A being so powerful and so full of knowledge as a God who could create the universe, is to our finite minds omnipotent and omniscient, and it revolts our understanding to suppose that his benevolence is not unbounded, for what advantage can there be in the sufferings of millions of the lower animals throughout almost endless time? This very old argument from the existence of suffering against the existence of an intelligent first cause seems to me a strong one;

Charles Darwin

Consider that Darwin loved shooting birds. Shooting birds is an act that induces suffering for the bird and the bird’s family.

In the latter part of my school life I became passionately fond of shooting, and I do not believe that anyone could have shown more zeal for the most holy cause than I did for shooting birds. How well I remember killing my first snipe, and my excitement was so great that I had much difficulty in reloading my gun from the trembling of my hands.
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“How I did enjoy shooting”
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If there is bliss on earth, that is it”
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So Darwin thinks that an intelligent being would not inflict suffering on other creatures, yet he himself inflicts suffering for his own blissful pleasure.

Darwin implicitly assumes he himself is an intelligent being since he presumes to know what God ought to do in managing the affairs of creatures on Earth. Yet Darwin argues intelligent beings won’t cause suffering, yet Darwin himself, an intelligent being, does the very thing he claims an intelligent being wouldn’t do. Would Darwin therefore argue Darwin doesn’t exist because Darwin causes suffering in the world? His line of reasoning is most ironic.
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In “New Insight Into the Brain’s Ability to Reorganize Itself” (ScienceDaily, Mar. 19, 2011), we learn “It’s amazing how the brain is capable of reorganizing itself in this manner,” says Murphy, co-senior author of the study and researcher at U-M’s Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Institute. “Right now, we’re still figuring out exactly how the brain accomplishes all this at the molecular level, but it’s sort of comforting to know that our brains are keeping track of all of this for us.” In previous research, the scientists had found that restricting cell division in the hippocampuses of mice using radiation or genetic manipulation resulted in reduced functioning in a cellular mechanism important to memory formation known as long-term potentiation. But in Read More ›

Here at Slashdot we are informed by someone or other that “There is a Texas bill, HB 2454, proposed by Republican State Rep. Bill Zedler, that will outlaw discrimination against creationists in colleges and universities. More specifically, it says, ‘An institution of higher education may not discriminate against or penalize in any manner, especially with regard to employment or academic support, a faculty member or student based on the faculty member’s or student’s conduct of research relating to the theory of intelligent design or other alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms.’” Most of the comments are predictable, and it would be far too much to ask otherwise. It strikes me that there was a time when outlawing Read More ›

Common sense comes in for a bit of support in “Still Red in Tooth and Claw” (The Wall Street Journal, March 12, 2011), on animal morality: Though stories of seemingly altruistic animals tug at the heartstrings, humans are nature’s sole moralists.Nothing tugs at the anthropomorphic heartstrings, though, more strongly than accounts of compassion or altruism in the animal world. A spate of books by authors such as Steven M. Wise, Jeffrey Masson, Jane Goodall, Marc Bekoff and Frans de Waal accordingly offer up examples of animals acting not just intelligently but virtuously. Dolphins lovingly tend sick comrades, elephants grieve over the death of relatives, and apes stage daring rescues of people, injured birds or other beings in distress. In the Read More ›

Lenski’s the guy who studied all those generations of E. Coli bacteria, and discovered that over many thousands of generations, there were very few beneficial mutations. (Darwinism depends, not on mutations as such but on mutations that benefit the organism.) Recently, his work was the subject of an item, “Evolvability, observed” by Jef Akst (The Scientist, 17th March 2011 ), where we learn

Natural selection picks the most well adapted organisms to survive and reproduce. But what if the most beneficial mutations in the short term meant less room for adaptation in the future?[ … ]

Researchers at Michigan State University and the University of Houston in Texas took advantage of a long-term evolution experiment on Escherichia coli that’s been running for more than 50,000 generations. Characterizing archived strains from 500, 1000, and 1500 generations, the team identified two beneficial mutations that arose in some strains prior to 500 generations and eventually spread through the entire population. The researchers dubbed the strains that carried these mutations at 500 generations the eventual winners (EWs) and those lacking the mutations the eventual losers (ELs).

Andrew J. Fabich at Tennessee Temple University, who knows somewhat of bacteria, writes to say that none of the stuff about them is any big surprise, Read More ›

Steve Clark writes in “Naturalism, Science and the Supernatural” (Sophia, 24 April 2009). Abstract: There is overwhelming agreement amongst naturalists that a naturalistic ontology should not allow for the possibility of supernatural entities. I argue, against this prevailing consensus, that naturalists have no proper basis to oppose the existence of supernatural entities. Naturalism is characterized, following Leiter and Rea, as a position which involves a primary commitment to scientific methodology and it is argued that any naturalistic ontological commitments must be compatible with this primary commitment. It is further argued that properly applied scientific method has warranted the acceptance of the existence of supernatural entities in the past and that it is plausible to think that it will do so Read More ›

Nick Matzke unwittingly gives more evidence for the claims of ID proponent John Sanford. Sanford argues that species and genomes are slowly dying, and this cannot be arrested by natural selection, even in principle. Nick got his co-authored paper published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature. Here is Nick’s commentary at Pandas Thumb Depending on the scenario, we reach a 75% “mass extinction” (for certain well-studied groups) within a few hundred to a few thousand years, if, as people say, “current rates continue.” This is a geological eyeblink. But this implies our best field observations do not suggest natural selection is originating more species! In fact they are dying faster than they are being replaced. One might argue humans are Read More ›

is not an illusion after all (New Scientist16 March 2011): But new, more precise measurements of supernovae, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, clash with the simplest version of the void model. That model could be made to fit previous supernova measurements and other cosmological data, but only if the local expansion rate is about 60 kilometres per second per megaparsec or less. (One megaparsec is 3.26 million light years.) That was within the possible error of previous measurements, but the new, more precise measurements give an expansion rate of 74 kilometres per second per megaparsec, plus or minus 2.4. “It looks more like it’s dark energy that’s pressing the gas pedal,” says Adam Riess of Johns Hopkins University in Read More ›

In response to Dr. Torley’s post here, commenter Graham asks:  “Can we now drop the pretense and just declare UD/ID to be religious”?  Well Graham, let’s think about that.  ID theory posits that some observations are best explained as the result of the acts of an intelligent agent.  The theory does not posit any particular agent and the agent need not be a deity.  It could, for example, be the aliens Dawkins speculated about in his interview with Ben Stein.  To be sure, many ID proponents believe the intelligent agent is God.  But that is a possible implication of the theory, not part of the theory itself. Neo-Darwinian evolution (NDE) posits that unguided material forces are sufficient to produce all Read More ›

Let us set aside all of the other problems with the much touted Miller–Urey experiment (e.g., the “atmosphere” assumed in the experiment bears absolutely no resemblance to the early earth’s atmosphere).  Indeed, let us go a step further and assume that scientists can develop a mix of chemicals that in fact accurately reproduces early earth conditions in every particular.  And finally let us assume they can zap that mix of chemicals with electricity and produce organic compounds. So what? The paradigm under which Miller-Urey (and similar experiments) was performed is hopelessly stuck in a quaint nineteenth century view of the cell.  Our ancestors believed the cell was, in the words of Ernst Haeckel, a “simple globule of protoplasm.” Today we Read More ›

A friend shares with me a courteous letter to the editor (“Atheists deny intelligent design of our universe”, March 17, 2011), It is the responsibility of parents to not only monitor what is taught in schools, but to provide information that is purposely excluded. It is painful to witness the lengths to which many atheists go in their attempts to deny intelligent design in both creation and perpetuation. Every time Hawking’s or others add a new layer of speculation concerning the origin of the universe, their information leaves another void that only God can fill.  I think the author, Michael Wolfe, is right. No responsible parent should take for granted what goes on in the classroom today. The days are Read More ›

And why not? It’s real. It’s actual. Paul Farhi tells us (March 16) The Washington Post suspended one of its most seasoned reporters Wednesday after editors determined that “substantial” parts of two recent news articles were taken without attribution from another newspaper. Oh, but wait. That implies purpose, a big no-no, if you go by Darwinist rules. Still, the guy was suspended. Does anyone other than me get sick of the hypocrisy? That incident the reporter was covering (Jared Loughner), by the way, led to a huge demand among our moral and intellectual superiors for control over private speech. I deal with the threat here. What keeps me going is a chance to serve coffee here.

A friend wants me to know about this latest BioEssays editorial, wailing about the use of teleological language in biology (= it happened so that). As in: …It is that innocent little word ‘to’ that transforms the meaning, giving enzyme Y the essence of ‘will’ – ‘to’ being short for ‘in order to ‘, or ‘with the purpose of’. Purpose can only be exercised by a supernatural entity in this situation.  So? Who’s that problem for? You? Me? The author? Darwin? Get ready to front zillions in taxes and maybe court cases, stopping people expressing themselves in a normal way, for one purpose only: to front Darwinism.

UPDATE: Since posting this article online, I have received an email from Professor Feser, in which he writes:

I have never accused any ID defender of heresy, and would never do so. To say to a theological opponent “Your views have implications you may not like, including ones that I believe are hard to reconcile with what we both agree to be definitive of orthodoxy” is simply not the same thing as saying “You are a heretic!” Rather, it’s what theologians do all the time in debate with their fellow orthodox believers.

I appreciate this clarification from Professor Feser, and I have therefore changed the title of this post, to make it less inflammatory. (I’ve removed one of the pictures, too.) I apologize for any pain I have caused Professor Feser; however, I should point out that in his latest article, Thomism versus the design argument, Professor Feser wrote: “ID is, from a Thomistic point of view, bad philosophy and bad theology.” Moreover, he approvingly cites Christopher Martin as writing that “The Being whose existence is revealed to us by the argument from design is not God but the Great Architect of the Deists and Freemasons, an impostor disguised as God,” and he later writes that “Paley’s ‘designer’ is really just the god of Deists and Freemasons and not the true God.” I hope the reader will pardon me for drawing the inference that Feser regards Intelligent Design as heretical. If that was not his intention, he really should have said so, very clearly, in his post. I have posted Professor Feser’s clarifying remarks in the interests of journalistic accuracy, and I welcome his statement that he regards the Intelligent Design movement as theologically orthodox.

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It’s been a long time since my last post at Uncommon Descent. The reason, for readers who may have been wondering, is that I’ve been working on a very long but interesting post aimed at showing, on scientific grounds alone, that a human embryo is just as important, morally speaking, as you or I. Uncommon Descent readers will find it especially interesting, because it employs a line of argument which will be familiar to people who accept Intelligent Design. I’ve nearly finished that post and it will be coming out soon. Several other posts are in the pipeline, so you’ll be hearing a lot from me in the next couple of weeks.

The topic of today’s post is Professor Edward Feser’s latest article, Thomism versus the design argument, over on his Website. The article makes a number of claims about Intelligent Design argument which are either irrelevant or demonstrably false.

Let’s start with Feser’s main beef with design arguments of any kind whatsoever: “The problem with these arguments is rather that they don’t get you even one millimeter toward the God of classical theism, and indeed they get you positively away from the God of classical theism.”

Here’s a simple question for Professor Feser. Which of the following is closest to the God of classical theism?
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Having seen what the Texas schools Darwin lobby had to say about self-organization (no, we can’t talk about that in class because students might confuse it with ID), I couldn’t help wondering what they will have to say about say about, oh, convergent evolution. Maybe it’s just because I gotta write about that today, and need to hear the good word from Brother Charlie again, to keep me on the straight and narrow. Or not. But all that got me thinking, who are these people? Well, I asked around, and whattan earful! Apparently, they are a set of people around a former Texas governor , who treat the school system as a private playground for rich people. Makes complete sense. Read More ›