However on the original subject, I also find the idea of ID offensive.

A theory of ID looks like mechanistic evolution but with certain special signatures, that supposedly can’t be explained. Presumably these signatures are there to test our faith, so that we can reject blind mechanism for Da Word.

However to comprehend these signatures (like the motility of the flagellum) we have to have studied the world rationally, and come up with evolutionary theory. Irreducible complexity as a concept is epistemological posterior to reducible complexity.

So the God of ID has created a world that looks mechanistic and requires us to use rationality to study it, only to turn away from this rationalism.

In other words this God is deceiving us and asking us to reject the gifts we have been given.

Apart from the scientific nonsense it makes, I find that theologically appalling.

How did you choose your religion, after all it worked for you.

Professional guild very strong then!

What was his area of expertise then? I didn’t think that science was an area of expertise at that time anyway. The renaissance was an era in which men inquired into a number of areas that would only now be considered discrete areas of specialization.

“A bit like Mark pontificating on Theology or Economics!!!”

Having viewed Mark’s book cases… I would say he has sufficient resources at his disposal to speak with at least a little authority on such matters. Furthermore, I would say that economics is an area of concern within the fields of sociology and industrial relations. The difference being that economics is dealt with there within a broader context and with many more terms of reference than in the pure discipline of economics. At the very least, most people can observe the influence of economics within their own lives and communities. Commentary on the subject is not the exclusive domain of pointy-heads and technocrats. This is a democracy after all.

The expurgated version is that Galileo was talking outside of his area of ‘expertise’!
A bit like Mark pontificating on Theology or Economics!!!

That is what it was like in those days.

With regard to God and science… I am certainly more symphathetic to Mark’s Catholic idea that faith and reason are complementary. I am curious, however, to hear why Catholic’s have always held this to be true… why then was Galileo’s theories the subject of such contraversy? Certainly, heliocentrism is not a central tenet of Christian faith (it seems to me that Christianity doesn’t have its own cosmology… iiuc the medieval cosmology derives from Aristotle)… but then why was a challenge to it contraversial? Why did it take until JPII to pardon Galileo? Is it simply because in his dialogue the proponent of the old cosmology was clearly written to be viewed with ridicule? But then why did the Church require Galileo to present both theories equally? Seems to me similar to the views of conservative politicians re: ID (namely that it should be given equal weight to evolution in bio class). Furthermore, if faith and reason are compatible, if the progress of science is the progressive discovery of God’s creation… then what happens to religion’s critical distance from the more contraversial and ethically problematic frontiers of science? Surely religion should seek to elevate itself above science as an ethical arbiter.

Mind you, I find it interesting that many of the views here are informed by a prior assumed, positive concept of the nature (and existence) of God. Beware that your difference of arguments does not simply stem from the difference between your starting points. Refer to my initial post that evidence of design does not license us to infer much at all regarding the nature of the designer. Nor should such conceptions of God be placed too close in mind to science. Science and religion are two very different things… some here seem to think that religion can explain science… I would suggest that its much more possible for science to explain religion. Whether the content of science and religion are both anthropomorphic is also possible… but I would argue that religion is more so, as it does seem to involve the “filling” of an unseen (and merely inferred) void… with a concept not observable in any species other than humanity. Is God the result of our own intelligent design? I wonder…
I do believe we can infer one thing about God, if we accept his existence, and his authorship of the world… and that is that he evidently intended for there to be suffering. It seems to me that this would be the natural intention of a God that (if one accepts the view of religion) requires our recognition… for what would the status of religion be (if it be at all), if there were no suffering? I recall a quote from Lennon (“God is a concept by which we measure our pain”).

Reducing US wealth and hegemony (as if those markers are discovered in nature) to it’s farming practices (a crucial factor to be sure) is pretty naive. Hopefully it’s less so next week, otherwise it’s Safran and Bob for this Weberian…

As a bit of a fan of Gun Germs and Steel the book, I must say that I although I started I couldn’t actually finish watching the GGS doco last night because I thought it was really poorly presented. The book makes no real claims about stuff like US hedgemony which the doco seemed to allude to.

The GGS thesis is primarily about why Eurasia had such a big lead on the the rest of the world by 15th Century. Essentially he says this was fairly inevitable due to availibility of high quality plant and animal resources, and the fact that these could be shared much more easily on a laterally arranged continent because of similar climates. These limiting factors slowed or halted the technological progress of societies in Australia and the Americas. Its essentially very much la longue durée explanation.

There is a small section on why Europe was dominant versus China, but this part is not really anything original.

The only virtue that has come from original sin is a wearing cricket wicket!

JC,
God says, “Come and reason with me!” so if you’ve got something to say, say it! Why wait. Settle it now!

You know as well as anyone that there is good and bad in the world, right and wrong, good and evil. I think that’s what Homer is talking about. When sin entered the world, it all went wrong. Everything that happens, good or bad, happens to everyone. No one is exempt. ‘It rains on the just and the unjust’.

There’s no guarantee of total safety, or protection from everything or anything. One day we’re all gonna die, hopefully of natural causes at a ripe old age, but there are those who go ‘before their time’. Did God promise us anything to suggest that our time on this planet would be comfortable and pain free during this age? Nope!

The world is subject to immense natural forces. If you live in California, sooner or later there’s going to be an earthquake. If you live in Darwin there are cyclones, crocs, and deadly box jellyfish. In Brisbane huge hailstones drop out of the sky. If you live in other places there are volcanoes, tornadoes, floods, sub-zero temperatures, dessert, raging oceans, landslides, avalanches, lightning strikes, etc.. This planet is hurtling through the galaxy while orbiting the sun and spinning like a top at incredible speeds. Somethings gotta give. It’s a wonder we’re here at all! Then there are non-natural disasters like train smashes, plane crashes, car pile-ups, murders, accidents, etc.. And, of course war, which is generally man-made.

Are you saying there’s a God up there orchestrating these things, pulling the strings, or is it just a confirmation of His warning that ‘in this world you’ll have troubles’? Somehow in all of this billions of us seem to survive, and many reach the dizzy age heights of sixty, seventy, eighty or even ninety. Maybe God does more to stop stuff than we know, because, frankly, how would we know?

At the risk of offending everybody here, which is not my intention…..

Pick up a paper every other day and you read about an innocent kid dying a horrible death. What has sin got to do with a kid at the age of two?

300,000 people got wiped out last year. What on earth has sin got to do with it? We were canstantly fed the stuff we were made in the perfect image image of God. Well I got to tell you I don’t see that as a perfect image. But if it is a perfect image, then not even God is perfect if he allows things like that happening.

Doesn’t his non-action resemble a parent letting his kid get runover despite being able to avoid it.

There may well be a God, but I tell you he doesn’t give that much of a shit about us. The sin stuff doesn’t cut it. And neither does the puppet example.

What’s wrong then in saying if I ever meet him I have a few bones to pick over? Shouldn’t we be allowed to question his actions?

And despite all I have said, the evolution stuff simply doesn’t cut it. That’s because randomness isn’t the order or laws we see around us.

So, Homer, what’s wrong with being pissed with God?

You have to make allowance for Sin Joe. It was GK Chesterton , I think, that said the history of man was the best evidence of original sin.

Facelift ,
did you see the article in Christianity Today concerning the evidence in the ‘ID trial’ and how the Judge stated some of the board members lied under oath.
not a good look

When I get to the pearly gates and sneak in behind Homer he’ll need to answer a few questions I got prepared for him and saying he just leaves things alone won’t cut it. He had a choice in making all this- murdered young kids and all. We didn’t!