Harry, thank you for the Catechism references, and Fr. Robert Spitzer “anthropic principle” link – I think I’ve possibly heard that before, but I’ll listen again.

1. Harry’s assertions have to become heresy on one side or the other. ID asserts that it can tell the difference between designed things and non-designed things. An infinite God, though, means nothing can be non-designed. That means either ID has to assert God is finite and limited in his powers, or everything is designed therefore ID can’t tell the difference between a designed and non-designed thing. If ID is correct, then the designer is not God. If God exists, then ID can’t be correct unless God is more like a finite person than in infinite God.

2. Newton was deeply religious. That’s about all the good you can say about him. As a theologian he had rejected almost all the major insights of Christian thinkers who came before him by centuries. Newton tossed out the Trinity, the Divine nature of Christ and lots of other Christian insights on religion and brought in numerology and cheesy efforts to calculate the date of the world’s end. If he didn’t have his mathematical and scientific accomplishments and had only to rely upon his religious work, he would been forgotten as a very low ranking religious thinker..probably unknown even to the most obscure historian of religion. The God of the Gaps is not a God serious ly religious people should aspire towards.

Newton, a deeply religious man, who is considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived, insisted that “this most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.”

I’ve pointed you to this essay before, which tackles exactly that quote of Newton’s head-on. But I’ll quote from it now:

A century later, the French astronomer and mathematician Pierre-Simon de Laplace confronted Newton’s dilemma of unstable orbits head-on. Rather than view the mysterious stability of the solar system as the unknowable work of God, Laplace declared it a scientific challenge. In his multipart masterpiece, Mécanique Céleste, the first volume of which appeared in 1798, Laplace demonstrates that the solar system is stable over periods of time longer than Newton could predict. To do so, Laplace pioneered a new kind of mathematics called perturbation theory, which enabled him to examine the cumulative effects of many small forces. According to an oft-repeated but probably embellished account, when Laplace gave a copy of Mécanique Céleste to his physics-literate friend Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon asked him what role God played in the construction and regulation of the heavens. “Sire,” Laplace replied, “I have no need of that hypothesis.”

And the more “fundamental phenomena” just might be the “logical consequence” of even “more fundamental parameters” and so might those be and so on and so on.

Does ’2+2=4′ depend on anything more fundamental? Could 2+2=fish? You keep missing the point – you keep assuming those parameters could have been different when you cannot possibly know that. You can imagine a world where water freezes at 274 Kelvin, yet everything else is the same… but you can’t actually have such a world.

How do you know the ratio of the mass of the electron to the proton could be anything but what it is? Tell me that and I’ll agree you have an argument. Until then, all you have is an opinion.

You are confusing philosophical arguments for the existence of God, which go back thousands of years, with ID, a modern day pseudo-science which claims to be able to measure God by comparing cells to watches.

If God is absolutely sovereign over the course of *all* events (chance is the invention of finite minds), as orthodox Catholicism has always taught, then His creation has been intelligently designed. This is why the Universe is intelligible, which is what makes natural science possible.

Newton, a deeply religious man, who is considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived, insisted that “this most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.” For Newton, discovering the design that brought forth the order of the cosmos proved, rather than challenged, the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent creator.

So, ID is not the “modern day” pseudo-science. ID is not new. What is new is science perverted by atheistic materialism. It is the “modern day pseudo-science” which denies the existence of all immaterial, incorporeal realities even though nature loudly testifies to their existence. Newton, who practiced true science, heard this testimony. Modern, atheistic pseudo-science places its hands firmly over its ears and keeps shouting loudly that there is no God in the hope that nobody else will hear nature’s compelling testimony either. That isn’t working.

To those who think ID is an ally to religion in the supposed ‘war’ between the two, beware you have been warned.

There can be no genuine conflict between true science and true religion because the natural and the supernatural have the same Author, yet ID is essential to religion, certainly at least to the Catholic variety:

“If anyone says that the one, true God, our creator and lord, cannot be known with *certainty* from the things that have been made, by the natural light of human reason: *let him be anathema.*”

– Vatican Council I, can. 2 § I

“… The existence of God the Creator can be known with *certainty* through his works, by the light of human reason …”

– Catechism of the Catholic Church, #286 (Cf. Vatican Council I, can. 2 § I)

“The witness of Scripture is unanimous that the solicitude of divine providence is *concrete and immediate*; God cares for all, from the *least things* to the great events of the world and its history. The sacred books powerfully affirm God’s *absolute sovereignty* over the course of events …”

– Catechism of the Catholic Church, #303

“And so we see the Holy Spirit, the principal author of Sacred Scripture, often attributing actions to God without mentioning any *secondary causes.* This is not a “primitive mode of speech”, but a profound way of recalling *God’s primacy and absolute Lordship* over history and the world …”

– Catechism of the Catholic Church, #304

I’ve pointed out that things we considered ‘singular constants’ before have turned out to be the logical consequence of more fundamental parameters. … it’s a live possibility that the ‘constants’ we see are the logical consequence of more fundamental phenomena, which may well be the way they are because they can’t be otherwise …

And the more “fundamental phenomena” just might be the “logical consequence” of even “more fundamental parameters” and so might those be and so on and so on. The further back we go the more “logical” the combination of the most fundamental cosmological parameter values had to be, which is all the more evidence for an ultimate Logos. For example, one could explain an explosion in a lumber yard assembling a finished house by saying that if we just understood why all the parameters involved had the precise values they did we would see that the house being assembled was inevitable. The parameters having precisely the required values would prove a mind must have put some thought into the values of the parameters, not that it was a lucky, mindless accident.

The Big Bang creating a low-entropy, anthropic Universe was much more unlikely than an explosion in a lumber yard assembling a finished house. To deny that somebody must have put a lot of thought into it might be based on just not wanting to believe that is the case, but not on reason.

Problem, humans are by definition finite and God is by definition infinite. To charge you can infer design by studying the designs of humans implies design by an infinite entity would look like design by a finite one.

As any engineer will tell you, human design is marked by dealing with limits. Materials can only take so much force before they break, energy can only be stored so efficiently, different values like weight and fuel economy are in conflict with each other etc. An infinite entity, though, is not constrained by limits.

This would mean that design by God or a god would almost certainly NOT look like the familiar designs of humans. IDers, though, seem to have forgotten one of the core concepts of monotheism, namely that there’s a huge difference between an Infinite God and a God who is merely more powerful than humans. Or as any mathematician will tell you there’s a world of difference between a really big number and true infinity.

Open question: Who is harmed more by ID? Science or Faith?

To those who think ID is an ally to religion in the supposed ‘war’ between the two, beware you have been warned.