Sunday, February 05, 2006

 

Everything Old . . .

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Michael Shermer has a letter in the New York Times Books section (may need free registration) in response to the essay, "When Cosmologies Collide," by religion writer Judith Shulevitz:

Although it is occasionally true that evolutionism can turn into bad philosophy in the hands of a rabid anti-theist, intelligent design (I.D.) creationism is always bad science and bad theology. We saw in the Dover trial why I.D. is bad science. I.D. is bad theology because it turns God into a mere garage tinkerer, a fumbling watchmaker, a Dr. Frankenstein cobbling together biochemical parts from the primordial soup into complex organisms. Such a God cannot be the omniscient and omnipotent God of Abraham . . .

Which is a nice contemporary way of saying what John Stuart Mill said some 135 years ago about ID, in its original form of Natural Theology:

It is not too much to say that every indication of Design in the Kosmos is so much evidence against the Omnipotence of the Designer. For what is meant by Design? Contrivance: the adaptation of means to an end. But the necessity for contrivance -- the need of employing means -- is a consequence of the limitation of power. Who would have recourse to means if to attain his end his mere word was sufficient? The very idea of means implies that the means have an efficacy which the direct action of the being who employs them has not. Otherwise they are not means, but an incumbrance. A man does not use machinery to move his arms. If he did, it could only be when paralysis had deprived him of the power of moving them by volition. But if the employment of contrivance is in itself a sign of limited power, how much more so is the careful and skilful choice of contrivances? Can any wisdom be shown in the selection of means, when the means have no efficacy but what is given them by the will of him who employs them, and when his will could have bestowed the same efficacy on any other means? Wisdom and contrivance are shown in overcoming difficulties, and there is no room for them in a Being for whom no difficulties exist. The evidences, therefore, of Natural Theology distinctly imply that the author of the Kosmos worked under limitations; that he was obliged to adapt himself to conditions independent of his will, and to attain his ends by such arrangements as those conditions admitted of.
Some thing don’t get better with age.
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P.S. There is also a letter from Niles Eldredge well worth reading.
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