Why is a \"designer\" so compelling? (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Thursday, July 16, 2009, 01:26 (5608 days ago) @ dhw
edited by unknown, Thursday, July 16, 2009, 01:40

dhw, 
In answer to 1 only... we should write a book together when we get done with all of this... - > 1) Under Chance v. Design you wrote: "Process theology [...] offers a very comprehensive view that allows one to have a supernatural [see (2)] god without violating the scientific method." I need to know more about process theology (thank you for the website reference, which contains some interesting reviews), but generally I don't see why religious belief has to violate the scientific method. It's only when fundamentalists insist on the literal meaning of their dubious texts that there is a conflict. Charles Darwin said his theory of evolution was compatible with theism, and you are aware that in epistemological terms there is no way of knowing whether life is the result of chance or design. Every discovery science makes in this field can therefore be made to fit in with chance or with design ... hence the fact that not all scientists are atheists! 
> - My view here is both unique and controversial--because I would actually like to see more theistic scientists (much to the aghast of some of my peers.) - The problem here, is one of a terse logical nature. - One can assess science as only studying the natural world, and theology only studying the supernatural. This is the one I presume you to take, and the one that the majority of theistic scientists I've met make. - This view can work perfectly as long as the supernatural isn't invoked as a cause and/or as a phenomenon regularly interfacing with that of the natural. This violates the assumption that we cannot differentiate from the natural and supernatural. Asserting that the natural world has or is caused by a supernatural phenomenon ultimately places on the person holding the position the burden for being able to say exactly when the supernatural ends and where the natural begins. Since the scientific method excludes this possibility there remains no tool save for raw speculation, because the process at arriving at a final truth invariably recreates the scientific method and thus must adopt its assumptions. Asserting a supernatural cause for the universe is the definition of paradox. - Panentheism and process theology manages to avoid this quagmire by positing similar positions, the former that the universe is contained within God, and the latter asserting that God is an animating force in the universe that is neither cause and effect: essentially the universe is a process and God is part of the process... if you think of quantum mechanics, God is Schrodinger's cat. - This is both a gross oversimplification as well as my own take on the philosophy--Whitehead's take on process philosophy is about as dense as reading Nietzsche as it is filled with its own words (literally, Whitehead makes all sorts of new words up in order to accurately describe his philosophy.) - EDIT: Quick note here, panentheism can still fail if one attempts again to assert that the deity somehow interfaces with the world--by recreating the paradox.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"