Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

We have discussed the issue of Intelligent Design here quite a bit I suppose. Mostly, it has been an effort to expose what we see as a general lack of appreciation that even theologically solid Catholics tend to unknowingly submit to the Cartesian induced and Kantian amplified fragmentation of knowledge in our modern culture. Well, here is an opportunity to discuss these issues in person for those who might be within traveling range of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The Institute of Catholic Thought at the St. John’s Catholic Newman Center is hosting a talk by a neurobiologist, at Newman Hall on 18 April from 7-9 pm. It will be held in Lewis Lounge at Newman Hall, on the corner of Armory and 6th Street.

Our speaker works in experimental neurobiology, concentrating in the area of the genetics of behavior. In addition to his specialty in neurobiology, he also has a very solid academic background in classical philosophy and Catholic theology.

I was hoping to have him do a guest post or two here but as he is in the middle of some traveling, it does not look like that will happen. However, I have seen the initial slides to the talk and it seems to me that the speaker is very much in line with what we have discussed here. However, he does have some criticisms of ID. Though they are not so much that it is not a “science” but as I understand the slides, rather as being too much of a modern science, at least from the perspective that it adopts the same methodological limitations of modern science.

I am looking forward to his talk. If anyone does make it to the talk please stop by and introduce yourself. I will try to remember my name tag. For those who may be interested, following is a synopsis of the talk.

Natural Philosophy, Science, and the Intelligibility of Intelligent Design

Modern debates about religion, science and intelligent design have provoked intense reactions on both sides of the discussion. Generally, little or no progress is made in resolving these issues. Arguably, one of the principle causes of this rests upon the modern division between objective knowing (science) and subjective knowing (religion) and the inherent incommunicability between these fields resulting from this division: no form of knowing exists that can bridge this supposed distinction. This division, however, is ultimately untenable if one appeals to common experience and its proximate intellectual product, the philosophy of nature.

The philosophy of nature, or natural philosophy, is that discipline which espouses a general knowledge of nature based primarily upon the common experience of causality and was the principle discipline that grounded classical and medieval knowing. Through natural philosophy one can rationally proceed from the material world to a knowledge of proximate immaterial causes of material being: formal and final causality (quite distinct from the final causality of science and intelligent design).

These latter two causes, and how one knows them, are the missing link in the modern religion, science, and intelligent design debate. It is only with a philosophy of nature that understands the four causes operant in nature – material, efficient, formal, and final – grounded in common experience, that proper distinctions can be made in the respective powers of disciplines of knowledge (science and intelligent design included) to resolve these debates, which both science and intelligent design are insufficient to fully comment upon due to inherent methodological limitations.

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