>At 01:17 PM 4/8/97 -0400, Gene Dunbar Godbold wrote:
>>According to Russell Stewart:
>>>
>>> SJ>There is no necessary contradiction between "God's will and
>>> >intentions" being in the final analysis inscrutable, and the fact
>>> >that "science" works with a methodology of prediction and
>>> >refutation.
>>>
>>> There is a huge contradiction. If God's will and intentions are ultimately
>>> unknowable, then the question of His existence will forever be beyond
>>> the boundaries of scientific investigation. And this provides an easy
>>> tool for Creationists to deal with any inconsistencies in their theory
>>> by saying, "well, God works in mysterious ways!" This is what leads to
>>> bad science.
>>
>>I'm not sure that a Christian would argue that *all* of God's will and
>>intentions are unknowable. There is that book called the Bible that some
>>take to be especially informative regarding some of God's will, esp.
>>concerning his plan for mankind. I am skeptical that Intelligent
>>Design Theory can come up with a testable hypothesis that posits a Creator
>>in some way that will prove the Creator, though I'm willing to listen to
>>ideas.
>
>This was really my point. I know that God's intentions are not supposed
>to be completely unknowable, but I was merely pointing out that it is
>a fallacy to use the inscrutability (is that a word?) of God's will as a
>logical argument.
>
Hello Russell, thanks for your comments. I'd like to throw in my
own $0.02 here.
First, I agree with what you wrote above. The problem though is
that the argument from imperfection is often guilty of the same
type of fallacy.
Nevertheless, the argument can be valid depending on the situation.
I'll call this the "who says what first principle". Suppose a
creationist says something like "look at X. It's obviously designed
blah blah". In this situation it is perfectly legit to counter
with "oh yeah, what about this, it doesn't look designed to me".
Turning this around, suppose an evolutionist says "look at this
silly thing. It's obviously not designed. It must be the result
of evolution since oddities like this represent '... paths that
a sensible God would never tread'[Gould]". Now the tables are
turned and it is the evolutionist who will need to provide a
theory of design with precise definitions of good and bad design.
They will further need a scientific theory of God from which
to evaluate which paths are sensible and which are not. Otherwise,
all they have is an opinion unsupported by any evidence except
for really bad theology.
You have mentioned the blind spot a couple of times. I spent a
lot of time "discussing" this on t.o a few years ago and had
to do quite a bit of background reading as a result.
As a sidelight, I'm sure you're aware that poking fun at engineers
is a favorite passtime for several folks on t.o. I'm not complaining
about this, of course. Poking fun at engineers is, generally speaking,
a noble occupation :). What I found humorous was that while
engineers obviously know nothing about biology, biologists seem
to know everything about design :). Most of what is said in the
course of an imperfection argument is, however, extremely naive
from a design point of view.
For example, one says "the eye would obviously be better designed
without a blind spot". This involves the implicit (and ridiculous)
assumption that one can change one aspect of a complicated design
keeping everything else constant. Of course, one could say that
God could accomplish this feat if he wished. But now you're supporting
your argument with theology. This is taking the easy way out that
creationists are so often condemned for. To really support the
case that the blind spot is bad, one has to come up with an alternate
design and demonstrate that it is better. No one has done this.
What I mean here, of course, is an alternate design of a human
eye, and not something completely different like a cephalopod
eye. Unless, of course, one would like to defend the position
that cephalopod eyes are better than human eyes in some overall
sense. I'm sure some might want to argue this, I doubt they
will be asking their doctors for cephalopod eye transplants any
time soon ;-).
I'm pretty sure that I still have all the relevant posts from the
t.o thread that I could forward to you if you are interested in
all the gory details. If memory serves the crucial points were:
1) a complicated interdependence between the various structures.
included in this is the importance of the relative locations of
some of the structures. One cannot simply change or move one thing
without producing a whole host of changes in other things. To
remove the blind spot one would have to move a lot of stuff.
2) The current "odd" arrangement allows the pigment epitheleum
to perform several different functions at once. To remove the
blind spot one would have to add something else to maintain
the functionality presently provided by the P.E. In engineering
terminology, tradeoffs.
The resident t.o "eye expert" lent his support to the basic
ideas I've presented here. His expert opinion was that the
eye probably could have been designed better, but that the
issues were so complicated that this conclusion is not in
any way obvious.
Brian Harper
Associate Professor
Applied Mechanics
The Ohio State University
"Because there's no primordial soup;
we all know that, right?" -- Leo Buss