Discussion of Blog Post: Epicurean Responses To The Intelligent Design Argument

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    Blog Article

    Epicurean Responses To The Intelligent Design Argument

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    Introduction: A Very Old Argument

    The intelligent design argument is one of the oldest and most persistent claims in the history of human thought. In its simplest form it says: the world we observe is too complex, too orderly, and too well-fitted to human life to have arisen without purpose. Something designed it. Something ordered it. Something or someone stands behind the apparent…
    Cassius
    April 28, 2026 at 4:41 PM

    Cassius

    It is going to take us humans several hours to wade through this AI generated defense against Intelligent Design. However, I notice that this defense appears to conflate intelligent design with divine providence. So, having an intelligent design requires having an ongoing divine providence operator??


    I don’t know how the eternal cosmos natural operations “began”, but I have clear evidence that there is no active divinity controlling my life, or tallying rewards or punishments in an afterlife.

    Can the two issues of the how the “laws of nature” were established (designer), vs a divine providence ongoing operator?

    Thanks for trying to clarify.

    Patrikios

    Quote from Patrikios

    It is going to take us humans several hours to wade through this AI generated defense against Intelligent Design.

    Yep, I am aware that these long articles are not going to be everyone's cup of tea. I am writing them because this type of thorough presentation is what I would like to have access to fifteen years ago. Had I had this research tool and compiled information available to me then, the course of my own understanding and work on Epicurus would have been tremendously accelerated.

    Quote from Patrikios

    So, having an intelligent design requires having an ongoing divine providence operator??

    I don't know that it has to be ongoing, I suppose that those who proposed Deism took the clockmaker approach, and had the creator stand back and never intervene thereafter. But i also gather that not many people found that approach very satisfying and that it has largely faded into the background of most discussion.

    For the record, that's a direct quote from Plátōn's Tímaios.

    I didn't quite appreciate it until I read into it a bit, but the arguments for Creationism (or however it's been dressed-up for a new audience) have gone unchanged for millennia.

    Meanwhile, the fossil record has expanded every day for decades.

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