Re: Phil Johnson's agenda
George Murphy ("gmurphy@raex.com"@raex.com)
Sun, 05 Dec 1999 18:28:01 -0500
glenn morton wrote:
.............................
> THe thing that disappoints me is that all this effort Christians have put
> into ID reaps such a small harvest. The removal of the Bible from the
> origins discussion and the fact that, with their strategy, they can't even
> show that the Christian God is the Designer. It might be aliens or even
> the Roman gods might be the designer. Don't believe this, here is what one
> fellow from the Touchstone issue on ID said,
>
> "Behe's argument does not entail (as in logically compel) a theological
> conclusion because it is consistent with other explanations. For instance,
> perhaps some advanced alien race planted fully constructed, reproducing
> organisms on a hospitable earth some time in the distant past. In that
> case, someone other than God would have designed these features of the
> biological world. Sure, it's far-fetched; but it's possible. For this
> reason, intelligent design arguments in biology do not normally entail
> theistic conclusions even if many people suspect God is lurking somewhere
> in the background." Jay Wesley Richards, "Proud Obstacles & a Reasonable
> Hope," Touchstone, July/August 1999, p. 29-32, p. 31
>
> It seems like a real waste of time to spend so much Christian effort to
> prove that aliens MIGHT be our creators!
True, but pointing out that some superior alien race _might_ be the Intelligent
Designer is an important part of the "nobody here but us philosophers & scientists"
game. It enables the IDers to pretend that their agenda isn't fundamentally religious.
Quite aside from that, the alien claim is fallacious, for of course all it does
is push the origin of life & consciousness back in time & out in space a bit. No one
will be satisfied with that as a complete solution of the problem, least of all the
IDers themselves: If (as Johnson argues) they're trying to show the inadequacy of
"materialist philosophy", they can't be content with merely material aliens as an
explanation of terrestrial life.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/