Re: [asa] Review of Behe in Books and Culture

My friend Patrick Byrne, chair of philosohy at Boston College, recently
shared two articles critical of ID in which he draws upon the philosophy of
Bernard Lonergan. He makes the distinction between "intelligent" and
"intelligible." We can argue that the world of cosmic and biotic evolution
is intelligible, and understand God as the One who comprehends all
processes, including randomness and emergent complexity, in the creation.
Lonergan writes that "the universe is a world process in which the order or
design is constituted by emergent probability." Differing radically from the
ID theorists, Lonergan focuses rather on the intelligibility, the design of
the process of evolution itself. Thus, specific instances of randomness,
emergent complexity, and emergent design, are all part of the whole design
of creation as constituted by the One who comprehends it all. This is
philosophical theology, not scientific analysis, but I agree with Patrick
that the discoveries of science fit in comfortably with this model.

While such an approach removes "God's fingerprints" from the creation, that
should not trouble many of you who are suspicious of such an approach in
natural theology.

Bob Schneider

On 7/9/07, Ted Davis <TDavis@messiah.edu> wrote:
>
> >>> "David Opderbeck" <dopderbeck@gmail.com> 7/9/2007 1:32 PM >>>writes:
> It's interesting to me, though, that
> there has been such a violent reaction when Behe apparently concedes so
> much. The B&C reviewer, for example, notes the following:
>
> Behe disagrees [with most creationists when he says]: "Evolution from a
> common ancestor, via changes in the DNA, is *very* well supported." After
> summing up the argument from the genetic similarity of all life, Behe
> writes
> that "It's hard to imagine how there could be stronger evidence for common
> ancestry of chimps and humans." And again, "Let's acknowledge that
> genetics
> has yielded yet more terrific (and totally unanticipated) evidence of
> common
> descent." Finally (though many more examples could be cited), "The
> purposeful design of life is also fully compatible with the idea of *
> universal* common descent, one important facet of Darwin's theory"
> [emphasis
> added]. Behe is quite clear that he has no objection to the idea that
> species as distinct as mice and whales evolved from common ancestors.
>
> I gather, then, that Behe is making a meta-argument about the role of
> "chance" in evolution. How different is Behe's position on this than,
> say,
> that of Simon Conway Morris, or even in some respects that of Francis
> Collins? It sees that Behe is further away from the Uncommon Descent
> crowd
> than he is from Francis Collins.
>
> Ted comments:
> This is precisely why I keep repeating that Mike Behe is a classical
> theistic evolutionist, ala Asa Gray. Behe is as David says, much closer
> to
> Collins or Conway Morris than he is to Dembski. I can only conclude two
> things from this (1) Collins and Conway Morris are not IDs, probably b/c
> they reject the dominant tone of ID, which is clearly quite strongly
> antievolutionary (in the sense of Common Descent); and (2) Behe is an ID
> b/c
> he thinks that "design" should have a specific *scientific* component,
> rather than being "merely" (my choice of word) a reasonable metaphysical
> inference from a variety of information, including scientific information.
>
> When I call Behe a classical TE, however, my friend Nick Matzke at NCSE
> objects. He says that Gray wasn't a classical TE either, that anyone who
> believes in the need for "design" to supplement NS is not a TE but an
> ID. I
> say, however, that belief in purpose/design alongside evolution--something
> often expressed in terms of purposive or goal-directed evolution--is a
> classic TE view, and that in this respect at least Behe and Gray are on
> the
> same page, and sometimes on the same paragraph.
>
> ted
>
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Received on Mon Jul 9 14:28:57 2007