Theistic Evolutionists – How Do You See (Intelligent) Design?

_{nullasalus
May 15, 2011

Darwinism, Evolution, Evolutionary biology, theistic evolution

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Evolution
Evolutionary biology
theistic evolution}

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Recently, I made a post regarding what I thought was an encouraging moment at Biologos, where a guest writer frankly speculated about how God could work through evolution. In the comments section, some discussion was had about just how rare or common such views are among TEs.

Since I’ve already made the call for non-theists and agnostics who are ID sympathetic to speak up on here (and was very happy to see the resident ID proponents respond positively to that), I’d like to introduce a similar opportunity.

I’d like any theistic evolutionists who are reading this to speak up and share their views. In particular, I’m interested in…

* How you think design is reflected in the natural world, in as much general detail as you can offer. The key here is detail: Does God play a role in variation or even selection in your view? Is God omniscient and omnipotent?
* How you see your views in comparison to Intelligent Design. Compatible? Incompatible? Unsure?
* I want to stress, this isn’t limited to Christians. Muslims, hindus, deists, anything else – while I admit I’m very curious about Christian TEs, I’m casting the net broad here.
* I’d also like to hear your views on how evolution is popularly communicated. Do you think “science defenders” (ranging from the NCSE to the Cult of Gnu) help or hinder communicating evolutionary theory accurately?
* Finally, a particular question: Have you ever heard of Michael Dowd, and what’s your opinion of his approach on this topic? (In the interests of being open, I admit: I have a very low opinion of the man’s thoughts.)

Same rules apply as last time, really: Be respectful. Stay on topic. Let’s keep hostilities to a minimum.

Comments

I looked in the mirror this morning and I almost made the mistake of thinking I had a nose. Unfortunately that would imply there are some with no noses. Even if they exist, that would be terrible and anyway I haven't ever seen them. So I resolved to remain agnostic on the issue.tragic mishap_{May 16, 2011
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...just a quick "thanks" to turrell for his visit to UD. Interesting posts. By all means, enjoy your corner of the tent.Upright BiPed_{May 16, 2011
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# 37 Chris: My opposition to Darwin is not just a concession. I think the epigenetic mechanisms, starting with Reznick's studies with South American guppies in the earlier 1990's shows how rapidly organisms can adapt to new and present danger. Lamark is back into consideration. Those mechanisms are all through the genome according to present studies. All levels of organisms have them, from simple protozoa to the most complex. It is obvious to me that rapid adaptive tools were availabled to life when life first started. How did life survive 3.6 billion years ago in the hostile environment on Earth right after the bombardment of planetismals, etc.? This throws the synthesis of Neo-Darwinism out the window. It is why the Altenberg-16 conference took place. The start of living matter, organic from inorganic is at the level of a miracle. 60 years of research and we have only learned negatives. Robert Shapiro is one of the best skeptics to read in this area, since he believes science will find an answer. James Shapiro (no relation) is another valuable skeptic. 'Secular Jew' is my best description of me. I went to Sunday School. I had a bar Mitzvah. I married a Jewish lady and we saw that our three kids had Jewish teachings. I did not like going to services, found them boring and meaningless. Became agnostic in medical school. Stopped going to Temple when my first wife died, not because of her death, but I was relieved of my obligation to go with her. But I believed in an afterlife at the time she died, and could not convince her she was going there. I agree with you that religions teach morality and how to live properly. I have spent 40 years in the study of whether there is a greater power, and it only took the first few years to convince me. The remaining years have only served to strenghten my convictions. But I have not used the Bible, although I have read parts of the Old and New Testaments, I am convinced by my studies in science, and the materials presented in ID. I am a firm ID believer. I am firmly a theistic evolutionist. DNA/RNA is a fantastic efficient coding system. Only an extremely superior intelligence could have created a code of that complexity and efficiency. Chance cannot do it. That is so obvious. Antony Flew is absolutely correct in changing his mind.turell_{May 16, 2011
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StephenB @ 33,
You have argued impressively [..] that a rational God would come out of his heaven to reveal Himself in the cosmological realm only to go back into hiding in the biological realm.
Imho God did not come out of his heaven to reveal Himself in the cosmological realm. He set the whole thing in motion with the big bang and watched for the first nine billion years the universe evolving according to the apparently finely tuned laws of nature without any intervention. It would only have been after nine billion years that, as an implication of the ID claim that the laws of nature are insufficient to produce life, God came out of heaven to then start to intervene personally.myname_{May 16, 2011
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In my previous example I spoke of a simple sequence of characters on scrabble pieces. But what if I take a box of scrabble pieces and arranged the pieces in a specific way, say in a way in which no three contiguous pieces spelled any word in the English language. Would someone who came along later and saw the scrabble pieces think with any level of confidence that the pieces had been arranged that way on purpose? Again we see that we don't need to have separate categories of design and not design. We can say we cannot detect design according to the degree that we require to be confident of design, but that does not rule out the presence of design.Mung_{May 16, 2011
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Prof. FX, I have just shown how it is not necessary to make a conceptual distinction between designed and not designed. Where is the flaw in my argument? It is a fallacy to assert that "blue" is in the same category as "design." A thing is not more designed or less designed in the same way that a thing is more or less blue.Mung_{May 16, 2011
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Mung @38 Let me clarify. What I meant was that to detect design (with whatever level of confidence), a conceptual distinction has to be made between designed stuff and not-designed stuff. For example, if we want to detect blue, there has to be non-blue to compare it with. Even if we conclude that the lovely shade of mauve we're looking at is only 15% blue.Prof. FX Gumby_{May 16, 2011
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Timaeus @35, 1. I'll accept your toaster detection expertise at face value. But what about Star Trek-esque information storage devices that look like crystals? Would you be able to detect design without knowledge of Vulcan technology? For that matter, what about man-made synthetic crystals? What about man-made ecosystems, like created wetlands or natural forests? These are designed, but could someone tell that they were without knowing about the sort of processes and motivations involved? 2. My point about design vs. not-design was that such a perspective necessarily limits God. 3. Perhaps you can sketch for me the general thrust of the research programme and some of the key findings? The book budget is a bit short at the moment. 4.
but TEs have no business complaining about ID’s vagueness regarding the input of design when they have nothing but vacuities to offer when asked how God uses an intrinsically non-directed process to achieve definite and specified ends. When any TE can offer a coherent theory of how God directs a Darwinian process, then and only then will TE be in a position to lecture ID people on intellectual coherence.
(bolding mine) You see, that's part of the problem right there. I make none of those claims. ID does and claims that God's direction is detectable. Until more details (and evidence!) are provided by the ID movement, then it is simply an assertion that somebody, somewhere, somehow designed something. This undermines your later opinion that "ID is certainly compatible with the best avaialable science, and contradicts none of it".Prof. FX Gumby_{May 16, 2011
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Prof. FX Gumby @34
ID in its efforts to detect design has to distinguish between design and not-design.
Actually, no, that is not the case. ID can be phrased as a level of confidence. If I come across some simple arrangement, say of scrabble letters, and I detect that three letters in an apparent sequence spell the word cat, I can think that arrangement might have been intentional, but how sure an I be? What if I spy a sequence that spells cataphract? My confidence level increases. And If I find that sequence in place on a scrabble board aligned perfectly with the scrabble squares and integrated with other words on the board? So I don't have to decide that the "cat" sequence was not designed, nor do I have to decide that the "cataphract" sequence was not designed, in order to infer that the "cataphract" sequence on the scrabble board ought to be ascribed to intelligent agency. All ID says is that there is a certain level at which our level of confidence ought to be reliable enough that an inference ought to be accepted as the best possible explanation. It certainly does not rule out design for those things for which we cannot ascribe the same level of confidence, and there is no requirement that anything be ruled out as not-design. As one who has accepted the "design all the way down - it's all design" perspective, this is something I've needed to think about. How to make ID compatible with that view.Mung_{May 16, 2011
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Hello Mr Turrell, I was very interested to read your post and certainly agree with all that is important about your approach to this question (though without your considerable experience). By comparison to typical theistic evolutionists, your concession to evolution (non-lamarkian microevolution and adaptation) is one that most of us who have chosen Design over Chance would make. I find it bizarre that typical theistic evolutionists want to fully embrace a neo-darwinian account of life. Ultimately, the most important question is: is life a meaningless accident or is there some amazing plan behind it all? All theistic evolutionists should believe the latter (much to the annoyance of atheists) but yet so many seem so keen to side with those who maintain that life is a meaningless accident. Do they really think that this will be looked upon favourably in the final reckoning? I’m intrigued by your description of yourself a “secular Jew” who does “not accept organized religion”. I certainly have a lot of sympathy with your objections to organized religion: when I look at the way the big three monotheistic faiths are practiced, especially institutionalised, around the world these days, I can only feel deep disappointment. Nonetheless, I believe the truth is in all their scriptures so while I recognise that the gap between practice and theory is probably larger than it has ever been (and this is unacceptable), I still maintain that the Book of Scripture (by that I mean a canon that takes the best of Judaism, Christianity and Islam) is of fundamental importance, giving us the all-important instruction manual for human existence. Furthermore, there are countless masses of people from all of these faiths (and others) who are quietly going about their lives, often struggling with their burdens but striving to lead a morally good life and this is, surely, mainly due to religious instruction. I’d be interested to know whether or not you agree with this and what value you place on the Book of Scripture (particularly what the Jew part of ‘secular Jew’ means in practice).Chris Doyle_{May 16, 2011
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nullasalus: I think that some of the resistance you sense in ID people to anything written by any TE comes from the fact that some ID people (a significant number) are against not merely purely chance-driven explanations for evolution, but against the very notion of evolution itself. That sort of ID person customarily says black whenever a TE person says white. But as you know, I'm not that kind of ID person. I'm completely comfortable with the idea of evolution; God could have chosen to use a cosmic developmental process lasting billions of years instead of creating everything in six literal days. The part of TE that irks me is not the E part; it's the T part. I think many TEs give orthodox conceptions of God and Creation very short shrift, and try to shoe-horn the creative activity of God into an un-Biblical, un-traditional naturalistic paradigm, and further, are repulsed by the notion of detectable design in nature for very inadequate theological reasons. (Which not surprising, since almost to a person, TEs are very inadequate theologians.) Now you ask me about Bishop. I haven't read his article. But if he says that maybe the mutations were specifically guided by God, that's perfectly compatible with Christian orthodoxy, as far as I'm concerned, and, since we can never recover the past history of mutations in anything like complete detail, it's perfectly compatible with all the empirical evidence that we are ever likely to have. So I have nothing against Bishop's suggestion. However, I note that most of the regular columnists on Biologos would very likely scorn such a suggestion as involving "intervention" or "miracles" or "God of the gaps." That's what they have always done when any ID proponent has made any similar suggestion. (In fact, they accuse ID people of asserting a "God of the gaps" even when ID people *don't* make that suggestion.) Wouldn't you agree that Bishop is in a minority position among the TEs on this one? And that, until his view is more widely acknowledged by the TE leaders as a legitimate TE position, ID people are not likely to pay much attention to it, but to concentrate on the more prominent TE writers, who seem to endorse a dogmatic naturalism regarding origins? I don't demand that all design inferences make use of Dembski's filter, and I don't think that deep down Dembski does, either. I think it's a useful conceptual tool, and helpful for dealing with atheistic blockheads like Dawkins and Dennett, who worship things that look mathematical and scientfic more than they respect common sense, but I don't think it's necessary to be constantly applying the filter in some formal way for ID work to proceed. Regarding whether the detection of design is science or philosophy or something else, I have no dogma on that. I think ID people put a great deal of emphasis on the scientific character of ID in part because the courts have given them only two options: ID is religion, or ID is science. The Dover judge bought into this polarization, which the NCSE witnesses for the plaintiff unscrupulously promoted. But in fact ID could well be a philosophical sort of inference, based on empirical science, rather than a scientific inference pure and simple; that wouldn't to me undermine the validity of design inferences, as I don't share this modern view that only science reveals certain truth, and that philosophy is unreliable. In fact, in some respects I think philosophical reasoning is sounder and surer than scientific reasoning, which is decisively based on questionable and revisable assumptions at all points. So, while I think that ID is very much science-informed, you won't find me pushing the "ID is science" claim here. ID is certainly compatible with the best avaialable science, and contradicts none of it; and that to me makes it legitimate as an interpretation of nature. As for "if it evolved, then it wasn't designed," that would certainly be true for Darwinian evolution (and Darwin intended it so, and so did all the builders of the modern synthesis, and so did Gould, etc.), but I think it's false for evolution overall. People like Denton and Sternberg and Conway Morris have suggested ways in which an evolutionary process might be designed so as to drive in the direction of certain desirable results, even though the processes all along the way are blind and wholly natural. In sum, I distinguish sharply between ID and "creationism" (in the narrow sense employed in American discourse, implying God separately creating the yellow-throated hummingbird and the Indian rhinoceros). ID is compatible with the general Christian doctrine of creation, but it does not need to endorse creationism. Nor should it. If individual ID proponents want to argue for YEC (which is compatible with ID), that is their business, and I won't interfere; but the moment ID as a movement ever requires a creationist "creed" that excludes even the possibility of evolution, I'm out of here. T.Timaeus_{May 16, 2011
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Prof FX Gumby: Thank you for your reply. Unfortunately, you are in the position of someone defending the existence of the ether who hasn't heard of the Michelson-Morley experiment. All your objections have been refuted many times, on the Discovery web site, on the ASA web site, here at UD, on the Biologos web site, in the books and articles of ID proponents, etc. So I'll give only the briefest sketch reply. 1. I could tell a toaster was designed even if I had never seen a toaster before. I could tell that of any moderately complex artifact at all, even an alien artifact on a strange planet who purpose I did not understand. The inference would come from the well-orchestrated working-together of parts for a common function. If I see that a button pushes a lever which causes a gear to turn, which in turn activates a number of other gears, which causes some pointer on a dial to turn, I don't have to know anything at all about what the device is for in order to know that it is designed. It could be a clock, it could be a kid's toy, it could be an astronomical instrument. It doesn't matter; I know it's designed. Further, I would need to know absolutely nothing about the designer of the alien object in order to be sure that the alien object was designed, and not a product of blind natural forces. Whether the aliens who built it had arms or tentacles; whether they were cannibalistic or vegetarian, what planet they came from; I would need to know absolutely none of this. Intelligence is inferrable from its products, without any prior knowledge of the beings possessing the intelligence. That's clear. 2. Your argument about God designing some things and not others has been dealt with many times. See Bill Dembski on the design filter and how it can show false negatives. It is indeed possible that there is design all the way down, but that design can only be demonstrated in a few cases. Further, it is easily imaginable that a limited role for the chance outcomes of Darwinian processes could be built into a bigger design plan, as turell has suggested above. 3. If you are not aware of any scientific effort to detect design "all the way down" then you obviously have not read *Nature's Destiny* by Michael Denton, a work which has been praised by ID theorist Michael Behe. I suggest you go out and buy Denton's book right away, and start reading it. 4. I don't blame you for not being able to explain how God controls evolution; but TEs have no business complaining about ID's vagueness regarding the input of design when they have nothing but vacuities to offer when asked how God uses an intrinsically non-directed process to achieve definite and specified ends. When any TE can offer a coherent theory of how God directs a Darwinian process, then and only then will TE be in a position to lecture ID people on intellectual coherence. By the way, how is Pokey doing these days? T.Timaeus_{May 16, 2011
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Timaeus @18, ID in its efforts to detect design has to distinguish between design and not-design. Otherwise, how can design be inferred? The approach thus far has been to look at a protein, a flagella, a Golgi apparatus, or whatever, and say that this is too complicated, therefore design. We also have examples of features that have clearly evolved naturally. We've witnessed cases of what you could call "microevolution". This leads to the situation where if there were a designer, he/she has designed some biological features but not others. If the designer is God, then this conception of God is limited to Him tinkering with some things and not others. A few comments have been made, like Mung's "it's design all the way down" or that design could also make use of evolutionary processes. This way of thinking doesn't limit God to the role of a mad scientist. However, I'm not aware of any scientific approach from the ID camp or others to detecting this sort of universal design. You say
ID is not clear about how things happened because ID, when it understands itself properly, is not a theory of historical origins, but a theory of design detection. I can tell that my toaster is designed without having a clue what company made it or what year it was manufacture or what year the metal in it was mined.
You can tell your toaster is designed because it's similar to other tools that humans make. This makes use of information about the designer. You can also even tell whether it was made in the past 5 years or so or more than 40 years ago based on knowledge about human designs over time. In all cases when we successfully infer design, it's because we know something about the designer. This is why investigating theories on how and when design occurred is necessary.
TEs are every bit as vague about how and when God is involved in creation.
Yes. Because I don't know. My God is a God of deep mystery and many-sidedness.Prof. FX Gumby_{May 16, 2011
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Timaeus, your post @30 is one of the best that you have ever written--and that is saying something. You have argued impressively on behalf of the unity of truth and against the proposition that a rational God would come out of his heaven to reveal Himself in the cosmological realm only to go back into hiding in the biological realm.StephenB_{May 16, 2011
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T, Alright. In that case, let me ask you something else: What did you think of Bishop's views on evolution, as linked to in the other thread? I know we've touched on that lightly, but expand on it here if you feel up to it. Do you agree with me that his recognition that 'variation' (And, I add, selection itself) could well be guided and purposeful, is a very promising stance for a TE to take? If so, one worry I have with ID is that I get the impression such speculation isn't welcome, or is 'not enough' for many ID proponents. Or that the TE inference of design in that sense absolutely must be considered science and be reached through some kind of 'design filter' way to be considered valid - and if the TE doesn't think their inference is science, or rejects the application of some kind of strict filter formula, then the inference for all practical purposes does not exist, or gets viewed as some kind of trick. Now, maybe I'm wrong about that. But it's the impression I get, so there it is. And I worry in part because it seems to cede territory to people who deny design in nature, effectively saying 'Well, if it evolved, then it wasn't designed.' - which is clearly ridiculous, since humans themselves demonstrably use evolutionary processes for our own designs, in way after way.nullasalus_{May 15, 2011
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--nullasalus: "How you think design is reflected in the natural world, in as much general detail as you can offer. The key here is detail: Does God play a role in variation or even selection in your view? Is God omniscient and omnipotent?" I really like this question since its obvious intent is to illuminate the discussion and get people to call things by their right name. In the spirit of your exercise, I would also like to ask this question of theistic evolutionists: Did God intentionally, purposefully, and infallibly provide for the final outcome of the evolutionary process?--did He get exactly what he wanted and nothing else?--or, as Stephen Covey would say, did He begin with the end in mind?StephenB_{May 15, 2011
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nullasalus: Thanks for engaging. Of course "TE" can mean many things to many people. If it means merely "theistic evolutionist" in the natural sense of the terms, i.e., a theist who believes that species, including human beings, arose through a macroevolutionary process, then of course there can be overlap between ID and TE, and I welcome all TE people who will acknowledge and explore that overlap. But in practice, for better or worse, due to what I consider to be a usurpation of a good set of initials by a certain group of individuals (mostly Protestants with a strong fideistic streak), "TE" has come to mean something narrower than that. It seems to mean, if I may be a bit smart-alecky, Christians who believe in evolution but are adamantly opposed to ID. More objectively put, it seems to mean Christians who have rejected the notion that science could ever, even in principle, prove the existence of God, or even provide decisive information which would then allow the general, reasoning mind to reliably infer the existence of God. TEs in this sense include: Francis Collins, George Murphy, Randy Isaac, most of the contributors the volume *Perspectives on and Evolving Creation*, Ken Miller, Darrel Falk, Karl Giberson, most of the contributors to Biologos, etc. I know that you are not among this group of TEs, but I'm using the term as it's commonly used, including by these people themselves. I recognize a group on the edge of TE, a group whose members might be said to have ID sympathies, but who make a distinction between philosophy and science, and who think that ID inferences are legitimate in philosophy, and not opposed to Christian theology. In this group I would put Ted Davis, John Polkinghorne, and Stephen Barr. There is also another group, the Thomists, Feser and Beckwith prominently, who could be included as a subdivision of this group, though they have their own peculiar characteristics and should probably be considered separately. As for Pascal, I confess to not knowing his thought well enough to securely class him as "fideist," though he is often classed as such by scholars of Christianity, and in any case, in the ID/TE debates, he is certainly treated by the TEs I'm referring to as if he is a fideist. Regarding fideism, I think it's no accident that so many Protestant TEs subscribe effectively to Gould's NOMA view of knowledge: "science" pertains to empirically demonstrable "facts,", and evolution by Darwinian mechanisms has allegedly been proved to be a "fact"; theology deals with "values" or "ultimate purposes," and whether or not there is design in nature deals with values or ultimate purposes. But I deny Gould's distinction at its root; I repudiate NOMA; I reject the suffocatingly narrow understanding of "science" upon which it is based; I think that such a compartmentalized view of reality into "faith" and "science" is destructive and shallow, and is at the root of the chaos of modern civilization. TE (as defined above), in its fideism, in its NOMA, is just another symptom of the fragmentation of the West, brought about by thinkers from Bacon through to Kant. It's a child of the Enlightenment and of Romanticism, and inconceivable without those movements. What ID at its best has the potential of doing is destroying this NOMA compartmentalization, by showing that "nature" can display "purpose" in a certain limited sense, not, to be sure "the purpose of life," but purpose in the Greek sense of *telos*, a sense which TEs (except for the Thomists) deny. Newton believed that we could know -- in a strong sense of "know" -- something of God from his effects in nature. That's where most Christian proponents of ID are at, and that's where Collins etc. are not at. Of course, there is ambiguity here, because Collins and some other TEs have granted that maybe we can know of design in nature through "fine-tuning" arguments, i.e., maybe we can detect design in physics. Why not, then, in biology? Nature is a seamless whole, as Denton shows. The artificial stopping of design detection at the boundary of biology hasn't a philosophical leg to stand on, and indeed, the real motivation for it is to defend Darwinism, which insists that there is no teleology in the origin of species. The TEs, especially the biologist-TEs, are simply incapable of imagining that the anti-teleology of Darwinism could ever be wrong. That's how strongly their reigning paradigm controls their scientific and philosophical imaginations. That's positively unhealthy. It's also outdated, as the loyalty to Darwinian biology is crumbling, bit by bit, even within biology itself. We have Margulis; we have the Altenberg 16; etc. What I'd like to see is a revival of the original idea of "theistic evolution" -- a broad-based attempt to put together theism and evolution which isn't committed to all the things that most modern TEs are committed to. It needs to drop its absolute and unwavering commitment to particular means of evolution (random mutations plus natural selection, for example), and consider both deterministic and interventionist possibilities; it needs to become open to the possibility of design detection; it needs to be open to natural theology (something which many current TEs despise and repudiate); but most of all, TEs need to expand their imaginations by reading a good deal more history and philosophy than they normally read. Keeping up with lab genetics while reading the odd evangelical book on evolution and faith will not produce a sound Christian theology of evolution. TEs need to immerse themselves in the history of science (as told in non-evangelical academic works), and to study philosophy of biology (from Bergson through Ratzsch) in a big way. They also need to read some general philosophy, become familiar with the primary texts of Plato and Descartes and Kant and so on. As things stand now, TE is mostly a Protestant movement with very little intellectual substance; it's mostly just Darwinian biology layered over with Methodist-Wesleyan piety, and to the extent that it has Catholic supporters (I'm not speaking here of you or of the Thomists), they are Catholics who basically think like Protestants, i.e., who are striving to bring Catholicism into the mainstream of modern science and philosophy, rather than to maintain a distinctively Catholic science or philosophy. But theistic evolution, in the true sense, could be much, much more, and could be very compatible with ID insights. The world is still waiting for a philosophically competent leader to emerge and bring TEs out of the intellectual wilderness. I for one will applaud any theistic evolutionist who can bring the ramshackle TE house into order. T.Timaeus_{May 15, 2011
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C. Yankee: Easy to explain. As I stated God is concealed and always will be. My theory as to what form He takes is as good as your form. I do not follow the Bible. I use science to reach my conclusions. I know that your conclusions may be as good as mine. but I am convinced, asd are the IDers that there is a greater power who has created this universe with its very finely tuned parameters, 20 extremely important and 100 of minor importance. This universe allows life. I don't buy multiverses, unproveable, and a copout for atheistic theoretical physicists and cosmologists. The origin of life is totally unexplained after 60 years of research. It is as dead a line of reasearch as string/membrane theory. There has to be a greater power, we call God who is in control of all this. Others may have more certainty about who God is, but it is all faith, belief not certainty. I have my own belief with which I am comfortable. You certainly may have your belief. You have a right to it, and I will not argue with it. Tell me, who is right? I admit I don't know. But you cannnot demand that I accept your belief, which is fine for you but not for me. The word is tolerance for all of us.turell_{May 15, 2011
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turell at 12, "I do pray to my concept and have a very deep faith in it, because it makes me feel good,the goal of religious folk. But i do not accept organized religion, because I do not believe any thinking human has any more knowledge of God than I do. I do not consider my postion as presumptuous, just logical." Interesting statement. Forgive me if I'm misreading you, but on the linked page to your name is a sort of synopsis of your book, where you state: "In the book, you will learn that I have found multiple scientific findings that lead logically to accepting God." Then you state: "Science Vs. Religion shows that I have discovered that the scientific findings of the past 150 years prove God beyond a reasonable doubt." This would indicate that you have certainty for God's existence, but in your first statement, you indicate that you don't believe other people's certainty of who that god is could be any greater than your own. This doesn't quite make sense to me. After all, at one time, you indicate that you had less certainty for God's existence, which would mean that others who believed in God at that time had more certainty at least of His existence than you. Why couldn't others have more certainty of His identity and purpose, as well as an ability to justify that certainty logically more than you are able to do as you presently believe? You appear to be saying that God is only what you presently accept Him to be rather than who He is regardless of what you believe about Him. Could you please explain?CannuckianYankee_{May 15, 2011
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tragic mishap, This depends on a definition of science that I have never heard argued clearly. I'll immediately cop to the definition of 'science' being dicey. And I'll be the first to say that there's hypocrisy in play - people who say "evolution is unguided!" don't get called on the carpet nearly as bad as people who say "evolution is guided!" (or 'There is design in nature!' or anything else) despite both beings claims that would typically count as 'non-scientific' or beyond science. No one will care or even remember their objections in a hundred years because this type of argument is pointless. I hope they enjoy marginalizing themselves. I apologize for my tone but it’s quite infuriating. I just want TEs to feel reasonably welcome here in airing their views. And some TEs I think take a stance that at least intellectually really is very close to ID, quibbling about science aside. At the same time, I also would agree that some TEs seem to confuse 'being pro-science' with 'getting a pat on the head from their atheist or secular colleagues'. That's the impression I get. But not all TEs are like that, myself included - hence me asking other TEs to speak up for themselves and say where they're coming from.nullasalus_{May 15, 2011
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Timaeus:
The difference would be this: the TEs would insist that the design of nature cannot be inferred from the facts of nature, and that all talk of design is a sheer “leap of faith” which Christians project onto nature even though science gives no ground for it.
Then TEs are prohibited from using scientific arguments to argue for the existence of God, and I see no such sensitivity to that when TEs are not commenting specifically on ID (see for instance the fine-tuning argument). In other words, this is an ad-hoc argument they only use against ID and don't actually adhere to. That's a double standard. null:
I don’t think all TEs would agree with that. I certainly don’t, insofar as my leanings are TE. It seems to me one could infer from the facts of nature (physical law, stability, just what has developed in our universe regardless of how) that there is real design and a real designer responsible, while still maintaining these inferences are not themselves scientific.
This depends on a definition of science that I have never heard argued clearly. No one that I have seen in the TE camp has dealt seriously with Ratzsch or Meyer on this issue. Besides, what this means is that ID and TE agree on everything except a definition of science. It's arguing about words (2 Tim 2:4). No one will care or even remember their objections in a hundred years because this type of argument is pointless. I hope they enjoy marginalizing themselves. I apologize for my tone but it's quite infuriating.tragic mishap_{May 15, 2011
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T, The difference would be this: the TEs would insist that the design of nature cannot be inferred from the facts of nature, and that all talk of design is a sheer “leap of faith” which Christians project onto nature even though science gives no ground for it. I don't think all TEs would agree with that. I certainly don't, insofar as my leanings are TE. It seems to me one could infer from the facts of nature (physical law, stability, just what has developed in our universe regardless of how) that there is real design and a real designer responsible, while still maintaining these inferences are not themselves scientific. I'm not sure Pascal would rightly be called fideistic either, he may take the position that ultimately what's going to push a person in one direction or the other is not reason. The evidence exists but is not conclusive for Pascal, I think. turell, Thank you. Interesting book summary on that page as well.nullasalus_{May 15, 2011
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tragicmishap: I can't speak for Ted Davis, but I will give you my answer to your question. For at least some ID proponents, e.g., Behe, it is theoretically possible that a microscopic analysis of all events would reveal no breaks in the causal nexus. In other words, the description of the history of the universe could be identical for Behe and for Collins or Giberson. The difference would be this: the TEs would insist that the design of nature cannot be inferred from the facts of nature, and that all talk of design is a sheer "leap of faith" which Christians project onto nature even though science gives no ground for it. Behe would say, no, the inference of design comes not from faith but from reason, because the design is inherent in nature, not merely a projection of religious faith onto it. So there is a major theoretical difference. Historically speaking, Newton would be on the ID side, since he makes clear in his General Scholium that one can infer design from the facts of nature. This is the sort of remark by a great scientist that you will never see mentioned on Biologos, or by any TE. You won't see them quoting the passage in Calvin's *Institutio* where he affirms the legitimacy of design inferences, either. They prefer to quote Barth or Pascal. And this shows that lying behind many contemporary formulations of TE there is a fideistic theology. And with a name like mine, you should be able to guess where I stand on fideistic theology. T.Timaeus_{May 15, 2011
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As For tragic mishap, settle down. I wrote a whole book on the subject of my conversion from agnosticism, and had to give a few brief comments here. Does religion make folks feel bad? When practicing I felt good. Our backgrounds are different. Please take that into account. Nullasalus, thank you for your kind comment. Finding ID was one of the convincing elements of my studies. Since you gave permission, my book is: "Science vs. Religion: The 500-Hundred Year War Finding God in the Heat of the Battle", 2004. It still sells on Amazon. I also am an invited regular commentator on the website: Agnosticweb.com as a resident theist of sorts. Do I think I have all the answers? Not at all, but neither do any of the participants here. I don't prosyletize actively,(it is not in Jeewish tradition) but I do present my approach to stimulate thought as you (N) have done with this question.turell_{May 15, 2011
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Btw.. an addition to my last post. I'm still a big fan of theology and science. ;)MedsRex_{May 15, 2011
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Mung @ 20 Amen. I'm a Christian who finds himself increasingly drawn to being more Torah observant. And the God of mystery and bewildering transcendence can never be nailed down by mere theological word games. nor can His universe ever be "explained away". Any way sorry for not staying on topic!MedsRex_{May 15, 2011
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The God of most ID proponents is in fact a ... God of deep mystery and many-sidedness.
I'm a Jewish-Catholic-Calvinist. I don't think science will ever explicate all the mysteries of the cosmos, nor will theology ever explicate all the mysteries of God. There's a certain majesty in mystery. I hope that's not too mystical for ya'll.Mung_{May 15, 2011
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turell: I haven't enough wisdom to comment on how you should relate your designing God to your personal faith as a secular Jew, but I'm very glad to see Jewish persons posting here, and I wish we had many more of them, running the gamut from secular to orthodox. There is nothing in ID that should make Jews feel excluded. Despite the strong interest of Christians in ID, the theory is, when properly understood, religion-neutral. There is no difference between Christian and Jewish methods of design detection.Timaeus_{May 15, 2011
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Prof FXGumby (7): You wrote: “The main problem, as I see it, with ID is that it trivializes God and dishonors science.” I agree with the “trivialising” sentiment in that it appears to me that the God of ID supporters is a very limited tinkerer or engineer filling in a few gaps in natural processes. I’m sure that’s not a conception of God held by all ID proponents; however, the lack of specifics in the ID position on exactly how or when ID actually occurred doesn’t allow me a clearer idea." A few points: First, ID has nothing to do with gaps in natural processes. It is compatible with the existence of such gaps, but in itself doesn't require them. Behe and Dembksi have made this clear, but their detractors continue to ignore what they have written and continue to talk about "gaps." Second, the God of ID isn't regarded as a very limited tinkerer by any ID proponent known to me. The God of most ID proponents is in fact a Calvinist-Biblical God of deep mystery and many-sidedness. The God of most of the remaining ID proponents is a Catholic or Jewish God of deep mystery and many-sidedness. But all that the methods of ID can detect is the indications that God has chosen to leave of his intellect in the world of nature. Obviously this will give an incomplete idea of God, but it will indicate something true about God. There is no trivialization in this. Third, ID is not clear about how things happened because ID, when it understands itself properly, is not a theory of historical origins, but a theory of design detection. I can tell that my toaster is designed without having a clue what company made it or what year it was manufacture or what year the metal in it was mined. Regardless of how it was actually assembled, I know that its parts weren't thrown together by a tornado. It is unfortunate that ID proponents have from time to time confused these two things, an account of origins and a proof of design. The latter does not require the former. What is "scientific" about ID is not that it provides an alternate history of nature to that of Darwinism; what is scientific about it is that it shows that living systems as we know them could not be produced by unguided processes alone but require the input of intelligence. Until certain ID writers grasp this, ID writing will always be liable to misconstruction by its readers and critics, and will generate unnecessary confusion and rejection. Fourth, if you compare ID with TE, you will find that TEs are every bit as vague about how and when God is involved in creation. Generally speaking they simply assert that God creates everything, but also that natural causes do everything, and then cover up the redundancy with various sophistical devices which a sophomore philosophy student can see through with ease. T.Timaeus_{May 15, 2011
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Fair enough, but you're wasting your time with self-styled mystics. I'm still waiting for Ted Davis to respond on the other thread. Was I too heated? My question is this: Ted Davis, could an IDer and TE agree 100% on absolutely every physical event that ever occurred in the history of the universe, including the complete set of causes for all events, and still disagree on what those events mean? Could an IDer and a TE look at the same evidence and come to different conclusions because of philosophical and/or theological differences about what can be demonstrated from physical evidence and what cannot be?tragic mishap_{May 15, 2011
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