Larry Arnhart, Department of Political Science, Northern Illinois
University, over at metaviews
(http://listserv.omni-list.com/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind00&L=metaviews&P=R14265),
makes a very good point about the difference between human beings as
designers and divine beings as designers (especially omnipotent, omniscient
beings). "Mainstream" ID theory depends on applying our knowledge and
understanding of *human* design to the design activities of an omnipotent
and omniscient designer.
Besides most of the points Mr. Arnhart makes about this, I'd like to ad
some special general features of human design:
1. Human design is based on human goals and values. We generally have no
basis for making any particular claims about the goals and values of God,
and therefore cannot just assume that He would have goals and values like
ours.
2. One reason for this is that human life, human happiness, human goals and
values, human knowledge and understanding are all *severely* conditional
and limited. The conditionality of human life and happiness, and the
limitations on our knowledge of suitable means, all have a fundamental
effect on what we design and how we design it.
3. Our efficacy, even aside from our limited knowledge, is also severely
limited, and this has a major impact on what and how we design and actually
make things.
4. I doubt that it even makes any *sense* to talk about God *designing*
things. If such a being existed, His omniscience would mean that He would,
in effect, have *all* possible designs *already* established. There would
be *no* thought, *no* effort, no possibility for false steps of any kind.
5. There would be, aside from the limits of the law of contradiction, be
absolutely no constraints on how He could make things. He could not, in
fact *design* life (at least not without first blocking access to much of
his own omniscience), but could only create and/or manipulate it.
6. Since we cannot, in all probability, define an extended *rational*
theory of divine design, we probably will not be able ever to validate a
claim of divine design even if it *happened* to be the case.
7. Though we cannot define such a theory, we can specify some general
"meta-global" aspects of it:
a. It is not bloody likely to be very much like *human* design, despite
the implicit claims of most ID theorists. Without *any* of the normal
human background, God would hardly have any need to design things
in such a way that they would look like they were designed by humans.
b. It probably will not look like it was done by a second-rate engineer
who has to experiment endlessly to get things right. This follows from God's
*total* lack of limitations on implementation.
c. There is no reason whatever to think He'd have even the very *slightest*
interest in us, our planet, or even our *entire* Universe. The idea that
he would is
just human religious egotism run completely amuck, probably because
of the considerations of conditionality and limitedness I described earlier,
leading to insecurity and a desire to be *important*.
Thus, the entire theistic ID position is not only unsound for the fairly
specific reasons that I and others have advanced, it is invalid in equating
their alleged God's designing with *human* designing, when, in fact, there
is no reason to believe that there would be enough in common between them
to make such an inference even *approach* soundness.
Finally, echoing Arnhart, the theistic ID position is based almost entirely
on ignorance. It's the "God of the Gaps," again. Since we do not *know* how
life originated, we *cannot* argue that it must have been design. Since we
do not have *any* specific evidence of an actual *instance* of divine
intervention (and just how would we know it was *divine* intervention,
anyway?), we cannot claim to know that such interventions have occurred.
The strongest claim we can make is that we are *ignorant* of such things.
And ignorance means *ignorance*, not an excuse to make any damn arbitrary
claim we happen to want to believe because it fits our desires or religious
beliefs. (This is something many of the *non-theistic* ID theorists need to
learn as well (Bertvan?).)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Oct 05 2000 - 00:01:48 EDT