What aspect of life on the Earth requires supernatural powers?

_{December 1, 2008

Intelligent Design}

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Some people who support ID doggedly hold that life on the planet earth requires a supernatural agency to make it happen. Others who don’t support ID also doggedly hold that ID requires a supernatural agency.

I’ve asked, many times, what is it about the construction of organic life on this planet that requires supernatural intelligence to make it happen? What laws of physics or chemistry must be violated to produce any aspect of any living organism thus far examined?

I admit that the origination and diversification of organic life on the earth seems best explained by participation at some point or points by an intelligent agency but I don’t see where a supernatural intelligent agency able to bend or break the laws of physics and chemistry is required.

I concede that the creation of the entire universe out of nothing seems to require an agency with capabilities that go beyond the laws of physics and chemistry as we understand them today but my question isn’t about the creation of a whole universe. My question is just about the creation of organic life on this planet.

Comments

What am I missing? Dave Scot asked, "What aspect of life on the Earth requires supernatural powers [to create it]?" The mind is certainly an aspect of organic life. Possibly a critical one. Several of us believe it is non-material. If that's the case, then "the mind" is precisely the answer to Dave's question, because an agent who is limited to material causes (efficient causes) can't create a non-material mind. That we can explain non-human life by way of non-supernatural agents (here I also agree) seems irrelevant.Timothy_{December 1, 2008
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I don't think Timothy misunderstands "efficient cause". He is simply saying that he thinks the efficient cause of mind must be supernatural. Except we are talking about the efficient cause of organic life, not of mind. He's not wrong, merely off topic.tragicmishap_{December 1, 2008
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Give it a rest Timothy. Your statement betrays your lack of understanding of the phrase "efficient cause." tragicmishap and I are in agreement. The answer to Dave's question: If you mean "efficient cause" the answer is "nothing." If you mean "formal cause," the answer is the non-material operation of the mind.Barry Arrington_{December 1, 2008
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Barry wrote:
He is quite correct that if humans have non-material minds (and I believe they do), if a human were to create a life form the formal cause would be the operation of the non-material mind, which cannot be explained by reference to the laws of physics and chemistry.
The efficient cause of a non-material mind that cannot be explained by reference to the laws of physics and chemistry must, by definition, be supernatural.Timothy_{December 1, 2008
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Yes thank you Barry. That's exactly it. Although it was chapman who used the phrase "talking past each other", not me. I have repeatedly acknowledged that the efficient cause of organic life need not be supernatural. I personally know of no concrete reason why it must be, even though that is what I believe. So we are all in agreement here...I think. loltragicmishap_{December 1, 2008
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tragicmishap suggests that he and I are talking past each other. He is correct. We are not disagreeing in principle. We are focusing on different uses of the word “cause.” First, some definitions. There are four types of causes: 1. Material cause: This, as the name implies, describes the material out of which a thing is made. The material cause of an eraser is rubber. 2. Efficient cause: This describes the “how” of the cause. The efficient cause of driving a nail into a piece of wood is the act of the arm/hand holding the hammer and bringing it down on the nail with force. In common speech, this is what people usually mean when they use the word “cause.” 3. Formal cause: The formal cause of a thing is the idea of the thing in the mind of the agent. The formal cause of a house is the idea of the house in the mind of the person who conceives it (an architect perhaps). 4. Final cause: The final cause of an object is its purpose. The final cause of a house is a place to live. I take it that DaveScott’s question focuses on “efficient cause,” and that is how I have been addressing it. I have repeatedly referred to a human manipulating his environment, such as, for instance, driving a nail with a hammer. My point, and I think Dave’s point, is that the efficient cause of life need not be supernatural. Indeed, we can imagine in the not too distant future a human working with highly advanced lab equipment to create a living organisms. The human’s hands manipulating the lab equipment are, in principle, no different than the arm/hand bringing the hammer down on the nail. The former is the efficient cause of the life form being created; the latter is the efficient cause of the nail being driven into the wood. Tragicmishap, on the other hand, has been focusing on “formal cause.” He is quite correct that if humans have non-material minds (and I believe they do), if a human were to create a life form the formal cause would be the operation of the non-material mind, which cannot be explained by reference to the laws of physics and chemistry. Whether I would call this “supernatural” is another question regarding the use of language. We have been arguing past each other, because until now we have not recognized the category the other was using. This once again, demonstrates that John Courtney Murray was right when he said: “disagreement is not an easy thing to reach. Rather, we move into confusion.”Barry Arrington_{December 1, 2008
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Post 35 is in answer to DaveScot's post 33.tragicmishap_{December 1, 2008
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And my answer is nothing, as far as I know. Maybe there is. Maybe there isn't. But it doesn't matter to ID whether mind is natural or supernatural or both. I believe for other reasons that the supernatural exists, so for me it is a readily available and simple explanation for intelligence and mind. Your question just doesn't seem relevant to ID. What do you think intelligence is then? I can see how one can believe that intelligence can exist without having free will or being supernatural. I assume that is what you believe. The difficulty of that belief is a plausible explanation for how intelligence arose. I would be interested to hear how you think that could happen. But I don't see how you can have free will without reference to the supernatural. And if you do not believe in free will then you are really a materialist. And I think positive evidence for materialism has been fading fast ever since the Big Bang Theory. So we are really left with only two conflicting beliefs with precious little scientific evidence to support either one. Since it isn't really relevant to ID, I question your motives for even bringing it up at all.tragicmishap_{December 1, 2008
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tragicmishap So what is the point of your post? My point was to ask if anyone can point to a specific thing about organic life on earth that could not have been created by a material intelligence working within the bounds of known natural laws. If you're saying that minds are supernatural and we're all saying that a mind is required in the creation of life then in effect you are saying that organic life requires a supernatural element. So what exactly about a mind requires the supernatural in either construction or operation? DaveScot_{December 1, 2008
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StephenB: "The issue is not natural or supernatural; the issue is mind or matter." I sort of agree with you for the most part, but if one believes as I do that mind is supernatural and matter is natural, then we are saying the exact same thing using different words. The natural/supernatural distinction is a legitimate one. Scientifically speaking though, we know very little about it primarily because materialism has prevented us from examining the distinction for so long. We IDists often speak of the limit of science. Well how will we ever know the limit of science until we pound our heads repeatedly against it?tragicmishap_{December 1, 2008
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"I have to agree with you that no IDist I can think of has pointed to something specific about organic life on this planet and categorically claimed it could not be created by a sufficiently advanced but wholly material means." So what is the point of your post?tragicmishap_{December 1, 2008
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In that two humans can procreate simply and enjoyably :), there is obviously no need for a supernatural cause. Is it possible to duplicate this biochemical construction process in the lab? No doubt, with much better technology! If we look at our human bodies as human-being duplication machines, we just need to duplicate the biochemical processes. There don't seem to be any supernatural requirements. And cloning, anyone? Personally, I don't believe in some ethereal "mind," external to or operating independently of our body/brain. Why is it necessary? (If that is what is being proposed. Maybe I misunderstand the mind concept in this context.)cklester_{December 1, 2008
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Sorry, my posts at 27 and 29 are jumbled and out of order. I'll try again. I think any creative act requires a mind or a program from a mind, and any super creative act of design requires a super mind. I don’t see how you get design (or function for that matter) without purpose, and I don’t see how you get purpose without mind. Beyond that, I don’t think an impersonal causeless cause can get the job done, because an impersonal first cause cannot decide to create or not create. If some material, immanent principle in nature created the earth, it would seem to have had no choice in the matter. But how can something create without the power to choose not to create? Further, how can one create a universe without also creating its raw materials and the rationality behind its laws? Some want to change the word create to “generate” as a means of bypassing personal agency, but, to me, that simply begs the question. Why does the generator exist? Even if one takes the extreme position that the generator was always there, another question remains. Does the generator have other options, meaning can it create via another pathway? If not, then surely there is no creativity there. A Mindless generator would hardly seem to qualify as a creator, and, in any case, would surely depend on a mind to make it work and give it purpose. So, to me, the real question is this: Does creating a universe like ours require a Divine mind or merely a superhuman mind? I don’t even use the vocabulary of natural/supernatural because I don’t think it applies. I use the language of animal, human, superhuman, and Divine. If, for example, a human creates a design, then it would seem that he does so because he has been given a small measure of the super mind’s capacity to create. So, in that sense, every creative act is either Divine, superhuman, human, or animal. Put another way, humans can create design because they participate, in some small way, with the super (Divine?) mind’s power to create. Once you introduce the vocabulary of natural/supernatural, description of the creative act becomes impossible. I once explained to a Darwinist that an ancient hunter’s spear was not the result of natural causes. He responded with the objection that it was indeed created by natural causes because it occurred “in nature.” That is the kind of nonsense you get when you agree to use your adversary’s vocabulary. (He who chooses the terms almost always wins the debate). The issue is not natural or supernatural; the issue is mind or matter. For my part, nature is both a cause and an effect. Insofar as a Divine (superhuman?) mind created it and sustains it, it is an effect; insofar as its laws operate on other things, including material brains, it is a cause. I submit, then, that a Divine mind creates and sustains nature, while human minds affect and are effected by it. To me, that is the only reasonable approach to take.StephenB_{December 1, 2008
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Dave, I think there is a clear possibility in that the designer agency for the life on Earth is from outside of the universe. The reason behind this conclusion is below, restricting the analysis to proteins only. I predict that the intelligent design theory will not stop with the design inference, but will be able to identify certain design procedures used for the creation of proteins. The more we will know about proteins the more knowledge we will have about their buildup and function. We will be able to identify re-used functional subunits, similar to common coponents of man-made machines, for example springs, screws, switches, plugs etc. A protein built up mostly of these components can be justly designed using a sequential process similar to the thinking of an engineer who uses already existing components to assemble a product. However, I think we will find proteins or parts of proteins that will defy the description of being an assembly of subunits. Here I mean unique amino-acid sequences that serve a highly specialized function. Existance of such sequences will point to a different design strategy: one that requires the manipulation of the entire object space of that amino-acid sequence, since direct arrival to the solution through chance will easily be ruled out. It is, however, clear that enormous computational capacity is required for the full analysis of all possibilities of even modest lengths of sequences. This required computational capacily quickly overruns the available resources in the entire universe of ~10^80 elementary particles. For example, staying with Dr Dembsky's favourite 300 aa protein, it is obvious that not even a single bit of information could be stored about the each unique sequence. To summarize: The required computational capacity to design a functional enzyme from SCRATCH (i.e. without the examples we can study in nature) can possibly be impossible using all the naturally available resources. We may not restrict the necessity of computations to an actual function, but also to interactions with other chemicals etc. A single protein may jolly well have widespread effects in a complex organism.Alex73_{December 1, 2008
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continued: Once you introduce the vocabulary of natural/supernatural, description of the creative act becomes impossible. I once explained to a Darwinist that an ancient hunter’s spear was not the result of natural causes. He responded with the objection that it was indeed created by natural causes because it occurred “in nature.” That is the kind of nonsense you get when you agree to use your adversary’s vocabulary. (He who chooses the terms almost always wins the debate). The issue is not natural or supernatural; the issue is mind or matter. For my part, nature is both a cause and an effect. Insofar as a Divine (superhuman?) mind created it and sustains it, it is an effect; insofar as its laws operate on other things, including material brains, it is a cause. I submit, then, that a Divine mind creates and sustains nature, while human minds affect and are effected by it. To me, that is the only reasonable approach to take.StephenB_{December 1, 2008
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"I concede that the creation of the entire universe out of nothing seems to require an agency with capabilities that go beyond the laws of physics and chemistry as we understand them today but my question isn’t about the creation of a whole universe. My question is just about the creation of organic life on this planet." Life isn't the only thing that requires a "supernatural" explanation; the existence of the universe itself requires it, hence life does as well, hence life on earth does too. You can't make up a game of breaking the chain, even hypothetically from a logical POV. The first domino MUST fall in order for the last to fall. If you try to break the chain of necessary events, then you will be guilty of Begging the Question. If you follow the chain from organic life on earth backwards, even excluding particular religious ideas, you'll logically wind up at the supernatural; hence organic life on earth does indeed require a supernatural cause. Some of us, especially those of us Christians that lean to Creationism within ID, also see the necessity of supernatural intervention much closer to home; since this earth (its position in the universe, etc...) and life on it appears much too complex to be created by something, anything, stuck within space/time. BTW, I too see what tragic' and chapman' are getting at from the angle of Intelligence, free will, etc... Kliska TheChristianScribbler.comKliska_{December 1, 2008
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If the human mind is not material, it cannot be created by material means. Correct? Otherwise, it doesn't appear that any aspect of life requires supernatural powers.Timothy_{December 1, 2008
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I think any creative act requires a mind or a program from a mind, and any super creative act of design requires a super mind. I don’t see how you get design (or function for that matter) without purpose, and I don’t see how you get purpose without mind. Beyond that, I don’t think an impersonal causeless cause can get the job done, because an impersonal first cause cannot decide to create or not create. If some material, immanent principle in nature created the earth, it would seem to have had no choice in the matter. But how can something create without the power to choose not to create? Further, how can one create a universe without also creating its raw materials and the rationality behind its laws? Some want to change the word create to “generate” as a means of bypassing personal agency, but, to me, that simply begs the question. Why does the generator exist? Even if one takes the extreme position that the generator was always there, another question remains. Does the generator have other options, meaning can it create via another pathway? If not, then surely there is no creativity there. A Mindless generator would hardly seem to qualify as a creator, and, in any case, would surely depend on a mind to make it work and give it purpose. So, to me, the real question is this: Does creating a universe like ours require a Divine mind or merely a superhuman mind? I don’t even use the vocabulary of natural/supernatural because I don’t think it applies. I use the language of animal, human, superhuman, and Divine. If, for example, a human creates a design, then it would seem that he does so because he has been given a small measure of the super mind’s capacity to create. So, in that sense, every creative act is either Divine, superhuman, human, or animal. Put another way, humans can create design because they participate, in some small way, with the super (Divine?) mind’s power to create. To the question on the table about which aspects of life require supernatural power, I would answer that the question, as asked, cannot be answered because it reintroduces that impossible natural/supernatural dichotomy. If the question was rephrased to read, "Which aspect of life requires Divine or superhuman power, I would answer---everything.StephenB_{December 1, 2008
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tragicmishap I have to agree with you that no IDist I can think of has pointed to something specific about organic life on this planet and categorically claimed it could not be created by a sufficiently advanced but wholly material means.DaveScot_{December 1, 2008
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Left-handed amino acids (necessary building block of life) do not line up in nature. These require an intelligent agent to impose order upon them. Since physical life without them is impossible, they had to be ordered by a non-physical, i.e. spiritual, entity.JamesHip_{December 1, 2008
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darkell, I refer you to the page: Arguments Not to Use And the Pandamonium game.Patrick_{December 1, 2008
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darkell: "The main problem is this: if we were designed who designed our designer?" My hypothesis is that the designer exists in a dimension where time doesn't. Therefore the designer is eternal and needs no causal event to create Him.tragicmishap_{December 1, 2008
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Darkell wrote: The main problem is this: if we were designed who designed our designer? And their designer, and theirs? There is no law that I am aware of that requires every cause to be the effect of another cause. On the matter of whether or not a supernatural cause is needed for the design of life, there is no question in my mind that some non-material entity must have been involved because the designer must have been extremely intelligent. While intelligence does not necessarily require consciousness, I see no possible way that either human or some other general intelligence can exist without a non-material helper in the mix. My rationale is based on what I know about human short-term memory. The latter can record any short (~ 7 items) random sequences almost instantly. The number of such possible sequences is astronomical and can be said to be infinite for all intents and purposes. The problem is that sequences in the nervous system must be linked together like a chain (with axons and synapses) in order to account for our ability to play them back during memory recall. Axons and synapses do not form instantly. This would require an extremely crowded pre-wired network in which everything is connected to almost everything else. This is not oberved. The problem becomes even more pronounced when you consider that a few human beings have perfect long-term memory capacity. Perfect memory cannot be explained in terms of neurons and synapses. In my opinion, animals do not have the random short-term memory capacity that humans have because the connectedness of their brains is not open-ended like the human mind. Otherwise, there is no reason that a dog could not learn to play chess or read. Their brain size are more than adequate. Some humans are born with very small brains and yet they are able to lead a normal life. So not even brain size is even a significant issue in determining general intelligence. Some non-material entity is necessary. Anyway, that's my take on it but I am always willing to be shown the error of my ways. And I am ready to change my position if presented with contrary evidence.Mapou_{December 1, 2008
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Well said tragic mishap. And the fact that it is responsible for a lot of stuff does make your point any less cogent.chapman55k_{December 1, 2008
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"I’m not saying the mechanisms of building a house are supernatural. I’m saying that the intelligence required to build it may be, even if that intelligence is human." What part of this do you not understand? I never said building a house may be a supernatural event. I said the intelligence required may be supernatural, and therefore the very natural house and the observable, natural mechanisms required may be direct evidence of a supernatural event that occurred in a supernatural mind. What I mean is that some of the mechanisms required to build a house may be supernatural, while others aren't. And yes, by my definition, every human act in history that was influenced by a human mind could therefore include supernatural mechanisms. Some human acts can only be entirely natural, such as involuntary muscle movements. Others, such as Hitler's decision to bomb civilians instead of airfields in Britain could in fact have supernatural elements. Thus the supernatural human mind can greatly affect the course of human history. The only alternative is to say that human beings have no free will and that everything humans have done in history is a direct cause of neurons moving around in their brain according to the laws of nature.tragicmishap_{December 1, 2008
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Sorry. I meant a category of phenomena.chapman55k_{December 1, 2008
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So you choose to believe that because a phenomena is ubiquitous and beyond nature, it is meaningless? OK.chapman55k_{December 1, 2008
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OK, at least you are being consistent when you say that building a house may be a supernatural event. Of course, by your definition, every volitional act of every human in the history of the world was a supernatural event, which, of course, swallows up the category "supernatural" and makes it all but meaningless.Barry Arrington_{December 1, 2008
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This audio link is relevant to the idea that something beyond the natural is influencing the brain: http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/player/web/2008-11-26T16_31_41-08_00tragicmishap_{December 1, 2008
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I'm not saying the mechanisms of building a house are supernatural. I'm saying that the intelligence required to build it may be, even if that intelligence is human. It's entirely possible that telic processes require a supernatural component. Planning ahead, conforming to a pre-specified pattern, etc. And again, that is tentative. It's not a requirement as far as we know...yet. And I know of no ID theorist who states positively that the intelligence required to create life "must" be supernatural. Dembski goes to great lengths to make clear that the designing intelligence could be alien intelligence and completely natural. Ratzsch treats supernatural and natural intelligence with equal seriousness. I think Dave is setting up a straw man. Dave, if you want to know why I personally believe in a supernatural God, the arguments I would turn to are historical, not scientific.tragicmishap_{December 1, 2008
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