Re: Defining Intelligent Design

Glenn Morton (grmorton@waymark.net)
Tue, 27 Jan 1998 05:58:51 -0600

At 01:28 AM 1/27/98 -0800, David B. Fenske wrote:
>I have a question regarding the definition of Intelligent Design as
>practiced by Behe and Johnson et al. This may seem an obvious query, but I
>haven't had time to read any of their books, and just want to make sure
>something I have been discussing with one of my children is somewhat
>correct :-)
>
>Beyond the fact that the universe was designed, and many biochemical
>structures are irreducibly complex, and Darwinism is not capable of
>explaining it, where else do these guys fit on the theological timescale
>:-) I have always assumed that the ID crowd accept an old earth and
>perhaps micro-evolution, but is this correct? Are they old-earthers or
>YEC? Do they accept micro-evolution but not macro, and thereby approximate
>Progressive Creationists? Do they allow for *any* evolution? How do we
>define them, using the usual labels?

They are a mixture. Johnson is old earth. At least he was a couple of years
ago when I badgered him into giving an answer. I suspect that Paul Nelson
tends toward the young-earth side because he was an editor of the Bible
science Newsletter which is young-earth throughout most of its history. I
suspect that Steve Meyer is old earth since he was a geophysicist in the oil
business and used to work at the same company I worked at (but I might be
wrong. I can't remember).

glenn

Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man

and

Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm