JLT
Posts: 740
Joined: Jan. 2008
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In good ID tradition Thomas Cudworth whines about ID being unfairly attacked.
| Quote | | I here undertake a constructively critical response to some arguments of Professor Edward Feser, who like Prof. Beckwith has contrasted ID unfavorably with Thomist design arguments and has accused ID of faulty theology. |
Some snippets:
| Quote | I have not seen any ID proponent say that God creates living things “in the manner in which an artificer constructs an artifact”. In fact, I have not seen any ID proponent describe how God creates living things at all. On the contrary, ID has been repeatedly criticized by the Darwinians precisely for not describing, in terms of past events and their efficient causes, how intelligence was involved in the origin and/or evolution of species. I don’t see how ID can be criticized for describing God’s creative activity in the “wrong” way, when it has never described that activity at all.
[...]
Being silent on the question of “how”, ID cannot be guilty of contradicting the Thomistic understanding of “how”. |
I think it's highly amusing that in order to defend ID against the "faulty theology"-attack Cudworth feels the need to point out how ID isn't even science. He's basically saying that ID is so vague and devoid of any substance that it can't possibly conflict with a theological statement.
I'm looking forward to his defence against YEC:
| Quote | | Being silent on the question of “when”, ID cannot be guilty of contradicting the YEC understanding of “when”. |
He's also claiming that ID is not theology but he isn't very convincing:
| Quote | | Many ID people are friendly to Thomism for its unwavering affirmation of a close connection between rationality, nature and God. ID people wish to remain on good terms with Thomists, and to ally with Thomists against atheistic Darwinists, and against those among the theistic evolutionists who divorce God from reason and nature and whose understanding of origins is distinguishable from that of atheistic Darwinism only by a private “leap of faith”. We do not understand why Beckwith and Feser are launching this attack against us. Are there not enough “erroneous” non-Thomist theologies of nature out there (e.g., affirmations of wholly naturalistic evolution supplemented by Barthian and other fideisms), to keep Thomist metaphysicians busy, that they have the time and energy to attack ID for theological positions that it does not in fact hold? |
We IDists are no bloody atheists or heathen TEs but we do not hold any theological position AT ALL!
Nicely done, contradicting yourself in the same paragraph.
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"Random mutations, if they are truly random, will affect, and potentially damage, any aspect of the organism, [...]
Thus, a realistic [computer] simulation [of evolution] would allow the program, OS, and hardware to be affected in a random fashion." GilDodgen, Frilly shirt owner
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