Friday, November 11, 2005

Here Is What My Religion Teaches About Intelligent Design

In the debates I've seen and participated in across the web, I often hear, "Look, Intelligent Design is bad science and bad religion. It is bad religion because if God were detectable in the things he has made, there would be no need for faith [which is implicitly to state that faith, as "everyone" knows, is utterly blind, utterly irrational]." I hear it from atheists and I hear it from liberal theists. I find it amusing that those who reject orthodox religion would try to tell me the true nature of faith. The Catholic liturgy for today contains this passage from the Book of Wisdom (Wis 13:1-9, which is also echoed in Chpater 1 of the Book of Romans, as well as in many of the Psalms):

For all men were by nature foolish who were in ignorance of God, and who from the good things seen did not succeed in knowing him who is, and from studying the works did not discern the artisan; But either fire, or wind, or the swift air, or the circuit of the stars, or the mighty water, or the luminaries of heaven, the governors of the world, they considered gods. Now if out of joy in their beauty they thought them gods, let them know how far more excellent is the Lord than these; for the original source of beauty fashioned them. Or if they were struck by their might and energy, let them from these things realize how much more powerful is he who made them. For from the greatness and the beauty of created things their original author, by analogy, is seen. But yet, for these the blame is less; For they indeed have gone astray perhaps, though they seek God and wish to find him. For they search busily among his works, but are distracted by what they see, because the things seen are fair. But again, not even these are pardonable. For if they so far succeeded in knowledge that they could speculate about the world, how did they not more quickly find its LORD?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hooray for passages that gratuitously insult people who disagree with your religion.

I also note that the passage says nothing about how life arose or took its present forms. Instead, it talks about natural forces and animism, which shed no real light on arguments like specified or irreducible complexities.

As for what Catholicism teaches about ID, how do you address what Paul Cardinal Poupard (President Emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Culture) recently said in a Vatican press conference about Darwin's ideas being "perfectly compatible" with the Bible, and his criticism that "fundamentalists want to give a scientific meaning to words that had no scientific aim"?