Skip to main content

The Human Question

Hi Leo,

I just red the article of Dembski. I think that I understand the position. The idea of him is that it is posible to afirm as a scientific hypothesis that nature have signs of "intelligent design". So, he doen't afirm that God is the gap that we don't understand but that there are things in nature that where the hypothesis of someone who guide the process is reasonable. I found interesting the argument of complexity, basicly, it says that there are certain systems where it is difficult to see how it evolve step by step because if you remove part of the system it doesn't work at all. I thing that this kind of argument that challenge the simple evolution theory are very interesting. I agree with the fact that it is important to recognize that there are many thing that we don't understand of how living beings arrive to be like they are and that this leave the space for a direct action of God.
However, I think that it is not reasonable to say that this probe the action of God in nature. This is something that we don't know and before doing this affirmation it is necesary to see clearly the facts.

My perception is that Dembski is afraid of evolution because he think that it removes the posiblity of God action in the creation of human being. He think that kids lost their faith because the observation of reallity don't demostrate God existence. I disagree with that. God action could have been much more sublte. Why does he need to act in a particular way?. I agree with the fact that there is an educational problem.I also suffered it!. But the problem is to learn to use reason in a correct way and this means to don't impose our ideas but to recognize what is real. I really think that the point is to be amaze for the what is the human being. This is a fact of our experience, something that is clear and that the positivism make us forget. I think that this is the point of the battle.

I know a scientist that was struck for the fact that many , many conditions are requiere for the existence of life in the earth (constants that caracterize nuclear reactions in the starts, temperature of the universe, speed of the big bang, etc...). So, one can reasonable think that everything was put in order for us to appear. If one is amaze for what is man, one is open to a purpose of reallity, an ultimatly purpose should exist. However, I think that we can not put conditions, only to recognize facts.

Alfredo


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

P F Strawson's Freedom and Resentment: the argument laid out

Here is a summary and comments on the essay Freedom and Resentment by PF Strawson.  He makes some great points, and when he is wrong, it is in such a way as to clarify things a great deal.  My non-deterministic position is much better thanks to having read this.  I’ll summarize it in this post and respond in a later one. In a nutshell: PFS first argues that personal resentment that we may feel toward another for having failed to show goodwill toward us would have no problem coexisting with the conviction that determinism is true.  Moral disapprobation, as an analog to resentment, is likewise capable of coexisting with deterministic convictions. In fact, it would seem nearly impossible for a normally-constituted person (i.e., a non-sociopath) to leave behind the web of moral convictions, even if that person is a determinist.  In this way, by arguing that moral and determinist convictions can coexist in the same person, PFS undermines the libertarian argument ...

Dembski's "specified compexity" semiotics and teleology (both ad intra and ad extra)

Integral to Dembski's idea of specified complexity (SC) is the notion that something extrinsic to evolution is the source of the specification in how it develops. He compares SC to the message sent by space aliens in the movie "Contact." In that movie, earthbound scientists determine that radio waves originating in from somewhere in our galaxy are actually a signal being sent by space aliens. The scientists determine that these waves are a signal is the fact that they indicate prime numbers in a way that a random occurrence would not. What is interesting to me is the fact that Dembski relies upon an analogy with a sign rather than a machine. Like a machine, signs are produced by an intelligent being for the sake of something beyond themselves. Machines, if you will, have a meaning. Signs, if you will, produce knowledge. But the meaning/knowledge is in both cases something other than the machine/sign itself. Both signs and machines are purposeful or teleological...

Richard Dawkin's problem with God

Beliefnet has published an interview by Laura Sheahan with biologist Richard Dawkins, who employs evolution in support of atheism. In the second part of the interview, Sheahan says to Dawkins: "You criticize intelligent design, saying that 'the theistic answer'--pointing to God as designer--'is deeply unsatisfying'--presumably you mean on a logical, scientific level." Dawkins then replies to the interviewer: "Yes, because it doesn't explain where the designer comes from. If they're going to emphasize the statistical improbability of biological organs—'these are so complicated, how could they have evolved?'--well, if they're so complicated, how could they possibly have been designed? Because the designer would have to be even more complicated." My reply: Dawkins does not explain WHY the designer of biological organs would have to be more complicated than the organs he designs. He does not think that such an explanation is...