Re: Who's Burden of Proof?

I agree with Mark that extrapolating from human designers to a divine
designer is not ideal. I do, however, think while there are obviously
dissenting opinions, there is a strong tradition in Christianity of natural
theology where God can be known to some extent by experiencing God's
creation(human designers in this case). Surely the design(human designers)
says something about the designer.

Also, even if the analogy has its faults, what are the alternatives to
addressing the deistic and neodeistic threads within and without
Christianity. Terry's appeal to scripture is a good one, but alone it is
not adequate for addressing science and religion issues. Even if those
deistic frameworks meet the needs of some people, they also seem(wittingly
or unwittingly) to undermine the faith positions of billions of people.
This is particularly an issue because it seems that more and more of the
intellectual elite are adopting this position albeit without understanding
the negative systematic implications of it for they themselves.

At this time it is the intelligent design issue that has put the competing
views of theism and deism to the forefront. While I agree with the sentiment
of ID I think 1) It will never create a scientifically compelling argument
for ID (neither will their ever be a scientifically compelling argument
against ID) and 2) The burden of proof on this issue lies not on those who
believe in God's ongoing intelligent design activity but on those who reject
it.

As I suggested in my first post, the most reasonable inferences can only
come from our own experience with designers. This tells us 1) Complex,
specifically functioning, novel objects are created by intelligent
designers. 2) Intelligent designers are continually active in their designs
and while they may use "chance", they rely on intelligence not chance to
dominate and control the results.

Steve Petermann
Received on Sat Nov 29 10:06:54 2003