Re: [asa] What Does ID Add?

Hello Steve,
   
  Please excuse the delay in responding to your post. Let me now address your thoughts.
   
  Steve wrote: "I don't think they [macro-evolution and common decent] are completely inseparable in theory but they do usually go together."
   
  Yes, this is pretty much what I gather from surveying the way people use 'macro-evolution' as well. And I agree, they needn't be inseparable. In some scientific fields the concept of 'macro-evolution' is rarely used, while common descent is commonly taken for granted due to the 'consensus' in biology, comparative anatomy, paleontology, etc.
   
  Steve also wrote: "I'm uncomfortable restricting divine action as exclusively interventional. In the vast majority of cases God's divine action can probably be better characterized as cooperative. However, to say that God can not intervene, does not care enough to intervene (deism), should not intervene (process theology), or has not intervened is not right either. For example, I do not see how the resurrection can be viewed as anything else but a huge intervention."
   
  This is also agreeable, I mean, the thought of restricting divine action with only one central term (intervention) is discomforting. The idea of 'cooperation' I also appreciate, especially when it is contrasted with the Darwinian/Spencerian notions of conflict, struggle, war, etc. The notion of 'intervention' need not carry a negative meaning, as if it were impossible or merely 'not-science' that God may intervene in human history. This is also where the contribution of the Russian zoologist Karl Kessler and the geographer/anarchist Pyotr Kropotkin of the concept of 'mutual aid' is well placed.
    
  Steve: "Do I think divine action is unambiguously scientifically detectable? Many times I really, really wish it were. However, my provisional answer is that I don't think it is. I don't think we are ever going to capture God in a testtube. If it were detectable, would I call it ID? Maybe, but I think both the "I" and the "D" are too restrictive. I'd definitely prefer "purpose" over "design"."
   
  Again, we are pretty much in agreement. I don't know how many times people at ASA have repeated to me in dialogue that divine action is not scientifically detectable. Why they persist I don't know because I have never suggested otherwise. Studying godmanhood (bogochilovechestvo) or 'integrality/togetherness' (sobornost) is, however, not putting God in a test tube.
   
  What ID appears to contribute is a way of opening up discourse about things that 'science' has typically disallowed (I say 'science' because there are many sciences today, not some monolithic singular Science in the Enlightenment sense that upholds scietism, Reason and Progress). This is a charge against scientific methodology, e.g in the notion that formal and final causes can be explored alongside material and efficient causes. I don't see any reason why final cause cannot be part of 'science,' even if Francis Bacon's 16th century contribution and those who followed it say otherwise. In my field of 'science,' final causes are unavoidable, in fact, so is 'teleology,' because human beings are possessors of purpose and goals and, yes, even ideas about design by our very 'human nature.'
   
  ID seems to add an anthropocentric voice that would save those in scientific fields from forgetting that human beings are a unique creature in the universe. With evolutionary psychology and biogentics encrouching on the specialness of human existence, I think the idea that human beings are unique is significant for our epoch. Though, admittedly, it is rarely expressed by most ID advocates who are not social-humanitarian thinkers and who tend to fumble with the issue of anthropocentrism. (Please could anyone notify me about exceptions to this generalization if you know of any.) With computers and information technologies rapidly growing in importance, it would seem that 'modernist science' is rather outdated, though this does not mean it is not still capable of producing results. ID is trying to push the label and explore new possibilities. Status quo defenders are just being noisy who would not admit the novelty, even if ID is not 'scientific' in the sense that they
 currently view the field.
   
  I prefer 'purpose' over 'design' too. It is striking to remark then that the philosophical import of that particular concept duo of 'intelligence' plus 'design' has gotten so far with the general (mainly American, and to some extent, British and Canadian) public, who are still highly resistant to the 'philosophy of evolutionism,' if not to the specific details of the evolutionary science. That theologians have subscribed to evolutionism, e.g Teilhard de Chardin and Hartshorne is not entirely surprising. Unfortunately ID now appears too rigid to go much further, at least in its current form.
   
  Regards,
   
  Gregory

       
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Received on Wed Sep 12 11:17:22 2007