From: Rich Blinne (e-lists@blinne.org)
Date: Sun Apr 13 2003 - 18:14:28 EDT
On Wed, 9 Apr 2003 14:45:01 -0400 (EDT), "Joel Cannon"
<jcannon@jcannon.washjeff.edu> said:
>
>
> "For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God
> has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his
> eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have
> been understood and seen through the things he has made so they
> are without excuse." (Rom. 1:19,20 NRSV)
>
> Intelligent design's goal (repeated in previous posts and by
> Wiker) of justifying belief in an intelligent designer through
> creation runs counter to what Paul is saying here (and what many, if
> not the vast majority of biblical commentators [1] find the passage's
> significance to be). Firstly, the passage seems to emphasize that
> natural revelation is ineffective, at least in most cases.[2]
Not only is natural revelation insufficient to impart faith, it is
insufficient to show so-called intelligent design. When Nobel Prize
winner Anthony Hewish found a pulsar in 1967, it was speculated to be a
sign of alien intelligence. This was because the regularity of the
pulses showed "intelligence" and not natural processes.
Unless the intelligent designer reveals himself, it is impossible to
definitively determine the "purpose" of something which we label as
design. Back in the early '80s IBM created a Winchester drive that had a
curved piece of plastic around the disks that appeared to do something
aerodynamic. That wasn't the purpose. The engineers told me personally
that it was to determine who was copying their hard drives. Sure enough,
a number of the competitors drives had the same useless piece of plastic.
It is even harder to "reverse engineer" the Universe than computer
equipment. We need Special Revelation to do that. And thus, Natural
Revelation alone is insufficient for this task. ID comes up short not
only scientifically but also theologically.
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