I don’t either and I hope you don’t think that I feel that someone inclined to believe that God used evolution to create biodiversity can’t be a true Christian.

The point I’m making is that there are those who so zealously believe that one can’t consider (much less accept) ID (much less YEC) and be a credible scientist that they are willing to use methods that can only be considered immoral (slander, economic threats etc.) to drive these people field. Further, I’m saying it is imperative for all persons of good will to confront those who do this to the point where it is recognized that this is not acceptable.

Of course, it is, and must remain, perfectly acceptable to rebut ID with regard to methods and conclusions.

But, I don’t see the link between opposition to Singer and opposition to TE as a close one. (Obviously, or I’d cease to think of myself as a TE.) My own sense is (and certainly many would not share it) that a lot of other things have been involved in getting to this point than simply evolution, or even simply naturalism. Just to throw out one fact, the churches’ support for governments and the miliary in wartime, when so many people on both sides are praying for victory to the same God, has probably had a much greater influence on advancing secularism and even atheism than has evolution–even if evolution did make it possible, as Dawkins has famously said, to hold atheism in an “intellectually fulfilled” manner.

Thank you for your answer but you didn’t need three words (or a lot more actually)

It was “yes” you believe (and understand) that ID is not creationism.

My point is, that for reasons such as these it is not hard to understand why many Christian scientists see ID as too close to YEC for comfort–and nearly all Christian scientists realize that YEC just isn’t true, so they keep their hands off of ID.

W/regard to culture wars, whose side would you rather be on? A YECer who believes that life is sacred and love is holy or Pete Singer who advocates infanticide?

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

In 3 words, tribune7, yes and no.

You asked me this, I think, b/c I had said that one of the reasons that Christian scientists stay away from ID (and remember, here I was being a reporter, conveying what I am hearing; I am not a scientist myself) is that they think it “smells a lot like YEC,” is how I put it. My own view is that ID is not YEC, and I’ve made that case in print at least twice. I believe that strongly, despite what most scientists think and what many other academics think. But most of those people don’t know very much about the history of religion and science in this country, and they don’t really understand what YEC really is. They don’t, e.g. (to offer just one crucial example), understand that the YE part of YEC is driven substantially by the belief that a good God simply would not allow animal death before the fall of Adam & Eve. It’s a subtlety that escapes the casual critic of creationism, but it’s not a subtle point actually–without that belief, many creationists would be more open to an “old” universe and earth.

But that’s not part of the ID agenda, and that is just one very significant reason why ID is not “creationism” in the usual sense (ie, it is not just another form of YEC). It’s not “creationism in a cheap tuxedo.

And, the historians I know who actually work on the history of creationism do not believe this either.

On the other hand, it’s hard to convince many people that ID is not creationism, for many reasons, but one important reason is that the tone and tactics employed by some ID leaders sound and look pretty familiar. For YECs, evolution is the worst case scenario, in terms of its perceived cultural and religious consequences. For the late Henry Morris, evolution was literally Satanic–given by Satan to Nimrod at Babel. The bottom line is that, at least since Bryan’s time in the 1920s, many Christians have demonized evolution, blaming it for all manner of social and spiritual ills, in much the same manner that Dawkins and company blame religion itself, or the very idea of God, for all manner of ills today.

I would suggest, tribune7, as respectfully as I can, that one doesn’t have to look too far to find a similar tone emanating from ID circles. And, one also finds a very similar strategy, when it comes to public education: just as YECs have tried to get evolution taught as a “theory,” by which they really mean, “a mere theory that is little more than wishful thinking,” (they do not mean a “theory” as in atomic theory or Newton’s theory of gravitation), so ID’s have tried to get evidence against evolution taught in biology classes.

Please don’t read what I just wrote as an implicit attack on “teaching the controversy.” My views on that are more complicated than a simple inference to a conclusion, and I am not going further with that now. My point is, that for reasons such as these it is not hard to understand why many Christian scientists see ID as too close to YEC for comfort–and nearly all Christian scientists realize that YEC just isn’t true, so they keep their hands off of ID.

That isn’t lacking backbone; it’s just (from their point of view) good judgment.

The culture wars do make it pretty hard to see the truth, and that cuts in all directions.

Your statement reveals a most glaring ignorance.

I appears you’ve never heard of about 3/4 of the worlds greatest “accomplished, successful and well respected” scientists.

It also appears your units of measure for ‘accomplished’ etc., are all out of line with fact. You mistake mere notoriety and wealth with accomplishments, success and respect.

Your argument is not unreasonable. Many of the theistic evolutionists, when wearing their Darwinist hat, assert that God’s attitude towards nature is “hands off”. Yet, when wearing their Sunday hat, they have no problem believing that God (and Jesus) took a very interventionist attitude towards nature, as recorded in most of the books of the Bible from the Pentateuch onwards, and particularly in the New Testament, where natural laws are violated on an average of probably once per page. (For example, does not Denis Lamoreaux, who despises ID for introducing an “unscientific” discontinuity into nature, believe without embarrassment that Jesus walked on water, raised Lazarus from the dead, cursed the fig tree, and fed the five thousand?)

Why the double standard regarding direct divine intervention, whereby it’s OK to invoke divine intervention for historical miracles but taboo for pre-historic acts of creation of living things? It can’t be that belief in divine intervention in nature would engender distrust in natural laws and thus render natural science impossible. If that were the case, then the New Testament would engender more distrust in the regularity of nature than Genesis or ID would, since the New Testament miracles are far more recent, and far more numerous, than the acts of creation recorded in Genesis, or required by most ID proponents.

I suppose one possible answer is that some TEs don’t believe in miracles at all, and interpret the NT as a book in which the miracles aren’t meant to be taken literally. Yet the report of Ted Davis above suggests that this explanation probably would not cover most TEs, whom he regards as sincere believers in traditional Christianity. So what answer does that leave?

Apparently the reason is ultimately esthetic. TEs simply don’t like the style of a God who creates via sporadic miracles. They want a God who establishes regular laws and then leaves the universe to create life by itself. Well, they’re entitled to their taste in Gods, but why should either other Christians or other scientists be required to share their taste? What if someone has a taste for Gods who alternately employ natural causes and supernatural interventions? What theological objection can there be to that? Especially since that appears to be the notion of God found in both the Bible and later Christian tradition?

In short, I think you’re right. The denial of “intervention” is inconsistently made. If you can believe in a living God who raised Lazarus and if you believe in a God who can heal your dying child (as Becke says many TEs do), you can easily believe in a God who intervened to produce the Cambrian explosion. In fact, for such people, it’s illogical not to believe in such a God.

There’s a clash of world-views going on inside the head of every modern religious person, TE and ID proponents included. The modern side of us has been taught to regard nature as a closed system of impersonal causes. The religious side of us has been taught that nature is not an independent, autonomous entity, but a dependent and interactive one, one which always was and still is radically open and responsive to the divine personal will. Most of us accept a confused compromise between these two views of the world. That’s understandable and forgivable, because the questions involved are very difficult for even the greatest minds to think through. But the TEs shouldn’t be self-righteous about their particular confused compromise. They have no authority from either “science” or “theology” to declare the exact boundaries beyond which God may not have intervened in, or interacted with, nature.

T.

Ted wrote:

I agree with this: “there is no more need for intelligence in the creation of life than there is need for intelligence for a drop of water to fall to the ground by the action of gravity.” But that is only to say that neither life nor gravity would exist at all, without intelligence. Nor would we, to look for the intelligence behind both

Ted,

First of all, thank you for standing up for ID proponents. I respect you even more for standing up for the rights of people you disagree with. That is very noble…

I respect your position, and it is apparent we disagree. I can live with that…

At issue with Ken Miller specifically is he gets on TV and labels people like myself and my associastes as anti-science welfare queens. I’m a science student at Johns Hopkins. I have pro-ID friends who are PhD candidates in molecular genetics at top notch schools, and who are fearful of their career because they are systematically being labelled as dangers to the scientific establishment….

The resentment you sense at UD toward Ken Miller is not primarily theological, IMHO, but directed toward his conduct and the culture of discrimination he promotes.

It does not bother me so much that Michael Behe is not a creationist. Miller and Behe believe in common descent. But why is Behe beloved, and Miller despised? For that matter why is Berlinski (not even a Christian) beloved and Miller despised?

The reason Miller and others are so disdained in the ID community is their eagerness to smear those who disagree with them,and to resort to false statements and fabrications in doing so.

They do this in a manner that is perceived as threatening to the livelihood and dreams of aspiring ID proponents who aren’t even deeply involved in the ID movement….this is the sort of resentment that won’t be easily mended. This is almost like asking for the ID community to be enthusaistic about the behavior of criminals.

I will get my 2 cents in before it’s time to go to bed.

My assessment of the evolution debate is that it is looked on as one theory by the populous and even by many scientists, when in fact there should be a more compartmentalized view. As a starter, there should be three completely separate theories and maybe more.

1. Origin of Life – which Darwin and nearly all evolutionary biologists say is not part of evolution but yet many who write about it and study it will still use terms such as natural selection or survival of the fittest to describe how life arose from inanimate molecules. It is a completely separate issue with no good ideas as to how it could have happened. Yet many will pass off a solution as just around the corner. The RNA world is often spoken of like it is an established fact when in fact is a wild conjecture.

2. Macro evolution – I will not try to define it because no one has a good definition for it. Let’s just say it is the origination of new complex and functional biological information through naturalistic mechanisms. That may not be the best definition for it but it indicates what we generally mean by macro evolution. As of today there is no reliable theory of how such complex and functional information can or has arisen, There is nothing that would be classified as science to explain this phenomena. Lots of conjecture or speculation but no reliable mechanism. Basically, biologist say because there was a predecessor there was a process from one form to another. And when there are no predecessors one is made up such as for the Cambrian phyla begging the question when such an organism is found that the hard part is to explain how the changes actually took place to form each phyla. Macro evolution would never meet any science standards ever proposed for any educational curriculum.

3. Micro evolution – This is the manipulation of current genomes through basic genetic processes of sexual reproduction, recombination, epigenetic processes, selection processes and other forms of changes to the current genomes and then prolonged by separation and environment changes. There are also slight changes to the gene pool of a population through occasional mutations, This process is well established and works on unicellular as well as multi-cellular organisms and leads to new varieties and occasionally new species without expanding or changing the current gene pool except for trivial additions. Often this process contracts a gene pool as separation and environmental pressures eliminate certain aspects of the gene pool through selection and drift or other processes.

The results of the third process is all Darwin ever saw examples of on his voyage on the Beagle and all that has ever been demonstrated by biologists. Yet this process is used to infer or establish the second process and sometimes the first. It is the only thing that scientists can use as justification that macro evolution actually happened. Macro evolution has never been observed and is only inferred to have happened by imagined progressions not actually found in the fossil record.

So when scientists defend naturalistic evolution they are really using the observed and proven mechanism of micro evolution to infer that macro evolution ever took place or that there was a process by which life originated. Nothing has ever been observed in either the first or second process. Life and fossils are there so a process is inferred but no credible mechanism has ever been demonstrated for either of these two processes.

I suspect that many of the theistic evolutionists will disagree vehemently with my last two paragraphs but those who support ID believe that this is all the science justifies. In fact they believe this is what the science is shouting at us. Many will also argue that there is precious little to justify much change taking place in the third process but most who are the leaders of ID are willing to accept nearly all of the micro evolution theory.

Many of us here would hold to naturalistic mechanisms for the first two processes if there were any credible information available to defend either as arising through naturalistic means. But we see none or any reasonable hint at any and believe that those who hold to naturalistic mechanism for these processes are doing so on faith alone which is the ironic thing because it is the ID supporters who are criticized as basing their beliefs on faith and accused as ignorant of science. How often have you heard that ID is not science?

This is just my assessment of one part of the disagreement. When I express it to anyone who is pro Darwin, that is pro naturalistic evolution for all of life’s history it is met with disdain but never really answered. We find it interesting that it is never really answered and ask why.

Ted, thanks for your response. The Scriptures are very clear on the fact that God’s “existence” is made evident by his creation. Put another way, The Bible teaches that God reveals himself in Scripture AND in nature. It has nothing to do with the “inadequacy of a particular scientific theory.” A design that cannot be detected can hardly be a revelation. That is exactly what St. Paul means when he says about those who deny the point that “they are without excuse.” When TE’s reject the Bible’s teaching that God’s “handiwork has been made manifest,” they are subordinating their Christianity to the Darwinism. That is their privilege, of course, but they ought to stop saying that they have reconciled two irreconcilable world views.

—-”We have *seen* God, in the flesh–and, when we did, we did not like what we saw, denied His divinity, and put him to death.”

Your comment is unrelated to the subject under discussion. It has nothing to do with the proposition that the world was designed for discovery. When the great scientists were insisting that they were “thinking God’s thoughts after him,” they were not talking about Christ’s passion, crucifixion, or resurrection. They were talking about God’s intent to leave clues about himself, a belief that came right out of the Scripture.

—–”I also believe, secondarily, that the very existence and rationality of the universe cry out for a deeper explanation, and that the explanation of both is the fact (as I see it) that this crucified and resurrected man was also the maker of heaven and earth. But I don’t know how to prove any of that to someone who won’t believe it. Do you.”

The Scriptural teaching about the intelligibility of the universe is an empirical statement. It speaks to the observable evidence, in design form, of a creator and his creation, meaning that it requires no faith. That is why St. Paul means when he says that “they are without excuse.” The Scriptural teaching about the “reasons” for the creation, or the “deeper explanation” about a crucified and resurrected man and his role as creator, is a question of faith and is, therefore, a different matter.

You are accepting the theological teachings of the Bible, (God’s plan of salvation) but you are rejecting the empirical/philosophical teachings of the Bible (God’s revelation in nature). That is another way of saying that you are selectively picking and choosing those passages that you can fit in to your ideological framework. So you read into the Bible (eisegisis) rather than reading out of it (exigesis).

Theistic evolution is a contradiction in terms to begin with. Evolution is science. The predominant theory of it is lame science where probabilities are ignored because chance, by doctrine, is always the responsible mechanism. Chance is not evaluated. It’s worshipped.