RE: [asa] What Does ID Add?

Sorry, I meant "as irrelevant as the YEC's".

John

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of John Walley
Sent: Sunday, September 09, 2007 12:33 AM
To: 'David Opderbeck'; 'AmericanScientificAffiliation'
Subject: RE: [asa] What Does ID Add?

David,

From my experience, the chasm between OEC and TE boils down to simply
clinging to a literal interpretation of Genesis and the doctrine of
inerrancy. Yom can mean day-age and the genealogies can have gaps and the
flood can be construed to be local (by the hardest) and all this still sort
of fits into a literal Genesis good enough so you can still get into some
evangelical churches by upholding inerrancy. The absolute show-stopper
though is macro-evolution and common descent because this is the thread that
unravels the whole inerrancy and literal Genesis doctrines. None of the
other issues with TE that you mention are that big of a deal for OEC. They
would have almost identical positions.

On this point, AiG is right that "if you open the door to billions of years,
it leads to evolution" regardless of how hard OEC's try to prevent that
conclusion. OEC is slightly better science than YEC but "an old earth does
not a concordant scriptures make", although that is what they claim. It is a
shame too because since they are predisposed to fit a special fiat creation
of Adam into their model, they selectively and somewhat dishonestly ignore
the evidences against this position that Collins and Behe have now helped
popularize.

I project that if OEC doesn't come around and merge with TE, they will
eventually be as irrelevant as the OEC's.

John

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of David Opderbeck
Sent: Saturday, September 08, 2007 8:23 PM
To: AmericanScientificAffiliation
Subject: [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?

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Sun, 9 Sep 2007 00:36:14 -0400