TheoEvo vs. ID — Hey, who started this anyway?

My problem (as a Christian who doesn’t swallow Neo-Darwinism), is not with the fact that Theistic Evolution is random.

Proverbs 16:33 says, The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD. In other words, seemingly random events could be unfolding according to a Divinely-ordained programme. Theologians have debated how God’s sovereignty and human free-will can co-exist since the year dot.

So, theologically, there is no problem with the seemingly random side of evolution.

The problem with *some* theistic evolutionists is that they are two-faced. One the one hand they deny ID - that there is any discernable Divine design or purpose evident in creation (or, at least, in biology). On the other hand, they turn round and say (when amongst Christians or when talking to the media as spokesmen for theo-evo) that they believe that there is a God who is behind creation (ie. they do subscribe to a form of ID).

This approach seems to be a purely political tactic. It is a tactic to keep their reputation intact in the face of the atheists/materialists who have a ‘take no prisoners’ attitude to those who deny methodological atheism.

I think the weakness of their position will become ever more untenable as they are caught in the cross-fire between the materialists and the IDists. The materialists will attack them for believing in God on a ‘blnd faith’ basis, while the theists will attack them for their theodicy: saying that God used the ruthless process of ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ to do His creating.

Phil Johnson’s attempt to get them on board by using a big-tent ‘Intelligent Design’ approach has clearly failed and needs to be abandoned. Instead, just as these theo-evo’s repeat a political mantra (ID is creationism), so too, ID needs to encapsulate its opposition to these ID-denying theo-evos in a smart catchy line that exposes their hypocrisy and shifts the agenda of the debate so that they are on the defensive.

Karl Gibeson wrote:

I am sick and tired of seeing genuine Christians smeared by creationists

Me too. I don’t like creationists smearing Mike Behe because he accepts common descent.

Karl Gibberson:

Bill Dembski is blasting theistic evolutionists on his blog now.

Yeah!

And on it goes. Is it any wonder that Christianity grows less attractive to our culture? We can’t even get along with ourselves, much less welcome those outside our faith. Shame on all of us for how this conversation is conducted. —Karl Giberson

Who is conducting a smear campaign here, Karl? Do you consider the highly paid IT professionals, attorneys, and medical doctors on this blog “welfare queens”.

By the way, you wrote: “How to be a Christian and believe in evolution”

Well, I think one can profess to be a Christian and profess to be a Darwinist. One can also profess to be Christian and believe in epicycles, phlogiston, and geocentrism.

The point of the intense disdain toward cretain TE’s like Ken Miller is that he resorts to fabrication, falsehood, misrepresentation (even under sworn oath) in order to defend Darwin’s false theory (and his pocketbook). What happened to scientific integrity?

I would have preferred peaceful co-existence with the TE’s. My first choice was to agree to disagree—to seek common ground—to dialogue in a spirit of friendliness and mutual respect.

But it was they who decided to go on the attack, defending their materialist atheist friends. It was they gave theological respectability to the atheist lie that ID scientists smuggle religion into their science. It was they who appeared in a court of law for the sole purpose of institutionalizing that lie, even as they swore on a Bible to tell the truth. It was they who helped perpetuate the insane idea that the ID project to secure its rightful place at the table was, at bottom, a covert plot to establish a theocratic tyranny. This same nonsense, by the way, came from the same ideologues who really do bully design theorists in the academy and who really have established an academic tyranny of their own.

Now, they have decided to up the anti by suggesting that we are a danger to the culture. But we are the only ones who are willing to uphold that culture because, unlike them, we agree with the main teaching in Declaration of Independence. We actually take seriously that idea we were designed to be free, as the “laws of nature” and “nature’s God” inform us. On the other hand, they are the ones who are offended by these ideas. They are the ones who deny that Jefferson was a “design” thinker, or that we were created in the “image and likeness of God,” or that we have “natural rights,” or that these ideas could be “self-evident.” They are the ones who are a danger to society, because they are the ones who deny the basic principles upon which a well-ordered-society is grounded.

In any case, it is the TEs who have abandoned the Christian world view. According to the Bible, God reveals himself in scripture AND in nature. This is not some mere exegetical reflection, it is an undeniable declaration of fact. To deny it is to take an anti-Christian position. If a design is not detectable, then it can hardly be a revelation.

As someone sort of caught between the ID and TE “camps,” I really don’t understand all this chest thumping and name-calling, from either side. When you boil it down, there is very, very little difference theologically or pragmatically between say, Mike Behe and Francis Collins. In truth, they both accept “evolution” if that just means common descent, and they both accept “ID” if that just means God designed the universe (even, for Collins, down to cosmological fine-tuning).

Bill, I’m not really sure why you think the “problem” TE tries to address “no longer exists.” Even if one accepts strong ID arguments, there is a huge leap from there to separate, special creation of every “kind,” including humans, and the problems of how and when sin and death entered the creation remain unresolved. It seems to me, this is where most of the really difficult theological and Biblical / heremneutical problems that TE tries to address lie.

becke,

The main difference between TE’s and ID is Darwinian macro evolution. TE’s accept it without much criticism and many have put their theological underpinnings on it as the “way” God designed life. ID says no way and that there is no evidence scientifically for Darwinian macro evolution.

At the same time there is a belief amongst most ID people that Darwin’s ideas lead to atheism. Obviously the TE’s cannot admit this. Thus, the rancor between them.

—–becke: “Even if one accepts strong ID arguments, there is a huge leap from there to separate, special creation of every “kind,” including humans, and the problems of how and when sin and death entered the creation remain unresolved.”

Where did you get the idea that ID necessarily posits a separate, special creation of every kind. Guided evolution is well within the bounds of ID.

With atheists holding all the high positions of power in academia and the National academy, it has become popular to say that belief in God is unscientific, i.e. it is a belief in superstition, yet
It is amazing to find that most major scientific discoveries were actually at the hands of fervent Theists, and thus, in final analysis, genuine atheists seem to be the ones in intellectual poverty, with very unscientific beliefs that have prevented any truly major breakthrough discoveries on their part on which they can brag.

Famous Scientists Who Believed in God

http://www.godandscience.org/a.....faith.html

Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543)

Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1627)

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

Robert Boyle (1791-1867)

Michael Faraday (1791-1867)

Gregor Mendel (1822-1884)

William Thomson Kelvin (1824-1907)

Max Planck (1858-1947)

And if we go even further we can make a good case that Christianity was essential for science to develop in the first place

Christianity and the Birth of Science

http://www.ldolphin.org/bumbulis/

excerpt:

THE EVIDENCE

Clue #1. The founders/fathers of modern science were shaped by a culture that was predominantly Christian.

The founders of modern science were all bunched into a particular geographical location dominated by a Judeo-Christian world view. I’m thinking of men like Louis Aggasiz (founder of glacial science and perhaps paleontology); Charles Babbage (often said to be the creator of the computer); Francis Bacon (father of the scientific method); Sir Charles Bell (first to extensively map the brain and nervous system); Robert Boyle (father of modern chemistry); Georges Cuvier (founder of comparative anatomy and perhaps paleontology); John Dalton (father of modern atomic theory); Jean Henri Fabre (chief founder of modern entomology); John Ambrose Fleming (some call him the founder of modern electronics/inventor of the diode); James Joule (discoverer of the first law of thermodynamics); William Thomson Kelvin (perhaps the first to clearly state the second law of thermodynamics); Johannes Kepler (discoverer of the laws of planetary motion); Carolus Linnaeus (father of modern taxonomy); James Clerk Maxwell (formulator of the electromagnetic theory of light); Gregor Mendel (father of genetics); Isaac Newton (discoverer of the universal laws of gravitation); Blaise Pascal (major contributor to probability studies and hydrostatics); Louis Pasteur (formulator of the germ theory).

If an appreciation for math and the cause-and-effect workings of nature were sufficient to generate modern science, how does one explain the historical fact the the founders of modern science were all found in a *particular* culture that just happened to be shaped by a Judeo-Christian world view? Instead of measuring energy in joules, why don’t we measure it in platos or al-Asharis?

Of course, the cynics would claim these men were not *really* Christians. That is, they really didn’t *believe* in Christianity, but they professed such beliefs because they did not want to be persecuted. This is the “closet-atheist” hypothesis. But it doesn’t square with the facts.

Many of the founders of modern science were also very interested in theology. If you read Pascal, this is obvious. Mendel was a monk. Newton often said his interest in theology surpassed his interest in science. Newton did end his Principles with:

“This most beautiful system of sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being…This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God.”

As Charles Hummel notes,

“Newton’s religion was no mere appendage to his science; he would have been a theist no matter what his profession.”

Boyle set up Christian apologetics lectures. Babbage and Prout contributed to an apologetics series called the Bridgewater Treatises. Aggasiz, Cuvier, Fleming, Kelvin, and Linnaeus were what we now call ‘creationists.’ When I speak about Biblical beliefs that paved the way for science, I will use both Kepler and Pasteur to highlight two specific examples.

Furthermore, many of these founders of science lived at a time when others publicly expressed views quite contrary to Christianity - Hume, Hobbes, Darwin, etc. When Boyle argues against Hobbe’s materialism or Kelvin argues against Darwin’s assumptions, you don’t have a case of “closet atheists.”

Jerry — but Behe accepts “macro” evolution, as do many other ID advocates.

What Behe says is that Darwinian “macro” evolution, including human evolution, is a fact, but that it can’t account for all the biological structures we observe in nature.

Likewise, the explanatory filter doesn’t say “no way” to “macro” evolution — it just says that the “information” content of the genetic code points to intelligence — whether the designer developed the code gradually or not.

Some ID’s (e.g. Mike Gene) accept just about all of “macro” evolution except for a “front loading” of information.

The dispute between most TEs and most IDs is about the meaning of “chance,” God’s action in nature, and natural theology (what we can know from God’s action in nature). These are important differences, but they don’t IMHO touch on the really hard issues for traditional Christians.

StephenB said: Guided evolution is well within the bounds of ID.

I respond: Yes, I completely agree. So, this is why I don’t understand the rancor from either side between TEs and IDs. “Guided evolution” is also well within the bounds of TE. At the end of the day, the differences between the two “camps” are tiny compared to our common differences with materialists and atheists.

becke,

There is another major difference between ID and TE’s that I see, Theologically the traditional God of Judeo Christian theology is thought of as omnipotent. During the enlightenment as the laws of nature became revealed a revised image of how God accomplished his works developed. One way was that all was set in motion from the beginning and there was no need for God to constantly interfere to repair or reset this intricate clock that He started at the beginning of the universe.

The TE’s hold to this view and include evolution in this world view. ID says the evidence does not support this view for evolution and the TE’s reply that this means ID holds to a lesser God because of the necessity of constant intervention. There are other issues such as evil and theodicy that get brought up and discussed by some here.

TE’s often challenge ID on theology as well as on science.

Jerry — I think you are confusing TE with Deism.

All of the Christian TEs I know reject Deism. They instead refer to primary and secondary causation, and see God as ominpotently and actively engaged in guiding evolution for his purposes, though without radical intervention that would leave a trace against the stochastic pattern of ordinary development. Many of these TEs also accept a particular, “spiritual” intervention by God in the creation / impartation of the humnan “soul” and / or the imago dei.

Some Christian TEs I know might approach this through more of an open theism model, which views these ideas of causation differently. But none accept Deism.

becke,

I am not sure Behe accepts Darwinian macro evolution. I believe he says there is no evidence to support it but neither is there any evidence to support any other mechanism. In the Edge of Evolution Behe specifically undermines Darwinian macro evolution.

jerry,

Actually, TEs at least can (and I know some do) admit that the way evolution is commonly presented encourages atheism. It’s one of my biggest complaints with the topic, and I think nonsense and philosophy is routinely shoehorned into its explanation. Calling evolution ‘unguided’ is, for my money, unscientific unless you have a test for guidance/design. So is calling fundamental aspects of it ‘random’, which is a loaded word - from our perspective it may be random for all practical purposes, but that’s different from well and truly random.

I’m also not sure ID proponents MUST reject macroevolution. I could be wrong, but doesn’t Behe accept this? I can’t see how he couldn’t yet still accept common descent, but I could be wrong on this point.

Now, with that said: Unless there’s something going on here (quotes being taken out of context, etc, and I have no reason to believe so at the moment) the quotes provided from Miller and Levine’s books are pretty damning. And I will outright admit that Ayala has always struck me as, frankly, a con man: I honestly suspect that his past takes on evolution and God (Which amounted to ‘Darwin did God a service because creation is so utterly terrible and depraved that only a monster could have allowed it, but thanks to Darwinism it means God didn’t create it’) amounted to well-poisoning. Making a evolution seem to describe such a ludicrous and horrible world that atheism was the only sane option, and offering up a ‘reconciliation’ any sane person would reject as described. Miller I have less knowledge of, but at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if he played the same game.

On the other hand, maybe someone can help me out here. Just who ARE ‘The TEs’? Because Miller and Ayala are just two guys, and terrible examples. Dinesh D’Souza is certainly another TE, but he takes the tact that evolution is routinely and horribly abused in description by atheists to support philosophy that the science simply cannot do. Michel Heller was quoted here once as he won the Templeton prize, but he seemed to take an Augustinian view that there is actual chance from the perspective of God. Collins is a TE, but I recall him having some praise for Dembski and generally trying to stake out a position as a TE sympathetic to ID. In fact, most of the TEs I can think of tend to regard ID more with polite disagreement than outright hostility. Again, I could be wrong - I’d love to see more examples of this hostility. I know the American Scientific Affiliation had some issues with ID, or so I recall.

becke,

That is not what I get from reading the ASA blog or reading the books they recommend. Why does it make a difference whether God used primary and secondary causes and aren’t these really the same anyway once you know the pre determined outcome? I always found this a specious argument, Anyway the evidence does not point to secondary causes.

Interesting you would use the word “many” and not all when referring to the creation of humans.

Bill (#15) — I’ve raised issues I have with Giberson and his new book directly with him on the ASA list. I agree 100% that the slights from the TE “side” are equally unwarranted.

To me, though, God “covering his tracks” isn’t a fair statement of most TE views. Is any stochastic process in nature an instance of God deceiving us by “covering his tracks?” When we say a new-born baby is a special gift from God, are we making God a liar because from our human perspective what sperm fertilized what egg seems random?

I agree that TEs who argue that God cannot have left empirical evidence of design in nature overstate their case. But likewise, it seems an overstatement to me to say that God must have left empirical evidence of design in nature (apart from the ordinary human experience of beauty, awe, and such in the presence of nature’s grandeur).

Whether such “traces” exist in DNA or some other biological structure seems to me an empirical question that can only be settled by looking at the data, not by preconceptions about what God “must” or “must not” have done.

Er, ‘that there is no actual chance from the perspective of God’ that is.

Could somebody please tell me that if God guided evolution either by primary or secondary causes and then covered his tracks, how each such event is not an example of special creation?

Jerry said: Why does it make a difference whether God used primary and secondary causes and aren’t these really the same anyway once you know the pre determined outcome?

I respond: No, they aren’t the same. There’s a long tradition in Christian theology concerning primary and secondary causation. Read, e.g., Aquinas’ Summa Contra Gentiles. It’s been an important argument against attributing evil, particularly human evil, to God.

Jerry said: Could somebody please tell me that if God guided evolution either by primary or secondary causes and then covered his tracks, how each such event is not an example of special creation?

I respond: well, “covered his tracks” isn’t accurate. But otherwise — exactly! It isn’t all that different, IMHO.

Hi. This is a serious question, and not a joke. I have honestly been too embarrassed to ask someone face-to-face in fear of being too naive:

do TEs believe in praying for the sick, or anything else?

that is, they don’t seem to think God gets involved in nature. So, do they think he gets involved in cancer? Would he reach down and cause someone to be healed? If so, doesn’t this violate their whole argument about God being hands-off?

I’m not sure how the bridge that gap. I didn’t really feel satisfied with the theistic evolution paper in Mere Creation, so I was unable to get any guidance there and hoped that someone here could respond.

—–becke: “I respond: Yes, I completely agree (That ID allows for guided evolution.)”

“So, this is why I don’t understand the rancor from either side between TEs and IDs. “Guided evolution” is also well within the bounds of TE. At the end of the day, the differences between the two “camps” are tiny compared to our common differences with materialists and atheists.”

I don’t agree. I think that you are dismissing the main area of contention. It is precisely the notion of “guided evolution” that TEs cannot tolerate. There is no teleology in Darwin, and Darwinism is the defining principle for most TEs. So I am not getting your point here.

Interesting to note that in Psalm 77:19, God does indeed cover his tracks:

Your path led through the sea,
your way through the mighty waters,
though your footprints were not seen.

I love that verse!! What God does is His perogative.

Becke -

I think the problem is that you are failing to distinguish between Darwinian macro-evolution and plain macro-evolution. Behe, for instance, believes in macro-evolution, but not Darwinian macro-evolution.

That is, genomes were front-loaded with information to guide the changes that were made. That is an ID option. However, what these TheoEvos are saying is that this option is simply un-Christian.

But if you look at the evidence, the evidence is clearly against Darwinian mechanisms, and the amount of non-descent-based homology (called convergent evolution by most biologists) is staggering, and indicates that some other factor is in play. The three main options are (a) close your eyes and pretend that this isn’t significant, (b) there are common design patterns that a creator used in creating organisms, or (c) life was pre-loaded with the information to build these types of structures. (a) is the only non-ID option. What these people are saying is that choosing (b) or (c) or some combination of all three is simply un-Christian.

Becke. Thanks for your thoughtful contributions.

You said “TEs who argue that God cannot have left empirical evidence of design in nature overstate their case.”

This is exactly the claim that separates TE and ID. With this claim they intentionally divorce themselves from the inclusive ID camp. They cannot accommodate Mike Behe in their camp either. The detection of design by any means other than a mystical feeling is anathema to those in the TE camp.

Also you say “it seems an overstatement to me to say that God must have left empirical evidence of design in nature”

Of course that would be a silly statement and you will never find that claimed by any prominent ID proponent.

ID is a target of ridicule first and foremost only because the philosophical difficulty that arises if one agrees that there is an objective way of detecting design.

Bill, I wasn’t intending to charge God with deception at all. You implied in comment #15 that the TE view has God “covering his tracks” (at least that’s how I understood what you said). My response is that a stochastic process doesn’t mean God is “covering his tracks” in some kind of deceptive way — which I think we agree about? To me, this means that if God created life as we know it using stochastic processes, it’s unfair to say God is then “covering his tracks.” It just means God chose to use stochastic processes, as he evidently often does.

I’ve read the Design Inference and many of your other essays, as well as most of Mike Behe’s work — which is one reason I was surprised by the “covering his tracks” reference to the TE position.

I agree with you 100% that when TE’s say God’s creative activity must be always and entirely stochastic, they are overstating their case. I am not defending Ken Miller — I personally have no taste for his rhetoric.

johnnyB — you mention convergent evolution. I’d classify Simon Conway Morris and his book Life’s Solution as TE. If you’d classify that as ID, that’s fine with me. It illustrates that the “boundaries” between TE and ID can be quite permeable. If you think all TE’s can’t tolerate “guided evolution,” then I think you misunderstand the nuances of different TE positions. I know some prominent TEs who are Calvinists and who believe emphatically that God guided each step.

TomRiddle — most of the Christian TEs I know believe in miracles and intercessory prayer. Some I know personally are quite “charismatic” in their theology in this regard. There is no conflict in this position — I think even most Christian IDs believe that God ordinarly does not do miracles. Life generally happens according to the usual laws of nature and God’s providential guidance is not usually directly empirically evident. But sometimes God does heal or guide in sudden, miraculous ways, as he chooses to do so.

Since I’ve been admonished about not posting too much, I’ll bow out. Thanks for the conversation. My hope and prayer is that people who follow Christ will be able to debate and discuss these questions without flames and wars.

Slightly off the topic of Miller’s apparent schizophrenia of beliefs,

Belief in a universe which has rationality at is core is the fruit of the Theistic Philosophy which holds that the universe is the product of a rational mind. Materialism, which holds that chance is ultimately responsible for the universe and life, offers no such rational core to its basis and in fact impedes science. For example, Einstein’s greatest blunder was the cosmological constant he inserted in his equation to reflect the steady state “materialistic” theory for the universe.i.e. materialism was the true source of his greatest blunder.

“God does not play dice!”
Einstein

“God is known by nature in his works and by doctrine in his revealed word”
Galileo

as well I found this book that looks very interesting

Scientists of Faith

http://www.rae.org/scifaith.html

excerpt:

Everyone knows that science and the Christian faith are incompatible-right? Secular thought often portrays religion as the enemy of science, but the truth is that many of the world’s greatest scientific discoveries were made by persons of faith, seeking to honor God and His creation. Scientists of Faith relates the personal stories of forty-eight scientists and provides a brief overview of each person’s contribution in their own particular field. Included are such notables as Johannes Kepler, Blaise Pascal, Michael Faraday, Gregor Mendel, and George Washington Carver.

I recommend looking at the list of scientists on the site it is truly a impressive list. It makes me wonder if there are any atheists at all who may have founded any uncontested branch of science.

TE’s are not all of one mind, all you can say about what they all have in common is that they claim to believe in some type of Godhead and some form of evolution. Besides those 2 claims of common ground there is a wide variety of opinion depending on how they percieve God. How they perceive God determines how they perceive evolution. Really TE’s are advocates of a religious philosophy more then anything else. Whereas ID’s are more then anything else advocates of a scientific paradigm leaving religious philosophy out of it.

There two approaches to evolution is what is causing the friction between the two types of people.

The TE’s are mostly criticial of ID based upon theology and philosophy. Some try to argue against ID based upon science, but invariably they come across as either arrogant and foolish (Miller) in their attempt to earn a living off of supporting the atheist establishment in their attack on religion, or they come across as out of their league when it comes to the science.

They have a view of God which can’t allow God to be intimately involved in our world because that would bring in the problem of why God “allows bad things” to happen. Therefore their God is not involved in our world to any great degree either because he isn’t able or doesn’t want to. And they claim that that idea is theologically superior to the implication of ID of a God who is intimately involved in our world, at least in the design of life forms.

To them a God who doesn’t want to get involved or cannot get very involved in our world is a superior type of God then a God who can and does get involved in our world.

Why?

Because a God who can and does get involved in our world is not the type of God who fit’s into their theological conception. It’s not only their inability to deal with the “problem of evil”, it’s also that many of them have an idea of a God who may be impersonal to one degree or another. Their God may be some kind of energy being, some kind of cosmic spirit without a mind or intelligence or personality, without omnipotence and without omniscience. Not all TE’s have the same view of God even though they may claim to be a Christian, or a Jew etc. For example there are many different types of “Christian” philosophies and Jewish philosophies. Some advocate–like the former Vatican astronomer George Coyne–a theology where God is some unknowable cosmic love spirit something-or-other which set the universe into motion, then having nothing to do with the universe after that, no design or rhyme or reason of any type, just sat back and watched evolution happen for billions of years to see what would happen, and then sends love vibes to humans when humans come into existance by chance. From that extreme negligible type of God to varities of that or other impersonal or impotent or uncaring types of conceptions of God can be found among TE’s.

Why they think a God who wouldn’t want to be involved with life here on earth very closely, as if there is something else for God to be doing, is theologically preferable to an active caring interested God, is based on their ignorance of God. They don’t why God would allow the world to be the way it is if God was in control, therefore God can’t for some reason or another be allowing the world to be the way it is. They are the judges of what God is or isn’t, God is what they say God is, that is good theology according to them.

For them to claim that ID implies bad theology in comparison to their own is laughable.

Dr. Dembski, just a comment on becke supposedly “posting too much on this thread”. He posted once with a direct comment on the matter at hand and his subsequent six posts, prior to your adminishment, were all responses to direct comments or questions addressed to him, including one from you! In what sense was he “posting too much”?

THE very definition of information would be - “God SAID - Let there be light - fruit bearing trees - seeds = INFORMATION - “Front Loaded indeed. I hope not, but suspect that all this tiptoeing around Design (”inference”) may cloud the “Eyes to See” given to an open heart and mind when just observing what is - A. a Creation or B. a happening of some sort. I bet most here would agree to the possibility of being “educated” out of our minds. Miller is a prime example - and not maybe either. The natural mind is ever persistent to its own truth if not discerned by the “Mind of Christ” and as He said - “They have their reward”.

The definition of information?”

Information is nt of energy/matter in quantum teleportation experiments, so information should be rigorously defined transcendent of any energy/matter basis. Information clearly deserves a concise definition that is completely separate and also one that maybe even foundational of any energy/matter considerations.

Information is do^min^ant of energy/matter…

I think the term Theistic Evolutionist is too weak. Theistic Darwinist is more accurate.

Definition of Theistic Darwinist:

1. believes in Darwinism
2. despises ID
3. claims to believe in God

Mike Behe, Mike Gene, many others are TE’s that are friendly to ID. The term Theistic Darwinist would not apply to them, but it would apply to Ken Miller, Keith Miller, George Murphy, Jeremy Mohn (of PT), Burt Humberg (of PT), Wesley Elsberry (of PT), PvM (of PT), Karl Giberson, Michael Dowd, and many of the Darwinist folks at Baylor, SMU, Wheaton, and others…

StephenB,

Thank you. I’m not familiar with most of those names, but I was hoping someone would give me a list to go on. I’ll cede that you clearly know more TEs than I do, and thus a lot of your TE-hostility may be due to greater information.

I’ve seen PvM do his song and dance, though, and I’d place him right alongside Ayala. Everyone else, only a passing familiarity at best.

Who started this?
They did. But it doesn’t matter.
We’ll finish it.

The most offensive thing in Miller’s new rag is the inane claim that somehow ID is a threat to civilization.

That is unbelievably stupid and/or hypocritical. The Judeo/Christian values upon which America was founded are diametrically opposed to just about everything Darwinism, and it’s undergirding materialist religion, stands for.

History attests to this in no uncertain terms.

I wonder if Miller’s name in Greek or Hebrew adds up to 666?
Can’t be, he isn’t smart enuff for that job.

I am responding to DaveScot’s comment about, about the absence of backbone amongst TEs. Much of my response is taken from something I wrote 3 years ago for a different but similar audience, as explained below. It fits now here, thus I mainly just edited that a little.

To begin with, IMO DaveScot has given voice to a view that is rather widely held among advocates of ID–though I want to point out right away that I know several leading ID advocates, including fellows of TDI, who simply do not share this view and indeed who would repudiate the tone and lack of discernment that the quoted paragraph contains. DaveScot speaks as an individual, and his views on this are not shared by at least several people who are considered leading ID advocates. This is my post, and I’m not going to drag those folks into this, but they exist, and there may be more of them then DaveScot would want to admit. They are not figments of my imagination.

I have however interacted with a number of ID advocates who agree with DaveScot that TEs are “spineless appeasers.” In a few instances this might be an accurate assessment, but as a blanket statement it’s both highly inaccurate and insulting. DaveScot certainly knows it’s insulting, and he probably doesn’t care how accurate it is.

It isn’t even original. DaveScot said the same thing on UDC back in May 2005, less than three weeks after I had responded to this particular sentiment–using highly similar language. My comments were posted to a very large private list for ID supporters and some others (such as myself), and I would not be surprised if DaveScot was present there to see them (I do not know for a fact that he was).

Instead of writing a brand new response to him now, I will edit the one I made 3 years ago, in order to remove a few specific references that were specific to persons on that list and to keep on focus here. Most of what follows below is taken directly from my comments at that time. Again, the larger context was that I resented the generalization that TEs lack backbone–that they are just seeking acceptance from secular academics and smothering their religious views to gain that acceptance. The image in my own mind was of Churchill, in parliament in 1931, seeing the “boneless wonder” in front of him in the person of Ramsay MacDonald. A famous speech, obviously, and it captured well the impression I was forming of how some ID adherents were seeing TEs in general. The immediate context was the editorial that “Nature” ran about ID, accompanying the article on the Dover trial that was its cover story in April 2005.

What did I tell my friends on that list, at that time? Here is the edited (see above) text:

Nature is absolutely right, IMO, that it is religious scientists (the noun here leaves me out, unfortunately, or I’d happily include myself) who are vitally important in this conversation. To be perfectly frank, a lot of the ones I know who might otherwise be more sympathetic to giving helpful comments about ID in their classes, have been alienated from the ID movement by the type of rhetoric we find above [I was responding to similar comments by someone other than DaveScot]. In 1922, Bryan referred to TE as “the anesthetic that dulls the pain while the faith is removed,” thus in a few words shortcutting any serious attempt to have productive conversations with most religious scientists at that time. (And the early 1920s were the watershed years for this type of conversation, with Warfield and Strong and Orr and other more thoughtful people passing from the scene and with the militant anti-modernism of the self-styled “fundamentalists” coming on strong.) I’m not claiming that ID is responsible for Bryan, but it isn’t hard to find similar kinds of comments, foreclosing conversation with many Christian scientists who are TEs and who are not afraid to speak about their faith on their highly secular campuses.

The type of personal and intellectual trivialization depicted [in your post] is obviously not helpful to anyone; we surely agree about that. But IMO both as a Christian scholar and as a scholar who does specialize in studying Christianity and science, the religious scientists on secular campuses are the key people in this conversation. I have met one or two who might fit your [description], or Churchill’s description of the “spineless wonder” sitting before him in Parliament. Nearly all of them do not.

Let me suggest a few of the reasons why many religious scientists do not support ID on their campuses. (And yes, I realize that there are also other religious scientists on secular campuses who do support ID but are literally afraid to say so b/c they haven’t got tenure yet, or b/c they want to keep getting NIH grants. I am not pretending that they don’t exist, they clearly do and some are on this list. Nor do I mean to imply that they are the real spineless wonders, for they are not.)

This is what I am hearing from those religious scientists on secular campuses who do not support ID. These are the main things I hear, in no particular order:

(1) Evolution is a valid theory, or “true”. By this they usually mean that common descent is a reasonable scientific conclusion from the evidence–esp the historical evidence, which some IDs tend to ignore b/c ID officially brackets the age/historical sequence question. Age for these folks is just not negotiable or bracketable, it can’t be put aside for discussion at a later date. It’s a fact that shapes our interpretation of other facts.

(2) It is unclear how one would do science differently with ID, when it comes to working in laboratories and observatories and in the field. There is no “there” there, in terms of an alternative theory for contextualizing stuff. Keep in mind the historical comment above–in the historical sciences, history is foundational. And in some sciences that are not strictly speaking historical–particle physics would be a nice example–what we know historically (e.g., that the heavier elements have been built up from H and He in the interiors of stars over billions of years, or that the cosmic background radiation matches perfectly with theoretical blackbody radiation from the big bang) makes sense in light of what we know when historical questions are not directly considered.

(3) Theodicy. This is perhaps the number one reason why secular scientists do not believe in God. As long as ID brackets conversation about theodicy and other theological issues, people like Jack Haught (whose theology I do not embrace) and John Polkinghorne (whose theology I generally do embrace) are going to make a lot more sense to the religious scientists who talk to secular scientists. These religious scientists are not embarrassed by their faith, and they are quite willing to talk about it openly. They simply recognize that this is a conversation at the level of theology and metaphysics, not at the level of science. And they tend to believe that conversations of that type do not produce knock-down arguments that an unbiased, rational person has to accept.

(4) ID smells a lot like YEC to many religious scientists. A good number of religious scientists have come from very conservative religious backgrounds. For various reasons that I won’t spell out here so as not to offend some on this list [I was thinking here of some YECs], they have had some tough personal struggles with some baggage relative to science, and they don’t want to relive those experiences. I know that ID is not YEC, and I think you know that I know that. But the tone of some ID stuff, with its highly negative comments about evolution and its alleged cultural consequences, only echoes the tone of the stuff they have left behind. Mike Behe, they might find reasonable and even a little persuasive; but [others] they find unreasonable and even offputting. Throw in the rhetoric about “dancing on gravestones” (claims that we’re living in the last generation of evolution, claims that sound like the Millerites waiting for the second coming), and they start looking for the exits.

(5) Different views of science as a religious vocation. This isn’t usually phrased as I just phrased it, but that’s what is meant when people talk about discipling their graduate students while helping them to write publishable papers. They aren’t encouraging their students to challenge “Darwinism,” rather they are encouraging their students to live strong religious lives while doing quality mainstream science. They haven’t been convinced that this constitutes a contradiction to or betrayal of their religious commitments, and they don’t appreciate efforts in the popular religious press to paint them as spineless wonders. The biggest problem with such efforts is not so much the insult (although that is real and noticed), it’s the fact that these very faithful servants (as many of them are) are having their vocations written off. That isn’t how one gains support from people who share some of one’s concerns.

I do not see the Nature editorial as an invitation to “treachery.” [I quoted here someone I was responding to] Rather, I see Nature’s call for a broader conversation as an opportunity for IDs to call for an even broader conversation. The problem you may find, however, is that the broader conversation is *openly* about theology and metaphysics, not simply explanatory difficulties of “Darwinism” in accounting for flagella and Cambrian phyla. And that’s just where many of those religious scientists already are. Fact is, the Brits (Nature) can take this angle more easily than we Americans can, b/c they aren’t constrained by a First Amendment that is being misapplied to public education. But at the college level, at least, even a Eugenie Scott admits that serious conversation about religion is permissible. Why not take them up on their suggestion?

Ted

Ted,

Thank you for your post.

For those who do not know anything about Ted Davis, he is one of the more reasonable men on the planet. He is not an ID supporter but is a defender of ID to those who criticize it. In other words Ted has defended ID people on the ASA site a multitude of times and if we want a valuable resource about non ID religious view points he is the person to ask.

He along with David Opderbeck are more that willing to discuss ID and be fair about it without being a proponent of it.

So I Ted comes around often because we can only be the better. He is an expert on the history of science so I am sure he will be valuable to us on this when he comes here.

The last paragraph of my post should be

So I hope Ted comes around often because we can only be the better. He is an expert on the history of science so I am sure he will be valuable to us on this when he comes here.

Ted,
If a TE scientist, such as Miller, continues to deny the overwhelming evidence of unexplained complexity in life, when repeatedly exposed to it, as Miller has been, and continues to maintain that Darwinism has full explanatory power and is not even in doubt, as Miller has repeatedly done (trashing ID proponents in the process I might add). All the while maintaining that he is a “devout Christian” who believes in Almighty God, has earned full right to the term absence of backbone (spineless in my book). I might even add that he has earned full right to the term hypocrite as well. Although only God can truly judge the full intent of a man’s heart, and far be it from me to say I know all the motivations of any man’s heart, from all outward appearances that I can see of the man he is indeed a spineless hypocrite who is more afraid of what his peers might say than what Almighty God might think.

There are people who are sincere, will conduct themselves in an honorable fashion, but still be deeply mistaken….

There are lots of TE’s that fall in that category. John Sanford was a TE, I was a TE, Henry Morris of (gasp) ICR was a TE, Caroline Crocker was a TE, I presume Bill Dembski was a TE….probably 80% of everyone in the ID movement was TE…..

There are TE’s, however, who conduct themselves in a manner that’s pretty questionable….I don’t have much hope for them because it is apparent, they are quite willing to resort to fabrication and misrepresentation to attack ID.

A more representative term might be Theistic Darwinist….because the term “Darwinist” carries the suggestion of having unsavory qualities…

Ted,

Do you believe that ID is not significantly different than “creationism”?

bornagain77,

I understand your point about Miller, and I also understand that DaveScot was specifically thinking of Miller in his comment above. I’m less willing myself to confine Miller to perdition (that’s up to God, and I suspect that God is unhappy with all of us), but DaveScot seems to generalize far too quickly here.

I have personal knowledge of the religious lives and views of many Christian scientists, and many of the TEs I know don’t hesitate to affirm the bodily resurrection and many other biblical truths. And yes, many of them also think that evolution (I hesitate to use the word “Darwinism,” since it has become an ideologically loaded term for many here, even more than “evolution” itself) looks like it’s true–at least mainly true, if not necessarily the complete picture of how nature works.

I realize that lots of people don’t understand how this can be true–either (they might think) those scientists are just compartmentalizing their thoughts; or they are just not thinking very hard about how their religious and scientific lives relate; or at worst they are just hypocrites, even spineless one.

Many of the people I’m thinking of here, bornagain77, simply don’t fit the three categories I just offered. They are genuine Christian believers, with active and strong religious lives, who are not afraid to live openly as Christians within the scientific community; and, they have thought long and hard about how their faith and their professional lives relate to one another. They are not hypocrites and they have backbones. They may not be visible to you here, and the larger culture tries to deny their existence, but they exist in good numbers.

Part of the problem, IMO, is that some participants in the culture wars want to force people to the extremes–they want Dawkins to represent science, and they want Ham to represent Christianity. Dawkins is a scientist, and Ham is a Christian, but that’s as far as I would be willing to go with that view. Miller has apparently denied even being a TE, whatever one may make of that–it’s just so often a matter of how terms are being defined, and by whom, isn’t it?

If there were no culture war involving origins, IMO, then Ken Miller and Mike Behe would both be seen by many as a couple of Catholic biologists who differ on the minutia of how to understand our present ignorance of certain biological phenomena. One puts more emphasis on what we don’t know (thinking that we will probably never be able to know it), and the other puts more emphasis on what we have already learned (thinking that probably we will continue to learn a lot more). Their theological views are not very far apart on some important points–Mike even talks about this in his essay for “Debating Design.” And, IMO as an historian of science and religion, Mike’s views on evolution, God, and design are not much different from those of the first American Darwinian, Asa Gray. Gray is usually seen as a classic example of a TE, and IMO without the culture war Mike Behe would be seen as a TE also. And surely, Mike is not spineless, any more than Gray was–or Francis Collins is, or Owen Gingerich is, or … too many to list.

In my honest opinion, it seems that once you are a Christian or theist and you allow miracles in your worldview you have opened the door to God and have no way of keeping him out. For TE’s there seems to be a disconnect between miracles, such as Jesus’ resurrection, and His intervention in other parts of History, al la Evolution. The problem I see with such views is that it becomes problematic trying to up hold the schism between a belief in an active personal God and a belief that he has kept his hands out of the formation of one of his most precious creations. It would seem to follow, that once you have a personal interacting God, there is little grounds for excluding him from life’s history. At least that’s how I see TE’s worldview.

Or to put it as a question, why would God interact with his creation and yet, have nothing to do with its formation? Christian TE’s and IDist both try to uphold a God who interacts with His creation, I simply think the latter does a better job of being consistent.

I once had a friend ask, “Once you’ve let God in the door what’s to keep him out?”

I hope this all makes sense as I have been writing in haste.

Thoughts or Criticism?

Ted,

You can make a case that Behe is a “TE”.

The problem is that ID is distorted and its advocates are demeaned and slandered, and those who claim to be believers in a Creator — and often claim to be Christians — hold the coats of those doing it and even join in the kicking when the subject is safely on the ground.

Miller is one of them.

I don’t think anybody here objects to criticism of ID or attempts to refute it.

The leading lights of ID clearly do not hold common descent to be a disqualifying view for joining their club.

But why is the “Edge of Evolution” not science? Why isn’t it something that would make a reasonable, objective person go hmmm? Or at least address it seriously?

And why is it wrong to attempt to use a measurable methodology to attempt to find design in nature?

There is nothing wrong with attacking (honestly) the measurements or the methodology, but what the opponents do is attack the attempt. And some prominent TEs seem to do it on a religious basis.

Ted,

Most of us here prefer to discuss science and often avoid theology since it can become very loaded with people of different Christian faiths, Jews, Muslims and some agnostics posting here. Also most of us are not theology trained other than what one would expect from someone who is religious and attends services for his or her religion. Thus, theology does not get anywhere near the level of discussion as it does on ASA.

Even while we love science, most here are also not trained scientists but there are doctors, many engineers, computer scientists or just well educated and well read people. So there are many here who have good brain power but are just not practicing scientists. The trained biologist who post here are generally supporters of the Darwinian paradigm so we have some opposition who post also.

Many will also discuss cultural issues and philosophy but the heart of what ID is about is science. So it rubs a lot of us the wrong way when many, including most at ASA, deride ID as anti science or not science.

So I am sure you will be getting lots of science questions if you decide to come here periodically. I know I have many but will wait to ask them till the basic TE/ID battle front is diffused. Then we can see where we disagree on science and maybe theology. And by the way many of us here disagree on the science underlying ID.

Ted, if you or any of your colleagues want to transcend science and discuss philosophy and theology, I, for one, would welcome any such discussion. Indeed, I have several questions that I would ask of the TEs, but I will not burden you with all of them at this time.

Still, if you would honor me with one brief answer, I would appreciate it. Theistic evolutionists, in general, attempt to reconcile their Christianity with neo-Darwinism. This is all very confusing to me.

On the one hand, the Bible teaches that God’s handiwork has been made manifest in his creation. Indeed, the whole point about it is that God WANTS to be discovered through his designs. As Psalm 19 instructs us, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” And, of course we read in Romans 1:20, that the invisible things are clearly seen “being understood by the things that are visible.” Now I would expect even a mainstream Christian to take these passages seriously, but a “devout” Christian ought to be downright passionate about them. According to St. Paul, this is a self-evident truth, so much so, that anyone, Christian, agnostic, cynic, or anyone else who questions it is “without excuse.”

On the other hand, Darwinism teaches that, in the unlikely event that there is a God, his handiwork is certainly not manifest in nature. Quite the contrary, design is an “illusion.” Obviously, that means that even if God does exist, he certainly does NOT WANT to be discovered through his designs, which means, of course, that he did not reveal himself in nature. Unlike the teleological view proposed above, Darwin’s world view is totally non-teleological. Even those TEs who say that God’s design is “inherent in the evolutionary process” agree with Darwin that such a design is undetectable. At best, it can only be believed. Obviously, a non-detectable design can hardly be a revelation.

So we have two propositions: [A] the Bible teaches that design is detectable, that God revealed himself in nature, and that God wants to be discovered through nature. [B] TEs insist that design is NOT detectable, that God did NOT reveal himself in nature, and that God does NOT want to be discovered through nature. My question, then, is fairly simple: How do TEs reconcile [A] with [B], since they insist that they these two world views are compatible?

I think that “spineless” is too strong a term to use for many TE’s. It implies a clear knowledge of what is right, and refusing to speak out in support of that knowledge in spite of the fact that it would do some good, because is afraid of personal repercussions.

I suspect that the problem is more likely lack of proper knowledge, or perspective on that knowledge, or simply the lack of clear thinking, perhaps due to the uncritical acceptance of popular (in the scientific community) memes.

Let me give you an example. Frances Collins, in chapter 1 of The Language of God, gives the story of his conversion, then in chapter 2 meets several objections to theism commonly used by scientists. Clearly, he is sticking his neck out for theism and Christianity. In chapter 3, he uses arguments for God’s supernatural involvement in the Big Bang, complete with fine tuning, that are familiar to most of us at UD.

After such bold moves, the first two paragraphs of chapter 4 are stunners:

The advances of science in the modern age have come at the cost of certain traditional reasons for belief in God. When we had no idea how the universe came into existence, it was easier to ascribe it all to an act of God, or many separate acts of God. Similarly, until Kepler, Copernicus, and Galileo upset the applecart in the sixteenth century, the placement of Earth at the center of the majestic starry heavens seemed to represent a powerful argument for the existence of God. If He put us on center stage, He must have built it all for us. When heliocentric science forced a revision of this perception, many believers were shaken up.

But a third pillar of belief continued to carry considerable weight: the complexity of earthly life, implying to any reaso