Intelligent Design or unthinking blasphemy?

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I assume this is a tacit recognition that God and the current paradigm concerning evolution would be incommensurate unions. But at the same time, you object that God designed His creatures in a, I'm guessing, Creation ex Nihilo type scenario. Is that a correct assumption? I'm wondering where this leaves you philosphically as far as causation for all that is actual.

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nwr seems to be understanding what I say. I too cannot see any relationship between my words and your responses. I suspect that your difficulty arises from the attempt to force my meaning into your own rigid conceptual framework. This makes communication difficult but the categorization of the whole truth into seperate issues is somewhat arbitrary and so explaining this to you is forcing me to go beyond the orignal topic of discussion.I see no incompatability between God's creation and the scientific description of evolution because that description is no more a complete description of reality than the conception of reality in physics as a system of mathematical relationships between measurable quantities.Certainly a creation ex nihilo senario would indeed have to be an example of a creation by design. But the creation of Adam as a magically animated golem of dust is no better.As for causation, God created natural law to operate autonomously and independently in order to give living things an independent basis of existence. However the material efficent causality (using Aristotle's terminology) or the local time-ordered causality (to use more modern terminology) of modern science finds its limitation in quantum physics with the uncertainty principle. Through the window that this limitation allows, God is able to interact (without violating physical law) with His creations in a non-forceful manner to care for, guide, encourage, and teach his living creations in an interactive process. This is the "small still voice" of God.

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But what do these fallible human attributes have to do with the concept of God when the very basis of perfection is measured by God, the very basis of good is measured by God, and the very basis for actuality is measured by God?

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But the "trial and error" process in teaching is not about the fallability of the teacher it is about the fallability of the students. Free will is the essence of life and living things and so living things do not always respond to God - they do not always move in the direction that God guides. I am not a Calvinist, and do not even try my patience arguing that point of view. The process of creating life cannot be facilitated with raw power, it take patience and love. God help a child if a parent tries the raw power approach in every thing the parent teaches the child.If you just don't like the word error, how about "try and try again?"

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In other words, are you saying that our understanding of design prohibits God from 'planning', so to speak, because His thoughts do not move on a time-line?

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No I said nothing of the sort. I would not limit God like this or in any other way. But neither do I think that God's omnipotence means that he can accomplish any result by any method that we care to dictate. Ridiculous counter-examples to this are easy. The result of creation is not independent of the method of creation.

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If God did not have His thoughts manifested in the form of space/time/energy/mass ... When you say God could not 'design' anything ...

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It sounded as though you were denying both design and chance for God. What other option exists? Life is either intentional or its unitentional. There is no third option.

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space? time? energy? anything????? As nwr observed I was talking about living things only!Ohhhhhh! Finally I get it. (maybe?) Life itself - the process of life - is an utterly intentional creation of God. That is entirely his invention! You could definitely say that God designed the process of life itself. In fact the content of that design can largely be found in the laws of physics, all of which were created with the single purpose of giving birth to life. But that is just creating the conditions for life to occur. The actual process of creating a living thing itself is one of careful encouragement of it from its fragile beginning.As for the beginning itself that cannot be clearly classified as either completely spontaneous or completely by design, because the careful preparation of the proper conditions where life can spontaneouly start is by design and there is no black and white line here because of that. NOT that we really know all that much about this very beginning. This is pure speculation only.Edited by mitchellmckain, : fixing errors and additions

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See my relativistic physics of space flight simimulator at Astahost.com

This is what I'm confused on. You stated that God does not design anything by trial and error. Isn't that the very hallmark of the theory of evolution? Obviously it is. So, I'm asking how you how that tenet of yours does not conflict with its own premise. It sounds as though you are beginning to understand my objection. God, if He/She/It/They exist, then at some point had to engineer, i.e. 'Design,' all that is actual and to bring it to fruition. That's why I'm not understanding how you can maintain your beliefs as congruant. Alright, this explains what you meant in better terms. To me it seemed as though you were weaving in and out of cosmological, teleological, ontological, and philosophical notions. It was difficult for me to understand just what you were arriving at. I understand what you are saying now. I don't believe that God tries and tries again. I believe He tries and succeeds. But to able to quantify that is an impossible task for humans, (this all assuming that God exists). Yes, exactly! I think we are both on the same wavelength. I apologize for any misunderstanding. Well, this precisely why the First Cause argument is going to trek on for as long as humans are alive on earth. Its all speculation. However, based on logic, I think some theories stand out in superiority than others-- namely, the Kalam Cosmological Argument, et al, the Aristotlean argument. Nonetheless, it appears that we will be in a perpetual stalemate.

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“If chance be the father of all flesh then disaster is his rainbow in the sky. And when you hear of, state of emergencies, sniper kills ten, youths go looting, bomb blasts school, it is but the sound of man worshipping his maker” -Steve Turner

Why?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

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This is what I'm confused on. You stated that God does not design anything by trial and error. Isn't that the very hallmark of the theory of evolution? Obviously it is. So, I'm asking how you how that tenet of yours does not conflict with its own premise.

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As nwr observed I am saying that trial and error cannot be a part of God's design of anything. BUT that does not mean that God does not need the "try and try again" process in getting through to human beings, for example. Nor does it mean that "trial and error" plays no part in God's creation of living things, because this is NOT design - not even close.Evolution is a description in terms of objective observations only of a process of partnership between the creativity of living things making their own choices and the subtle shepherding influence of God. Trial and error is most definitely a part of this because trial and error is the basic learning process, and the development of life is a learning process. God does not exercise absolute control over life and therefore His "infallablity" is just not an issue.

If God uses trial and error for anything then you are tacitly asserting that He is neither omnipotent nor omnisicent, because if He was omniscient He would know how His guidance would turn out before the event happened in real-time and He couldn't be omnipotent because trial and error convey fallibility. That's straying very far from the prevailing Christian ethos (not that my saying so makes it right or wrong, just playing the Devil's Advocate here).As well, why couldn't the Protagonist of the universe Design living things? Even if He designed the pathways to make life possible then He created something from absolute nothingness. A Creator needs to 'create' in order to be justifiably referred to as such, no?

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“If chance be the father of all flesh then disaster is his rainbow in the sky. And when you hear of, state of emergencies, sniper kills ten, youths go looting, bomb blasts school, it is but the sound of man worshipping his maker” -Steve Turner

If the future is not determined (i.e. determinism is wrong), then the future is unknowable. Does omniscience require knowing what is, in principle, unknowable? Or is it sufficient to know all that is knowable?

Well, if you can't manage to eloquently articulate your thoughts concerning one's beliefs, let some one who said it more fluently than yourself get the point across for you. And so, I now defer my explanation to C.S. Lewis who puts my thoughts into words better than I can. In ine of his chapters called, "Time and Beyond Time," he probably most closely embodies what I believe is how God can establish the existence of time without Himself being affected by time.This is going to be annoying because I have to freehand it from a book. But, its for a worthy cause, eh?"A man put it to me this way: 'I can believe in God all right, but what I cannot swallow is the idea of Him attending to several hundred million human beings who are addressing Him at the same moment.' And I have found that quite a lot feel this.

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Now, the first thing to notice is that the whole sting of it comes in the words 'at the moment.'... What really becomes difficult is to have God doing too many tasks in the same moment. Our life comes to us moment by moment. One moment comes and disappears before the next comes along... That is what Time is like. And of course you and I tend to take it for granted that this series of Time-- this arrangement of past, present, future is not simply the way life comes to us but the way thngs really exist. We tend to assume that the whole universe and God Himself are always moving on from past to present to future just as we do. But many learned men do not agree with that. It was the Theologians who first started the idea that some things are not in Time at all: later, Philosophers took it over: and now some scientists are doing the same thing.

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Almost certainly God is not in Time. His life does not consist of of moments following one another... If you put it this way, He has all eternity in which to loisten to the split second of prayer put up by a pilot as his plane crashes in flames... We have to leave behind A before we can get to B, and cannot reach C until we leave B. God, from above or outside or all around, contains the whole line, and sees it all.

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Another difficulty we get if we believe as such... if He knows I am going to do so-and-so, how can I be free to do otherwise? Well, here once again, the difficulty comes from thinking that God os progressing along the Time-line like us: the only difference being He can see ahead and we cannot. Well, if that were true, if God forsaw our acts, it would be very hard to understand how we could be free not to do the,. But suppose God is outside and above the Time-line. In that case, what we call 'tomorrow' is visable to Him in just the same we call it 'today.'" -C.S. LewisAlright this is taking too long. In other words, God lives every moment as if it were 'now' because space does not contain Him, and space is intimately connected to time. This grants God the ability to know all, yet still allow those beings who are bound by time to make their own choices, because always lives in the 'now.' And God being infinite, the 'now' is always 'now.' Any event that takes place in real-time has already been lived out, is being lived out, and will always be lived out. This is not the easiest concept to grasp because we are so utterly bound by the laws of physics, but with quantum mechanics and string theory, and whatnot, we are just on the cusp of such a discovery. We all knew that time travel was theoretically possible, but now theologians, philosophers, and astrophysicists are beginning to place into theory what we all suspected-- that space-time only matters to physical being. We know nothing of the metaphysics other than its potential. In any case, that's how I feel on the subject. Edited by nemesis_juggernaut, : No reason given.

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“If chance be the father of all flesh then disaster is his rainbow in the sky. And when you hear of, state of emergencies, sniper kills ten, youths go looting, bomb blasts school, it is but the sound of man worshipping his maker” -Steve Turner

A wasted effort, actually. It is pretty much beside the point.What you quoted is traditional theology. It is theology invented by theologians an an attempt to explain away problems with other parts of theology (also invented by humans). Newcomb's paradox poses a serious problem for the idea that you could have free will and a knowable future. That people have invented theologies supposedly explaining how it works doesn't answer Newcomb.In any case, the question I raised was whether omniscience requires knowing what is in principle unknowable. A simple yes/no response would have sufficed. Your introduction of theology just evades the question.

Perhaps not as much as Newcombs Paradox. Interestingly enough, a paradox is only a seemingly insoluble answer. But it isn't. And the inventor cannot tie God into this inanimate, calculating machine. Case in point: The problem of predicting the output of a computer program to the program. The program requests that make a prediction yourself aso that it can make a prediction itself based on the answers you give it. The supercomputer is designed as such that that once it gathers one prognostication after the other, the answer you gave outloud will be false, although, your answer can easily differ in your mind from your stated answer. Only on the surface level this appears to present a problem to free will. Think of it this way, if God were predicting our behavior and we knew all about it, we would deliberately act to falisfy the prediction once we knew it. But this is the same as "Predictor" in the Newcomb's Paradox. It has nothing to do with any actual predictions because it requires input in order to give an answer-- an answer based on odds.There is no contradiction. It makes perfect sense. If God were effected by time, he'd in fact be a material being. Think about it. How could a Being of this magnitude not be above Hos own creation and to remain in absolute control over His creation of time if He was not outside of our dimension? Its so simple, yet it is difficult to fully grasp. No, that was very simple to answer. If you don't give the supercomputer an answer, then it won't make a prediction. And even if you did give a verbal answer, you could be thinking in your mind something different, and in effect, totally dismantle the argument. Evades the question? What is unknowable for you? Edited by nemesis_juggernaut, : typos

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“If chance be the father of all flesh then disaster is his rainbow in the sky. And when you hear of, state of emergencies, sniper kills ten, youths go looting, bomb blasts school, it is but the sound of man worshipping his maker” -Steve Turner

How can you - a being in our "dimension" - know whether or not there are other "dimensions"? How can you know how a "higher" Being would "have" to interact with various "dimensions"?

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We don't 'know' that anymore than we 'know' the veracity of superstring theory. Its all theoretical. But then again, we as human beings don't 'know' even what we think we know. I'd guess we'd have to go into one long discourse on reality. Such wild vagaries we've concoted.Edited by nemesis_juggernaut, : edit to add

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“It is in vain, O' man, that you seek within yourselves the cure for all your miseries. All your insight has led you to the knowledge that it is not in yourselves that you will discover the true and the good. The philosophers promised them to you but they were not able to keep that promise.” -Blaise Pascal

That's a cute little blurb for your book on A Brief History of Knowledge, but it doesn't answer the question.You claimed, if I understand correctly, that the concept of planning "ahead" doesn't apply to God because He is "outside of time". I asked how somebody inside time could know that and your only response is "How can we know anything?"You might as well just admit that you can't know - that the "Designer" might very well be an incompetent bozo who did screw up many of His "designs" and can't figure out how to fix them.You might as well just admit that you've scuttled "Intelligent" design.

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The only portion of the Newcomb's paradox that I think any conclusions can be drawn from is the glass box version. Since the predictor is a participant in the game, his actions affect the actions of the other player, which means that the predictor's knowledge of the future can only be conditional, such that he knows what the other player will do depending on what he himself does. So here is where I see the real conflict between human free will and the omnisicence and omnipotence of God. Since God is a participant in the lives of his creatures, knowledge of what human beings will do as a result of his own actions, necessarily means that he has absolute control over their actions. This would mean that free will is at most an illusion and since God would then make all the choices, it would be irrational for Him to hold us responsible for anything. A God outside time and space seeing the future laid out in front of him can only be compatable with the idea of human free if God remains an observer only, like the Deist conception of God. As a Christian who believes in a personal relationship with God, this is not an option.Here is my own paradox: Does God know how to give someone privacy? It would be very strange if God cannot do something that every human being can do. I think a key question here is if God is truly all-knowing and all-powerful, does this mean that He is limited by our definitions and descriptions of Him? Is God a real person or just a human concept? If we are going to believe that God is all-knowing and all-powerful then we certainly cannot adopt interpretations of these which are contradictory. I think that the only way to avoid contradiction is not to interpret these as defining God or dictating what God must know or do. Or to put it another way, an essential aspect of God being all-powerful is that He is ruled only by his own will not our definitions and that it is in pursuing His will that He has no limitations. Therefore to be all-knowing or all-powerfull means that God can acomplish whatever He chooses to accomplish and know whatever He chooses to know. This means that God is capable of giving privacy as well as taking risks, making sacrifices and limiting Himself in any way that He chooses.God can make a log so heavy that He Himself cannot lift it, because He can define and limit Himself as He chooses, we cannot define or limit Him in any way. God is not only capable of risk, sacrifice and self-limitation, but He is ready and willing to do so all the time. He is ruled by His will and His will is not to power or to knowledge but to love.Life and free will are the same thing. Creation without sacrifice is a trivial exercise. God sacrificed absolute control, limiting His own knowedge and power in this way, to create this entire physical universe as a womb of life. It is irrational that He would would then destroy this capacity for life and free will by annihilating the possibilities open to us. I think that God works to do just the opposite, that is to increase the choices open us and magnify our free will as much as possible. In fact I think this is the essence of God's opposition to sin, for sin is just a general term for all the different forms of addiction in the world, and all of them destroy our free will. Therefore God begins by not choosing to know what our future actions will be, giving us, at least, that one type of privacy.God certainly exists outside of the space and time of the physical universe because He created it. But to be consistent with the analysis above, this does not mean that he is incapable of change. This is absurd. Is it impossible for God to change from the person who intends to create the world to the person who has already created the world? Being outside the space and time of the physical world does not mean to be changeless and without time. If God can create time for us then He certainly can create time for Himself. Being outside the time and space of the physical universe only means that His time and our time are not bound together. He can choose how interact with this universe at His own discretion.Certainly God created the physical universe with time and space, but He also created it with free will, which means that from the vantage outside of time and space it is a superpostion of possibilities. How that superposition of possibilities resolves into actual events depends on how he chooses to interact with it. Guided by both ethics and aesthetics He will certainly choose to interact with the physical universe in a time-ordered manner as a participant bound within the limitations of time. He will not read the end of the story before the beginning. But as a participant He will exert His own will to guide it toward the future of His choosing, but only within the limitations that the free will and "future privacy" of His creatures imposes upon Him. Since sinful men and women rarely exercise their free will anyway, this is not a very burdensome limitation.

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See my relativistic physics of space flight simimulator at Astahost.com

I did answer it. I said I don't know with 100% empirical veracity. But then again, who can offer that? Its an inference. And before you demonize an inference, just know that upwards of 95% of things we 'know' come by way of inference. In other words, we may not know even the things we think we know. It could all be an illusion, right? I can play the semantics game too. That's why I said perhaps we need to start first with the reality of reality. You are straying into the realm of epistemics, leading us into a paradox and a crux that really can't be solved without first defining some truths. Until we establish an agreement on some truisms there realy is no basis for even arguing. If God is an incompetent bozo then that would explain your disposition. Ah, I'm just messing with you. In all seriousness, you are right that I could not possibly 'know' that anymore than I could know if He has screwed up many times. But consider this: The very notion of perfection comes from God. If God blundered then God couldn't even exist because the very concept of perfection and being come directly from Him. That would insinuate that something must be higher than God. And if that's the case, its far beyond our ability to discern something so grand. How did I do that? What I've noticed about you and how you argue is that you play a game of semantics; in effect, asking me to define the definition of "is." That's a worthless endeavor IMO.

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“It is in vain, O' man, that you seek within yourselves the cure for all your miseries. All your insight has led you to the knowledge that it is not in yourselves that you will discover the true and the good.” -Blaise Pascal

The only portion of the Newcomb's paradox that I think any conclusions can be drawn from is the glass box version. Since the predictor is a participant in the game, his actions affect the actions of the other player, which means that the predictor's knowledge of the future can only be conditional, such that he knows what the other player will do depending on what he himself does. So here is where I see the real conflict between human free will and the omnisicence and omnipotence of God. Since God is a participant in the lives of his creatures, knowledge of what human beings will do as a result of his own actions, necessarily means that he has absolute control over their actions.[/qs]I certainly believe that God is able to manifest mindless automotons that do His bidding if He so desired. But what is the one gift that God could give to Himself? Giving His creatures the option of love or rejection. Afterall, love is a meaningless term when you remove the option from it. An interesting concept. I would say yes and no. The descriptions of Hell vary from lakes of fire to utter darkness, but even more profound, the soul condemned to hell will never know God. Its been described as if God simply forgets about them. He gives them what they always wanted, which is to not have God in their midst. Perhaps God can negate His own omniscience through His own omnipotence. As far as can He give us privacy, probably not. It shouldn't surprise us that we can do things that God cannot. God couldn't sin because it would negate His very essence, His very Being. This is why omniscience and omnipotence have limited values. To me, being omnipotent means that He has the ability to control everything in the known universe. However, He cannot go against His own nature. So, if that incorporates 'omnipotence,' then I don't believe He is. (Not that it matters. He's exceedingly more powerful than all of us, either way). Since you word that, this makes sense, even Biblically. It is said that God 'forgets' our sins. Perhaps it isn't a metaphor for showing us that He can truly forgive us fully. Perhaps it also means that He literally has the power to forget all about it. In fact, the coined term, 'forgive and forget' comes from the passage I speak of. Could God allow us privacy? Who knows. The notion that God needs to 'carry' anything is delving into anthropomorphism, which I do not ascribe to. However, if one is inclined to believe that Jesus was fully God and fuly man, then this tells us that God can limit Himself in whatever He sees fit.

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“It is in vain, O' man, that you seek within yourselves the cure for all your miseries. All your insight has led you to the knowledge that it is not in yourselves that you will discover the true and the good.” -Blaise Pascal