I’m sure you’re all very familiar with the Intelligent Design Movement. It’s largely backed by the Discovery Institute, and its central aim is to propagate the “theory” that there is an intelligent designer of the universe. Its primary argument has to do with something called irreducible complexity, which I won’t go into here, and don’t have nearly enough background to prove or disprove. I do, however, have an objection to Intelligent Design on more theoretical grounds.

The Intelligent Design movement posits that Intelligent Design is a valid scientific theory. Scientific theories are generally agreed to be models which (1) are supported by a fair amount of evidence, (2) explain a certain set of phenomena, and (3) have a truth procedure* via the scientific method.

As I said before, I’m not in a position to analyze the evidence for Intelligent Design. And Intelligent Design could conceivably explain certain phenomena. Thus far, no objections. But when we get to the truth procedure and the scientific method, I think ID runs into trouble.

The physical sciences are empirical, and have been for a very long time; largely because the huge majority of scientists want to keep it that way. I’m somewhat skeptical as to whether this ought to be the case, and there is a little bit of blurring the line amongst the Philosophy of Mind community, especially. But until this change becomes more than merely blurring, the truth procedure for any theory must be empirical. Intelligent Design does not have such a truth procedure.

Let me elaborate. Let’s say I have a theory. My theory states that my tongue should look red. To test this hypothesis, and to prove my theory consistent with reality, I have to conduct an experiment: I go look in the mirror and see if my tongue is actually red. But when it comes to Intelligent Design, you can’t do this. The “theory” states there is an intelligent designer, but an intelligent designer outside the physical universe is not empirically verifiable. He does not have a truth procedure via the scientific method, and thus, must be thrown out of science.

Finally, I would like to note that this is not some obscure technicality those nasty Darwinian Evolutionists are pulling on Theists because they hate their guts. The same objection has been brought up against other “theories”. For example, String Theory has been attacked on these grounds, notably by Peter Woit in his book “Not Even Wrong”. Science is, for the present, empirical; until that changes, the Intelligent Design Movement has no case.

* A truth procedure is a procedure through which we can verify the truthfulness of a given piece of information.

John Ahern writes,

I’m trying my hand at haikus. Forgive me if the allusions are esoteric. Here are two. (The first is a combination of Eastern and Western poetry, i.e. the Odyssey.)

Mnesterophonia

Dedicated to Rachel Ahern

log piles getting low
random scar ekphrasis
opportune moment

Dedicated to Christopher Nicholas Evans Embrey.

“Well, to be honest, right now I’m not capable of understanding anything. It sounds like we have a poet who sleeps in too much, to me, though.”

beautiful sunrise
the poet doesn’t know though
a late last night.

Philip Hilton scribbles,

My Theory:

The will makes decisions based on a foresight into which course will produce the most pleasure. Thus, any way one looks, pleasure must be the ultimate goal of any decision.

There are two types of pleasure: the first, is anything that involves personal gratification, improvement, etc. Instances: food, smell, etc, anything that gratifies the five sense, and intellectual pleasures such as literature, music, etc; also, what are commonly called moral pleasures, almsgiving, not-swearing, etc. Such moral pleasures accrue generally to our sense of goodness, and it is a kind of Pharisaical happiness. “I thank God that I am not as other men…” In other words, all things that accrue to ego.

(This last idea of moral pleasure is a Nick Embrey production…Nick Embrey, Inc., however, does not in any way sponsor or approve of the material in this post…)

The other type is the Christ-type, the pleasure that comes from gratifying others. This type of love also has moral pleasures, but they are of such a sort as accrue not to the ego, the focal point of the other love, but the vos, the focal point of this love.

Love and pleasure. Pleasure is the object and love is the force that draws us to it.

To be quite clear:

Our will has two objects: giving pleasure to ourselves, and giving pleasure to others. The one is egotism and the other is self-sacrifice, and what is called love is the force that is considered to be the attraction between us and them, as if it were a kind of gravity force that not only attracts our own body to other bodies, but also our body to our own body…

This has some incidental implications for ethics. Morality/Ethics basically revolves around the second type of love: there can be no real morality based on the first type, since our sense of goodness in ourselves is even more ephemeral than our sense of goodness in others.

However, in theory we should be able to discover the rules for the second type of love, as we have discovered the rules for the first type, and ways of satisfying our ego, assuming that the second type really is separate from the first type, and thereby we could create a code of ethics absent traditional or divine morality, but with equal results.

Theoretically.

Hannah Roorda writes:

I thought it was time to finally getting around to writing an evening hymn. I’ve never been quite satisfied with any I’ve found (though there are some great ones, namely “God That Madest Earth and Heaven” and “The Day is Past and Gone”) because they are either too complicated or too simple. I think a good evening hymn needs to mention praise, work, rest, forgiveness of sin, and end with reference to the Trinity, but it also needs to be pretty pithy in doing so. And you just can’t find that in evening hymns. So I wrote one. It’s in the meter 8.8.8. with an Alleluia (looks like 8.8.8.al. in most hymnals) and is to be set to the tune O Filii et Filiae, which is a French melody from the 1600s (can be found here.)

Evening Hymn

In humble adoration raise
Your hymn of thanks and psalm of praise:
For Christ has blessed us with life today.
Alleluia! Alleluia!

With strength that He so kindly bestowed
We served in toil and carried our loads.
And now, in rest, more blessing He shows.
Alleluia! Alleluia!

As daylight ends and night draws near
Beseech the Lord to keep you from fear,
Your sins to absolve and hearts to clear.
Alleluia! Alleluia!

To Father, Son and Holy Ghost
Exalt our God, the Lord of Hosts,
In Him alone is song or boast!
Alleluia! Alleluia!

John Ahern writes,

Somebody asked me if among my strange beliefs was my rumored interpretation of the Genesis 1 and 2 accounts as non-24-hour days. I affirmed this, and said person found this surprising. I suggested that I post something about it here on PAN, and said person said that was a good idea. Well, here I am with a nice controversial topic – one I rather like, for some reason.

Quick catch-up if you’ve never heard of this:

People divide many ways on Genesis 1 and 2. The two main realms of thought are as follows: one can interpret when God says “the second day, the third day, etc.” as 24-hour days like ours, making the Earth from 6000 to 10,000 years old. Or maybe one could make Genesis more “conducive” to modern scientific research on the age of the universe, Big Bang, etc., putting things at about 13.7 billion years.

Many people treat this issue very dismissively, and that’s something I really don’t like. This issue wasn’t a problem for people in the past because they didn’t really give whether the universe was 6000 or 13.7 billion years old. It’s a problem for us though: something like the Big Bang is enormously significant to our lives today. It means a lot, scientifically, technologically, even philosophically, religiously, etc. Not something I’ll explore in this post, and I’d refer you to places where people do it better (I know nothing about astrophysics and next to that about such philosophy. BB cosmology touches on both).

I do have a personal opinion that at least Somebody might find interesting, and will certainly open a can of theological gummy worms for us to chew on, smiles on our faces. That’s what Gummy products do to you: make you smile. As with Gummies, so with theology.

As not all “Young Earthers” are Kent Hovinds (for heaven’s sake, Peter Leithart, my hero, he’s a Young Earther), so with “Old Earthers”. We really aren’t all feeble-faithed liberals trying to square our faith with Modern Science. I’ll avoid using that term, “Old Earther”. Looks like “Death Eater”.

I’m mainly going to address the issue of twisting the Bible to conform to our scientific presuppositions. When people use this argument, that interpreting Genesis as something other than 24-hour days is twisting the Bible to fit one’s presuppositions, they acknowledge something about General Revelation (creation) they refuse to acknowledge about Special Revelation (Scripture). Both General and Special are the word of God. Both need interpretation. The interpretation of God’s creation is called Science. I think I have most people behind me on this point.

The fact that creation’s fallible interpretation is science is something people generally acknowledge. They sometimes skip over the other part. It’s not a matter of twisting the Bible into scientific evidence; it’s twisting your fallible interpretation. I’m not molding the Bible with my scientific beliefs; I’m molding my interpretation of the Bible with my scientific beliefs. The Bible nowhere says that those 6 days are 24-hour days. It does not say “24-hour days”. It says “days”. “24 hours”, however obvious it might seem, is still an interpretation.

What’s more, the Bible leaves a specific ambiguity on the matter in Psalm 119:148 and continuing. A day in God’s eye could be anything: 1000 years or 3 hours in the night. Now granted, the psalmist may not be referring to the Creation Days. But he’s pointing out a general principle: God’s time is different than man’s. As Gerald Schroeder points out, couldn’t 13.7 billion years be man’s?

[Check out the excellent article here. Not sure I agree with everything there, but he explains it so nicely I’m sort of compelled. http://www.geraldschroeder.com/age.html (I think there are some typos on that webpage. It may be a bad source to give you the article from. You can Google it to get a better copy -- it’s a fairly famous article and should be all over the place.)]

In fact, those days really could have been days in a real, ontological sense to God. I’m not denying and never have denied that those aren’t really real days. But why 24 hours?

In one sense, no, it doesn’t matter. God said it was a day. That’s what is most important in Biblical context. Keep in mind here that that means it’s most important in the story of salvation. The Bible is not a set of theological or scientific truths. It’s a story. Science has a different aim than the Bible (something many Young Earthists justly point out to Old Earthists). The most important thing is it, though, not science. It is the story of salvation. Science only can give us shadowy glimpses of this.

As much as I can stress the separation between how man reckons things and how God does, I haven’t found an example where science in its discoveries about the origins of the universe directly contradicts Scripture. It all seems to fit, though science and Scripture deal on two different levels of reality. It’s the glory of it. Man’s feeble sense, sure to fail, catches a glimpse of how God created, and, lo! it fits with how Moses talks about it. (I have my Tolkien moments.) Even though Scripture may be “limited” to the story of salvation, it is Truth, and wherever it happens to overlap with other things, it will always be accurate.

I’ll challenge you, in all graciousness of course, to bring me an example of where such a contradiction exists, between stuff like the Big Bang theory and Scripture, or whatever. Since I believe it to be Truth, I’ll stand beside Scripture. If the contradiction is valid, I’ve tied myself into a knot I can’t get out of. I’ll be on your side by my own reasoning. But, thus far, I haven’t found something like that.

The important issue is this, and I’m throwing something in there just to get a rise out of you. Maybe it isn’t such a different issue, though.

Protestants often are so worried about interpreting the Bible “literally”. They’ll get into a hype at Catholics, who usually don’t have such a problem with the 6 days not being 24 hours. My question, as a Protestant, is this. If Protestants are worried about interpreting the Bible literally for the sake of interpreting it literally, then why the blind inconsistency to the Words of Institution? “This is My Body” and “This is My Blood” is pretty darn clear to me. God said it. I believe it.

Absit invidia.