Some Catholics hold the opinion that Intelligent Design theory is opposed to Catholicism (or vice versa). Some will cite the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas to claim that the Catholic view is something radically different and contrary to that of ID.
Fr. James A. McWilliams in his widely-used college textbook, Cosmology, gives superb detail and understanding on this topic. He explains that there is more than one dimension to teleology. There is the teleology of purpose, where nature finds its fulfillment in attaining ends. Or there is, what is termed, Structural Order:
Structural Order. Teleology is order in activity, and is therefore called dynamic order. But there is also the order of structure. Structural order ; is the harmonious arrangement of diverse integral parts in one pattern or configuration. Thus the frond of a fern or palm has leaflets or blades, arranged along the stern in a recognizable pattern. Structural order is characterized by symmetry and proportion. Symmetry is the repetition of some feature, as in the similarity of two leaflets on opposite sides of the stem, or the two eyes of an animal. Proportion is the gradation of a feature or character according to a more or less fixed ratio; thus in the frond the row of leaflets on either side of the stem is arranged in gradually diminishing sizes from the base to the tip. Structural order is observable in the wings of a bird, in a snowflake, in a frost- flower on a window-pane. In fact, a most interesting study is the examination of natural objects, even with a microscope, to discover their intricate and amazing structures. Moreover, X-rays disclose a structure in the very atoms themselves.
It is true that structure is often suitable for useful activity, still it can be recognized without our knowing its utility. Hence, structural order, apart from dynamic order, furnishes independent evidence for intelligence. But since the formation of the arguments the same in both cases, we combine the evidence from both sources to one set of proofs. And although we recognize purposive activity from its useful results, which we contend could not be attained unless intended, structural order is recognized by merely noting its symmetry and proportion, without our being required to know its purpose. It must not be thought, however, that structural order is necessarily immobile and unchangeable. The structure of an organism changes in its progress from the germ state to that of maturity; and when the organism dies, the same matter is taken up by ether organisms to be formed into other structures. Included under structure are the arrangement and shading of colors, as in flowers, butterflies and practically all animals. We may even extend the term to graceful motion; and, on the authority of musicians, to the very bird songs, which, to be truly musical, must have harmonious “structure.”
Many things, when taken on a large scale, as mountains and the stars, have no symmetry or proportion. By reason of their immensity and their inherent mystery, they can only be denominated as sublime and as transcending the status of mere patterns. Nevertheless, on a small scale, the very crystals of granite and the atoms which are known to exist in the stars, have a minute and intricate structural order. Order cannot be explained by chance much less can its repetition and continuance be so explained. The only alternative is intelligence. And whether that Intelligence created the world, or merely arranged and operates it, to reject His existence is to dethrone reason.
Thesis 2. The material universe displays purposive finality and structural order, for which the ultimate reason must be sought in a supramundane intelligent cause.
Part 1. Intelligence is required
All grant that there is marvelous order in nature, that countless specimens of natural objects exhibit an in an intricate structure, and act and interact in such a way as to preserve and develop a highly ordered universe. But such order can be explained only on the ground that some intelligence intended it.
The minor. a) There is no other sufficient cause, as is acknowledged by the conviction of all mankind in much simpler effects. Let a man but discover on some lone island a crude tomahawk or a sundial, and no amount of argument will persuade him that these things were the product of unreasoning nature. The human mind recognizes an essential connection between fitness and intention.
Our experience also warrants the conviction that a highly complicated order cannot result otherwise than from intelligent selection and arrangement of the parts. We cannot so much as lay a tile floor in a simple pattern of alternate colors unless we be allowed to see the color of each tile, and thus recognize its fitness for its particular place. The same is true of the construction of the simplest implement or machine. One may construct a photographic camera which with proper adjustment will focus an object before it, but he cannot secure this effect without intelligent selection and arrangement of the materials to that end. Yet every eye regularly represents what is before it, even the most shifting scenes. And if the ordered performances of the eye are worthy of years of study, what shall we say of the order throughout the universe from atom to solar system?
— Fr. James McWilliams, S.J. – Cosmology, p. 16-17
The Catholic philosopher, Dr. Peter Kreeft gives a nice explanation:
Peter Kreeft — Handbook of Christian Apologetics page 5.
The Design Argument
This sort of argument is of wide and perennial appeal. Almost everyone admits that reflection on the order and beauty of nature touches something very deep within us. But are the order and beauty of the product of intelligent design and conscious purpose? For theists the answer is yes. Arguments for design are attempts to vindicate this answer; to show why it is the most reasonable one to give. They have been formulated in ways as richly varied as the experience in which they are rooted. The following displays the core or central insight.
1. The universe displays a staggering amount of intelligibility, both within the things we observe and in the way these things relate to others outside themselves. That is to say the way they exist and coexist display an intricately beautiful order and regularity that can fill even the most casual observer with wonder. It is the norm in nature for many different beings to work together to produce the same valuable end—for example, the organs in the body work for our life and health. (See also argument 8.)
2. Either this intelligible order is the product of chance or of intelligent design.
3. Not chance.
4. Therefore the universe is the product of intelligent design.
5. Design comes only from a mind, a designer.
St. Thomas makes this argument clear in his Summa Theologica (On the Government of Things in General (q 103, article 1):
Certain ancient philosophers denied the government of the world, saying that all things happened by chance. But such an opinion can be refuted as impossible in two ways.
First, by observation of things themselves: for we observe that in nature things happen always or nearly always for the best; which would not be the case unless some sort of providence directed nature towards good as an end; which is to govern. Wherefore the unfailing order we observe in things is a sign of their being governed; for instance, if we enter a well-ordered house we gather therefrom the intention of him that put it in order, as Tullius says (De Nat. Deorum ii), quoting Aristotle [Cleanthes].
Secondly, this is clear from a consideration of Divine goodness, which, as we have said above (44, 4; 65, 2), was the cause of the production of things in existence. For as “it belongs to the best to produce the best,” it is not fitting that the supreme goodness of God should produce things without giving them their perfection. Now a thing’s ultimate perfection consists in the attainment of its end. Therefore it belongs to the Divine goodness, as it brought things into existence, so to lead them to their end: and this is to govern
With this response we can see the two kinds of Argument from Design. The first, is the Argument from Structured Order. We can see that there are aspects in nature that are like a well-ordered house — irreducible complexity, mathematical symmetry of the universe, biological structures that could not be the product of evolution, etc. Actually, evolution itself is driven by chance, so the argument applies there.
The second argument is the more classic teleological view regarding the laws of nature and the metaphysical structure of things reaching perfection and attaining ends.
The second argument could propose that evolution is merely one of the natural processes that God used. The problem is that since evolution occurs by chance (reliance on a random variable), then this would be what St. Thomas is arguing against here.
There are many examples of this argument in Christian literature. Here is one from Athenagoras of Athens (c. 133-190 AD), a Christian philosopher and apologist.
ATHENAGORAS, A PLEA FOR THE CHRISTIANS
Chapter XV.—The Christians Distinguish God from Matter.
…For as is the potter and the clay (matter being the clay, and the artist the potter), so is God, the Framer of the world, and matter, which is subservient to Him for the purposes of His art. But as the clay cannot become vessels of itself without art, so neither did matter, which is capable of taking all forms, receive, apart from God the Framer, distinction and shape and order. And as we do not hold the pottery of more worth than him who made it, nor the vessels of glass and gold than him who wrought them; but if there is anything about them elegant in art we praise the artificer, and it is he who reaps the glory of the vessels: even so with matter and God—the glory and honour of the orderly arrangement of the world belongs of right not to matter, but to God, the Framer of matter. So that, if we were to regard the various forms of matter as gods, we should seem to be without any sense of the true God, because we should be putting the things which are dissoluble and perishable on a level with that which is eternal.
We can note here the contrast between what is best described as the random movement of matter and that which shows the shape and design of God (it doesn’t mean that God does not shape all parts of nature, but only that God has permitted us to see His hand more clearly in other aspects):
the clay cannot become vessels of itself without art, so neither did matter, which is capable of taking all forms, receive, apart from God the Framer, distinction and shape and order
Here’s yet another simple example of the ID argument found in a basic summary of Catholic doctrine written by Bishop Buddy of San Diego (1963):
The human mind soars from nature to nature’s origin, from the contingent to a first necessary cause. The design of the universe, its order and adaptation of means to ends, its co-ordination of plans, specifications and development — all reflect the first Intelligent Cause, the one Necessary Being, the Prime Mover, the Supreme Lawgiver, the Sublime Architect and Builder of the world, the divine Ruler of all creation. The universe points to Almighty God, creator and sustainer of all things.
Men speak of nature — but nature, its order and symmetry, the complex human body, all manifest the divine wisdom, the divine intelligence and all-absorbing beauty of God.
To the metaphysical proof, add the physical argument. The order of the universe, the adaptation of means to ends, the seasons of the year following one upon another, the separation of land and water, sun, moon, and stars, the millions of constellations moving about the heavens in perfect harmony, all point to a Supreme Intelligence who not only made this world, but who also directs and sustains it.
Cicero (106-43 B. C.), famed Roman senator and pagan philosopher, declared: “When we look up to heaven and consider the heavenly bodies, what can be clearer and more obvious than that there is a Divinity, a most exalted Mind, by whom these orbs are ruled?” In fact, science points out more marvels in the order of creation in a minute than the atheist can explain in a century.
REASON CHALLENGES
But again the rational creature must resume: Who made the clod of earth or the nebula or the tiny atomic structure? And precisely what is it? It could not have made itself. One conclusion and only one can satisfy the mind of man: namely, the first Cause made all things out of nothing: Him we adore as God, the Creator.
— For Them Also, A Resume of Catholic Doctrine, Rev. Charles Francis Buddy, Bishop of San Diego, CA, pgs 8,10, 14
Catholic physicist Stephen Barr offers this from his book, Modern Physics, Ancient Faith:
This idea of God as cosmic lawgiver was from very early times central to Jewish and Christian thinking. It is the basis of the so-called Argument from Design for the existence of God. An early statement of this argument can be found, for example, in the works of the Latin Christian writer Minucius Felix near the beginning of the third century:
”If upon entering some home you saw that everything there was well-tended, neat, and decorative, you would believe that some master was in charge of it, and that he himself was superior to those good things. So too in the home of this world, when you see providence, order, and law in the heavens and on earth, believe there is a Lord and Author of the universe, more beautiful than the stars themselves and the various parts of the whole world.”
There is something paradoxical in the long-running debate over design. On the one hand, we have the older view that the lawfulness of the universe implies the existence of a lawgiver. This is the perspective of the Bible and of ancient religious writers, as we saw from the passages from Jeremiah, Psalms, and Minucius Felix quoted in chapter 9. It was also the view of many pagan writers of antiquity. On the other hand, we have many modern atheists who claim that the laws of nature prove the very opposite: that there is no need of God. One thinks of the famous statement of Pierre-Simon Laplace, who when asked by Napoleon why God was nowhere mentioned in his great treatise on celestial mechanics, replied, ‘I have no need of that hypothesis.” (When told of this by Napoleon, another great physicist, Joseph-Louis Lagrange, is reported to have said, “Ah But it is such a beautiful hypothesis. It explains many things”) Are the laws of nature evidence for God or an alternative to “that hypothesis”? Do they prove that God is needed or that he is not needed?At work here are two very different ways of thinking about the order found in nature.
The old Argument from Design is based on the commonsense idea that if something is arranged then somebody arranged it. The reasonableness of this idea can be seen from an everyday example. If one were to enter a hall and find hundreds of folding chairs neatly set up in evenly spaced ranks and files, one would feel quite justified in inferring that someone had arranged the chairs that way.One can imagine, however, that a person might object to this obvious inference, and suggest instead that the chairs are merely obeying some Law of Chairs although often in a secret or hidden way. When we see situations that appear haphazard, or things that appear amorphous, automatically or spontaneously “arranging themselves” into orderly patterns, what we find in every case is that what appeared to be amorphous or haphazard actually had a great deal of order already built into it. I shall illustrate this first in the simple example of the marbles in the box, and then later in more “natural” cases like the growth of crystals and the formation of the solar system. What we shall learn from these examples is the following important principle: Order has to be built in for order to come out.In fact, we shall learn something more: in every case where science explains order, it does so, in the final analysis, by appealing to a greater, more impressive, and more comprehensive underlying orderliness. And that is why, ultimately, scientific explanations do not allow us to escape from the Design Argument: for when the scientist has done his job there is not less order to explain but more.‘The universe looks far more orderly to us now than it did to the ancients who appealed to that order as proof of God’s existence. Before we look at examples taken from nature, let us revisit the example of marbles in a box. We saw that if we tip the box slightly the marbles tend to form an orderly arrangement. But why does that happen? if I were do a similar thing with my living room—if I were to hire a huge crane to come and tilt it so that everything slid into a corner—I would not end up with an orderly pattern. I would find, instead, that the lamps, the furniture, the toys, and so on, would pile up into a jumbled heap. Why, then, don’t the marbles form a jumbled heap? Part of the reason is that, unlike the objects in my living room, the marbles all have exactly the same size and shape. But this is not the whole story. After all, if I were to put a lot of identical spoons, say, in the bottom of a box and tilt it, the spoons would still form a jumbled heap. A crucial fact is that the marbles not only all have the same shape, but that that shape is a particularly simple and symmetrical one: the sphere. In fact, the sphere is the most symmetrical three- dimensional shape possible, because it looks exactly the same from any angle. So when the marbles fall into the corner it does not matter very much how they fall. Spoons or furniture pointing every which way will look like a jumble. But spheres cannot point every which way, because no matter which way a sphere is turned it looks just the same.We see, then, that even before the box was tilted and the marbles lined up, there were two principles of order already present and at work: (I) every marble had the same size and shape as every other marble, and (2) each marble had the perfectly symmetrical shape of a sphere. And these principles of order are, in a basic way, very much like the principles of order that the chairs in the hall obeyed.
The great Catholic martyr of the 20th century, St. Maximilian Kolbe, a scholar, teacher and man of advanced culture offers this view:
God made Himself known to human beings in two ways: naturally through human reason, and supernaturally through revelation. And, as we know, the concept of God exists among all peoples. There is not a corner of the earth where God is not known. Even among the most savage tribes there is a concept of a Higher Being.
It is difficult to conceive it any other way; we need only look about ourselves so as to come to the conclusion that God is in charge of everything, that He directs everything. Everything is directed to its appropriate and determined end; its very method of development is determined. On one and the same plant there grow leaves and buds, and the latter become lovely flowers. The structure of the flower is so mysteriously, so wondrously thought out; how exact it all is. Scientists are at a loss even to enter into the mystery, though they might spend a lifetime in observing just one such plant. Therefore, the words of Sacred Scripture are entirely correct: “The fool said in his heart: there is no God.”
St. Maximilian Kolbe – Maria was His Middle Name, 1977 pg. 11
This again is not only the teleological argument from “purpose” (each thing fulfilling a function to a determined end) but it’s the teleological view of “structured order”. St. Maximilian refers to the remarkably exact structure of a flower.Here St. Maximilian gives the classic argument again:
“Sir, what would you think of a man who would describe his wristwatch as follows: ‘The metal covering the watch came out of the mine by accident; in some strange way it was molded and formed, cleansed and shaped into its present form by accident; the face of the wristwatch came to be written upon also by accident. In fact, the crystal was blown into its form by accident. The spring and mechanism came into being by accident; finally, all of the various parts of the wristwatch were assembled by accident, that is, without assistance of human thought or hand; in fact, the wristwatch gives the correct hour by accident.’ Now, what would you say of a person who, in all seriousness, were to be so convinced?”
“Perhaps that he has taken leave of his senses!” “In nature, too, we have organisms of incomparable complexity, mysteriously constituted. No doubt, sir, when you studied anatomy, you marveled at the structure of the human eye. You doubtless noted how many parts it has, how delicately and wonderfully they serve our vision. All nature is composed of millions and billions of living organisms that unfold and multiply. Is it possible, therefore, to assert that these wonders of nature are an accident? –Maria was His Middle Name, 1977
This is an attack on Darwinian materialism once again.
Fr. Conway’s Question Box:
How do you prove to a certainty the existence of God ? Cannot a man be moral without belief in God? Is not virtue its own reward?
The most common proof, and perhaps the oldest argument, is the argument from design (“The heavens show forth the glory of God, and the firmament declareth the work of His hands.”—Ps. xviii. 1); namely, that the harmony and order of the universe point to an Intelligent and Infinite Designer, God. The chronometer with every particle of its mechanism moving in such perfect harmony as to declare the time of day to a second; the automatic machines in our large factories, which do the work of thousands of men silently from morning until night under the influence of steam or electricity, evidence a skilled human intelligence that designed them. So likewise this vast universe of ours, with its thousands of complex, interlacing laws, all manifesting a wondrous intelligent adaptation of means to ends, points to a Supreme Intelligence that designed them all.
The heavens with its myriads of stars revolving through space without the slightest interference one with the other; this earth with its quick rush through space, of which we are unconscious; the constant succession of the seasons, the beauty of the structure of the tiniest fern, the laws of instinct in the brute creation, the special adaptation of the various organs and senses of the human body, all declare an Intelligent Lawmaker by whose wisdom all has been established.
Scientific men have in our day of unbelief endeavored to destroy the force of this argument; but their attempt has failed, for science is merely furnishing new data for its defence. Says Professor Huxley (“Evolution and Ethics,” page 58, Appleton, 1894) : “If the belief in a God is essential to morality, physical science has no more to say against the probability of that doctrine than the most ordinary experience has. And it effectually closes the mouths of those who pretend to refute it by objections drawn from merely physical data.”
Some have said that this harmony is due to mere physical causes, and that matter must necessarily obey the laws of nature. But who but God established these laws ? To say that nature did, is to make nature intelligent, or to call God by another name. Again, with some the theory of evolution has in some way weakened the force of this argument. And yet, as Romanes declared (Nineteenth Century, June, 1888), all that evolution has accomplished “is to throw back the question of design from the facts immediately observed to the causes subsequently discovered. And there the question must be left by science, to be taken up by philosophy.” As the evidence of design points to a Designer, so evolution points to an Intelligence who is the origin of the universal law of progress.
– The Question Box, Rev. Bertrand Conway, Catholic Book Exchange, 1903 pp. 1-2
From a classic text on the Catholic catechism:
If a ship sails on its way and arrives safely at its destination, we conclude that it had a clever pilot. To say that the stars of the heaven of themselves direct their course, is as foolish as it would be to say that a ship had started from New York, sailed round the world, and returned safely without any one to guide it. Cicero said long ago, ” When we contemplate the heavens, we arrive at the conviction that they are all guided by a Being of surpassing skill.” In all that is upon the earth we see traces of design and of a most wise Designer in the construction of the bodies of animals, and of the bodies of men, in the -succession of the seasons, in trees and plants …As it would be impossible that the letters of the alphabet should be grouped together by mere chance in the order of the ” Iliad,” so it is impossible that the arrangements of the universe could have come about by chance, and without the knowledge and direction of a mighty intelligence.
