Beckwith in the dock

[Quote] Prof. Beckwith, you are an intelligent man, but that does not make up for not being a good listener. You are so eager to make your point about Thomas Aquinas (a point which almost no ID proponent would disagree with), that you don’t understand what Clive is objecting to.

The prologue to your Biologos article attributed to you the view that, according to ID, design is found only in certain structures in nature, and that God is not involved in the rest. You did not correct that characterization of your views when it was challenged on the Biologos site and elsewhere. Therefore we must assume that you believe ID asserts this.

Clive is telling you that ID does not assert this. And you are brushing him off, by telling him he badly misunderstands. And what you are not seeing is that Biologos, your latest platform, is crawling with TEs who have also asserted this mischaracterization of ID. We at UD are therefore very nervous when you, a Thomist, appear on Biologos and appear to defend these TE mischaracterizations. We have long since learned to expect that we will be willfully misconstrued by TEs, but we expect more from Thomists who come from a more disciplined intellectual tradition.

And by the way, I have never seen any ID person, anywhere, write or imply that Thomas Aquinas was:

“teaching that the universe consists of lots of “Instances” of designed entities some of which may be detected and some of which may not.”

No, Aquinas did not *teach* that, but if that should turn out to be *true* about the universe, nothing is taken away from Thomas’s teaching. There is no *clash* between Thomism and ID. That is Clive’s point. And you seem to be determined to establish that there is a clash. And we wonder why.

It is not as if ID people have said: “We don’t need those stinkin’ Thomist arguments to prove the existence of God; we’ve got irreducible complexity.” ID people have not ruled out, and many of them embrace, metaphysical arguments for the existence of God. Thus, you seem to be picking an unnecessary fight, and you are doing it from a platform, Biologos, which hardly has the theological high ground, from a Thomist point of view. You’ve stopped short of defending TE against ID, but you certainly seem more interested in embarrassing ID than embarrassing TE. Why is that, given that I haven’t seen a TE writing which doesn’t contain at least one heresy that would make Aquinas wince?

The other difficulty I am having is that you keep speaking of Aquinas in weighty tones, but when people here offer you passages of Aquinas which do not appear to fit into your own version of Thomism, you do not engage. Is it possible that you know Thom*ism* much better than you know the texts of Thomas himself? Perhaps not, but if you know Aquinas’s texts well, let’s have some *expositio*, please. You know the threads where the exegetical challenges have been posted, here and on beliefnet. I’ll be watching for your counter-exegesis.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/evolution/francis-beckwiths-biography-pertaining-to-id/#comment-350980

I would also like to know why you, Beckwith, would have a certain fellowship with Biologos in light of their TE position and other heretical views that would make Thomas Aquinas wince. The issue of differences in design detection is a side street nuance in the otherwise straight path of design, and doesn’t merit the theological critique from you (in my opinion) that Biologos merits daily.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/evolution/francis-beckwiths-biography-pertaining-to-id/#comment-351023


It is more dangerous to ID and reason, yes, because half truths are always more dangerous than obvious lies. Perhaps an analogy would help. Who do you think hurts the Catholic Church more? Atheists who rant and rave with their irrational secularism or high ranking bishops who turn their backs on sexual deviants and give the those atheists something substantive to attack with. “Corruptio, optimi, pessima”

Who does more violence to reason? An atheist nitwit who might stupidly say that Aquinas was a bad philosopher, or a Thomist who acknowledge his greatness only to grossly misrepresent him and use his legacy against his true philosophy?

—”But it’s worse than that, it is, according to StephenB, demonstrably false to believe otherwise.”

It is demonstrably false that Aquinas’ metaphyics is incompatible with ID, yes, most definitely.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/evolution/francis-beckwiths-biography-pertaining-to-id/#comment-351079

People have posted on this site with serious arguments based on a great deal of learning. Your responses of cute one-liners, expressions of exasperation, etc. do not do your reputation justice. Where is the deep Thomistic thinker that many of us hoped Francis Beckwith would be? He seems to have gone AWOL.

C’mon, Dr. Beckwith, you are better than this. Some of the people writing here have doctorates in religion from top-ranked universities. Others have philosophy degrees and have applied them to reading a considerable amount of the writings of the Angelic Doctor. How about engaging on Aquinas and defending your exegesis?

http://www.uncommondescent.com/evolution/francis-beckwiths-biography-pertaining-to-id/#comment-351095

We’re all dudes with keyboards these days. And yes, heresy, such as theistic evolution, and a theodicy that removes God completely from creating anything biological. For that matter absolves God from any responsibility to His creation when it tries to give all evil consequences of nature red in tooth and claw over to evolution, a force that even God cannot control. I’ve read it on biologos myself and written about it here. That man and all of biology are results of the power of evolution (that even God cannot change) once set into motion, they think, absolves God of evil, thus their theodicy; even going to far (again, I’ve seen it myself) of calling Christians who believe in special creation heretics. In Darrel Falk’s view, Thomas Aquinas was a heretic. So yes, heresy on Biologos, all in the name of mighty Evolution will they jettison scripture and religious understanding. Why do you associate with those people who are so obviously theologically heretical? Why? I really want to know, sincerely I do. Please don’t be anything but honest, please, because I’m being very sincere.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/evolution/francis-beckwiths-biography-pertaining-to-id/#comment-351123

Well, if Dr. Beckwith is going to go around correcting the metaphysics and theology of all those who do not hold to a Thomist metaphysics and theology, I hope he will apply that to *everyone* who writes about creation and nature, not just ID people.

I’d like to hear his Thomist perspective on “evolution must be true, otherwise God would be responsible for evil” — an argument that Ken Miller and Francisco Ayala have made. I’d also like to hear his Thomist perspective on the numerous Barthian attacks on natural theology which have been made by TEs. Does he think that Thomas Aquinas is compatible with Barthianism?

If Dr. Beckwith wants to “be his own man”, distinct from ID and from mainstream TE, that is fine with me. But so far I have heard only what distinguishes him from ID. I haven’t heard what distinguishes him from the overwhelmingly Protestant and utterly non-Thomist approach of most TEs.

Unless he tackles the theology of TE in whatever books and articles he puts out in the future, he will have no credibility as a theological referee in the debate between ID and TE.

Unfortunately, Dr. Beckwith seems to have decided to back away from a detailed discussion of theology and metaphysics here. His total contribution has been to refer us to one of his articles, which is excellent on the legal aspects of the ID debate but only an undergraduate-level introduction to Thomism, and hardly capable of refuting the counter-claims about Thomas which have been made by posters here, backed with quotations from Aquinas himself. Beckwith’s mastery of the Thomistic tradition has not yet been demonstrated, and will not be demonstrated by half a dozen quotations from Aquinas, Gilson and Feser. Until he shows more academic substance, I for one do not regard him as capable of speaking for Thomistic metaphysics or Thomistic theology, let alone of judging ID in its lights.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/evolution/francis-beckwiths-biography-pertaining-to-id/#comment-351499