The common assumption, shared by the ID crowd and the Atheist-for-the-sake-of-evolution crowd is
"all that happens randomly is not by design"
This assumption is false. A SIMILAR truth pertains even to our own order of causality: When I seed my lawn, I throw out seeds "at random" in the sense that I know many of them will never germinate, will hit rocks, will be eaten by birds, etc. Nevertheless, this random event is happening by design.
God's causality is even more intimate and mysterious than this, for he is the universal cause of all being, even those beings that come to be by chance. The clearest exposition is given in the response to the first objection here:
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1...umma/
102202.htm
where St. Thomas explains why an event that is trully random is at the same time trully designed.
the translation is "hazard and luck". It's better rendered in our modern English as "luck and chance". The first pertains to the random events in human life, the second to random events in natural things. The medievals, following Aristotle, would always refer to the two together- keeping clear a distiction that moderns tend to obfuscate. I mention this now because "hazzard" is not a word in common coin for the thing spoken of.
the translation is "hazard and luck". It's better rendered in our modern English as "luck and chance". The first pertains to the random events in human life, the second to random events in natural things. The medievals, following Aristotle, would always refer to the two together- keeping clear a distiction that moderns tend to obfuscate. I mention this now because "hazzard" is not a word in common coin for the thing spoken of.
The other main problem between the ID'ers and the Atheist-for-the-sake-of-evolution crowd is that they both confound two meanings of the word "science", which can mean either:
a.) an objective, dispassionate, organized body of knowledge that explains complex things in terms of the simple, or
b.) an experimentally verified body of knowledge based on falsifiable hypotheses.
Notice that if b is the same thing as a., in other words, if the only objective, organized knowledge, etc. were the kind attained by method b, then no kind of Mathematics or logic could be called a science! This is simply absurd.
For what its worth, the only way one can say "all science must be verified by experiment" is if they are assuming that the study of God is not scientific, for it is admitted on all sides that there are no experiments with God. But the very matter under discussion is whether there can be a scientific grasp of God. Your interlocutor, therefore, begs the question, since he is assuming what he should be proving.
Even if ID is true, it is superfluous. The science of Natural Theology can already prove that the truly chance events of nature proceed from an intelligent cause. The proof is very difficult to learn thoroughly, and I would not expect more than one man in a million to be able to learn it well- it takes too much time, it involves lofty concepts, and many simply lack the interest in the higher things.
But who would ever suspect that the seach for the deepest things was easy?
The debate between the ID'ers and the Atheists-for-the-sake-of-evolution is, to the extent that it stays within its present limits, an ignoble debate between people who understand neither God nor science. Each side has a part of the truth, which you notice in your post, but neither side seems willing to learn theology in order to speak about God (i.e. give a "logos" of the "Theos")
"an ignoble debate between people who understand neither God nor science"
A depressing decription but very likely true, and I include myself in that. It *is* sad that few seem to make the effort to understand the other side, and that is a mistake I want to avoid.
The whole point of many oppossed to ID 'theory' being taught as a scientific theory isn't that it can't be true, but that it is philosophy, not science. The fact that so many people are having trouble telling the difference between the two with this issue only underscores for me that they should be taught separate and considered part of separate disciplines until such time someone can devise a telling test for the hand of God.
Mark,
Apologies for this long response, but the state of the terms "science" and "philosophy" (which are central to the discussion here, as you indicate) is so muddled these days that one has to go to great lengths to make clear statements about them.
I think your first sentence is perfectly right, if "science" is taken to mean "the physical science of biology". There are a few difficulties though:
-you seem to allow for the possibility that something can be true in "philosophy" and false in "science".
-Your opposition of "philosophy" and "science" seems to require that philosophy is not a science. What is it then? an art? a fiction? Why is it that things can be "true" in it?
If you are what you call "a scientist" then your answer should be "I don't know, my science doesn't give me any proofs or principles to answer those questions". If you said this, you'd be right. But as soon as you say this, your whole argument vanishes. How can you claim to know what is scientific, as opposed to philosophical? All you know is that this science (say, experimental biology) is one WAY of being scientific. How do you know that philosophy isn't also a science? MAthematics has an entirely different method from biology, but mathematics is science per excellance. To oppose "science" to "philosophy" is a philosophical claim- and I would argue that it's a bad one. There's more than one scientific method, just as there's more than one scientific instrument- and for the same reason. Methods are Instruments.
I thought mathematics was a tool of science.
Philosophers tend to be smartasses, I know, that's what I got a degree in. But philosophers don't do science, they usually come up with a certain set of assumptions, but they don't test those assumptions - they generate no data - they argue for a position based on the set of assumptions. Usually, of course their arguments are great, it's their assumptions that need work.
No scientist can afford to screw up his assumptions if they want to be able to interpret their data.
A philosopher will say 'it's turtles all the way down!" A scientist, sigh, will want to count them.
"Even if ID is true, it is superfluous. The science of Natural Theology can already prove that the truly chance events of nature proceed from an intelligent cause. The proof is very difficult to learn thoroughly, and I would not expect more than one man in a million to be able to learn it well- it takes too much time, it involves lofty concepts, and many simply lack the interest in the higher things. "
Ummm...smells like bs to me. Science likes simple principles that lead to complex phenomena. What eez diss? Some new age ontological argument? A postmodern Anselm has discovered another island? Please - just a hint, a journal reference, since it's a science, perhaps corroboration?
"But philosophers don't do science, they usually come up with a certain set of assumptions, but they don't test those assumptions - they generate no data - they argue for a position based on the set of assumptions."
I agree with you there, Tom, but "philosophers" who do this (and the various schools they are taught in) would be called "sophists" by Plato for doing this very thing. The problem today is that what ought to be the study of the highest things has been twisted into its opposite--philosophy departments cloud and poison minds instead of pointing them towards truth. Any one who loves wisdom will see this and be dismayed with such "philosophy", as you seem to be.
You ask for corroboration. Well, its certainly are not the same as the thousands of "scientific" journals that that ceaselessly being printed, but my "corroboration" would be some things written down by men named Aristotle, Plato, Augustine, Boethius, Thomas Aquinas., etc., etc., and the millions of men throughout history who have claimed that these guys were wise, and that these guys pointed in various ways to the same truths . . . as well as all the fruits that Western Civilization bore through this periennial wisdom (Dante learning from one of Aquinas' students, for instance; or perhaps the very idea of a university or hospital, the notion that might doesn't make right and all that those who argue the point have done for their fellow man, etc., etc.)
Oddly enough, those names I mentioned will still be read 500 years from now. I doubt whether most of the journals that unfortunately define knowledge for you will still exist or be read by anyone.
Yet in your own day-to-day life you no doubt know plenty of things with great certainty--knowledge that you arrived at without falsifying hypotheses through experimentation (or corroborating with or relying on the results of others doing this).
Mathematics can be a tool of science--it can also prove things on its own.
You reveal and assume precisely what shulamite is denying. In order to oppose him, you must make an argument that he is wrong based on reason rather than simpling stating that the method of the modern study of nature is the only way to know anything true and asking if other people agree with him. He makes a bold claim, to be sure, and he may indeed be full of bs, but whether he can back this up or not it is clear that you have determined somehow that philosophy can't prove anything.
There must be a reason for this--do you think that there are no self-evident truths that man can start reasoning from?
If all this (all these authors revered throughout the history of Western Civ and all their disciples and all the good that came from their work) still "smells like BS" to you, TomR, because it isn't corroborated by some particular 20th century journal, is that any reason to thoughtlessly reject it?
To explain the first part above further, I mean that philosophy is ultimately the attempt to know causes--to dig out the "assumptions" and what they rely on, rather than, as is so often the case today, randomly showing what follows from a given set of assumptions without attempting to know the primary, (highest or deepest) things. Many times this isn't even done well, or at all.
In fact, as shulamite points out, mathematics, when not being used as a tool of science--before we can use it as a tool we must understand it--moves from assumptions to conclusions, PROVING things. It has nothing to do with hypotheses or experimental knowledge.
In the twisted academic world we know today, the disciplines have reversed themselves--philosophy takes all assumptions/premises as equal and experimental science is thought of as more rational because it questions premises and "can't afford to screw up its assumptions."
I submit that philosophy, properly understood, can't afford to do that either. In fact, it is supposed to do the opposite.
Well, this is certainly one of the better comment threads I've been host to. Love the Onion link about 'intelligent gravity.' I also find the idea that philosophy and science are opposed to really odd. If you want to pair Science with an opposite, try Fideism or Rhetoric. Philosophy is a larger subject than any of the three.
And my impression of Canada's blogosphere is that almost no one knows the difference between Theism and Fideism. They aren't synonyms, you know.
Tom,
your argument is this:
"But philosophers don't do science, they usually come up with a certain set of assumptions, but they don't test those assumptions - they generate no data - they argue for a position based on the set of assumptions. Usually, of course their arguments are great, it's their assumptions that need work."
I have only one question:
So what happens when a philosopher's assumptions are true?
Your whole argument amounts to saying that if the first principles of something are false and remain false, then the rest will be false too. I agree- as would any other sane man. But this argument, if it condemed anything, would condemn any body of knowledge.
One less necessary point, that I won't labor: you should judge any science by its best exposition, not its worst. I will concede that the most common presentation of philosophy is silly and shameful. But I would no more judge philosophy on its most commonly produced product than I would judge the novel by its most commonly produced product (i.e. supermarket novels)
And If you want a link to a journal that argues my initial point, go to the link I gave in my first comment.
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