The Wrath of the Intelligent Designer

[Paul Mackin]

On Sep 18, 2005, at 10:25 AM, jporter wrote:

> There's something almost "V. like" about this latest hybridization
> of technology and religion called "Intelligent Design."
>
>     http://www.discovery.org/
>
> I'm not at all sure that this attack on the theory of evolution which
> seems to accept almost all of the scientific explanation of how
> the universe has evolved, excepting the transition from the inanimate
> to the animate,

Yes, this does seem to be the case, though isn't it rather odd to  
restrict "intelligent design" thusly.  The inanimate features of the  
universe are as well-ordered and purposeful as the animate ones. I  
think the distinction is in large part tactical.  The Evangelicals  
feel it necessary to try to bring conservative Catholics over to  
their side,  and there is no way Rome is ever again going to snooker  
itself into a radical anti-science position.

Aquinas didn't make any such distinction in his fifth proof (of five)  
for the existence of God
(in which he sets in opposition the idea of things coming into  
existence fortuitously (or in modern terms by Evolution) or their  
coming into existence designedly):

"The fifth way is taken from the governance of he world. We see that  
things which lack knowledge, such as natural bodies, act for an end,  
and this is evident from the acting always, or nearly always, in he  
same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that  
they achieve this end, not fortuitously, but designedly. Now whatever  
lacks knowledge cannot move toward an end, unless it be directed by  
some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence, as the arrow is  
directed by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by  
whom all natural things are directed to their end: and this being we  
call God. "

Yes, the Evangelicals want to argue for the existence of God in  
science  class.





> doesn't signal a last desperate gasp by the belief
> community before the final plunge into Scurvhamism- seduced
> over one by one into worship of the clock-like perfection of the
> material world.

Sorry to have interrupted you in mid-sentence but I got hung up on a  
word. What is scurvhamism?

>
> The question that looms for me is where do they draw the line
> between the designer and the designed? Stencil may have been
> able to avail himself of the third person, but he was only framing
> a part of the whole. It's more difficult to be objective when one is
> responsible for the whole shebang.
>
> jody
>
>