On Aug 29, 2005, at 7:23 PM, Dinogeorge@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 8/29/2005 9:44:46 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, gildnerr@ipfw.edu writes:
haven't heard the argument before, but one problem that I see is the
underlying use of the term "intelligent" (meaning "divine") designer.Another problem with the term "intelligent" is that we simply don't know what it means. What looks "unintelligent" in one context could well be quite "intelligent" in a deeper context; and, of course, vice versa. Just as there is no end to the question, "Why?", so there is no end to the cycle "this seems stupid," "no, it's not," "yes, it is," etc.
If there is an intelligent designer, who or what designed it? And who or what designed the designer of the intelligent designer? And so on, ad infinitum. And if nobody was needed to design the designer, why then is anybody needed to design mere humans?
Brain dump 2.
First, of course the "argument from design", which is effectively what this is all about, has a very very long history that goes way back before Paley. Even Kant, who was constitutionally inclined to demolish metaphysics, found some sort of emotional appeal about it, and indeed his "
Two things fill me with wonder, the starry sky above and the moral law within" is a direct reflection of this.
The comments above by Dinogeorge reflect some made by Hume in the 18th Century, and for what it's worth, have not been generally regarded as unanswerable by theologians. It is true that, in the same way as arguments of "cause", there must be a "First Designer" to avoid infinite regress. But by hypothesis, a First Cause or First Designer is different from the things that flow from it. The "Cause" of all things, or the "Designer" of all things obviously cannot be caused or designed, or indeed, a thing, if one also accepts the "all things are caused" argument, which incidentally, is quite a popular maxim amongst scientists. So the comments above are generally thought to embody a category mistake.
Unfortunately for them, ID proponents also seem to make the same mistake. By treating any putative designer as a causal "thing", ie something a long way back in the ordinary natural chain of causality, they reduce the role of the designer to that of a natural cause, whereas, as any first designer or cause is not a thing (see above), this can't be the way it works.
A better way to think about it is the way in which we think about ourselves. We are blobs (albeit complex ones) of cells and chemicals, and yet we without blushing attribute thoughts, desires, designs, motives, will, agency etc etc to ourselves. Yet we are not really saying, surely "this blob of cells decided to do this" - which is as nonsensical as "this chair decided to do this". Rather, we attribute our agency and will to some transcendental package deal we think of as "ourselves". This is not to countenance a dualistic body/soul split necessarily, rather to point to certain basic facts about how we view ourselves. Obviously, our physical makeup is important to "ourselves", otherwise brain damage/hangovers etc would not have any effect. What Kant refers as the "transcendental apperception of the self" - the basic grounds of our acting as a conscious, unified thing, is however, something that does not "fit" into our concept as ourselves as physical things. When I say "I want a cup of coffee" I do not really mean "my legs, arms, trunk and head want coffee", after all. As a result of this location of the "I" outside our physical world, working out how *we* causally interact with the world is deeply mysterious; indeed, at the moment, it seems quite unclear how science could tackle the problem even (apart from denying it flatly, as did Hume, and Dennett after him). We are back to the problem of how a transcendental concept such as "self" interacts with a physically causal world.
One could indeed argue that however much one physically analysed a set of events involving people, it would miss out a basic narrative that is the stuff of history and social studies. This would be like e.g. trying to analyse the causes of the Napoleonic Wars at a subatomic level without making any reference to Napoleon's sick delusions of European domination (in my view). Nevertheless, one could no doubt, given the technology, do such a description, and it would no doubt make sense in its own terms. It would, however, be rather a dull description involving lots of gluons and quarks and superstrings etc, and despite its enormous complexity would miss out the elegant yet intelectually compelling explanatory power of "Napoleon invaded Europe because he had a small thingy and felt insecure about it".
Despite all the mechanistic progress of evolutionary theory, then, the grander questions of "purpose" remain metaphysically open. After all, we know that when I drink a cup of coffee, an awful lot of quantum-level, probabilistic and "purposeless" events go on in synapses that lead to my will being carried out. Does that mean that we must dispense with the concept of me willing to drink the coffee? This, mutatis mutandis, seems to be the fear that ID has: so tries to read purpose into the mechanics of evolution. Similarly, though, the opposite must hold: "purposeless" modes of evolution like Natural Selection also therefore have no implications for the potential of grand sweeps of design in nature.
Nevertheless, there is a deeper point in all this. Like Kant, we can surely reflect on the natural world around, and be amazed, astonished and humbled - perhaps even grateful - without feeling embarrassment about slipping into fundamentalism - something Kant himself denounced as "impiety", incidentally. Presumably if there was nothing worthy of remark in the world around, we would not feel obliged to study it. Thus both the scientist and religious can surely relate to, in their own, related ways, this basic sense of marvel at the world - a sense that is by no means shared by everyone, it must be said. The natural world is worthy of study, of enjoyment, sometimes of horror, sometimes of astonishment, and above all of reflection. For some people, the reflection will lead in very different directions to that of others. But the basic starting point for all of this is the same for the serious minded among both scientists and theologians. And this is a fundamental agreement that we would be foolish to neglect.
GB