Problems with this section (Agnosticism)

by Frank Paris , Tuesday, October 27, 2009, 15:27 (5294 days ago) @ dhw

'I accept your criticism of the term "Intelligent Design", as it has become tainted, but "design" is too useful to jettison.'-Based on what follows in your post, I cannot accept your usage of the word, "design," as you shall see.-'My own concept entails a possible designer using the laws of nature which it has established. It could have set up the whole code which governs evolution. And it could even have intervened by experimenting with that code (e.g. exeunt dinosaurs, or enter hominids). By science, not by magic.'-First of all, I think calling a spade a spade requires us to abandon dancing around terminology and simply admit that what we mean by the word, "designer," is God. So at the very least, you believe that God consciously uses the laws of nature to deliberately move evolution in directions he wants it to go. The example you give is the extinction of the dinosaurs to make room for the rise of mammals and the eventual appearance of human beings, and you say this divine "use" of the laws of nature is "by science, not magic."-But it seems to me that fundamentally you are requiring God to do this by magic, not science. For example, suppose the extinction of the dinosaurs was precipitated by a large meteor strike (a theory that is becoming more controversial, I know). How did God make the meteor strike the Earth? He must have intervened somewhere along the line and bent the laws of nature ever so slightly, perhaps after aeons. Nevertheless, it involves getting in there and influencing individual atoms to go this way rather than that way, where they would go if they strictly followed their own nature.-In my theology, God can't influence individual atoms to go this way or that way, for the simple reason that atoms aren't conscious enough to be influence by the lure of God. Human beings are. I believe that even higher mammals and birds are. Reptiles? I doubt. Dinosaurs? Perhaps some (velociraptor?). In any case, within my theology (and canonical science), that meteor struck Earth strictly through the blind workings out of the laws of nature, and if humans were the result, it was strictly because there was "room" for them eventually to appear in eco-space, but no guarantee whatsoever. But once there, God can move in on human beings and have an influence, because (some) human beings are conscious enough to feel God's will and be moved by it.-Only through conscious creatures can God direct evolution by his will. Until consciousness emerges, all God can do is observe and enrich his own knowledge. (Part of process theology is the notion that God changes through his observation of what happens in the universe, so God's knowledge can indeed increase.)