Thomas Cudworth

Over on Biologos, Francis Beckwith has posted a third and a fourth instalment of his “Intelligent Design and Me” series.  He has dedicated these instalments to some of his critics, naming some UD people specifically, and also discussing the views of Jay Richards of the Discovery Institute.

I’m grateful that Dr. Beckwith has seen fit to reply.  I must confess that I had almost written him off as a “drive-by shooter”, but now I must say “better late than never”, and thank him for his effort to get back to us.

First, as one of the UD people mentioned by Dr. Beckwith, I should apologize for misreporting, in my earlier column, some of the chronological details of Dr. Beckwith’s religious and intellectual life.  Dr. Beckwith has corrected me on these in his new article.  I can assure him that there was no conscious attempt to misrepresent anything, and I am glad he has reminded us that his adoption of Thomism preceded his return to Rome by many years.  This makes the important point that Thomism is a theological approach rather than a religious confession, and is open to Christians other than Roman Catholics.

I won’t comment on Dr. Beckwith’s new articles point by point, but will focus only on two main ideas which I think need discussion.

A.  Dr. Beckwith tells us that Thomas Aquinas did not have an argument from design in the style of William Paley, but an argument from the existence of final causes. 

Last month, I noted with pleasure that Dr. Karl Giberson appeared to have extended an olive branch to ID people, and I wrote a reply here in a similar spirit.  It seemed to me then that Dr. Giberson was showing a breadth of mind and a listening attitude that was unusual among theistic evolutionists, and I genuinely wanted to encourage it, and to encourage ID supporters to respond graciously to his overture.

I am disappointed to report that this month, Dr. Giberson has taken two steps backward for his previous step forward, and has displayed a narrowness of mind of exactly the sort that has provoked ID/TE frictions in the past.

I am referring to his Biologos column, published on May 10, 2010, entitled “Would You Like Fries With That Theory?”  The condescension toward the common man implied in the title is matched only by the condescension toward the common man (and others) frankly expressed in this article. Read More ›

In an earlier column (27 March 2010), I offered constructive criticism of the position of Francis Beckwith, who had implied an incompatibility between the ID and Thomist approaches to design, and had condemned ID for advancing or at least implying a bad form of Christian theology:

https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/what-francis-beckwith-gets-wrong-about-intelligent-design/

Prof. Beckwith responded once to my article, but only touched on a couple of points, and in the course of his discussion misrepresented both my motivation and some of my arguments.  When I clarified my position (in Comment #8 below the article), Beckwith did not respond to the clarification.  Thus, he left the impression that he had demolished my argument, when in fact he had rebutted only a misrepresentation of just part of my argument.

I here undertake a constructively critical response to some arguments of Professor Edward Feser, who like Prof. Beckwith has contrasted ID unfavorably with Thomist design arguments and has accused ID of faulty theology.  I am hoping that Professor Feser will reply, here or on his own site, and will engage more fully with my comments than did Prof. Beckwith. Read More ›

Biologos supporter Karl Giberson has recently posted what seems to be an olive branch to ID.  As we rarely get these from the TE/EC/Biologos camp, I think we should respond graciously to Dr. Giberson’s overture.

His remarks, under the heading, “Through a Glass Darkly”, are found at:

http://biologos.org/blog/through-a-glass-darkly-blog/

I was grateful when Dr. Giberson backed away somewhat from the tendency of TEs to throw out “God of the gaps!” as a shibboleth against ID.  He wrote:

 “Not all ID theorists insist on this however. I had a chance to chat with Michael Behe when we were on a panel a few months ago at Brigham Young University; I pressed him to find out just how far apart we were. I knew he accepted common ancestry and rejected young earth creationism, just as we do at BioLogos. Behe insisted that “design is empirically detectable” but he did not insist that such design requires intervention by God.

 “Fair enough.

“Perhaps it would be most appropriate to say that ID “tends to slip into god-of-the-gaps,” rather than equating it with god-of-the gaps, as its critics tend to do.”

I am grateful that Dr. Giberson is capable of noticing the exaggerations of some of his anti-ID colleagues, and pleased that he shows determination to find out what ID proponents say about themselves, and does not rest content with inaccurate second-hand reports.  For this I thank him.

I would add that Behe is not alone in his position.  Read More ›

Francis Beckwith is one of the more interesting commentators on Darwinism and intelligent design.  Beckwith is intelligent and independently minded, willing to move with the evidence and the arguments, and thus capable of non-partisan thought on the issues.

Originally a Protestant and a supporter of intelligent design as formulated by the major ID theorists, he has since become a Roman Catholic and a Thomist, and now believes that the best arguments for design are metaphysical arguments of a Thomist variety, rather than scientific arguments of the sort proposed by ID supporters.  In a recent two-part posting on the Biologos site, Beckwith has explained why he was uncomfortable with ID from the beginning, and how his new Thomist insights clarified for him the defects of ID as an argument for natural theology.  The articles can be found at:

http://biologos.org/blog/intelligent-design-and-me-part-i-in-the-beginning/

 and

 http://biologos.org/blog/intelligent-design-and-me-part-ii/

 There is a Comments section following each article, with some useful criticism of Beckwith’s position, notably from Mike Gene and from a poster writing under the alias of “pds”.  There is also further discussion of Beckwith articles, with more from “pds” and some responses by Beckwith, at:

 http://blog.beliefnet.com/jesuscreed/2010/03/what-role-naturalism-2—insig.html

 It would be impossible in one column to discuss both of Beckwith’s articles and all of his responses to commenters, so I will content myself with pulling out the highlights of Beckwith’s arguments from these three locations, and responding to them.

First, it is important to note that Beckwith’s criticism of ID is not on the plane of natural science.  He does not pretend to referee between Ken Miller and Michael Behe on the irreducible complexity of the flagellum; nor does he object in principle to the attempt to show, against Dawkins & Co., that Darwinian processes are incapable of producing complex organs and biological systems.  As he puts it in Comment 48 on the beliefnet.com/jesuscreed site: Read More ›

A criticism which neo-Darwinists have frequently made of Intelligent Design is that it is not a “scientific” theory. ID, they say, explains the bacterial flagellum by saying “God [sic] made it”. However, they complain, it doesn’t say when God made it, how God made it, what material substrate God was acting on when he made it, etc. It therefore gives scientists nothing to go on, nothing to work with, nothing on which they can base experiments which could confirm or disconfirm the explanation. In contrast, they believe, Darwinian explanations give scientists something to work on. The hypothesis that the flagellum slowly evolved, through a series of intermediate, functional steps, allows for testing. One can look for possible intermediate steps, e.g., Read More ›

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/views/story.html?id=711a0b47-29d5-426d-a273-a270817b000e&p=1

Shermer’s attack was brought on by a comment of Rabbi Reuven Bulka, published in the Citizen on July 7. Bulka had written:

“By the way, for the record, I have no problem with evolutionary ingredients in creation. This can co-exist quite comfortably with intelligent design, or God’s design, which is stretched out on an evolutionary canvass.” http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/opinion/story.html?id=efe4cbf9-dd5d-4e33-b1ed-0c0334095047&p=2 Read More ›