...evolution is replete with telos (and from natural telos, Thomas' Fifth Way takes us interesting places. It was simply that the "ultra-Darwinians" have taken a perfectly serviceable scientific theory and deformed it into a metaphysical stance.

Recall what Thomas wrote in passing regarding the emergence of new things: Species, also, that are new, if any such appear, existed beforehand in various active powers; so that animals, and perhaps even new species of animals, are produced by putrefaction by the power which the stars and elements received at the beginning.(Summa theologica, Part I Q73 A1 reply3) His point was, following Augustine, that God had endowed matter with natures capable of acting directly, and so new things could arise from the natural powers created in the beginning. He was wrong about the "putrefaction," but "mutation" is surely another form of corruption, and "the stars and elements" will do for "material bodies."

-Mike Flynn

Mike Flynn, on religious violence:

This raises the interesting question of what is religious violence. This is not as easy as it sounds. Pinker notes (with an apparent rhetorical smirk):

World War I, as I recall, was a war fought mostly by Christians against Christians.

That "as I recall" bit is pretty cute, and he seems to have written it as if it were meant seriously. But if that is his criterion then gandersauce requires us to count all the black men who were lynched by Democrats in the 1910s-1940s. World War I was also fought mostly by modern scientific Europeans against modern scientific Europeans. So what? It remains to be shown that Imperial Germany, Austro-Hungary, France, England, et al. went to war because they were Christian or modern scientific Europeans, or that mobs of Democrats lynched black men because the lynch mob were Democrats.

Pinker seems impressed with what people call themselves or he would not have made that fatuous remark about WW1. North Korea calls itself a democratic republic, but need we take the claim seriously? If the Europeans of 1914 were Christians, they were simply members of the State Established Churches. Worship of the Nation had by then long submerged worship of God. War posters like the one on the left cited the State or the Folk, but not the Church.

Or as our old buddy Tommy Aquinas put it, there is a difference between a human act and the act of a human. The former is what a man does because he is a human; the latter is merely something that he does. In the same way, a scientist (e.g., Fritz Haber) might devise a new means of mass murder (poison gas) for the Great War; but does he do it because he is a scientist or because he is a patriotic German? I don't mean his technical skills, but his motives. 

Even when there seems to be a "because-ness," closer inspection reveals greater complexity. Sure, there was a time when you could gin up a crowd to lynch someone because he was a dirty stinking Calvinist and this here is Lutheran land. But there are times and places when you could do the same thing using race or ethnicity or even economic commitments. If human beings are prone to violence, then it may not matter much what is used to incite them.

Thus when we examine the Huguenot wars in France, what we discover is that three Great Houses were fighting for control of the French throne, and they swung back and forth between Calvinism and Catholicism as the needs of state dictated. "Paris is worth a Mass," Hank Bourbon famously declared as he shed his Calvinism for convenience. A more accurate title would be the War of the French Succession.

Even the Thirty Years War is iffy. The German princes did not declare themselves independent of the Empire because they had become Protestant; they became Protestant because they wanted to declare their independence of the Empire. And can a war in which the Pope and the French crown supported the "Protestant" side really be called a religious war? It was really a war between Bourbon and Hapsburg, with both Protestant and Catholic princes on both sides.

Heresy was often a surrogate for political disloyalty, which is why heretics were more severely persecuted by the secular power. The church authorities were derided as "soft-hearted" (clericalem verens mollitiem) because they preferred persuasion.

Take another look at Pinker's list of the top nine [destructive atrocities of all time], above. Note that the top six are all pre-Christian and non-Christian events. And the last three date from after the subordination of the Church to the secular State; that is, after the Concordances, the English nationalization, and cuius regio, eius religio.

To read the whole post (on a more general topic) that this is extracted from, click here

I am also miffed by the use of "person" for "man," since it denies rational thought to women and reserves it exclusively to weremen. (cf. in English men-tal, min-d, also mankind, etc.; in German mann as the genderless pronoun. Hence, "a rational being.") Adult males were once referred to as "wera," see also Latin vir, Irish fir, words like vir-ile, vir-tue, etc. Instead of changing every word with the suffix -man, just give males back their prefixes and give them a unique designator of their own.

-Mike Flynn

"How can you discuss what is due to natural processes independently of the creator, since the creator is the author of those same natural processes? Those who say the world looks just as we would expect it to look if it were not designed by a creator miss the point, for if it were not so designed we would not expect it to exist at all."

-Mike Flynn

"During the patriarchal Victorian/Edwardian Age, the Church was accused of being 'too feminine'. During the age of feminism, the Church was accused of being 'too patriarchal.' She is always accused of being the opposite of what the secular society reveres."

-Mike Flynn

"...the ability of the Professionally Offended to take offense where none was offered is really a kind of social theft. (Theft is taking something that was not offered.)"

-Mike Flynn

As Heisenberg noted, what we observe is not Nature but only those aspects of nature accessible to our methods of investigation. The medieval idea of methodological naturalism means that our results will only ever consist of natural causes. We cannot conclude from that that there are no other facets of reality, because we have decided ahead of time that we will not "detect" them.

-Mike Flynn

Mike Flynn on the difference between medieval scholasticism and modern fundamentalism:
 
The entire post from which this quote comes can be found here: 

http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2012/06/fundies-are-coming-fundies-are-coming.html

_____________________

And the third thing, which is what actually got my attention in the first place was that neither Wilson (who said it) or Hibbard (who "reported" it) seem to have a clue about medieval scholasticism.  They seem to think it has something to do with Late Modern, scientificalisitc fundamentalism.


The scholastics, it is well to recall, had no reason to suppose that there were such a thing as evolution, having never seen an example of a new species arising.  In fact, all the kinds known to Aristotle were known to Darwin; and those known to Darwin within Aristotle's geographic scope were already known to Aristotle.  There is no reason to concoct a theory to explain a phenomenon that has never been observed. 

Tommy Aquinas

One scholastic who did consider the concept in passing was Thomas Aquinas (aka Da Man), who wrote:

Species, also, that are new, if any such appear, existed beforehand in various active powers; so that animals, and perhaps even new species of animals, are produced by putrefaction by the power which the stars and elements received at the beginning.

-- Summa theologica, Part I Q73 A1 reply3

IOW, if any new species ever did arise, they would do so through the immanent powers of nature actualizing the existing potentials.  (Much as the word "gat" exists beforehand in the word "cat," being actualized by a simple mutation/phonemic shift.)  Moderns, who do not believe in immanent natures, have a mechanical philosophy "in which nature is seen as a kind of unnatural composite of passive, unintelligent, preexisting matter, on which order has been extrinsically imposed."  This led inevitably to Paley and Dawkins. 

The Louisiana textbook material is further presented as saying:

"God created each type of fish, amphibian, and reptile as separate, unique animals." 

Gus Hippo

But there is nothing that actually requires this, and it is a belief that dates pretty much to the 19th century novelty sects.  If we go back a millennium and a half, we find Augustine (who was not a medieval scholastic, the middle age having not yet quite begun).  He wrote:

It is therefore, causally that Scripture has said that earth brought forth the crops and trees, in the sense that it received the power of bringing them forth.  In the earth from the beginning, in what I might call the roots of time, God created what was to be in times to come.

-- On the literal meanings of Genesis, Book V Ch. 4:11

IOW, various species need not have come into being at the same time, since God created "what was to be in times to come."  Not only that, but it was the "earth," that is, the natural world, which received from God the immanent power to do this, Gus citing the Bible as his source.


Were I of a puckish frame of mind, I might even say that this means that evolution can be found in the Bible.  Fortunately, I am not; and so I will not. 

It is astonishing that anyone would think that the author of nature would be negated by the discovery of the natural causes of which he is the author. Remember, Aquinas' fifth way was based on the lawfulness of nature; not exceptions to those laws.

-Mike Flynn

God is no more a “factor” in the mechanics of evolution than in the mechanics of automobiles. My auto mechanic takes neither God nor Darwin into account when repairing a transmission. There is no mention of God in the postulates of Euclidean geometry, either. I don’t know why anyone thinks this is astonishing. It all depends on the nature and depth of our considerations. I don’t take my laundry into account when mowing the lawn.

 Creation and evolution are simply not the same sort of thing; and God cannot be reduced to a mere efficient cause in the World among other efficient causes. The workings of Nature are not somehow independent of God’s giving existence to Nature. Otherwise, gravity and electromagnetism would be as upsetting as evolution.

 “You poor fools,” said William of Conches back in the day. “God can turn a cow into a tree. But has he ever done so? Therefore, give reasons why a thing is so or cease to hold that it is so.”

Or to quote St. Albertus Magnus: “In studying nature we have not to inquire how God the Creator may, as He freely wills, use His creatures to work miracles and thereby show forth His power; we have rather to inquire what Nature with its immanent causes can naturally bring to pass.”

(That is, methodological naturalism in the sciences was a medieval Christian invention.)

-"Ye Olde Statistician" (Mike Flynn) in a comment on Mark Shea's blog)

If ever you have nothing to do, and looking to have some interesting reading, just google "Ye Olde Statistician" or "TheOFloinn", just to see author Mike Flynn's contributions to various discussions on diverse blogs on the Internet. Trust me, it will be worth it.
 
Mike Flynn is a science fiction writer (and a pretty good one apparently based on the reviews- indeed, one of the blurbs on his book Eifelheim was from Orson Scott Card, someone who even I, in my near complete ignorance of science fiction, have heard of. Card's blurb stated "Eifelheim...may turn out to be the best science fiction novel this year.")  However, I do not read science fiction, so admittedly I cannot comment much there. But from an apologetics and philosophical perspective, he is wonderful to read. 

Incidentally, his blog is tofspot.blogspot.com

An important fact to remember concerning many "wars of religion"

Commenter on Mark Shea's blog:

It’s a good thing Christianity never had any schisms or disunity, or spilled enough blood over such theological divisions to float Cromwell’s navy…


Mike Flynn responds:

Cromwell — English. Irish — Irish. No further hypothesis is needed. As the old joke ran, “If the king of England woke up Hindu, the Irish would be facing Mecca by nightfall.” No one ever went over the top from the trenches crying “Transubstantiation and the Triune God!” Although they did do so crying “Hapsburg” or “Bourbon” or “Down with the King!”

Fact is, once the State had reduced religion to lapdog “established churches” the whole matter simply became a surrogate for political loyalty.

"...Bill and Ted's Excellent Bible Shack..."

While reading this post by science fiction author Mike Flynn (which I would highly suggest reading in its entirety), I came across this quote that I enjoyed in particular. :-)

Atheists and other fundies often forget about the Orthodox Church, but it is the second largest Church in Christendom. Together with the largest, the Roman Catholic, they comprise better than 63% of all Christians. Throw in the third largest - the Anglican Communion - and we've got two-thirds of all Christians, well before we get down to the more exotic and idiosyncratic sects. If I want to know "what Christianity teaches," I would be inclined to ask the Orthodox or Catholic churches, as they have near 2000 years of noodling over it. Yet when the Coynes of the world want to tell us 'what Christians believe,' they agitate over the idiosyncratic beliefs of Bill and Ted's Excellent Bible Shack, whose teachings go back to last Tuesday. Go figure.

William of Ockham

Just came across a great quote on William of Ockham made by Mike Flynn, himself commenting a post by Edward Feser (thus introducing me to a great blog I wish I would have come across long before!). Anyway, here is Michael Flynn's comments, adding to Edward Feser's thoughts:

Christopher Hitchens claims that William undermined medieval scholastic thought using proto-scientific rationalism. But because it is Hitchens, we know that it must be wrong. In fact, William was a voluntarist who believed in the Triumph of the Will, specifically of God's Will. This was contrary to Thomist thinking, which held that the intellect was prior to the will. (Basically, you cannot desire something that you do not know.) As always when you get things exactly bass-ackward, things do not cohere and all sorts of "paradoxes" and "problems" appear out of nowhere. Causation blows up, and with it ethics and morality, and the limited state. There is no demonstrable connection between cause and effect, so causation goes bye-bye; and it is only so far as scientists paid little attention in practice to Ockhamism/Humeanism that science prospered at all. When al-Ghazali pulled the same stunt in the House of Submission, the scattered fires of natural science faded out. The triumph of the will over the intellect meant that God becomes the Tyrant in the Sky issuing arbitrary rules about what is good or bad. Draw a straight line from there to absolute monarchs and libertarians. (A libertarian is an absolute monarch with a very small kingdom.) The denial of essences meant that you could never know if another creature was "really" human. If there was no human "nature" or "essence," then there are only individual human beings; and those creatures with different skin colors or talking jibber-jabber might not be human at all.

http://m-francis.livejournal.com/193505.html?style=mine#cutid1
Unfortunately, we all know where that led...