Friday, February 11, 2011

St Thomas Aquinas and intelligent design

IDvolution - liking it more and more.

A Response to Professor Feser


For when we call the builder the principle of the house, in the idea of such a principle is included that of his art; and it would be included in the idea of the first principle were the builder the first principle of the house. God, Who is the first principle of all things, may be compared to things created as the architect is to things designed.
- Summa Theologica, Vol. I, q. 27, article 1, reply to objection 3.
Although creatures do not attain to a natural likeness to God according to similitude of species, as a man begotten is like to the man begetting, still they do attain to likeness to Him, for as much as they represent the divine idea, as a material house is like to the house in the architect’s mind.
- Summa Theologica, Vol. I, q. 44, article 3, reply to objection 1.
For just as an architect, without injustice, places stones of the same kind in different parts of a building, not on account of any antecedent difference in the stones, but with a view to securing that perfection of the entire building, which could not be obtained except by the different positions of the stones; even so, God from the beginning, to secure perfection in the universe, has set therein creatures of various and unequal natures, according to His wisdom, and without injustice, since no diversity of merit is presupposed.
- Summa Theologica, Vol. I, q. 65, article 2, reply to objection 3.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Nachman - Purifying Selection

No matter how you spin it the end result is deleterious.......we are devolving.

Nachman - Purifying Selection

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

PNAS Authors Resort to Teleological Language in Failed Attempt to Explain Evolution of Irreducible Complexity

PNAS Authors Resort to Teleological Language in Failed Attempt to Explain Evolution of Irreducible Complexity


Summary: A recent article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) purports to explain the evolution of a relatively small molecular machine in the mitochondria that transports proteins across a membrane, thereby allegedly refuting irreducible complexity. Phrases and assertions like “'pre-adaptation' to bacteria ahead of a need for protein import,” “parts accumulate until they’re ready to snap together,” “machines emerge before there’s a need for them,” or intelligently "engineered" macromutations are part and parcel of this latest failed attempt by critics of intelligent design (ID) to answer Michael Behe’s argument of irreducible complexity. As would be expected, when evolutionists are forced to resort to such goal-directed and teleological language and mechanisms, this shows that inherently, blind and unguided materialist explanations are not sufficient to produce irreducible complex systems. As discussed in more detail below, this latest attempt to answer irreducible complexity unwittingly shows the need for intelligent design. A summary of the problems includes:

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