Don Page, Dennis Feucht and others have forwarded to me recent
discussions on ID and theology. A few comments:
In his post, Bill Dembski wrote:
>Because intelligent causes are empirically detectable,
>science must ever remain open to evidence of their activity.
If you want a common credo for the ID group, there it is. (By implication:
methodological naturalism is unsound.) Theologically, this might be
understood under the dictum, "Adopt no philosophy of science which ties
God's hands." But I do not think any ID theorist would say that God
must intervene to leave evidence of His existence.
God does whatever He pleases. We, in turn, struggle to understand.
What puzzles ID theorists, I think, is the astonishing willingness of
scientists who are also theists and Christians to lay aside possible
modes of causation a priori -- as if they knew, before looking, how God
acted (i.e., via only so-called natural causes).
Why? What could one hope to gain by having a *smaller* box of possible
causes into which to reach, when confronted with the patterns of nature?
If God did act in more than one mode, methodological naturalism can only
hinder our getting at the truth.
Bill Dembski's forthcoming book, _The Design Inference_ (Cambridge
University Press, 1998), should help focus this discussion, as will the
joint Dembski/Meyer/Nelson book, _Uncommon Descent: Detecting Design
in Biological Systems_, where we apply the theory to biology. Jonathan
Wells at UC-Berkeley has a book in the works, and many others (e.g., Rob
Koons, Bill Craig, Charles Thaxton, Walt Bradley, Robin Collins, Del
Ratzsch) continue their work or are newly contributing to the flowering
of ID theory. And ID provides a broad ground for engaging our
secular colleagues.
But please: no more sermons about the necessity of methodological
naturalism.
Paul Nelson
P.S. Since the ASA listserve archive appears not to be working, I can
no longer follow discussion in this forum. I'm not on the ASA list, so
please send me e-mail if you want to follow up.