Reflectorites
On Sun, 30 Jul 2000 17:54:05 -0500 (CDT), Wesley R. Elsberry wrote:
[...]
>SJ>Johnson makes it clear that he is talking about "divine
>>creation" in an gneeralised Intelligent Designer sense,
>>i.e. one whose "philosophical roots goes back to the ancient
>>Greeks and Romans".
[...]
WE>Anyone can read the transcript whose URL I provided.
If Wesley is implying that he provided the transcript URL that I posted, he
is wrong. It was posted to the other List I am on. I received Wesley's post
in the same session as I sent mine.
WE>Anyone
>can see that Koppel's question was about Johnson's claim of a
>modern scientific theory challenging Darwinian biology.
And "Anyone can see" that Johnson was not just answering Koppel's
question but also Neas', trying to equate ID with Paley's Christian Natural
Theology.
WE>Anyone can also see that if Johnson's replies don't equate ID
>with divine creation, then they were evasive and obfuscatory.
>Take one or the other, but one can't avoid taking one of them.
And "Anyone can see" that Johnson *immediately* clarified *in the same
sentence* what he meant by "divine creation", namely "that there is an
intelligence behind life and necessary in creating it..."
And "Anyone can see" that Wesley ignores my point that about all
Christian IDers recognising that there are two separate arguments: 1) there
is a Designer; and 2) the Designer is the Christian God:
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Those members of the ID movement who are Christians like Johnson,
Dembski and Behe have made no secret of the fact they are Christians and
that they believe the Designer to be the Christian God ...
But they all accept that there are two separate arguments: 1) there is a
Designer; and 2) the Designer is the Christian God. The first is a purely
scientific argument from nature, and is not based on the Bible or the
teachings of any religion. It is therefore not proscribed by the
Constitutional doctrine of the separation of Church and State. There is no
reason therefore why the first argument should not be made in schools and
even science classes.
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But then he *has* to. The whole anti-ID strategy of trying to equate ID
with just another form of Christian Biblical creationism would collapse like
a house of cards if Wesley and his ilk conceded even for a moment that
there are two separate arguments!
Steve
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"But many biologists, looking at evolution over longer time intervals, have
noted that species are rarely modified consistently in one direction long
enough for significant evolutionary change to accumulate. Even the
Galapagos finches seem to oscillate, not really "going any where" in an
evolutionary sense. The reason is that short-term environmental change
tends to be cyclical, so natural selection is not likely to keep pushing a
species in any one particular direction long enough for new species or
major new adaptations to evolve. Furthermore, every species is broken up
into local populations, each of which belongs to a different local
ecosystem-making it even less likely that natural selection will modify the
entire species in any particular way as time rolls on." (Eldredge N.,
"Evolution and Environment: The two faces of biodiversity," Natural
History, June 1998, pp.54-55)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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