I'm not here to be a whipping boy for creationism or Christianity. I personally don't put much stock in either. And I strongly suspect that 95% of the "Intelligent Design" activity in the past few years is simply another quasi-political move in the culture wars and not a good faith attempt to improve science.

But to not recognize that Christianity, especially as worked out by the philosophers of the Catholic Church over the past 20 centuries, is an internally consistent system of remarkable clarity and rationality is to be either intellectually dishonest or sadly uninformed.

To be sure science has been a wonderfully productive approach yielding all manner of practical and theoretical benefits. But it's not the only discipline which is rewarding. It's not even the only discipline which is rational.

Mathematics, for example, is highly rational...but it's not science.

And on the other hand, the arts tend to be happily irrational at times...but are we going to throw away punk rock just because it isn't science?

>> How can we critique a design when we can only have an imperfect
>> understanding of the intent of the designer?”

> This is the weakest argument possible and always the retreat of
> the theist.

This is actually a very strong argument, and you only have to bring it down to earth a bit to see the point. Imagine we send a car back in time to the 13th century. The people of the time gather to discuss the design of this object.

"It has wheels...it must be some kind of cart"

"Yes, but the enclosure is so small...it will be of little use to carry my crops or farm animals"

"Perhaps it is a carriage to bring people from town to town.

"But it's so terribly heavy. How many horses will be required to draw it? And where, by the way, is the hitch for the team? And how will I see where I am going being so low to the ground...I'll be staring at horse butts all day"

"It's obviously a terrible terrible design. Some aspects are remarkable...but clearly the designer is without rationality"

How can a 13th century farmer critique a car design when he doesn't understand the intent of the designer?

Anyway...it may not be your cup of tea, but I see as much hubris in those who easily dismiss religion without trying to understand it *on its own terms* as I do in those who dismiss science they don't understand.

There is a more modest and effective way to deal with Intelligent Design than to declare a full scale war on religion and the religious. Just demand that the ID crowd follow the rules of the scientific method. Demand a hypothesis that is falsifiable. Demand empirical evidence that can be reproduced. Demand peer review and publication. Demand that issues of scientific theory be settled by scientists...not politicians.

galanter wrote:
This isn't a retreat to faith. It's a rational and honest implicataion of man's own limitations.

Thank you. Thomas Aquinas would agree with you. Speaking of Thomas, he was far ahead of his time when he posited in the Summa Theologiaethat there is no way to know if the world (read: universe) had a beginning.......save Genesis 1:1- divine revelation..........he was hundreds of years ahead of all these crackpot "cosmologists" who theorize about Big Bangs and Planck Time and Multiverses and nonsense.

However I think Thomas would add in reply to you that only when one is truly rational and honest with himself and his limitations can he even begin to have faith.....humility is the beginning of faith, in other words.

matthew wrote:

galanter wrote:
This isn't a retreat to faith. It's a rational and honest implicataion of man's own limitations.

Thank you. Thomas Aquinas would agree with you. Speaking of Thomas, he was far ahead of his time when he posited in the Summa Theologiaethat there is no way to know if the world (read: universe) had a beginning.......save Genesis 1:1- divine revelation..........he was hundreds of years ahead of all these crackpot "cosmologists" who theorize about Big Bangs and Planck Time and Multiverses and nonsense.

However I think Thomas would add in reply to you that only when one is truly rational and honest with himself and his limitations can he even begin to have faith.....humility is the beginning of faith, in other words.

Matthew, are you being honest, though? You're clearly intelligent, but you seem to be willing to bypass this in order to cling to some very intellectually and politically obscurant ideas. It's just hard for me to understand.

matthew wrote:
Also, I might add, only when one is truly rational and honest with himself and his limitations can he even begin to have faith.

So what, since it's not faith, does the fellow you're speaking of have prior to this point of true rationality and self-awareness?

Say I believe in God and intelligent design but I'm not totally rational and there are some blind-spots in my self-knowledge, these beliefs cannot even begin to be based in faith, so how do I have them? What are they? Is this the Matt-Daddy version of bad faith?

galanter:

Your arguments are based on there being a designer. What empirical evidence do you have of this? I renounce the idea of a "designer", “saviour” or any other mythic creature with strangely human traits.

Mathew:

You are so gone beyond rationality it is pointless to debate with you. I'll be blunt here, I think you are a fundamentalist and more than a little touched. As I said above, although I think you are mentally ill, but compared to galanter you have the courage/stupidity to back up the lunacy of your convictions. So a small amount of respect it due, but please only vote in your own country.

I'm sure all this plays into the persecution complex that Christians thrive on.

Neither of you have answered the question why Christianity should be treated any differently than any other primitive belief system?

galanter wrote:And on the other hand, the arts tend to be happily irrational at times...but are we going to throw away punk rock just because it isn't science?

This would be a much more intresting and profitable discussion. Metaphysics can be provident for artistic expression, as well as religious understanding. There is an overlap there. Much more so than in the Science Vs. Religion debate. Foucault would say as much.

...

solum wrote:I think that this post addresses pretty much everything we've been discussing very well (up until Cranius' interesting point).

I don't understand how you can buy into this? The assumption with this argument is that there is a "intelligent designer". Without that the whole point falls to pieces.

I repeat, and no one has answered, why should Christian mythology be treated any differently to Thor or Zeus?

In New Zealand the Maori myths say that the Islands were fished out of the ocean by a great warrior. How is this creation myth different to "In the beginning God created..."?

galanter wrote:Anyway...it may not be your cup of tea, but I see as much hubris in those who easily dismiss religion without trying to understand it *on its own terms* as I do in those who dismiss science they don't understand.

I don't think there's hubris in deciding you want to decide what to believe based on reason. I'm pretty sure I understand religion "on its own terms". It's fine for some, but not for me, and not for publicly funded US science classrooms. I don't call that "hubris".

galanter wrote:There is a more modest and effective way to deal with Intelligent Design than to declare a full scale war on religion and the religious.

Where (outside of Gramsci's posts [winking emoticon]) do you see, on this board, or in the world, a "full[-]scale war on religion and the religious"?

galanter wrote:Just demand that the ID crowd follow the rules of the scientific method. Demand a hypothesis that is falsifiable. Demand empirical evidence that can be reproduced. Demand peer review and publication.

Well, yes. That's kind of the point. The thing is, the way you put it is sort of cart-before-horse. The ID crowd, if they're the scientists they claim to be, should be doing all these things without anyone having to demand it. They don't (because they're not scientists), so they're not considered scientists, so they're not considered welcome in classrooms by those who value the integrity of science classrooms, and they're not convincing to those who are convinced by rationality.

galanter wrote:Demand that issues of scientific theory be settled by scientists...not politicians.

It's a little sad that anyone should have to demand that. It would be nice if that could just be obvious.

matthew wrote:Speaking of Thomas, he was far ahead of his time when he posited in the Summa Theologiae that there is no way to know if the world (read: universe) had a beginning.......save Genesis 1:1- divine revelation..........he was hundreds of years ahead of all these crackpot "cosmologists" who theorize about Big Bangs and Planck Time and Multiverses and nonsense.

I half-agree. There is no way to know if the world had a beginning. But on what basis does he, or you, say "save Genesis 1:1"? We have dozens - hundreds - of creation myths, plus several scientific hypotheses and theories. What claim does Genesis 1:1 have to be a way - and the sole way - to know if the world had a beginning? The nice thing about the Big Bang is, if I cared to, I could look at all the evidence that has been collected: empirical data, some of which supports the theory, and some of which does not. Then, I can decide, as a rational being, whether the body of supporting evidence is strong enough for me to believe in the Big Bang. I can not repeat this process with Genesis 1:1. There is no evidence for or against Genesis 1:1. I can have faith that the book it's in is Divine, and have faith that it's true. I can do what most Americans do, and have faith that the book it's in is kinda Divine, and have faith that the parts I like are true. I can simply guess, flipping a mental coin, that it's true. But I cannot use any rational process to decide to believe that it's true. For you, a person of faith, that is not a shortcoming. For me, it is. And that's really okay, as long as you keep this faith out of science classrooms.

galanter wrote:To be sure science has been a wonderfully productive approach yielding all manner of practical and theoretical benefits. But it's not the only discipline which is rewarding. It's not even the only discipline which is rational.

I don't understand where you're going with this. Between Evolution and Intelligent Design (i.e. the topic under discussion), Evolution is the only one of the two that is rational. If the debate were "Which is healthier: Bananas or Doritos", would you insist that it's basically a tie, since there are plenty of foods just as healthy as bananas? Or because foods aren't the only thing that can be healthy?

galanter wrote:And on the other hand, the arts tend to be happily irrational at times...but are we going to throw away punk rock just because it isn't science?

No. But are we going to use it as an alternative to Evolution in the biology classroom? Also no. I (and I think most others here) have no problem with the irrational. I happen to think we all get a little irrational sometimes, as we ought to, and some more than others. But for me (and most others here), when I'm choosing what to believe to be factually true, I use reason. You don't, and that's fine. I'm not going to call you an idiot - although there are some here who will. It's just a difference in the way we think. It doesn't make me anti-religious, and it doesn't mean I don't understand religion.

Linus Van Pelt wrote:Where (outside of Gramsci's posts [winking emoticon]) do you see, on this board, or in the world, a "full[-]scale war on religion and the religious"?

You're right in that one, I'd have Matty co. in re-education camps faster than you can say, "Stop, stop, oh god stop, I renounce Jesus, just turn off that Creed record!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"