can look for it even if you are certain you might never find it. I never said atheists do not behave morally, that they do not have God’s laws on their heart or that a correct worldview is more important than doing good deeds. Only that if objective morality does not exist, there are no real oughts and it is all just opinion and if we cannot objectively distinguish between feeding orphans or raping them, something is wrong with our worldview.
I read this post as you believing hurting children is objectively wrong. You may disagree but that is what is looks like to me. You also refer to grossly immoral positions, which, in my mind, assumes an objective standard of morality. If there is no such thing as “truth” something couldn’t be true or false. If there is no moral truth, I am not sure how something could truly be right or wrong. As C.S. Lewis opined: “The reason why your idea of New York can be truer or less true than mine is that New York is a real place, existing quite apart from what either of us thinks. If when each of us said ‘New York’ each means merely ‘The town I am imagining in my own head,’ how could one of us have truer ideas than the other? There would be no question of truth or falsehood at all.” It’s the same with morality for me. As far as I a concerned, whether or not we agree on all issues, the fundamental distinction between “right” and “wrong” is an integral and undeniable part of life. The goal is trying to figure out what is right and do it. Denying that is detaching oneself from reality. Materialism does that in my mind even if materialists do not.
Who here said subjective assertions of personal preferences and feelings are arguments for knowable, independent, objective standards? I think you are misunderstanding.
If objective morality does not exist, there are no morally obligatory laws, there is no actual right or wrong. Imagined rules of something that doesn’t exist are not right or wrong because they do not correspond to reality i morality is subjective (see the CS Lewis quote above about New York). I don’t need to have a correct list of moral rules or behaviors to know that. If we believe in right and wrong, then objective morality exists. If we don’t believe in objective morality then right and wrong do not actually exist. Functional based ethics can support the individual, the slave, the slave owner, the Nazi, the Jew, society as a whole, just your skin color, just your ethnicity or everyone including pets. There is still no way to tell Hitler he was actually wrong. I assume most people really believe he was wrong. Let me make it simple. If you don’t really believe that, then that is your business. That is the argument. You can just deny objective morality as @T_aquaticus does. The argument is over. The discussion is really about the consequences of that or whether people actually live their lives consistently with such an outlook.
Vinnie
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God is not one thing or being among other things and beings that can be demonstrated via material evidence, God is the source of being or being itself. So the reason God doesn’t do this is the same reason God doesn’t create round squares.
I agree in general but I think an argument can be made that given its successes and ever since the so-called “enlightenment,”, in popular thought science has increasingly moved society towards a materialist worldview and many today view science and faith as being in conflict. This outlook is entirely wrong, but it is a real part of the world. Science is great but its scope is overinflated at times. Out of sight of mind. Not to mention, new atheism skewed things with its four horsemen, most of whom wouldn’t know “metaphysics from Metamucil.”
Rejecting God is a crime whether it is done by Christian apologists or atheists.
Vinnie
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That might be an interesting assertion to debate.
Richard
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It would be a quick debate for me. I would just quote Jesus in all of Matthew 7 but especially 21-23
True and False Disciples
21“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.22Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
And add in a little Matthew 25 especially these:
44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
Maybe even a splash of CS Lewis with one of my favorite quotes from him:
Bad psychological material is not a sin but a disease. It does not need to be repented of, but to be cured. And by the way, that is very important. Human beings judge one another by their external actions. God judges them by their moral choices. When a neurotic who has a pathological horror of cats forces himself to pick up a cat for some good reason, it is quite possible that in God’s eyes he has shown more courage than a healthy man may have shown in winning the V.C. When a man who has been perverted from his youth and taught that cruelty is the right thing does dome tiny little kindness, or refrains from some cruelty he might have committed, and thereby, perhaps, risks being sneered at by his companions, he may, in God’s eyes, be doing more than you and I would do if we gave up life itself for a friend.
It is as well to put this the other way round. Some of us who seem quite nice people may, in fact, have made so little use of a good heredity and good upbringing that we are really worse than those whom we regard as fiends. Can we be quite certain how we should have behaved if we had been saddled with the psychological outfit, and then with the bad upbringing, and then with the power, say, of Himmler? That is why Christians are told not to judge. We see only the results which a man’s choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it. Most of the man’s psychological makeup is probably due to his body: when his body dies all that will fall off him, and the real central man, the thing that chose, that made the best or worst out of this material, will stand naked. All sorts of nice things which we thought our own, but which were really due to a good digestion, will fall off some of us: all sorts of nasty things which were due to complexes or bad health will fall off others. We shall then, for the first time, see every one as he really was. There will be surprises.
I think Jesus was much more into works than some popular formulations of Christianity today let on.
Vinnie
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Wish I could give this multiple likes. Thanks for posting.
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The RNA world begins by calling RNA a catalyst for chemical reactions…Hmm. RNA as a catalyst is at best weak and non-specific. On the other hand, protein enzymes as catalysts are amazing. They are so specific that each enzyme is actually named after the reaction, i.e. Succinyl-CoA Synthetase, Pryruvate Carboxylase. And without the enzyme the reaction goes very slowly or not at all.
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Not sure you got the right angle.
It is not about discipleship, but about crime.
That would make it not a free choice but an obligation to follow God.
I do not think that is justified by your quotes.
Richard
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Yes, I was going in a different direction with that.
If God were one good thing among many, maybe you could make such an argument. But for me God is goodness itself or the source of goodness. Everyone has the choice to align or not align.
I wouldn’t over-defend the word crime which usually entails state sanctioned punishment. We can also freely choose to follow or not follow societal laws. Consequences might sway us but we still have a choice in the matter.
I also don’t really bat an eye at thinking of us having an obligation of following God. It is what is right and good. But we don’t have to choose that.
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So you are claiming that we cannot identify goodness if we do not identify God.
There is a Chrisitan doctrine that would claim this, but does it match reality?
I am not convinced that you could ever prove or even diagnaose it.
Richard
This has a lot to do with the shift from Greek to Latin in the West. The verb πιστεύω includes not just “believe” but “trust”, “keep faith”, even “show faithfulness” or “be faithful”, whereas the Latin “credo” conveys little more than intellectual assent. So the active aspects of a confidence in Christ fell away with the language shift, and with the Reformation that became entrenched in a lot of doctrine.
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Yes. This objection to an “obligation” requires the assumption that humans can be just fine apart from God, as though there is some neutral status we can inhabit where God is irrelevant. It ignores the line of poetry that Paul endorses – “in Him we live and move and have our being” – along with the theme in Paul’s writings that we are made for a purpose, with the implication that apart from that purpose we are broken.
Personally I would replace “obligation” to “necessity” – we were made to be in God’s family, connected to Him, and apart from that we are necessarily less than we were meant to be.
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So God deliberately maade us dependent on Him.
Not sure i would worship such a God.
Of course.
Scripture supersedes all. Reality, humanity, even god.
No wonder i am not a Biblical Christian in the literal sense of the phrase.
Richard
I don’t think that is what I said. I don’t want to fully commit to this phrasing yet but maybe it would be more accurate to say identifying goodness identifies part of the nature of God, whether one knows/admits it or not.
I think it matches both 1) many statements in scripture 2) and sound metaphysical arguments for God’s existence which tie in the Divine attributes.
@St.Roymond offered a very instructive response. I think there are many statements in scripture about us living, moving and having our being in God. These cohere perfectly well with Thomistix arguments about God being the source of being and so forth. So for me, the scripture matches the metaphysics wonderfully. I mean, Thomas Aquinas loved the Bible so this isn’t surprising but I find the argument sound.
I know many think we can’t establish God’s existence via sound metaphysics and theism is just some blind guessing game or based on personal experience. The latter is very important to me always. I’ve been fooled myself and given up on the classical arguments for God’s existence. But that is without actually dialoguing with what they really claim and say. I think people just get so bogged down by the arguments and counter arguments they just give up and feel the truth here is unknowable. Which is essentially doing what so many view inserting God into gaps as: quitting.
But anyway, the arguments for God, like versions of the cosmological one don’t just establish the brute existence of some deity. If we actually read the arguments carefully and dialogue with the top Christian philosophers today who espouse and defend them, as opposed to caricatures of them on the internet and/or just what we think the arguments say, we learn the Divine attributes come with them. So when you say this:
It’s fine that you believe that but I believe there are sound metaphysical arguments to the contrary. Part of Fesers very long cosmological argument are 28-32
- If the purely actual actualizer were imperfect in any way, it would have some unactualized potential, which, being purely actual, it does not have.
- So, the purely actual actualizer is perfect.
- For something to be less than fully good is for it to have a privation–that is, to fail to actualize some feature proper to it.
- A purely actual actualizer, being purely actual, can have no such privation.
32 So, the purely actual actualizer is fully good.
So for me, it’s a whole host of arguments for God’s existence based on Thomas that cohere wonderfully, in my view, with scripture.
Yeah, I would say “believe” is not just head knowledge (even the demons believe and shudder) but more “align yourself with Christ” and that entails following his commands, taking up the cross and so on. I’m not advocating a works based salvation but passage after passage from Jesus leads me to a “strive to enter” mindset.
God is the source of all goodness and being itself. Anything else is a round square in this framework. And I guess my honest response is that just looks blind pride and lacks proper reverence for God. We make him out to be our helper or buddy at times but in the end He is the creator of the universe and freely created us out of love. There is no deficiency in God that we somehow fill. He wasn’t lonely for eternity. We aren’t stroking his ego. No one is saying God made us dependent on Him because He needs us to fill a void or complete himself. That is absurd and quite blasphemous in my mind. We exist solely because of the overflowing love of God. “I won’t submit to the source of all goodness and perfection that wants the best for me but created me in a real world with real freedom so I could freely choose good.” That sounds like a child throwing a tantrum. I’d say, well, you have your choice in front of you, and if you don’t choose God, that’s your business. Good luck.
The movie Nefarious was amazing in my opinion. The critics only roasted is because it didn’t tote the Holywood party line of viewing abortion as wrong. It treated it as murder. In the movie a psychologist ends up talking to a man possessed by a demon and this is exactly the reason the demon said they rebelled. They said loving God was slavery.
It supersedes you. Jesus Christ, the creator and redeemer of the universe appeared to Paul, someone persecuting the Church and made him the apostle to the Gentiles. He authored much of our sacred scripture which repeated these same thoughts in numerous places. You just grotesquely dismiss any aspect of scripture you don’t like. You haven’t even pointed out a single flaw in any of the reasoning or shown how it’s I inconsistent with reality or God. You just misunderstood it and pouted because you can’t have goodness outside God anymore than you can have a round square. You are pompous and pontificate on high. Make up your own holy scriptures and start your own religion already. You playing the victim here is really old.
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That’s an interesting idea! I don’t think I’ve encountered it before. More commonly the first rebellion is said to be out of envy, that God should be so intimate with creatures of matter and the second (the Watchers; Genesis 6) due to lust. Of course that’s within the second-Temple understanding of demons as the departed spirits of the Nephilim and their offspring (“the bastards” in Enoch); demons as rebel angels is a later development that doesn’t fit well with Paul (a second-Temple Jew).
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