This is a more in-depth look at a discussion with Smidlee in "Australopithecines aren't just "apes".
Quite rightly. ID isn't about God doing it. It is about a specific mechanism for God doing it. ID says God manufactures either whole species or parts of them, or the first cell. In the context of abiogenesis, there is a gap between non-living chemicals and a living cell. There is no "natural" process that can bridge the gap.
Smidlee discusses this manufacture and a gap:
Smidlee uses "producing" but "manufacturing" is the same.
Now, there are theological problems with God being the direct engineer. Of course, God can engineer, but the question is "did He"? If He did, then what does that tell us about God?
This is where the theological problems begin. We can infer characteristics about the engineer from what is produced. Right now, the consensus is that the Toyota engineers were either not too smart or sloppy.
Well, when we look at all the designs in nature, we must infer that God is sadistic, stupid, and suffering from Alzheimer's. Just 2 examples: ichneud wasps and Panda's.
Ichneud wasps have a very complex design for reproduction. The female ichneud wasp can detect a grasshopper in flight, plot an interception course, and then impact the grasshopper. At the instant of impact, the ovipositor instantenously injects an egg into the grasshopper -- so fast the grasshopper doesn't even know it has happened. Think of the engineering marvel that is! But what is the result of all this engineering brilliance? The egg hatches and eats the grasshopper alive from the inside! Just like the movie Alien. The end result is sadistic in the extreme. So yes, God could produce ichneud wasps from scratch, but do we really want a God with the personality to do so?
The panda eats bamboo and needs to grasp it. So it has a very clumsy "thumb" that is a modified wrist bone. However, the panda already has 5 digits, and a perfectly good thumb. It is just that the thumb is fused to the other fingers like it is in all bears. Now, God created humans, primates, raccoons, etc. that all use the thumb for grasping. So God knows what a thumb is for. All He had to do in producing pandas was unfuse the thumb that is already there! Does God have Alzheimer's that He just forget that pandas had a thumb? If so, will God forget other more important things, like forgiving our sins? (What's more, the corresponding ankle bone in the panda is also elongated, but not as much as the wrist. Is God such an incompetent engineer that He must elongate both bones instead of just the one He wants?)
This is part of the reason Christians abandoned ID so readily in the 1860s. After an initial brief resistance to evolution, Christians realized that evolution by natural selection rescued God from ID. Now God does not produce all the designs in organisms: natural selection does. God is no longer the engineer, natural selection is. And all those problems for God made by ID disappear. God sustains natural selection but is not directly responsible for the results.
No, it's not. But that isn't what we are tallking about, either. We are talking about the raw resources producing a living cell by chemical reactions. That is abiogenesis. Life is chemistry. So we are talking about the chemical reactions taking place to make a living cell with the chemical reactions that are "life". One way is for proteins to come together to make a living cell. And we know this happens because we can observe it happening today in simulated natural circumstances. In fact, we can start earlier with amino acids, have them react to form proteins, and then, as part of the same process, the proteins come together to make living cells.
It doesn't matter whether Shapiro is a scientist in OOL research. He is still making a mistake about this. It could be that all scientists in OOL research make the same mistake; it's still a mistake. As it turns out, most scientists in OOL research do not make that mistake.
As I said, you need to separate Shapiro's atheism from his science. His science can be, and generally is, very good. But that doesn't mean his extrapolations of science to metaphysics is equally good.
Quite rightly. ID isn't about God doing it. It is about a specific mechanism for God doing it. ID says God manufactures either whole species or parts of them, or the first cell. In the context of abiogenesis, there is a gap between non-living chemicals and a living cell. There is no "natural" process that can bridge the gap.
Smidlee discusses this manufacture and a gap:
Smidlee uses "producing" but "manufacturing" is the same.
Now, there are theological problems with God being the direct engineer. Of course, God can engineer, but the question is "did He"? If He did, then what does that tell us about God?
This is where the theological problems begin. We can infer characteristics about the engineer from what is produced. Right now, the consensus is that the Toyota engineers were either not too smart or sloppy.
Well, when we look at all the designs in nature, we must infer that God is sadistic, stupid, and suffering from Alzheimer's. Just 2 examples: ichneud wasps and Panda's.
Ichneud wasps have a very complex design for reproduction. The female ichneud wasp can detect a grasshopper in flight, plot an interception course, and then impact the grasshopper. At the instant of impact, the ovipositor instantenously injects an egg into the grasshopper -- so fast the grasshopper doesn't even know it has happened. Think of the engineering marvel that is! But what is the result of all this engineering brilliance? The egg hatches and eats the grasshopper alive from the inside! Just like the movie Alien. The end result is sadistic in the extreme. So yes, God could produce ichneud wasps from scratch, but do we really want a God with the personality to do so?
The panda eats bamboo and needs to grasp it. So it has a very clumsy "thumb" that is a modified wrist bone. However, the panda already has 5 digits, and a perfectly good thumb. It is just that the thumb is fused to the other fingers like it is in all bears. Now, God created humans, primates, raccoons, etc. that all use the thumb for grasping. So God knows what a thumb is for. All He had to do in producing pandas was unfuse the thumb that is already there! Does God have Alzheimer's that He just forget that pandas had a thumb? If so, will God forget other more important things, like forgiving our sins? (What's more, the corresponding ankle bone in the panda is also elongated, but not as much as the wrist. Is God such an incompetent engineer that He must elongate both bones instead of just the one He wants?)
This is part of the reason Christians abandoned ID so readily in the 1860s. After an initial brief resistance to evolution, Christians realized that evolution by natural selection rescued God from ID. Now God does not produce all the designs in organisms: natural selection does. God is no longer the engineer, natural selection is. And all those problems for God made by ID disappear. God sustains natural selection but is not directly responsible for the results.
No, it's not. But that isn't what we are tallking about, either. We are talking about the raw resources producing a living cell by chemical reactions. That is abiogenesis. Life is chemistry. So we are talking about the chemical reactions taking place to make a living cell with the chemical reactions that are "life". One way is for proteins to come together to make a living cell. And we know this happens because we can observe it happening today in simulated natural circumstances. In fact, we can start earlier with amino acids, have them react to form proteins, and then, as part of the same process, the proteins come together to make living cells.
It doesn't matter whether Shapiro is a scientist in OOL research. He is still making a mistake about this. It could be that all scientists in OOL research make the same mistake; it's still a mistake. As it turns out, most scientists in OOL research do not make that mistake.
As I said, you need to separate Shapiro's atheism from his science. His science can be, and generally is, very good. But that doesn't mean his extrapolations of science to metaphysics is equally good.
