On Sun, 28 Nov 1999 10:51:14 +0000, glenn morton wrote:
>SJ>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.
GM>Well, Stephen, for one, being a christian, I am more interested in
>Christianity having a good apologetical defense. While I have muslims in my
>extended family and have a deep respect for them, I do not believe their
>religion to be correct and thus, I don't have to deal with their
>apologetical problems.
Glenn is getting confused with ID and Christian Apologetics. I am interested
in Christian Apologetics too, just like I am interested in Christian Evangelism,
and Christian Missions. But these are all separate spheres, although they
are all important and connected.
ID is a valuable part of Christian Apologetics, but only a part of it. There is
a lot more to Christian Apologetics than ID. ID is a part of Christian
Apologetics but Christian Apologetics is not a a part of ID.
ID is about establishing there is a God. Christian Apologetic is about
establishing the *Christian* God.
ID uses the facts of nature. Christian Apologetic uses the facts of nature
(General Revelation) and the facts of Scripture (Special Revelation).
ID could be taught in science classrooms under the US Constitution but
Christian Apologetics never could. ID is the counterpart to Materialism-
Naturalism, which is by default taught in science classes.
>SJ>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%.
GM>They have done this because those who believe in a designer have not been
>effective at presenting a scenario for the past history of the earth.
>Modern Science presents a scenario that is purported to be the ACTUAL
>history of the universe. It fits the observational data. ID makes the same
>mistake YECs do--they present NO scenario for what ACTUALLY happened.
ID proper has only been going, in its modern form, since 1991 and non-ID
has almost all the money and university posts! It is *unreasonable* for
Glenn to expect ID to compete with modern non-ID science on equal terms
right away.
But also, Glenn assumes that ID must come up with something *different*
regarding "the past history of the earth". This is not necessarily so. There
will be a lot of things that ID and Naturalism don't differ much on. The age
of the Earth is one of them.
ID's prime role at this moment in its history is establishing the very
possibility of Design, i.e. philosophical. Modern science denies even
the possiblity of ID. That battle has to be fought first. The research programs
will come along in due course, when the legitimacy of Design is established
and public funds are allocated to carry out research into Design.
A prime area of research IMHO will be the origin of life and molecular
machines. If plausible scenarios can be worked out which uses Intelligent
Design legitimately, and fits all the facts, then ID will be established as a
superior paradigm to Naturalism. Then all else will follow up the line.
But all this will take time, maybe several generations. Darwin in his Origin
said that his theory would not take hold until all the existing scientists died
off and he was right. Darwinism did mot really take hold until the 1930's,
70 years after Darwin. ID might take as long, or even longer to become
established. Those who complain that ID is not doing anything lack
historical perspective. I am 53 and I doubt if I will live to see ID's triumph.
But I do expect to see ID steadily making progress.
GM>Thus
>they, like the YECs will be relegated to the sidelines of science. Until
>Christians finally figure out that there is a need for a workable scenario
>the 10% will always have sway. The game is being played and we are not even
>on the field!
See above. Glenn is still fixated about YEC. YEC is becoming a side-issue
even among the YECs. Read Ashton's "In Six Days". It's supposed to be
about YEC but it's all about ID. It has quote after quote by Behe and he
believes in common ancestry and an Old Earth! IMHO YEC will just fade
away as a major issue and ID will take its place.
>SJ>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.
GM>Big deal. UFO buffs who believe that alien races seeded the universe with
>life are also ID proponents. And the ID movement doesn't and can't
>distinguish between the alien-designer concept and the God-designer
>concept. Do you think the ID movement will allow one of the UFO buffs to be
>on the same stage with them?
Glenn is getting confused about different levels of ID. There can be
ID theories at the cosmological and biological levels. While someone
could argue, as Crick does, for an "alien-designer concept", he still
has to explain the aliens! And the aliens could not be responsible
for the fine-tuning of the universe. While the "alien-designer concept"
could not be ruled out under ID to explain life on Earth, it could not
compete with the "God-designer concept" as a more comprehensive
theory of design.
That there may be competing ID camps is no argument against ID.
There are competing camps under Materialism-Naturalism. Glenn's
"UFO buffs" exist under Materialism-Naturalism and one of them,
Crick, is a Nobel laureate!
>SJ>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'!
GM>No, it doesn't have to be better. It is another false rabbit trail that
>will lead nowhere. THey don't tell us what actually happened in the past
>and that is the game that must be played. And by the way, I am a member of
>the ID movement because I believe in a Designer. But if I stop there, then
>I haven't done a thing.
See above. Glenn is still fixated about YEC issues. The age of the Earth
is not an ID issue:
"The third reason why Miller's argument misses the mark is actually
quite understandable. It arises from the confusion of two separate
ideas-the theory that life was intelligently designed and the theory
that the earth is young. Because religious groups who strongly
advocate both ideas have been in the headlines over the past several
decades, much of the public thinks that the two ideas are necessarily
linked. Implicit in Ken Miller's argument about pseudogenes, and
absolutely required for his conclusions, is the idea that the
designer had to have made life recently. That is not a part of
intelligent-design theory. The conclusion that some features of life
were designed can be made in the absence of knowledge about when the
designing took place. A child who looks at the faces on Mt.
Rushmore immediately knows that they were designed but might have no
idea of their history; for all she knows, the faces might have been
designed the day before she got there, or might have been there since
the beginning of time. An art museum might display a statue of a
bronze cat purportedly made in Egypt thousands of years ago-until the
statue is examined by technologically advanced methods and shown to
be a modern forgery. In either case, though, the bronze cat was
certainly designed by an intelligent agent." (Behe M.J., "Darwin's
Black Box", 1996, p227)
>SJ>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?
GM>We simply can't prevail until we present a workable scenario of past
>history!
See above. The "past history" of the Earth is simply not an ID issue.
Glenn is demanding that ID address something that is a non-problem to it.
Steve
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"Was it an accident that Darwin's conclusion meant just what every reader
wanted it to mean? I think not. Darwin used the same ambiguity in his
private letters. Darwinism, therefore, began as a theory that evolution
could be explained by natural selection. It ended as a theory that evolution
could be explained just as you would like it to be explained." (Darlington
C.D., "The Origin of Darwinism", Scientific American, Vol. 201, May
1959, p60)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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