Re: Jim said

Allan Harvey (aharvey@boulder.nist.gov)
Mon, 12 Jan 1998 12:10:27 -0700

At 01:44 PM 1/10/98 -0700, John W. Burgeson wrote:
>Jim Behnke wrote:
>
>"At the ASA meeting at Bethel in 1996, Mike Behe told some of us
>at lunch that he was pushing ID for apologetic reasons. He may have
>changed his mind by now. When I told Phil Johnson this in Minneapolis
>in October, he couldn't believe me."
>
>A fair comment, Jim. But it still is not to the point!
>
>Assume ALL of the ID folks are "pushing ID" for the wrong reasons.
>Suppose they are all pushing it "with malice in mind." To this, I would
>simply observe "so what?" I am interested in where the ID hypothesis
>leads, and what we can find out because of it. The motivations of the
>people involved are of trivial interest.

True only to a point. Yes, their motivations are not particularly
important by themselves. But when these "wrong" reasons are transmitted
to the church, leading Christians into God-of-the-gaps theology (or
reinforcing what already exists), then it is a big problem. Whether this
problem is due to Behe or Johnson transmitting bad theology which they
themselves hold or whether the fault is in the communication is perhaps
the part that is of secondary interest.

Face it, within the church Johnson is *not* perceived as somebody just
trying to improve science. He is perceived as the guy who is showing
that Christianity is not falsified after all, because the theory of
evolution is not true after all. The horrible theology (namely, that a
natural explanation of something, if true, would exclude God) implied in
that perception, which Johnson does not seem to shy away from, is the
aspect that scares many of us.

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| Dr. Allan H. Harvey | aharvey@boulder.nist.gov |
| Physical and Chemical Properties Division | "Don't blame the |
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