Are you puzzled by our title? This is a bit tricky and very theological, and theology is not a subject we know very well, but we’ll do what we can with an article titled Intelligent Design vs. the Argument from Design.
It appears at the website of the National Catholic Register, which describes itself as “America’s most complete and faithful Catholic news source.” Their website says that copying their material is ” strictly prohibited.” We wouldn’t want to bring their wrath down upon us, so we shall comply. Instead of giving you excerpts, we’ll merely describe what they say.
The reason we found this interesting is that they severely criticize the concept of intelligent design, which is so beloved by the Discoveroids. First, they start out by mentioning Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274), a/k/a St. Thomas. Wikipedia says that he “is considered the Church’s greatest theologian and philosopher.” We’ve written before about his five “proofs” of God, each of which has been found fallacious (or at least unpersuasive), but many theologians and believers rely on them anyway.
St. Thomas believed in divine design, that is, he felt that the design of the universe was evidence for God’s existence. This, according to the National Catholic Register, is nothing like the “theory” of intelligent design, which they dismiss as nothing more than a God of the gaps argument. That’s exactly what it is, despite the Discoveroids’ strenuous denials — see Stephen Meyer: “I Don’t Use God of the Gaps”. The Discoveroids claim is that because we can’t understand something, it must have been the work of the intelligent designer.
In contrast, the National Catholic Register says that St. Thomas never used such an argument. Instead, he said that it’s because of divine design that we can understand the way things work. Unlike the Discoveroids, St. Thomas didn’t assume a supernatural designer because of our ignorance, but because of our understanding. He said that the evidence of divine design is that nature is lawful and the world makes sense to us. That seems to be his fifth proof, a teleological argument that claims because everything in the universe follows laws, it must have been created by God.
Whether you find that persuasive or not, it certainly tolerates science better than the Discoveroids’ do. The Discoveroids want to overthrow science. Do you doubt that? Then see What is the “Wedge Document”?
So the National Catholic Register doesn’t think there’s much to recommend the Discoveroids’ notion of intelligent design. They don’t specifically say it, but it’s obvious that they don’t think a God-of-the-gaps argument is good science. And it’s very clear that they don’t think much of it as a theological argument either. In fact, it’s clear that they don’t like it at all.
Our guess is that the only people who do like intelligent design are ignoramuses who imagine it means that science supports their religion, and primitive preachers who don’t know much of anything at all.
Copyright © 2013. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
Creator and God as a philosophical and faith-based issue. Terrific, some sanity.
The reason we found this interesting is that they severely criticize the concept of intelligent design, which is so beloved by the Discoveroids.”
One does not need to go anywhere near the jargon-infested subject of theology (a gold mine for wordsmiths) to find a simple, indisputable conclusion: Any religion that preaches “thou shalt not bear false witness” and means it will completely reject the modern ID movement.
The catch is that the leaders of such religion need to know the sleazy tactics that ID peddlers use. And they won’t if they only hear about ID from the media (“it’s creationism.” “it’s a religious view,” etc.)
FYI. According to fair use, under the 1st amendment you can copy anything you want to as part of a commentary or critique http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/what-is-fair-use/
AnOldScientist correctly says: “According to fair use, under the 1st amendment you can copy anything you want to as part of a commentary or critique”
That’s true. But the doctrine of “fair use” isn’t a magic shield that lets us dwell in a blogospheric paradise. Suits alleging copyright infringement were recently rampant during the now-ended terror caused by the tactics of Righthaven. The experience of the blogger defendants illustrates that “fair use” is a defense to a claim of copyright infringement, which has to be demonstrated in court. If sued, one must decide to either fork over something to settle the thing, or fork over perhaps even more to fight the thing in court. Although justice ought to eventually prevail, it’s best to avoid such situations.
“a teleological argument”
Science has thrown teleology out of the window some 200 years ago.
“it certainly tolerates science better than the Discoveroids’ do.”
In the end no. That same Thomas of Aquino adopted the cosmological argument, which relies on causality, which in our days of Quantum Mechanics is just as anti-scientific.
“Monsignor Georges Lemaître was a 20th century physicist who looked at the evidence that everything in the universe was moving away from everything else”
Likely after he had read an article in a German scientific magazine from the Russian commie Alexander Friedman, who had this idea several years before our Monsignor. But yeah, a catholic celebrating a commie ….
Charles D: just ask the most liberal catholic you know if Jesus’ Resurrection was a historical and physical event. Also ask him/her how his causal god relates to the probabilism of Quantum Mechanics.
“a philosophical and faith-based issue”
There is a reason catholics don’t like Kierkegaard.