Some good essays in this Catholic Case for Intelligent Design. Why Catholic? Because a lot of Catholic thinkers regard ID as an anti-metaphysical Protestant thing. Supposing one has already adopted a Thomist metaphysic, then ID is superfluous. In a way, the ID folks implicitly accept a scientistic metaphysic, but then bring in God as an ad hoc explanation for its inevitable discontinuities.
Thus, it seems these largely Protestant thinkers are trying to recover what they lost when they threw out all things Catholic, including traditional metaphysics and natural theology.
In Thomistic thought, God is not merely a powerful designer who intervenes from time to time, but rather, the very act of being itself. Anything that is is already an act of metacosmic intelligence. Thus, there are no gaps if we consider reality from the top down.
Rather, these discontinuities are inevitable artifacts of a bottom-up view of the world, for which reason (for example) the leap from matter to life seems impossible; likewise from biology to the transrational human subject.
Protestantism has no means of thinking about God apart from revelation. Conversely, the traditional thinker can literally begin anywhere and with any thing, for any intelligible thing speaks to intelligence, just as contingency speaks to necessary being, change to changelessness, order to a telos, etc. Again, being itself is already a revelation that leads up to its source.
Any truth is God extending his greetings to the mind.
That's right, Petey. God's creative power is constantly at work, not in competition with natural processes, but as their very source. He doesn't just create, but "creates creativity," so to speak (which accounts for the exuberant creativity of evolution).
In other words, God creates a universe with inherent causal powers. There is no need for God to intervene in a discrete way because his causality is always already present, immanently operating through the natural order, and this order is ordered to a telos. Thus, for example, we can say that from the moment of the Big Bang, the cosmos was ordered to life and mind. There was no need to magically intervene at the moment matter miraculously sprang to life, or when some chimp fell of a tree and asked WTF?!
For Thomas, the teleology observed in nature is inherent to created things. A plant grows, a bird builds a nest, not because God is constantly guiding each step like a puppeteer, but because these things are ordered towards their ends by their very nature, which God has given them. This intrinsic teleology is a fundamental aspect of reality, reflecting God's intellect in creating things with specific natures and ends.
But again, modern thinkers tossed out formal and final causation, leaving them with only material and efficient causation to try account for what inevitably escapes their comparatively meager explanatory powers. Can material cause really account for final cause? Of course not. So the materialist just pretends it doesn't exist, while ID appeals to a God who directly intervenes and makes special exemptions in the chain of material and efficient causation.
In short, ID focuses on areas where current scientific explanations are incomplete, and then posits a direct, interventionist designer to explain those gaps. A Thomist would say that this approach makes God's existence dependent on our scientific ignorance, when his existence is a necessary condition of intelligible being itself. There is no need to bring in God to explain the gaps, because he is also the explanation of the continuities.
In other words, God is the principle whereby anything at all is intelligible to our intelligence. Looked at this way, the mere existence of science is already proof of God. Using science to disprove the existence of God is like using eyes to disprove the existence of sight. Amirite, Gemini?
As you correctly observe, ID often seems to operate within a largely mechanistic or scientistic framework, where "design" is understood primarily as an artifact akin to a human engineer building a machine. This can lead to a reductive view of God as merely a very clever super-engineer. Thomism, by contrast, sees God's causality as far more profound, as the very ground of being and intelligibility of all things.
That is to say, God's act of creation is fundamentally different from a human artisan building something from pre-existing material. God creates ex nihilo (out of nothing) and sustains all being.
Conversely, ID can implicitly suggest that God's action is primarily one of discrete "interventions" into an otherwise self-sufficient natural order. Thomism, however, emphasizes God's immanent activity in upholding and enabling all secondary causes to function. The "design" isn't in specific miraculous tweaks, but in the very fabric of nature and its consistent laws.
Note also how the cosmic area rug falls apart if we fail to begin with the act of being that ties the cosmos together from top to bottom, inside and out, past to future. That is, if the universe only operates due to constant interventions, it undermines the very notion of stable natural laws, which are crucial for both scientific inquiry and the natural law. This is a much deeper kind of design than the one envisioned by ID, ultimately tying together theology, cosmology, biology, and anthropology into a single, self-consistent and unified metaphysical area rug.
God is so profoundly and universally the cause and sustainer of all reality that the specific arguments of Intelligent Design become unnecessary. The universe, in its very existence and natural operations (including evolution), already points to the intelligent, purposeful Creator. Seeking specific "gaps" to insert God's action can, paradoxically, diminish the grandeur of a God whose design is woven into the very fabric of being.
Still, we're going to review the book. That was just an introduction.
What the Image Symbolizes
Inherent Order and Interconnectedness: The swirling patterns, celestial bodies, and delicate tendrils of light illustrate that the universe is not a chaotic accident but possesses deep, intrinsic order and interconnectedness. This reflects the Thomistic view that teleology is built into creation.
God as the Ground of Being: The central, emanating light and the subtle glow woven throughout the cosmic fabric represent God as the immanent cause and ground of all being, rather than an external designer who occasionally intervenes. The light comes from within the structure of reality itself, signifying God's continuous and sustaining presence.
Continuity over Gaps: There are no gaps or missing pieces in the image; instead, everything flows and connects. This symbolizes the Thomistic rejection of a "God of the gaps," emphasizing that God's causality is present in all continuities of nature, not just its unexplained discontinuities.
Profound, Integrated Design: The overall harmony and complexity suggest a design that is far deeper and more comprehensive than one of mere artifactual construction. It's a design woven into the very fabric of existence, from the "top down," rather than pieced together by a super-engineer.
In short, it's a visual metaphor for a universe permeated by divine intelligence, where God's creative power is the source and sustainer of all natural processes, including evolution, rather than an occasional intervener.
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