Intelligent Design was so thoroughly permeated by a sector of Christians trying to reserve some scrap of Creationism that it became unreliable even when individual parts of the argument were quite solid. I believe there were people who were trying to sincerely look at ID objectively and even give them credit for doing pretty well. But those were so thin on the ground that it became not worth my time to try and identify which were which. If I missed a great truth, I thought, oh well, I've missed a lot of them before. In a finite life, one has to play the percentages on where good information is going to come from.
So it has piqued my interest that the atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel agreed with neither Intelligent Design nor its opponents. He did not believe in ID, but neither in materialism. We discussed it this week at the CS Lewis Study Center where we are about 80% through Miracles at present. It looks like Mind and Cosmos is the important volume here, and I have never read it. I am not sure the people in my current discussion understood it fully themselves, for reasons I won't go into, so I am seeking information elsewhere, including two philosophy professors from St Anselm College who are in my other book group. If you know something, let me know. I will try to be an open vessel.
3 comments:
I listened to Mind and Cosmos on Audible once, but that was well over a decade ago. My recollection is that nothing about the book particularly impressed me in anyway. I want to say it reminded me a bit of the "What The Bleep Do We Know?" documentary, but not nearly as sensational and misleading*. The audio book is under 4 hours, so maybe I should give it another listen. Maybe I was just particularly distracted while listening to it.
*My good friend told me that "documentary" was the first thing that made him inclined to believe in something like God. While I didn't want to quash that, I did feel obligated to explain to him how the film stretched a lot of quantum mechanics principles to get to some kind of ersatz spirituality.
I don't know about ID, but a lot of smart people from Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, and Scott Adams have pushed simulation theory. I don't see that as much different as ID.
Admittedly oversimplified interpretations of ID, simulation, Darwin's survival of the fittest, etc... the thing that strikes me in considering the first two is that "we humans" are somehow inherently deserving of survival whereas Darwin's idea is more Mafia like... so what have you got to offer?
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