Post by VBMI just posted over at Euangelion some thoughts on Intelligent Design and how
http://euangelion.wordpress.com/2007/08/22/is-intelligent-design-supp...
I had a look at your post over on Evangelion. I was initially going
to reply on Evangelion, but could not see any easy way to join their
discussion without contacting them first. They don't seem to have a
do-it-yourself log-on site for first timers.
You made two main points - the first was that the Intelligent Design
lobby (ID for short) operate from a pre-existing belief that this is
the desired end product of God's intention, and that the odds of it
happening by chance are extremely low. In short we look at the result
and work backward.
However an atheist is not bound to believe that there is no designer,
and that this result is just one possibility.
Your second point is that some of the ID movement still believe in
evolution, but do not accept a Darwinian mechanism.
Science deals with the natural world, and does not deal with any
supernatural possibilities, since it has no way of measuring
supernatural phenomena, being restricted to natural evidence using
natural tools and natural intelligence.
Now in my own case when I became a Christian about 25 years ago, I
came from an atheism which took some of it's roots from the theory of
evolution. And when I first became a Christian, I I put this problem
in the too-hard basket. However it just happened that the AIG
movement was just getting underway and it really began in Brisbane in
Australia not long before that with Ken Ham and some others getting
together.
So for a while I became a bit of a fanatic about creationism. Since
then I've become Catholic, and in Catholic circles, the question of
origins, at lay level anyway, hardly gets a mention. Pope Benedict,
in the usual cautious manner of Vatican announcements, did make a
statement recently stating that the theory of evolution had a few
problems. I still believe in intelligent design, but I tend to differ
on some Creationist stances, some of which is based on a
fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. Fundamentalist
interpretations of the Bible are sometimes unbiblical. The "Rapture"
for example is a load of crap.
About a year after becoming a Christian I had my first real clearly
"spiritual" experience as a Christian, so I know from first hand
experience that the spiritual world exists. I also had the experience
about four years BEFORE I became a Christian of my father appearing in
my bedroom the night he died (ten kilometres or more away) during
which we conversed, argued, accused and which ended with an almighty
scream on his part just before he disappeared. However since I was an
atheist at the time, and therefore did not believe in an afterlife, I
did my best to convince myself it was a bad dream.
In my own personal case, I haver therefore had certain experiences
which indicate the spiritual world is real. On the other hand, the
spiritual world only makes its presence known to us on its own terms,
and not ours, unlike the natural world which we are free to
investigate at will. When I've had my "double whammies", it has
always come out of the blue, quite unexpectedly, and on it's own
timing, not mine. Nor can I prove it to anybody else. All I can do
is describe what I experienced, and then leave it to them to accept it
or reject it.
So unless God performs some miracle in full view of everybody, and
makes it very clear it is from Him, and in particular the Christian
God , we are stuck with the problem that the atheist has only his
natural viewpoint to depend on.
You may wonder why God would have to make it so clear it was from the
Christian God. Well, I happen to believe in the miracle of the
dancing sun at Fatima, when Mary appeared to three children. However
there were 70,000 other witnesses who saw the sun dance, and who also
had their clothes dry spontaneously after a shower of rain. But ...
the little village of Fatima was actually named after the daughter of
the last Islamic chief to be driven out of Portugal / Spain. A
spanish prince fell in lover with her and they married. She converted
to the Catholic Church.
But Fatima is also the name of Mohammed's daughter, perhaps the most
prominent female in Islamic theology. And Mary is also held in high
esteem by Islam. Hence God sent Mary to give us a warning, but did so
in a Catholic country, in a village named after an Islamic convert to
Catholicism, with overtones of Mohammed's daughter.
Since no message is sent from heaven without a good reason, then the
question is why? You may recall for example that in Revelation there
is a great protent of a women in heaven, adorned with the sun and
twelve stars. I happen to believe that is Mary, and she has appeared
a number of times over the last century or so, and when she appeared
at Akita in Japan, it was with a real sense of direness.
The point is that the Moslems could make just as much a claim to a
Marian warning as Catholics. So God would need to be very clear that
He was the one who performed a given miracle.
I think therefore that your origiinal question was correct - that
faith is necessary before we believe in intelligent design. However a
super -computer which was put to the task of calculating the odds of
intelligent carbon based life, along with a sustaining ecosystem,
arising by chance and having all the support necessary for that life
to develop industry (oil, coal, metals, uranium etc) and move out to
explore the universe, would be remote in the extreme.
But it still requires faith.