While I was away on my blogging break, a simmering debate between Intelligent Design proponents and certain top-notch Catholic thinkers broke out into warm (I would not say heated) dispute. The Catholics’ Thomistic approach probably mirrors that of Holopupenko, a frequent commenter here who has often told us he considers ID poor theology. I’ve asked him to lay out his extended reasoning for this position, which he said he was working on. Little did we know an extended (very) discussion on this topic was about to surface on the Internet.
For someone who wants to catch up on this debate, the first step is to map it out. That’s as far as I’ve gotten so far.
If you decide not to read it all (understandable), at least see it for what it is: a lively, reasoned theological debate, and a living refutation of prejudicial anti-theistic claims that Christianity dogmatically rules out all doubt or dispute.
I’ve probably missed some posts in this list. I would welcome additions and corrections.
2009:
September 6, Edward Feser, Manzi on the Wright-Coyne dispute
September 24, Edward Feser, Teleology revisited
September 30: Edward Feser, Four approaches to teleology
November 4, Edward Feser, The trouble with William Paley
November 6, Edward Feser, The Greek atomists and the god of Paley
2010:
March 19, Francis Beckwith, Intelligent Design and Me, Part I: In the Beginning
March 20, Francis Beckwith, Intelligent Design and Me, Part II: Confessions of a Doting Thomist
March 23, Scot McKnight(?) What Role Naturalism? 2 – Insights from Thomas (RJS)
March 27, Thomas Cudworth, What Francis Beckwith Gets Wrong About Intelligent Design
March 28, nlwrad, Thomism and Intelligent Design
March 30, Brandon Watson, Thomism and ID
April 8, Edward Feser, “Nothing but”
April 10, Edward Feser, Intelligent Design theory and mechanism
April 11, V.J. Torley, A Response to Professor Feser
April 11, Francis Beckwith, Comment on A Response to Professor Feser
April 11, Brandon Watson Thomism and ID II
April 12, V.J. Torley, Comment to Edward Feser on A Response to Professor Feser
April 12, V.J. Torley, Comment to Brandon Watson on A Response to Professor Feser
April 16, Edward Feser, ID theory, Aquinas, and the origin of life: A reply to Torley
April 18, Thomas Cudworth, Professor Feser’s Puzzling Assault on ID
April 18, William Dembski, Does ID presuppose a mechanistic view of nature?
April 20, Edward Feser, Dembski rolls snake eyes
April 22, V.J. Torley, In Praise of Subtlety
April 25, Edward Feser, ID, A-T, and Duns Scotus: A further reply to Torley
April 26, Michael Sullivan, Is Intelligent Design Scotistic?
April 26, Michael Sullivan, Nature, Artifacts and Machines 1
April 27, Michael Sullivan, Nature, Artifacts and Machines 2
April 27, Michael Sullivan, “Intelligent Design” and Scotism
April 27, Edward Feser, Scotism and ID (UPDATED)
April 27, V.J. Torley, What a living thing is, what an artifact is, and why the first living thing would have been one (Part One of a Response to the Smithy)
April 28, Michael Sullivan, Nature, Artifacts, Meaning and Providence
April 28, V.J. Torley, Living things, Machines and Intelligent Design (Part Two of a Response to the Smithy)
April 30, Michael Sullivan, Reply to Dr. Torley
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Possibly related posts (automatically generated):
Thanks for doing this; it’s useful to have an index to it all.
It’s worth noting, though, that it isn’t all just about whether ID is good theology, although that comes up. The primary foci of the debate were:
(1) Whether ID is consistent with Thomism (and, later, Scotism) in the structure and grounds of its argument.
— This isn’t primarily a matter of theology; the major issue is with how ID theorists argue and whether and to what degree someone with at least a broadly Thomistic approach can regard its argument as a legitimate kind of argument.
(2) Whether ID in fact concedes the primary point by assuming a mechanistic view of the universe.
— Closely related to the previous
(3) Whether ID, even setting aside (1) and (2), can be rendered compatible with Thomism (or Scotism) while also remaining a purely scientific approach.
(4) Whether ID is compatible with Thomism (and, later, Scotism) when interpreted theologically.
It should be noted with each of Feser’s posts there was further discussion at the blog, “What’s Wrong with the World”.
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For those who aren’t motivated or able to read through this all, are there any summaries and/or recaps of the conversation posted anywhere?
I’m particularly interested in learning about the “Is ID good theology” question.
Steve Fuller weighed in on this question in the Guardian: The question: Is intelligent design bad theology?
Tom,
Thanks for posting these. I found both approaches to the issue quite interesting.
As I was reading these threads, I noticed how the discussion represented, in part, the impact of a scientific explanation for biological complexity on natural theism.
One specific example of this is the formation of the Biologos Foundation, which seems to be one of the many controversial conclusions held by natural theists.
This is despite the fact that evolution, like all scientific explanations, is subject to limitations on certainty. In addition, the exact mechanism of evolution is not universally accepted and the entire theory could be rejected on philosophical grounds since we can’t really prove that external reality exists at all.
How is that a scientific explanation of biological complexity could have a significant impact on natural theism?