I am sending this via webmail from work in my morning tea break.
Hope it works OK!
On Tue, 23 Nov 1999 19:42:12 +0000 mortongr@flash.net wrote:
[...]
>SJ>Here is an op-ed piece by Jonathan Wells, one of the ID movement's
>>leaders, reporting on a round-table discussion between ID advocates
>>and Darwinists.
GM>I have just discovered something. It appears that Jonathon Wells is a
>Moonie. See:
>
>http://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Talks/Wells/0-Toc.htm
>
>As I have said many times, the ID movement really won't do Christianity
any
>good as it can be applied to any religion including Islam. See:
>
>http://www.harunyahya.org/Eng/homeeng.html
>
>I especially like the part that says:
>
>"The author has published numerous books and booklets explicitly proving
>the existence of Allah, emphasising the marvellous creation of Allah
>against the
>materialistic and atheistic ideologies, and of course their most efficient
>and significant view: the Evolution Theory"
>
>Sounds familiar doesn't it. He is the Phil Johnson of Turkey! Q.E.D.
Well the penny has finally dropped with Glenn that "ID...can be
applied to any religion including Islam"!
But isn't that what I have been saying all along? That ID is not YEC in
disguise (Susan and Chris' thesis) but is the common property of most,
if not all, religions, and certainly the common property of the
theistic religions like Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Where most religions differ is *above* the level of the existence of
an Intelligent Designer, ie. in who the Designer is, what He has
done, and what He wills. I can have major differences with my
fellow IDers at those higher levels, but they are usually off-topic
for the ID movement.
Among the religious IDers some are Jewish, some are Catholic,
some are YECs, PCs, DEs and TEs, and some are not even
conventionally religious at all. I have differences, some major, at
varying levels with all of these. But at the basic level of the
existence of an Intelligent Designer, the 90% of those who believe
there is an Intelligent Designer are in agreement on that point
against the 10% who believe there is no Designer.
The trouble is that the 10% who believe there is no Designer have,
on that point, effectively taken over science, the government, the
law, education, and the media because they have exploited these
higher level differences among the 90%.
It is the goal of the ID movement to unify the 90% on this one issue:
the very existence of an Intelligent Designer.
How Glenn can say that that "won't do Christianity any good" is
beyond me. While re-establishing ID in science, government, the
law, education, etc, will do Christianity's religious competitors good
as well, it won't do more good to them than it will do to Christianity.
And it *has* to be better than the present situation where the
existence of an Intelligent Designer is almost completely excluded
from these areas of public life leaving the non-existence of an
Intelligent Designer virtually the `established religion'!
But apart from these considerations, if we in the 90% believe it is
the *truth* that there is an Intelligent Designer, why should not all
of us in the 90% (including TEs), want to see ID prevail over the 10%
who hold a virtual public monopoly on what to us is an untruth?
Steve
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen E. (Steve) Jones ,--_|\ Email: sejones@iinet.net.au
3 Hawker Avenue / Oz \ Web: http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
Warwick 6024 -> *_,--\_/ Phone: +61 8 9448 7439
Perth, Western Australia v "Test everything." (1 Thess. 5:21)
--------------------------------------------------------------------