I appreciate your contribution to this discussion of design. Thanks.
You wrote on April 16:
<<Young people are not fools; they will see that if nothing in the observable
world requires an argument from design, and can be approached by the methods
of modern science, then the "feeling of design" can be jettisoned, no matter
how strong in the beginning. I went through this process. Giving up the
feeling of design seemed momentous, but it wasn't.>>
We should not stop, however, with pitting the "observable world" against
"feeling of design". Let's go on to what cannot be observed, yet a realm in
which both Christians and atheistic scientists have a stake. Is the universe
here by *chance* or *design*? This question cannot be answered by
observation; either alternative must be inferential. Yet answers to both
alternatives make a world of difference how we interpret scientific data of
certain kinds, e.g., cosmological and bio-historical. Is the "feeling of
design" that a Christian may have any different psychologically and
epistemologically from a "feeling of chance" that an atheist may have? I
think not. We both start from our presuppositions which are pre-
observational. What is different is the consequences of each position-- how
questions such as the following are answered--why there is anything at all, is
nature all there is, why we are here, what is our destiny? I think that most
Christian men in science would be able and willing to make a good case in
front of teenagers for Design when compared to Chance in these terms; and to
argue that the Word that created the universe is the same Word that entered
the world to redeem it.
Thanks again for you helpful input to this discussion.
Bob