Re: [asa] Science's Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific Naturalism

> Moreover, even if the text suggests that God created in stages, it doesn't
> necessarily follow that those stages would be transparent to scientific
> observation. What if the "stages" represent something internal to God's
> will for how the creation should continue to develop, but the physical
> result of God so willing is hidden in the record of natural history?

It would also be possible for God to create in physically
discontinuous stages without that being readily detectable to science.
 Given such considerations as the patchiness of the fossil record, it
is certainly unsafe to say "Because swimming things are a separate
kind in Genesis 1, therefore no transitional form will be found to
link the oldest known fish with other organisms." It's always
possible that an older, simpler fish will turn up even if fish were
separately created.

Furthermore, the interpretation of the kinds of Genesis 1 as
referencing specific taxa as recognized by modern biology is highly
problematic. Organisms are divided by habitat and locomotion-plants,
aquatic animals, flying animals, creeping land animals, big wild land
animals, domestic animals. Thus, it is far from clear whether the
premise that aquatic animals are a separately created kind implies
that the first fish should lack ancestors as opposed to the first
aquatic animal, etc.

Other posts have already noted that interpreting the kinds of Genesis
1 as necessarily separately created is problematic; the above is
intended to show that even under that premise the scienctific
implications are far from clear. I might note a bad exegetical
argument I encountered invoking I Cor 15:39 in support of the
independent creation of kinds. This is silly eisegesis. Paul says
nothing about the origin of the differences between organisms; he just
takes the fact that one ought to be able to tell the difference
between a hamburger, chicken sandwich, and fish sandwich as an
illustration that our heavenly bodies will still be bodies yet
different from our current ones. In fact, since :51 ("we shall not
all sleep, but we shall all be changed") is not a warning to
prospective nursery workers but rather an assertion that God will
transform our earthly bodies to heavenly ones. If so, transforming
one kind of earthly body into another via evolution is surely not too
hard for Him, though of course the passage does nothing to imply
evolution just as it does not reject it.

>The supposed similarity of engineering and biological complexity<

I'm afraid I would strongly emphasize the word "supposed". Of course
there are similarities in that both reflect activities within the
constraints of physical laws and practical limitations that achieve
particular functions. A critical difference is that engineering works
to a previously specified goal, whereas anything that can survive and
reproduce will do for evolution. Although God uses evolution to work
towards His goals, science is incompetent to detect this, just as
study of history as a series of events reveals no goals even though we
can say based on theological insight and hindsight that God is working
out His plan in history. Note also that in reality we do not use the
criteria proposed by ID advocates to distinguish between human
engineered items and "natural" ones. The cloud visible outside my
window is much more complex in shape than the aquarium just inside it.
 Actual criteria used include knowing what is typically natural versus
man-made [which should clarify what I mean by natural in this context]
and knowing something of the likely purposes and methods people have
for making something. Those do not translate well into the issue of
God creating, not to mention the common category mistake of opposing
"God created" and "happened in accord with physical law"-the latter is
a subset of the former, not an alternative to it. The criteria such
as specified complexity, irreducible complexity, and their watered
down and distorted popularizations seem to be efforts to identify
complexity as proof of intelligent intervention rather than attempts
to decribe the actual difference between intelligently designed
requiring intervention versus occurred naturally (again, the latter is
theologically known to be a subset of God's intelligent design).

Engineering does illustrate that there are often numerous solutions to
a given problem, especially if the goal is "works, using reasonably
handy material, without interfering with anything important" as
opposed to "optimized", In this it is similar to evolution.

-- 
Dr. David Campbell
425 Scientific Collections
University of Alabama
"I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams"
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