Catholics Worship Mary

Mark Shea is rocking the boat on Intelligent design again. He accuses others of beliefs they don't hold, as I did in the headline above.

I'm not sure how much to credit what he has to say, because I think he relishes exagerating and mischaracterizing people's arguments, beingmore interested in the controvesy than he is interested in actually determining the truth.

But he's  veering towards Sugenis territory the more he talks intelligent design. 

My favorite is when he recycled Michael Behe's old argument about being able to see that Mt Rushmore is designed. He says, We don't look at Mt. Rushmore and think 'the wind did that'. We immediately intuit design.    So this one is designed, too, right?

In 25,000 years neither Rushmore or Kennedy may look designed at all. Mark Shea's Aqunas argument is wrong as well. This has been pointed out to him in Crisis Magazine , that bastion of dogmatic materialistic atheists.

The Crisis letter observes:

Finally, I’m a bit troubled by Shea’s claim that those who doubt that specified complexity in nature serves as significant evidence of a designer do so only because of a “dogged faith in materialist dogma.”

I am more than a bit troubled. This is poor apologetics.

I'm even more troubled when he rails at those Catholics who beg to differ with him on a subject he admittedly knows nothing about, by making this observation.

Now, as one of these ordinary people, I have certain things in my religious tradition which my Faith asserts as "true". True, not in some Pickwickian private sense. True, not simply when I am at Church or having some religious discussion with like-minded members of my Faith Discourse Community[TM], but true on Tuesdays. True even when a guy in a lab coat tells me they are Primitive Myths without basis in Hard Scientific Fact. Among other things, these truths include the proposition that God is the creator of all things, both seen and unseen and that human beings are made in the image and likeness of God.

This is simply a claim that other Catholics who disagree with him aren't as serious about their religion. Did any guys in lab coats say anything to him? No, fellow Catholics who share, not *his* faith, but *our* faith* pointed him to scholarly articles, books, religious discussions and even scientific papers in their ares of expertise. But no, thse people are "lab coats". Nice hyperbole. Uncharitable, but nice hyperbole. This is a fine example of "Catholci apologists" who have to be "right" but are not sincerely interested in evangelization.

Here's where he simple becomes unintelligible:

I'm not particularly sold on irreducible complexity (which basically points to systems that don't work if any component is missing). It seems to me to be a 'God of the gaps' argument that says "I don't see how this system arose, so God must have done it." That's not the same as specified complexity.

Well that's too bad because all of ID is based on irreducible complexity and it is, in fact, the same thing as specified complexity. He's right it's a god of the gaps argument (a hint on why it's also bad theology)

Specified complexity simply means that something that is both complex and highly specified in its complexity is *always*--100% of the time--seen as an artifact of intelligence.

and he follows with a list of human examples.  Although he has been asked for an example of such specified complexity that is non human, he has not done so.  Neither has Dembski, the inventor of the concept.  Only human examples are ever offered -Mount Rushmore and Hamlet for example.

That proves only that humans have designed things. It doesn't prove anything else.

For a far better discussion, go here. This is brilliant.

Comments

[cathoLorenzo]

Some of those people should remember that divination is strictly forbidden by the Bible. To "read" nature in order to find God's messages in it (like auguries do) is a major sin, an abomination. Maybe those creationnists are the reason why God is smithing the States... Just kidding... I shouldn't even be kidding about that...

[Franklin Jennings]

". He accuses others of beliefs they don't hold, as I did in the headline above."

That's almost as terrible as accusing people of making horrible claims they did not make.

Like "accusing a fellow Catholic of lathering up with soap made from his fellow human beings."

Guess ther's enough condemnation to go around.

[Tom]

This Site looks like a bunch of crap to me. But I'm sure you know this alrready.

[KiwiNomad06]

As a 'new' blogger I made the mistake of leaving a comment on Mark Shea's 'Intelligent Design' blogging. I instantly got shot down in flames!
I am a lapsed catholic, but one with recently updated knowledge of biological evolution through a university paper. I was somewhat stunned to see such ignorance supported by so many in the comments. I thought science and the Vatican had a bit more dialogue these days.