>This is a bit of a straw man. ..... I think your "CANNOT" label
misrepresents the "fully gifted creation" position. .....
>it is more of a "DOES NOT NEED TO" theory.
I agree, this is better. Sorry about my mistake; I'll revise my
definition and will try not to mis-represent it again.
>and is not even as strong as saying that God *did not* intervene.
So if God intervened, it wasn't because it was NECESSARY, it was
for other reasons? Like to "guide" it to a desired complex result,
rather than another complex result?
>Maybe that becomes a PROBABLY WOULDN'T, but it can't fairly be called
>a CANNOT.
OK.
>in my experience [of the ID movement] 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.
Interesting. I saw your statement, and I would endorse it.
This might be a useful topic for conversation at the ASA meeting,
for Paul and Bill.
>As George Murphy
>points out, restricting God's meaningful action to the non-natural is
>just plain bad theology.
Here is where your position may need to be revised. Even if there
was an expectation among ID-people that God DID work through miracles,
or that we should EXPECT God to work through miracles that could be
detected by the methods of empirical science, this is not the same as
saying that "meaningful action" (how is this defined?) is restricted to
to the non-natural. One can believe that a universe with ONLY natural
action (in formative history) is not as likely (or as God-honoring) as
a universe that has BOTH natural and miraculous action, and this would
still not be the same as saying God works only through the natural.
Do you see the important difference? The "strawman ID-belief" is
that "God does not work through the natural." But the real belief (of
those who refused to sign Allan's statement; we would have to ask them
if this is their real belief, however) is that "if God worked through
the BOTH the natural and miraculous, this is more Biblical (or better,
or more likely, or...) than if God worked through ONLY the natural."
But I don't think a preference for BOTH is necessarily bad theology,
since the Bible does contain both natural and supernatural actions by
God. If both were an essential part of human history, I think the most
reasonable starting point, for a default assumption, is that both were
also an essential part of formative history. The burden of proof lies
on those who think the two histories involved different modes of action,
with ONLY natural in formative history, but BOTH in human history.
Or, consider that of the three major emphases of ID, two of them
(origin of life, and development of biocomplexity) propose (implicitly
but not explicitly) miraculous actions, while the third (the numerical
values of physical constants,...) involves the natural. In this third
area, ID seems to be very appreciative of God's design in the natural.
{And, no, this is not "God of the gaps" deism, with God ONLY involved
in these three areas.}
>I think the ID
>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.
I agree. This should be thoroughly discussed, due to its importance.
Thanks for the suggestions, Allan. The fewer the strawmen, the better,
whether they're built by me (at the beginning) or by others (at the end).
Craig Rusbult