Nullasallus has an interesting pair of posts at "Uncommon Descent" on the whole Thomism and ID thing (Part 1, Part 2), entitled "Why Thomists Should Support Intelligent Design." The posts actually don't seem to me to establish why Thomists should support intelligent design, but they do a good job of laying out a way that Thomists could draw upon at least some attempts to formulate an intelligent design theory in the course of arguing against certain philosophical positions. Indeed, there are already Thomists who do or have done more or less what nullasalus is suggesting; Haldane in his debate with Smart is the most famous. But (1) at this level what we're talking about is only very broadly called support; (2) at this level ID has lots and lots of competitors, i.e., positions Thomists could make argumentative use of in much the same way -- and indeed, it is consistent with saying that at least some of the physicalists and materialists arguably have arguments that Thomists could use against ID in the same way; and (3) at any level the whole of ID and all the conflicts in which it is involved are very, very small change in the context of the overall Thomistic project, and would barely be more than a sed contra or objectio, so to speak, in the whole Thomistic awareness if it weren't for the fact that ID theorists keep trying to latch on to Thomism. Nullasalus recognizes that (3) is often in play, it should be said; it's what makes the posts much better than pretty much anything else that has been written at "Uncommon Descent" on the subject.
Thinking about NS's post led me to be more convinced of something I've thought before, but I'm not sure I've ever actually said here. (None of what follows really has much to do with the details of the posts at "Uncommon Descent," being merely occasioned by them.) While it wouldn't be a huge difference, ID would be more than a penny's worth of attention if it had something directly to say about God; and it's usually only in such a light that Thomists can even justify spending much time on the subject. But ID theorists, of course, will always say that ID is not about God but simply about inference of some intelligence in the face of any criticism adding to the mix 'and this all men call God'. All the 'we're really purely scientific' line that ID theorists so insist upon in an attempt to get people to take ID more seriously is exactly a reason Thomists tend to take ID less seriously. If they want to insist that they are purely scientific in character, so be it; but from the Thomistic perspective that inevitably reduces the whole controversy to a parochial dispute over technicalities in one's approach to experiment and theory, and thus to something that on Thomistic principles really is better handled by the art and prudence of those who actually study these things day in and day out -- fallible, yes, and subject to human failings and philosophical biases, but the natural authority in such matters. In the end, ID, at least as its proponents defend it, is neither Thomistic enough in spirit nor, without linking it directly to God, metaphysical or theological enough in importance to merit much attention on its own. (There might be extrinsic reasons for paying attention to it, of course, like personal interest evolutionary topics, or exasperation at yet another ID theorist saying that Thomists should accept ID as a scientific approach because Thomists believe God can work miracles, or concern that the Fifth Way is being muddled up with ID design inferences in the broader public mind.) If it's a matter of scientific method, one might as well demand that Thomists take sides on the best method for lizard sexing on the grounds that Aquinas addresses the question of male and female biology in an Aristotelian commentary. Sure, they could do that if they're interested in lizard sexing; some Thomists somewhere probably are. Conceivably there could be some minor but interesting epistemological issues involved, something, as said above, for sed contra or objectio; in which case it will be dealt with on Thomistic principles rather than anything else. Possibly here and there it might be useful as one possible jumping-off point for another dispute, as nullasalus argues. Everyone else will just treat it as a parochial dispute about lizard sexing, and leave it to the lizard sexers. And it's really not a problem for them to do so. Thomism, Scotism, and the like are not chaotic systems: a flap of the wing of a butterfly can be studied and remarked upon, if one chooses, but it doesn't shift at all the earth and sky of fundamental metaphysics and theology.
Another tangent. I once considered writing a story about an eccentric Unitarian Universalist who writes essays about the important question of how it might possibly be rational to suspect that God might possibly exist in some form or other, and about how anyone who accepted this should be a Unitarian Universalist, because in a sense that's what Unitarian Universalism is: the religion for people who suspect that it might possibly be rational to suspect that God might possibly exist in some form or other. Somehow this always comes to mind when this topic comes up.
