[asa] What Does ID Add?

I'd particularly like to hear from folks who are sympathetic to ID and OEC
-- what do you think ID adds with respect to relating science, faith and
scripture?

As I read materials from OEC's who are sympathetic to ID and hesitant or
antagonistic about TE, I often feel a sort of disconnect. When discussing
the age of the earth, OEC's mention all sorts of things about God revealing
himself through nature as well as through scripture, doing our best to take
all of God's revelation together, not interpreting scripture in ways that
seem to clearly contradict well established scientific findings, and so on.
And yet, when the same folks talk about evolution and ID, the discussion
seems to change entirely -- now the discussion on the scientific side is all
about questioning the assumptions of science, scientism, and so forth.

I'm trying to understand why so many OEC's find it so important to critique
"macro"evolution in this fashion. As far as I'm concerned, the most vexing
problems with a TE position -- death before the fall, theodicy, who / what /
when was Adam, the fall, original sin, what / when was the flood, what is
the present "groaning" of creation, how will creation be renewed or
"restored" in the eschaton -- are equally difficult whether one is an OEC or
a TE. So why is "macro"evolution such a dividing line for most OEC's?

Two things come to my mind: (1) ID might help support certain concordist
"day-age" views that require sudden developmental jumps in kinds of animals;
and (2) ID might serve as a useful apologetic device against folks who think
evolution gets rid of God. Is there anything else? Particularly for OEC's
who are open to "framework" and other understandings of Genesis 1 and 2, is
the potential apologetic value of ID worth the candle of the divide between
OEC-ID and TE?

Note -- I'm not asking for critiques of the vaucousness or non-vaucousness
of ID. I'm more interested in a question of identity -- why is it seemingly
important for many OEC's to identify strongly with ID?

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Received on Sat Sep 8 20:22:57 2007