Law of Causality

“The knowledge of the secrets of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. This is why I speak to them in parables, ‘Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand’” (Mat. 13:11,13).

When thinking about design in the universe, it makes one wonder why God created a universe where evidence seems to perpetually point in two possible directions.  In other words, we don’t find a message encoded into DNA that says something akin to “God was here,” written in every known language.  Certainly He could have done that, but it seemed to be part of His purpose that evidence for creation be presented in the same manner as He spoke through Jesus (i.e., in parables).  Unbelievers in the days of Jesus consistently misinterpreted the meaning of His parables, just as the evidence of design is consistently misinterpreted by today’s unbelievers.

That’s why I don’t ever expect ID theorists or creation scientists to find a “smoking gun,” that absolutely proves design in nature.  That would remove the necessity of faith.  Likewise, I don’t expect a smoking gun from the side of naturalism that proves that matter and energy are the only things that exist.

As a result, I’m skeptical whenever I hear claims that it has been proven that the mind is either completely material or immaterial, that it has been shown that there is no evidence for design, that there is no evidence for materialism, and so forth.  In other words, by design, there will always be evidence pointing in both directions.  However, when it comes down to an individual’s decision about whether to believe in God, there is enough evidence for each person to decide where they will place their faith in order to fulfill the following verses:

Psalms 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

Romans 1:20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.

That said, ID is an important scientific endeavor that seeks to uncover the evidence for design, which is evident in nature.  For Christians thinking about the issue who might be confused, it is helpful  to remember that the evidence will never be bulletproof, but it will be sufficient for your decision of faith.  Furthermore, the evidence is strong enough so that we are without excuse.

This is a topic that has been given a thorough treatment by theologians and apologists. Ashby Camp has written a concise point by point treatise on the matter, The Historical Case for the Resurrection of Christ. If you have not read other similar works, this paper is concise and thorough. I recommend it.

And biologist Kenneth Miller of Brown University, author of the popular book Finding Darwin’s God (which is used in many Christian colleges), insists that evolution is an undirected process, flatly denying that God guided the evolutionary process to achieve any particular result—including the development of human beings. Indeed, Miller insists that “mankind’s appearance on this planet was not preordained, that we are here… as an afterthought, a minor detail, a happenstance in a history that might just as well have left us out.” [Finding Darwin’s God (1999), p. 272]

Miller does say that God knew that the undirected process of evolution was so wonderful it would create some sort of rational creature capable of praising Him eventually. But what that something would be was radically undetermined. How undetermined? At a 2007 conference, Miller admitted that evolution could have produced “a big-brained dinosaur” or a “mollusk with exceptional mental capabilities” rather than human beings. [Quoted in Darwin Day, p. 226]

The Outsider, DB, would call this type of thinking, making it up as we go.  Essentially, that appears to be the approach of most theistic evolutionists. Unfortunately, they seem to apply a similar process to theology that many Darwinists apply to history. In other words, they imagine God to be whatever they want (e.g., a powerless cosmic puppy dog who loves you perhaps). Basically, they often seem to be worshiping science first and God second. But the God they worship (second to science) appears to be one of their own making.

Reference:
According to theistic evolution, did God direct evolution and know its outcome?

Humorously, they continue to use the word Design throughout the video, and engage in the typical anthropomorphism of Darwinists when talking about natural selection.

Charles Darwin should be spinning in his grave: More than 40 percent of American adults still don’t believe in evolution. Though Darwin’s theory has been uncontroversially accepted among scientists, public resistance remains remarkably forceful. Meanwhile, creationism and intelligent design enjoy widespread public support. (1)

Clichés aside, I don’t think Darwin or any other naturalist should make reference to the continued existence of anyone post-death.  I don’t think most people, other than Darwin worshipers, should be too worried about the post-death radial velocity of Darwin’s remains. This is just another way of saying, “There are a lot of stupid people out there, and IDists and Creationists are among them.”

An academic psychologist, Tania Lombrozo, from a venerable Ivory Tower (2), UC Berkely, has tried to explain teleology from an evolutionary perspective.

Why might humans have evolved this kind of a reasoning strategy? Lombrozo has several ideas. “One possibility is that if you look at our evolutionary past or at our experiences growing up, one of the things we did most often was explaining human behavior. And human behavior is generally goal-directed — it does involve intentions and functions. We may be taking the mode of explanation that we’re best at and then applying it to other domains,” she says. “Another possibility is that it’s more effective. We’re going to learn more about the world if we go around assuming that things have functions and then sometimes discovering we were wrong, rather than the reverse.”

Lombrozo points out that, most of the time, functional explanations don’t do a lot of harm. In fact, they can sometimes help people understand concepts that might otherwise be too difficult. In chemistry, for example, it can be helpful to think about the electron wanting to go to where it’s positive, or, when learning about evolution, that the moth doesn’t want to be visible to its predator. On the other hand, says Lombrozo, systematically catering to what people find satisfying can be bad for their appreciation of science.

“Education is most successful when it gets people to undergo something like a theoretical change,” she says. Recognizing what kinds of assumptions people come into the classroom with will help in figuring out how to best accomplish this.”

For the Creationist, this can be taken as a compliment, although it is not meant that way:

3.  ”Let the children come to me.  Do not hinder them.  The kingdom of God is people like this.  I say to you clearly.  Unless you are people who accept the kingdom of God as a child, you will never be able to enter in it,” (verses sixteen and seventeen).

4.  The words “to enter the kingdom of God,” it goes without saying, means our salvation.  So, the Lord says, “the kingdom of God is people like this,” that is, “it is people like children.”  Therefore, we understand that what we ought to learn through children are not things which only enrich our life, but what concerns our eternal salvation, which is something very much more important.  So, what in the world did the words the Lord gave mean? (3)

IDists will often find these remarks more offensive.  I find the remarks to be irrelevant.  There are many other factors that speak to the maturity of an individual, and apparently, spiritual aspects of maturity are not given high regard by Jesus.  Paul gives the other aspects of maturity a different treatment:

When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.  (4)

So, the reasoning, thoughts, and speech of children, may be done away with, but the spiritual aspects seem to be important.  In this sense, being more “childlike” is better.

As mynym has pointed out, the “urge to merge,” is a psychological aspect of childhood, which seems to apply to many Darwinists.  This does fall into a non-spiritual category of “immaturity,” that relates to thoughts, speech, and reasoning.

(1). http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2008/12/10_teleology.shtml

(2). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivory_tower

(3). http://www.j-e-s-u-s.org/english/1998/e980614.htm

(4). http://bibleresources.bible.com/passagesearchresults.php?passage1=1%20Corinthians+13:11&version=49

IT’S not just the nature of dark matter that’s a mystery – even its abundance is inexplicable. But if our universe is just one of many possible universes, at least this conundrum can be explained.⁽¹⁾

Indeed. It’s a conundrum for an anti-design perspective. From an ID and theological perspective, it’s not surprising that even the quantity of this material points to design. The notion from the anti-design perspective is that “common sense doesn’t work.” Fine. Sometimes it doesn’t. But, I don’t think people even have to rely on “common sense” to support a design perspective. You can rely on logic, philosophy, and scientific reasoning to support a design perspective. It just happens that these perspectives can also correspond with “common sense.” The same cannot be said for an anti-design perspective.

The total amount of dark matter – the unseen stuff thought to make up most of the mass of the universe – is five to six times that of normal matter. This difference sounds pretty significant, but it could have been much greater, because the two types of matter probably formed via radically different processes shortly after the big bang. The fact that the ratio is so conducive to a life-bearing universe “looks like a tremendous coincidence”, says Raphael Bousso at the University of California, Berkeley.

It does look like a “tremendous coincidence.” Thankfully, purely naturalistic scientists have an out. Of course it can’t be verified. Of course it can’t be measured. But it doesn’t start with a “g” or even a “G.” Therefore, it makes rational sense, and is science.

Freivogel focused on one of the favoured candidate-particles for dark matter, the axion. Axions have the right characteristics to be dark matter, but for one problem: a certain property called its “misalignment angle”, which would have affected the amount of dark matter produced in the early universe. If this property is randomly determined, in most cases it would result in a severe overabundance of dark matter, leading to a universe without the large-scale structure of clusters of galaxies. To result in our universe, it has to be just the right value.

In a multiverse, each universe will have a random value for the axion’s misalignment angle, giving some universes the right amount of dark matter needed to give rise to galaxies, stars, planets and life as we know it.

Praise Science that they have an alternative explanation. “So what?” if it is unmeasurable, untestable, and unfalsifiable. It doesn’t involve any kind of “G” word (a scientific explicative). It sounds good, and appeals to Science Fiction; therefore, it’s science.

⁽¹⁾ http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026854.800-universes-dark-matter-mix-is-just-right-for-life.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news

(1). Humanism

(2). Existentialism

(3). Descartes pt 1

Atheist philosopher Bradley Morton said in an ID the Future Podcast:

“I actually find some of the intelligent design arguments at least somewhat plausible, and at least taking seriously within academia, and I’m unhappy with the unfair and false criticisms that a lot of my fellow philosophers and academics have given of Intelligent Design. I’m also, for the record, unhappy with some of the Intelligent Design arguments. I think that, even though some of them are wrong, they could be given better than current Intelligent Design proponents are giving them….” (2)

What I take from this debate is that, one might support the perspective of ID, scientifically, without being logically required to believe in God. Creationists on the other hand, may point to the scientific perspective of ID and note that this supports the existence of the God of the Bible.

Some atheistic evolutionists are quick to point out that a belief in the supposedly scientific perspective of evolution does not have anything to do with belief in God. Others (e.g., Dick Dawkins and his ilk purport that atheism is entailed by the ‘truth’ of evolutionary science).

As Dr. Morton writes on his website:

The doctrine of intelligent design has been maligned by atheists, but even thought I’m an atheist, I’m of the opinion that the arguments for intelligent design are stronger than most realize. The goal of this book is to try to get people to take intelligent design seriously. I maintain that it is legitimate to view intelligent design as science, that there are somewhat plausible arguments for the existence of a cosmic designer, and that intelligent design should be taught in public school classes. (3)

(1). Straws in the wind: Atheists and agnostics support constructive debate on design
(2). http://intelligentdesign.podOmatic.com/entry/2008-11-06T09_16_15-08_00
(3). ID – Bradley Monton

She (The Christian Scribbler) has written 3 posts that may be of interest from a philosophical perspective:

Apologetics; The Teleological Argument for God

Apologetics; The Cosmological Argument for God

The Ontological Argument for God

Apologetics; The Moral Argument for God…