I don’t think Hummus has done much other than to just keep repeating one quote from the Bible taken out of context.

Ironic, isn’t it?

The True path is narrow. Christ’s words, not mine.

…the application of these words in the current context is entirely yours.

Nothing can quite be compared to taking Scripture out of it’s original context, placing it in a context foreign to that from which it was taken, and then declaring, “thus says the LORD.”

This sort of stuff, coming from purported Christians, sickens me, especially when used as ammunition against other Christians.

http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-339317

With regard to your comment in Post 117: What I am confused about, is whether ID recognises macro-evolution and common descent as something that has really occurred in the history of life.

There has been discussion on that very point here

If you don’t feel like making the click, the answer is that ID neither endorses nor disputes macro-evolution and common descent.

—-”So, stephenB, doesn’t this comment consist of precisely the kind of linkage between religion (i.e. Christianity) and ID that you claim does not (and should not) exist?”

No. Did you analyze the context of the remarks I was responding to? Did you take note of the numerous references to God in the question I was being asked? Did you consider the earlier comment, made by you, asking what it is about Roman’s 1:20 that either requires or denies the direct intervention of God in natural processes.

Did you notice that I responded by saying, “nothing.” “It indicates only that God played a role and made it happen in some way.”

Did you notice that, before that, I was responding to and disagreeing William Dembski’s comment that theistic evolutionsits can, in any way, make a case that Christianity can be reconciled with Darwinism.

Did you notice that my main point, which started the ball rolling, was to ask theistic evolutionists, who can’t stop talking about religion, to make up their mind about whether God did or did not play a role, rather than to say, as they do, that he played a role by not playing a role.

ID begins from the bottom up, analyzing the evidence and following where the evidence leads. Theistic evolutionsts, on the other hand, begin from the top down, positing that God must have done things Darwinin’s way, because a competent God wouldn’t tinker with his creation. Thus, in responding to theistic evolutionists, ID defenders must talk about God, because theistic evolutionist will not stop talking about him except to say that he isn’t really involved in the evolutionary process, except that he is.

“Here we go again with another special version of your favorite anti-ID talking point: ID = religion.”

And then in comment #72, stephenB wrote:

“The issue is not about how we perceive randomness, but whether or not randomness has been constrained to know where it is going and if, through “prior intent,” the creator designed it that way.

1. Darwinism holds that [a] there was no prior intent and therefore [b] natural laws and randomness launched evolution on an unpredictable journey to an unknown end, which, by definition, could not have had man in mind.

2. Christianity holds that [a] God intended to create man, and did, therefore, have a specific end in mind. Front loaded evolution, which knows where it is going, could pull it off; Darwinian evolution, which doesn’t know where it is going, could not.

Christian Darwinists want to have it both ways, but there is no logical way to do it. If God, through prior intent, created life by means of front loaded macro evolution, that rules out Darwinism, which rules out both front loading and prior intent Thus, Christian Darwinists, who posit both prior intent and no prior intent, contradict themselves. To say, then, as they do, that God played a role by not playing a role, is to lapse into irrationality.

So, stephenB, doesn’t this comment consist of precisely the kind of linkage between religion (i.e. Christianity) and ID that you claim does not (and should not) exist?

Thanks for the response.

I understand that ID questions the sufficiency of Darwinian mechanisms to produce macro-evolution.

What I am confused about, is whether ID recognises macro-evolution and common descent as something that has really occurred in the history of life.

If we grant that the mechanisms of variation and selection are insufficient, and thus that intelligent guidance is required, that does not logically necessitate that common descent is false. For example, it is logically possible that a designing intelligence guided the process of imperfect replication so that macro-evolution occurred according to a prescribed plan.

What I guess I am stumbling over, is that many ID arguments seem to focus on disputing that macro-evolution occurred at all, rather than on the separate issue of whether macro-evolution occurred in an unguided manner.

Thanks
C.

Really? I thought I was quite clear: random mutation and natural selection can and do produce minor changes in a species, but the evidence very strongly suggests that that mechanism is incapable of producing major biological novelty, such as new body plans, new structures, organs, or processes.

I think what you said could be read both ways. You meant changes within species.

“Bruce David said (above) that ‘random variation culled by natural selection produces change in species … by itself, is incontestable and has been observed in nature and even in the laboratory.’ But bornagain77 said ‘Darwinism [is] a theory with never any credible scientific support to sustain it’.

Am I the only one that is puzzled by this? Just what is ID’s position on the reality of Darwinian mechanisms?”

I think you will find, if you read the ID literature, that ID proponents are pretty consistently in agreement that the mechanism of random variation/natural selection works to produce minor change in species. The question at issue is whether that mechanism is capable of producing major change in living organisms, a.k.a. macroevolution (e.g., new body plans, new organs or organ systems, new processes). It is this for which there is no evidence for and much evidence against.

If you read the post you referred to above carefully, you will see that this is what I said there.

I can’t see the wind, but I often know what my friends are thinking. What’s your point? Does everything you know have to been seen?

I am not disputing the wind or the atom. I am disputing that Frost has any special insight that renders him capable of deciding who and who isn’t a real Christian.

frost:

As to Hummus, he is now switching ground trying to argue for scriptural “interpretations” and so forth.

Switching? Not really. The entire edifice of your presumed ability to differentiate the real Christians from the poseurs is built on the notion that you hold the one true interpretation of Scripture. I am merely pointing out that people who study the Bible for a living can’t agree. Thus, it is presumptuous in the extreme to think you know better.

So I think I am going to end it here- and Hummus can take the last word if he/she wants.

Jitsak. Shady character to say the least. Go git him. He needs some Christian charity. Why should I have all the fun.