Intelligent Design or unthinking blasphemy?

Both magic and miracle have to do with the supernatural. Both describe events that suspend, or operate outside, natural laws. But there is a difference in connotation.Magic refers to something a human being does. The human being wears the talisman, says the magic words, intones the chant, throws eye of newt and toe of frog into the broth, and something happens. A mortal has tapped into supernatural forces and harnessed those forces to serve his or her will. The mortal, for the moment, acts as a kind of stage director, with supernatural forces acting as players in the drama he or she controls.Miracle refers to something a deity does. If you are a being who holds supreme authority in a certain realm--either as god of the sea, or goddess of childbirth, or Creator of All Of It--it follows that you have the power to intervene directly in your realm if you choose. Maybe you've set things up so that water behaves a certain way or babies are made a certain way. You retain the power to cut the red tape any time you want. You can say 'Well, this time let's roll the waters back' or 'This time a virgin should have the baby.' You suspend your natural laws, you get the thing done, and your action is termed a miracle. Mortals react as they will. They can cooperate with you, by walking through your parted waters or consenting to have your baby, or not. But the mortals do not control it.Religions rooted in Judaism, including Christianity and Islam, affirm the possibility of miracles but carry prohibitions on the practice of magic. That's why some people are reluctant to equate the terms. For them it's a matter of who is directing the drama--the human being or God.It's a difference worth paying attention to--especially because the boundary between magic and miracle are often not so clearly cut. Believing that God answers prayer is not all that far removed from believing that God, when summoned, grants you your wish. Devotees often cross the boundary into magical belief.For years theologians have regarded many folk practices--healing cloths, statues and religious emblems carried for luck or safety, religious relics reputed to have certain powers--as meeting the definition of magic. To the extent that these things represent attempts to harness supernatural powers for personal use, they are.As it happens, many Pentecostals today are deeply interested in magic. I have heard some Pentecostals insist that certain requests of God, made under certain conditions, require the deity to do what you ask. This is not only magical belief, it is magical belief of rare audacity. Many Pentecostals use words like 'Jesus' or 'Holy Spirit' or phrases such as 'Jesus rebuke you' as magic formulas. The words are thought to have talismanic power, like abracadabra. The speaker who utters them automatically puts supernatural powers to work doing things the speaker wants. What makes all these things magic is that the mortals are in the driver's seat. It is they who order the room service; it is God who is the bellhop.

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Archer

Ringo writes: Well, that is the catch.
The ambiguity is built in, I think, when a religion that postulates a miracle-working, prayer-answering deity also prohibits magic. Historically Judaism and Christianity have had an easier time distinguishing between the two in theory than in practice.They also inherit the theologically sticky story of Saul and the witch of Endor, where God performs a miracle through one of the very witches his law outlaws (1 Samuel 8.3-12): oremus Bible Browser : 1 Samuel 28.2-12

You're changing the subject, you know. You're not arguing for intelligent design now, but for gratitude.Different thing. If intelligent design were so obviously true, we would expect designs we see in nature to be intelligent. Not perfect, necessarily, but certainly not illogical. We would not expect to encounter a variety of designs we, even with our limited human intelligence, can easily improve.You have a creature that lives its entire life at sea. It is born at sea, it mates at sea, it cannot survive unless submerged in seawater. Its main food source is giant squid two miles down.No intelligent person would design that creature so that it has to come up for air. Why? A child knows better.We now know this same creature regularly gets the bends in the process of coming up to breathe. What logical purpose is served in such a 'design'?This is not the kind of thing you expect to see if an intelligent being out there is designing animals the way you or I might design a piece of furniture.But it is exactly the kind of thing you expect to see when you are looking at an unconscious, opportunistic process. It's the kind of thing you expect if an originally terrestrial animal found a survival advantage in the ability to move farther and farther out to sea, and evolved into an ocean-going creature.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

God made the tapeworm, right? The design works.If I say a tapeworm is a disgusting creature, am I being blasphemous?

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ArcherAll species are transitional.