@Ron: Why do you think I specified the material as …

Comment on Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull by Sean Pitman.

@Ron:

Why do you think I specified the material as a granite cube? – when I talk about a highly symmetrical polished granite cube requiring the input of intelligent design to explain?

Many different types of highly symmetrical crystals (pyrite, salt, quartz snow flakes, etc) can be produced by mindless natural mechanisms without the need for intelligent manipulation over and above what these natural laws can achieve all by themselves. However, this is not true for the material of granite.

In short, you have to have at least some experience with the material in question as it relates to various known mindless forces of nature before you will be able to detect true artifactual manipulation of this material via intelligent design over and above mindless natural mechanisms.

The only point I am trying to make here is that it can be difficult to define intelligence in the term intelligent design.

For some phenomena, yes. For others, no. There is no question as to the intelligent origin of a highly symmetrical polished granite cube measuring 2 meters on each side – even if found on the surface of an alien planet like Mars. This is because anyone with any prior experience with the material of granite knows that granite does not spontaneously form such highly symmetrical structures.

Again, the detection of a deliberately designed artifact requires some scientific investigation and development of predictive value. Such determinations are not intuitive without such background experience and investigation.

Using the supercomputer analogy. If the supercomputer represents nature. Does nature appear to operate intelligently because God designed to to provide intelligent output like a watch, or does it provide intelligent appearing output because God is still providing intelligent input through the keyboard?

If God were still providing intelligent input through the keyboard above and beyond the detectable limits of the laws of nature that He has already set in place, then we wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the actions of mindless laws of nature and those of deliberate design. Such a situation would make forensic science, anthropology, and SETI theoretically impossible. The fact that these sciences are at all feasible means that your theory that God is still manipulating everything behind the scenes outside of the limitations of His natural laws is not valid. Generally speaking, God does not appear to work above and beyond the natural laws, and their limitations, that He has created. On the rare occasions when He does do so, we call these events “Miracles” of intelligent design.

It’s like the basic programming for the operating system of your computer. This operating system can do some amazing things, but it is still limited in what it can do. It cannot create the software to do word processing or photo editing, etc. These software packages have to be independently created, by intelligent design, and uploaded onto your computer system.

In the same way, the operating system for the universe is limited. Additional software programs, like the genetic programming necessary for a novel highly complex biosystem in a living organism, requires additional intelligent programming that goes well beyond the known limitations of the general operating system for the mindless universe…

It seems to you are arguing that God does not have access, (or chooses not to use) the keyboard… You are saying that just because genetics account for small changes naturally, God as the creator is not involved in the process for these small changes.

That’s right. God chooses not to block the natural results of our choice to separate ourselves from Him – to step away from His direct and constant care into the realm of mindless natural laws that do not personally care about us. This is why God allows random mutations to produce diseases in the human genome – such as cancers, sickle cell anemia, Down syndrome, cru-de-chat syndrome, etc., all of which are the result of random genetic mutations which God did not directly type into the universal supercomputer. These are simply the natural results of the decay of any mechanical system that does not undergo regular repairs by the Mechanic… all such complex functional systems experience various forms of entropy, or degeneration, over time.

(Isn’t it a little weird that in the process of arguing for evolution, I wind up arguing for God functioning as a creator, and when you argue against evolution, you wind up arguing against God functioning as a creator? I’m not sure I saw that coming.)

You are arguing for a type of creator who cannot be recognized as doing anything above and beyond the basic natural laws that he has created. My argument is different in that I am arguing for a Creator who can be recognized as creating above and beyond the basic laws of mindless nature… creating stuff that these laws, that the basic operating system of the universe, simply cannot explain without the additional input of very very high levels of intelligence and creative power (as in the production of additional software programs for your computer). It is for this reason that we can actually detect the Signature of God, not only behind the basic laws of nature, behind the origin of the basic operating system, but behind various features of nature that go well beyond the known limits that these basic laws have been programmed to achieve… to include the origin of living things and the origin of the written Word – the Bible (i.e., additional programs within the operating system).

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

Sean Pitman Also Commented

Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
Consider the following comments from the E.G.. White Estate regarding the origin of disease, suffering and death:

Suffering, other than sickness due to neglect of physical laws, is also caused by Satan and not the deliberate intervention of God. On many occasions she reinforced the teaching of Jesus on this point…

Her teachings regarding the cause of death, as well as suffering, flowed from the big picture of the great controversy between God and Satan:

“It is true that all suffering results from the transgression of God’s law, but this truth had become perverted. Satan, the author of sin and all its results, had led men to look upon disease and death as proceeding from God—as punishment arbitrarily inflicted on account of sin… Sickness, suffering, and death are [the] work of an antagonistic power. Satan is the destroyer; God is the restorer.”

Ellen White, The Desire of Ages, p. 471. and The Ministry of Healing, p. 113

http://www.whiteestate.org/books/mol/Chapt7.html

So, again, neither the Bible nor Mrs. White see diseases, like childhood leukemia, as being the result of a deliberate act or intervention of God…

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Ron:

Where talking about the ability to detect the need to invoke intelligent design to explain various phenomena that exist in nature – regardless of if the intelligent agent is God or your wife or some alien from Zorg.

The loaves of bread that Jesus made by Divine power were the obvious result of intelligent design. They looked like regular loaves of bread that your wife might make. No one could tell the difference by looking at them if they were placed side-by-side. Yet, one loaf would have been made by God and the other by your wife. The fact is that God can make what humans can make. What would be obvious, however, is that both loaves of bread required intelligence to produce. In other words, they weren’t the product of mindless process of nature or natural laws that had no access to deliberate intelligence.

In short, just because your wife’s intelligence is “natural” doesn’t mean that all natural processes have access to intelligence or that every natural phenomena requires intelligence to explain beyond the basic non-intelligent laws of nature.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Ron:

So, you think that if God is directly responsible for the death of anyone that He is therefore the direct cause of all sickness, disease, death, and destruction? Every natural disaster is God’s doing? – a miracle of Divine design and creative power?

Do you not see the difference between the miracle of something like Lazarus being raised from the dead and a tornado wiping out an entire town the other day in the Midwest?

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Recent Comments by Sean Pitman

After the Flood
Thank you Ariel. Hope you are doing well these days. Miss seeing you down at Loma Linda. Hope you had a Great Thanksgiving!


The Flood
Thank you Colin. Just trying to save lives any way I can. Not everything that the government does or leaders do is “evil” BTW…


The Flood
Only someone who knows the future can make such decisions without being a monster…


Pacific Union College Encouraging Homosexual Marriage?
Where did I “gloss over it”?


Review of “The Naked Emperor” by Pastor Conrad Vine
I fail to see where you have convincingly supported your claim that the GC leadership contributed to the harm of anyone’s personal religious liberties? – given that the GC leadership does not and could not override personal religious liberties in this country, nor substantively change the outcome of those who lost their jobs over various vaccine mandates. That’s just not how it works here in this country. Religious liberties are personally derived. Again, they simply are not based on a corporate or church position, but rely solely upon individual convictions – regardless of what the church may or may not say or do.

Yet, you say, “Who cares if it is written into law”? You should care. Everyone should care. It’s a very important law in this country. The idea that the organized church could have changed vaccine mandates simply isn’t true – particularly given the nature of certain types of jobs dealing with the most vulnerable in society (such as health care workers for example).

Beyond this, the GC Leadership did, in fact, write in support of personal religious convictions on this topic – and there are GC lawyers who have and continue to write personal letters in support of personal religious convictions (even if these personal convictions are at odds with the position of the church on a given topic). Just because the GC leadership also supports the advances of modern medicine doesn’t mean that the GC leadership cannot support individual convictions at the same time. Both are possible. This is not an inconsistency.