On Mon, 9 Dec 1996 16:31:33 EST5EDT, HVANTILL@LEGACY.CALVIN.EDU
wrote:
HVT>As I watch the discussion on "intelligent design," I am led to
>the judgment that little progress will be made until the
>participants come to some agreement on the meaning of the central
>term.
>HVT>What does it mean to be "intelligently designed? I see two
>principal ways in which the term is being used: (1) To be
>"intelligently designed" means to be the outcome of thoughtful
>conceptualization (which, or course, implies purpose). The focus of
>attention here is on the action of mind (or, more appropriately, of
>Mind).
Agreed.
>HVT>(2) To be "intelligently designed" means to have been assembled
>in time by extra-natural means. The focus of attention here is on
>the action of "hands," or the divine equivalent thereof.
Disagree. Intelligent Design does not necessarily mean "assembled in
time", nor "by extra-natural means", nor by "the divine
equivalent...the action of `hands'. An supernatural Intelligent
Designer may, in the realisation "in time" of His design(s), use
natural processes, or He may use "extra-natural means".
>HVT>I would think that all Christians, who see the entire universe
>as a Creation--that which has been given being by the Creator, agree
>that the universe is "intelligently designed" in the sense of
>meaning (1).
Absolutely. As Asa Gray pointed out in 1860, all theists must
believe the universe is "intelligently designed":
"The proposition that the things and events in nature were not
designed to be so, if logically carried out, is doubtless tantamount
to atheism....To us, a fortuitous Cosmos is simply inconceivable.
The alternative is a designed Cosmos... If Mr. Darwin believes that
the events which he supposes to have occurred and the results we
behold around us were undirected and undesigned; or if the physicist
believes that the natural forces to which he refers phenomena are
uncaused and undirected, no argument is needed to show that such
belief is atheistic." (The Atlantic Monthly, October 1860, in Noll
M.A. & Livingstone D.N. (eds), Hodge C. "What Is Darwinism?", 1874,
Baker Books: Grant Rapids MI, 1994 reprint, p156)
>HVT>The disagreements arise when meaning (2) is considered. As I
>understand them, both the ID Theorists and Special Creationists
>(including both young-earth and old-earth species) presume that to
>be "intelligently designed" means both (1) and (2).
Not necessarily. Howard (probably unconsciously) sets up a straw
man, which makes "ID Theorists and Special Creationists" appear to be
the odd men out. On the contrary "ID theorists" merely assert what
almost all Jews and Christians (including the Biblical writers) down
through the ages have taken for granted, namely that God can and does
directly influence the course of nature (whether by contriving
special situations or inserting new information, or both). It is the
TEs/ECs who in practice (if not in theory) appear to deny this.
>HVT>That, however, means that one is committed to at least the
>following theological perspectives: (a) An interventionist
>concept of divine action in the formational history of the physical
>world:
Note first here the rhetorical use of labels (ie. "interventionist")
to stereotype those one disagrees with:
"Adjacent to the pit of deism is the quicksand of interventionism.
According to that perspective, most things in the material world
happen "naturally" (in essence, naturalistically), but on certain
special occasions God breaks into this realm and supernaturally
intervenes in the affairs of the material world or its creatures."
(Van Till H.J., "The Fourth Day: What the Bible and the Heavens are
Telling us about the Creation", Eerdmans: Grand Rapids MI, 1986,
p225)
This is presumably meant to imply that the vast majority of
Christians who believe that "on certain special occasions
God...supernaturally intervenes in the affairs of the material world
or its creatures" are abnormal and the tiny minority who don't
believe it are normal? In fact, Charles Hodge calls those who deny
God's intervention, Deists:
"The Deistical Theory of God's Relation to the World. The first of
the general views of God's relation to the world is that which has
ever been widely adopted by Rationalists, Deists, and men of the
world. It is founded on the assumption that the Supreme Being is too
exalted to concern Himself with the trifling concerns of his
creatures here on earth. He made the world and impressed upon it
certain laws, endowing matter with its properties, and rational
beings with the powers of free agency, and having done this, he
leaves the world to the guidance of these general laws. According to
this view, the relation which God bears to the universe is that of a
mechanist to a machine. When an artist has made a watch it goes of
itself, without his intervention. He is never called to interfere
with its operation, except to remedy some defect. BUT AS NO SUCH
DEFECT CAN BE ASSUMED IN THE WORKS OF GOD, THERE IS NO CALL
FOR HIS INTERVENTION, AND HE DOES NOT INTERFERE. All things come to
pass in virtue of the operation of causes which He created and set in
motion at the beginning. According to this view God in no wise
determines the effects of natural causes, nor controls the acts of
free agents....that all such events are as they are, must, according
to this theory, be referred to chance, or the blind operation of
natural causes. God has nothing to do with them. He has abandoned
the world to the government of physical laws and the affairs of men
to their own control. This view of God's relation to the world is so
thoroughly anti-Scriptural and irreligious that it never has been,
and never can be adopted by any Christian church. " (Hodge C.,
"Systematic Theology", Vol. I, 1892, James Clark & Co: London, 1960
reprint, p591. My emphasis.)
Note: I am not calling Howard, or any TE/EC a Deist. Unlike Howard,
I see no value in stereotyping people with labels. :-)
HVT>At the beginning God is presumed to have purposely withheld from
>the Creation certain formational capabilities, thereby making
>biological evolution impossible and occasional "supernatural
>interventions" necessary.
Note the (unconscious?) verbal manipulation to carry the argument by
the use of loaded words, eg. "purposely withheld". Sounds bad
doesn't it? But God is under no obligation to set up the world so
that He need not intervene in it.
If "biological evolution" is thereby "impossible" why should that be
bad? God may have planned that life on Earth needed Him to
supernaturally intervene or specially contrive natural causes to
bridge major discontinuities in the natural world.
Indeed, one could paraphrase the above:
"At the beginning God is presumed to have purposely withheld from
the Creation", specifically the first man and woman "certain
formational capabilities", namely they were able to sin "thereby
making" a fall from grace "possible and 'occasional `supernatural
interventions' necessary"! :-)
HVT>In the course of these "interventions" God is presumed to have
>acted on created materials in such a way as to impose upon them
>structures and forms that they were not capable of actualizing by
>the application of their own limited formational powers.
More rhetoric. Why "impose"? God doesn't need to "impose" on His
creation as though it has some mind and will of its own. I can
"impose" my will on my children, but I can't "impose" my will on the
rocks in my garden.
HVT>To say it more strongly, God is presumed to have forced some
>members of the Creation to do something different from, or beyond,
>what the formational powers given to them at the outset could have
>allowed them to do.
Again, mere rhetoric. Why is it "forced"? Why should God not limit
the "formational powers" of His "creation". Is it significant that
Howard capitalises "Creation"?
HVT>God is thought to have created the universe with gaps (missing
>capabilities) in its formational economy, and God is thought to
>have bridged those gaps by acts of "extraordinary assembly" in the
>course of time.
Again this is more (unconscious?) verbal manipulation: "missing
capabilities" sounds bad. But God is under no obligation to supply a
full suite of "capabilities" to His creation.
And no "ID Theorist" that I know of has said that God has "bridged
those gaps by acts of `extraordinary assembly'". Indeed, what does
"extraordinary assembly" actually mean?
>HVT>(b) an evidentialist apologetics: the presence of these
presumed gaps in the Creation's formational economy is thought to be
>empirically discernible. The task of Christian apologetics would
>then be to demonstrate, by appeal to the empirical sciences, the
>presences of these gaps--gifts that God chose to withhold from the
>Creation at the beginning.
More rhetoric: "gifts that God chose to withhold from the Creation".
Sounds bad, doesn't it? But "gaps" are not "gifts" withheld, if God
never did plan to give them.
HVT>The agendas of both Creation Science and ID Theory are strongly
>shaped by the desire to demonstrate the existence of these gaps in
>the Creation's formational economy, thereby making evolutionary
>continuity impossible.
These "gaps" presently exist as an empirical *fact*, eg. the origin
of the cosmos, the origin of life, the origin of animal phyla, etc.
There is no reason whatsoever why "evolutionary continuity" should
*not be "impossible".
Indeed, one could turn this on its head:
"The agendas of both" Theistic Evolution and Evolutionary Creation
"are strongly shaped by the desire to demonstrate the' non-"existence
of these gaps in the Creation's formational economy, thereby making
evolutionary continuity" possible!
HVT>And if evolutionary continuity is impossible, then the
>comprehensive worldview of evolutionary Naturalism is also
>untenable.
I would not say "untenable", just more difficult.
>HVT>I take issue with both (a) and (b). But note that (a) and (b)
are theological in character. Hence we need some more well-informed
>theological input into the discussion, a point that George Murphy
>has often made.
I's not surprising that Howard "takes issue with both (a) and (b)".
He sets them up so that just about everyone would "take issue" with
them! :-) And no doubt by "well-informed" he would exclude any
theologians who advocate divine intervention, like the Biblical
writers, the Reformers, the Princeton divines
>HVT>Back to the original concern--what is ID? It is a perspective
that entails two major claims: (1) that the universe bears the
marks of having been thoughtfully conceptualized,
Agreed.
HVT>and (2) that within the Creation there are a few specific,
>empirically discernible life forms and biotic subsystems that could
>have been actualized only by acts of "supernatural assembly" in the
>course of time.
This trivialises ID's position. The empirical fact is that there
*are* major discontinuities in the natural world, and is only the
dogma of "evolutionary continuity" that maintains as a first
principle that there is not.
>HVT>I heartily agree with (1) but find no merit, for theological
>reasons,in (2).
What Howard calls "theological reasons" I would call un-Biblical
*philosophical* "reasons":
"But is the `divinized First Cause', the God revealed in Scripture?
The Biblical God seems to engage in a lot of creaturely behavior.
The New Testament tells us that the Second Person of the Trinity was
born as a human baby in a stable in Bethlehem, after growing to
adulthood performed some very immediate miraculous acts, before dying
a creaturely death on the Cross. He changed water into wine, healed
leprosy and blindness, fed multitudes on scraps of food, raised
Lazarus from the dead and eventually rose from the dead Himself and
ascended into Heaven. Is this a God, who in Van Till's words, would
never `temporarily assume the role of a creature to perform functions
the the economy of the creation that other creatures have not been
equipped to perform'? (Johnson P.E., "Evolution and Theistic
Naturalism" , tape 1 of 3, Trinity Founders Lectures, Access Research
Network, Colorado Springs CO, 1992)
On 09 Dec 96 19:17:47 EST, Jim Bell wrote:
JB>I think Howard Van Till would have made a good lawyer (this is
>not an insult!), because he recognizes the value of being able to
>"define the issues."
It takes one to know one! :-) It reminds me of something Phil
Johnson says on one of his tapes, "As a lawyer, I really admire
Darwin's style of argumentation in the Origin of Species"! :-)
JB>He says the "assembled in time" idea of creation (special
>creation), commits one to two theological perspectives. I don't
>think his wording makes it so.
No. Howard's argument against "ID theorists" is a straw man. He
takes it for granted as a first principle that "evolutionary
continuity" is a fact and therefore "Creation Science and ID Theory"
are fundamentally wrong and therefore must be "strongly shaped by the
desire to demonstrate the existence of these gaps in the Creation's
formational economy". He is trapped in this metaphysical circle
until he can re-examine his assumption of "evolutionary continuity".
>HVT>(a) An interventionist concept of divine action in the
>formational history of the physical world...God is presumed to have
>purposely withheld from the Creation certain formational
>capabilities...to have forced some members of the Creation to do
>something different from, or beyond, what the formational powers
>given to them at the outset could have allowed them to do. ..to
>have created the universe with gaps (missing capabilities) in its
>formational economy...to have bridged those gaps by acts of
>"extraordinary assembly" in the course of time.
JB>The gigantic assumption here is that only by empowering creation
>with certain formational capabilities AT THE START can God be, what,
>efficient? Good?
This is just another "God-wouldn't-have-done-it-that-way" argument.
There is nothing in the Bible that says this - it is just philosophy.
JB>IOW, Howard sees interventionism as per se inefficient or
>imprecise or "less than perfect."
Yes. But this is the type of thinking that J.B. Phillips wrote
about in Your God is too Small".
JB>I don't know how one can know that without knowing the mind of
>God. Calvin College is good, but not that good.
I would hope that Howard's thinking is not representative of "Calvin
College". Louis Berkhof, former Professor at Calvin College, would
no doubt be turning in his grave! Here is what he wrote:
"The deistic conception of divine providence. According to Deism
God's concern with the world is not universal, special and perpetual,
but only of a general nature. At the time of creation He imparted to
all His creatures certain inalienable properties, placed them under
invariable laws, and left them to work out their destiny by their own
inherent powers. Meanwhile He merely exercises a general oversight,
not of the specific agents that appear on the scene, but of the general
laws which He has established. The world is simply a machine which
God has put in motion, and not at all a vessel which He pilots from
day to day. This deistic conception of providence..was clothed in a
philosophic garb by the Deists of the eighteenth century, and
appeared in a new form in the nineteenth century, under the influence
of the theory of evolution and of natural science, with its strong
emphasis on the uniformity of nature as controlled by an inflexible
system of iron-clad laws." (Berkhof L., "Systematic Theology",
Banner of Truth: London, 1958, p167).
and
"The materialistic conception of the laws of nature as a close-knit
system, acting independently of God and really making it impossible
for Him to interfere in the course of the world, is absolutely wrong."
(Berkhof, 1966, p169)
JB>By waiting until 30 A.D. to reveal Christ, wasn't God
>"withholding" salvivic capacity? Wasn't there a "gap" in salvation
>history, especially as related to the gentiles? If we're going to
>do theology this way, you can't stop at creation.
Of course. The history of Israel was a series of failed experiments
punctuated by supernatural "interventions". On Howard's criterion,
God really planned it all fairly badly. Surely an Intelligent
Designer with a science degree from any modern university, would have
done much better. For starters, the serpent would not have been
allowed to talk, man wouldn't have sinned, and the whole messy rescue
operation wouldn't have been necessary! :-)
JB>The revelation of Christ was by any account "extraordinary" in the
>history of the world. The creation of man was no less
>extraordinary. I find it consistent with God's acts in history.
Yes. When "evolutionary continuity" was applied to the Bible (a la
Wellhausen) and other theistic-naturalist theologians, and carried
through consistently, there was no supernatural intervention left
behind, but then there was no real salvation either. Churches that
adopted that theological liberalism became defunct (surprise,
surprise), and good old Darwinian principles of survival of the
fittest ensured that mainly the fundamentalists reproduced progeny to
the next generation.
The current largely anti-intellectual situation in protestantism, is
directly attributable most of the intellectual leaders embracing an
evolutionary and hence theistic-naturalist world view. Our current
crop of TEs/ECs are just perpetuating the problem. But God is
working around the problem, with what Ratzsch calls the "The newly
emerging upper tier of the creationist movement" (Ratzsch D.L., "The
Battle of Beginnings, 1996, p84).
JB>Using "withhold" as a necessarily pejorative term is
>inappropriate, in my view. God REVEALS when he decides to, and
>doesn't want us to presume to hold him to our own standard of
>utility. Didn't Job get precisely this message?
Agreed. Howards argument depends on (unconscious?) verbal
manipulation to carry it. Substitute the pejorative terms for more
neutral ones, and his argument collapses.
>HVT>(b) an evidentialist apologetics:...The task of Christian
>apologetics would then be to demonstrate, by appeal to the empirical
>sciences, the presences of these gaps...thereby making evolutionary
>continuity impossible....
>JB>Hmm, I don't think THE task is to "demonstrate the presence of
>gaps." Rather, it is the empirical recognition that gaps are there,
>and that natural science is unable to explain them. Nor is it the
>DESIRE to demonstrate gaps. It is the DESIRE to find the best
>explanation for creation IN LIGHT of the gaps.
Absolutely! Because Howard has accepted as a first principle the
fact of "evolutionary continuity" (despite the "empirical" evidence)
he thinks that ID has to "demonstrate the presence of gaps". Rather,
because the gaps are an empirical fact of nature, the boot is on the
other foot. It is "The task of" Darwinist "apologetics...to"
*explain away "by appeal to" naturalist philosophy and 'God-
wouldn't-have-done-it-that-way arguments" the presences of these
gaps...thereby making evolutionary continuity" possible...".
>JB>I've never found the "God of the gaps" tag the devastating
>monicker so many others seem to think it is. We do have an
>unfolding knowledge of our world, through science, and naturally
>some gaps get closed. But others do not, and there is no a priori
>reason to exclude supernaturalism.
Of course not. It is only those who have bought into the principle
of "evolutionary continuity" that have a problem with the
so-called "God of the gaps":
"Why should theistic scholars be haunted by the fear that invoking
divine action in biology is inherently futile, assuming they believe
that such divine activity could have occurred? (If they do not
believe divine action could have occurred, then they are naturalists,
not theists.) ...The real power of naturalism consists of its
presence in the minds of its natural adversaries. Scientific
naturalism is the spirit of the age, at least in the universities,
and even many Christian intellectuals are at least half convinced
that naturalism is true." (Johnson P.E., "Reason in the Balance",
InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove Ill., 1995, pp100-101)
On Tue, 10 Dec 1996 16:17:51 -0500, Terry M. Gray wrote:
AH>However, somebody on the Evolution reflector raised a point which
>(despite my sympathy for van Till's position) I think deserves some
>discussion here. As Christians, we affirm that *salvation* history
>IS (at least from the viewpoint of human history)
>"interventionist", in that God bridged a specific gap almost 2000
>years ago. One even hears the "Couldn't God have done it right
>from the beginning?" question with regard to salvation. Of course
>there are reasonable answers to that question. But, for our current
>discussion, can anybody point out some fundamental difference that
>would make "interventionism" less theologically acceptable for the
>Earth's formational history than it is for salvation history?
Good question! My constant question of TEs is that if we admit that
God's pattern of acting in human history has been interventionist,
why do we deny in principle that he has similarly acted in
biological history.
Note: I do not say that God *did* intervene in biological history (I
wasn't there - Job 38:4), just that I don't rule it out and am
prepared to consider it as an explanation in the case of origins when
there are gaps with no known naturalistic explanation.
TG>The work of Christ is not "interventionist"--it was planned from
>before the foundation of the world....
This is truly an amazing answer (and in nearly 2 years on the
Reflector I have seen some pretty amazing answers <g>). To suggest
that "The work of Christ", ie. the Incarnation, Resurrection,
Ascension and Second Coming, are not "interventionist" because they
were "planned from before the foundation of the world", is the
reductio ad absurdum of the non-interventionist argument.
It presumably acnowledges that these events in "salvation history"
really were *interventions*, but they were *planned* interventions?
Well "ID theorists" would claim that if God intervened at strategic
points in biological history, eg. the origin of life, life's major
groups, man, etc., these would have also been "planned from before
the foundation of the world".
So why couldn't God have "planned from before the foundation of the
world" to intervene in biological history just like he has done in
human history?
Happy New Year!
Steve
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