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

Lonergan was indeed a promoter of integration and/or
shared understanding between natural sciences,
philosophy and theology. He took particular interest
in mathematics and economics, in addition to being a
trained theologian and philosopher. Could you please
say which text of his you got that quote from Robert?

Lonergan's 'generalized emipirial method' (GEM)
accepted both data of consciousness and data of sense.
In this way it can be interpreted to avoid the prongs
of MN/PN dichotomy. Likewise, while Behe accepts most
of the main features of evolutionary biology,
including common descent, yet posits 'intelligent +
design' as a 'scientific component' (as Ted says), he
could make use of Lonergan's GEM. Of course, Behe is
neither a theologian nor a philosopher, but this has
not stopped him in the past from saying things like
"ID has implications for all humane studies" (Preface
to ID: THE Bridge between Science and Theology, 1999).

Behe seems to be walking a finer line than most in the
evolution, creation, ID conversation. He cannot be a
'typical' TE because he sees so much wrong with its
inverted priority - which gives too much credit to
process philosophy and process theology, at the cost
of _X_. I agree with David O. that Behe seems to be
making a meta-argument about the role of 'chance' in
evolution. Yet, in doing so, Behe has had to step
outside of his educational training (i.e. to include
philosophy, which can easily be abused) and thus he
has become an easy target. Likewise, with no SINGLE
theory of evolution, even in biology, it has become
all too easy in our post-modern society (assuming
readers of this message live in the US, Canada,
England, New Zealand, or perhaps Australia - and the
'fact' of being post-modern) to relativize
evolutionary theory such that ANY of even the main
mechanisms of evolution can be stepped back from by
evolutionists, whether theistic, atheistic or agnostic
in form.

The case of Behe not stepping back, even from
seemingly outlandish statements ('all humane
studies!') , given his faith in the concept duo of ID,
likely based on his trust of Dembski, Johnson, Meyer
and Nelson, i.e. their supposed visionary 'new
science,' has come around to bite him.

Thanks to Robert for raising Lonergan in this context.
He is a person whose 'insights' we could probably all
benefit on in this complicated, few simple answers
discourse.

Gregory

--- Robert Schneider <schneider98@gmail.com> wrote:

> 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

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Received on Mon Jul 9 15:02:59 2007