Intelligent design
Kim Du Toit(retired, semi) has a piece today about the stupidity of teaching Intelligent design, and I can’t but agree.
The idea that a single creator came into being and then, out of thin air, created everything, all at once, (or, for that matter, in seven days, which amounts to the same thing) is ludicrous. It’s ludicrous in the extreme, frankly, and the idea that children be taught this is pure and simple bullshit.
The only thing we know is true, is that the universe operates by a set of defineable scientific laws.Laws of nature, if you will, which include the mathematical, chemical, biological, behavioral, etc. etc. etc. We can state with some certainty that modern man (and all other creatures) have come into being through the process of natural law.
The only question I have for Kim, is this:
Who is the author of natural law? If you expect me to believe that natural law as it is, with all it’s complexity and sophistication, simply sprang into existence on it’s own, from whole cloth, all at once, then my bullshit detector starts to ring like mad. Personally, that’s just, well, bad science. Like believing in spontaneous generation. Here’s an undeniable fact: That there was a mind behind the creation of natural law is as likely if not more so, than the idea that natural law simply sprang into existence on it’s own. Like midaeval folks belived that piles of old clothes would spontaneously generate rodents. Kim draws an analogy to goldfish in a goldfish bowl. The water keeps getting changed, so one is convinced there is a god. Obviously, there isn’t, there’s a higher power who is changing the water. The point is, just as the water gets changed, so are there sets of natural laws that exist. Is it beyond our understanding what those laws are? you bet it is. does that mean that the author of those natural laws is divine? I don’t know.
The water keeps getting changed, in any event. Just as the natural laws continue to exist and function.
I examine the world no differently than an atheist, I am more convinced of the scientific based than faith based process of anything. I do know this: there are subtle clues all over, and in every scientific discipline, that there was an awareness behind creation, and that awareness has left those clues for us to follow.
Just my humble opinion.
If “natural law” requires a “author” then “who” or what created the “author”? Each belief has a difficult question to answer.
Exactly the point. We do NOT know the answers.
For any formal theory T in which basic arithmetical facts are provable, T proves its own consistency if and only if T is inconsistent.
Here is a natural law (Godel’s second incompleteness theorem) that proves that inconsistency in natural law is part of the package. That doesn’t mean that we should not seek to extend the application of natural laws, merely that it is not surprising to find an inconsistency.