This is a bit of a straw man. While Howard Van Till can defend himself
if he's reading, I think your "CANNOT" label misrepresents the "fully
gifted creation" position. If, for example, you read carefully his
chapter in the _Three Views_ book, you will see that it is more of a
"DOES NOT NEED TO" theory. The idea is that God gifted things fully from
the beginning so that additional interventions were *not necessary*.
This is very different from saying that God *could not* intervene, and is
not even as strong as saying that God *did not* intervene. What I do
think it says is that, if Van Till is right and such intervention is not
necessary due to the "functional integrity" of God's creation, the
presumption would be that it has not happened unless strong evidence to
the contrary is presented for individual cases. Maybe that becomes a
PROBABLY WOULDN'T, but it can't fairly be called a CANNOT.
>>The statement is also grossly in error in asserting that positive
>>evidence for a creator must come from non-natural evidence.
>
> I agree with you here, as (I hope) do most OECs. To the extent
>that there is any confusion about this, OECs should do a better job
>of being clear. Again, this is not an argument for TE, it is an
>argument against an extreme form of OEC.
I wish I could see the ID movement (pretty synonymous with OEC these
days) through Craig's rose-colored lenses, but in my experience the
"MUST" aspect (requiring God to show off in some non-natural way in order
for theism to be credible) is widespread rather than confined to an
extreme. In the past year or so on this list, 3 leaders of that movement
(Phil Johnson, Paul Nelson, and Bill Dembski) have been asked if they
could endorse a simple statement that God is not diminished if his work
is through "natural" processes, and they went 0 for 3. As George Murphy
points out, restricting God's meaningful action to the non-natural is
just plain bad theology. Ultimately, the bad theology is more harmful to
the Church than any bad science might be, which is why I think the
movement, if it is to have any healthy effect at all, needs to give much
higher priority to sorting out and correcting its theological presuppositions.
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| Dr. Allan H. Harvey | aharvey@boulder.nist.gov |
| Physical and Chemical Properties Division | "Don't blame the |
| National Institute of Standards & Technology | government for what I |
| 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80303 | say, or vice versa." |
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