(1) Terry Gray expressed his feelings about having been called names. I'm
entirely in agreement. I just want us to observe the "sauce for the goose
is sauce for the gander" principle of equity (does anyone know the Latin
for this?).
(2) George Murphy expressed the following:
>>But when ID people conclude that something is the
result of capitalized Intelligent Design, we're supposed to believe that
scientifically understandable processes could not have produced it and
stop our investigation at that point.<<
Well, I can't claim to speak for the "ID people", but I don't see where
embrasure of the overall program actually entails "stop our investigation
at that point". It may mean our investigation takes on different lines,
but what's bad about that? If I decide that Stonehenge is not a product of
the rocks that make it up, I will no longer interrogate the rocks for
answers to that class of question. I don't necessarily lose interest in
the rocks (e.g. in the properties that have made it so long-lived); but I
also have some new avenues of research, namely, who made it, when, and
_why_ did they make it?
(3) Peter Vibert commented on never thinking Lewis got a particular point
right. George Murphy helpfully pointed to the context in the book
_Miracles_; I'd like to point out that Lewis was building on an idea found
in Athanasius' 4th-century treatise on the Incarnation about that kind of
miracle. Lewis gives an indication of this in the essay in _God in the
dock_, a number of points of which did not make it into the final version
of _Miracles_ (more's the pity).
Peter also wrote,
>>I concede that "signs" may not be the right concept to map onto God's
"extraordinary", "unmediated", "unusual", "direct", "supernatural" works.
What's the right way to describe them? And is the act of creation (at least
in part - for God used some "ordinary" processes in creating, according to
Gen. 1 & 2) one of them?<<
To which I can only reply, I'm trying to work that out. I would be
grateful for your prayers!
Yours sincerely,
Jack Collins