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arroba
Here at “The Hump of the Camel,” Jon Garvey (who comments at times at UD and is much appreciated) discusses the ongoing debate between Bill Dembski for the ID theorists and Darrel Falk and others for Biologos:
… Falk leaves very little room for exceptionalism in his description of evolution, which belongs entirely to the natural, law-driven, activity of God. Such a process could not produce other than the reliable and predictable. 98% identity with the chimp genome sits happily with that, but I’m not so sure that language, space travel and Rembrandt do. Darrel’s phrase, “our linguistic and cognitive abilities aside…“, leaves quite a lot unexplained by a strictlty lawlike process. But not, I agree, the spiritual nature of man, which is the truly unique thing. I’m assuming that Darrel would class such a thing within his “supernatural” category, rather than his “natural”.
And that begs the question: when and how did that relationship begin? If Falk and I agree that it cannot be an “emergent property” of evolution, then it had an origin. And not only that, but it had an origin independent of anything natural or directly detectable by science, such as language and cognition are. A relationship can develop, grow or be damaged, but it has an origin in space and time, and it involves individual interaction.
If it is the relationship with God, and not biological attributes, that defines man’s exceptionality, then there was a first man, or first people. And those first people were the first true humans, regardless of whether they were descended from genetically identical parents who spoke, thought – and in fact did everything except experience that exceptional relationship with the true God.
For example, it could well be that a man, or even a couple, …
It sounds like he is holding Falk’s feet to the fire about what he actually does believe.
The BioLogians kvetch about being called Christian Darwinists. But what explicit proposition advanced by Darwinists in the science literature are they prepared to deny, based on evidence?
Incidentally, what evidence against Darwinism would they accept? What evidence for design would they accept?
If they weasel on that one, some of us are uncertain what the point of a discussion between them and ID theorists is.