Howard Van Till commented recently on YEC and ID:
"The pattern is familiar: (1) Presume that evolution = Darwinism; (2) Define
Darwinism to include explicitly anti-theistic, naturalistic propositions;
(3) Allow no distinction between the scientific concept of biotic evolution
and the exploitive rhetoric of naturalism; (4) Accept the rhetoric of the
preachers of naturalism when they claim that evolution warrants their
naturalistic worldview; (5) Conclude that any teaching favorable to
evolution is the enemy of Christianity.
On this YEC and ID agree. However, ID's allowing or encouraging the YEC
advocates to jump on the ID bandwagon may cost the ID movement dearly in the
long run. The ID advocates may have to admit their episodic creationism
(which focuses attention on episodes of form-imposing divine intervention as
essential to their concept of divine creative action). As I've been saying
for years, what is called ID Theory is really a claim that some organisms
and biotic subsystems could have been actualized only by episodes of
extra-natural assembly. IDT is really EAT (Extra-natural Assembly Theory)."
The knock on ID, as I perceive it, is that it attributes an imperfect
creation directly to the imposition of a God, who the Bible tells us is
"perfect in all His ways." In abbreviated form, according to ID theory:
God > sculpts > life forms. If so, where was God when Alzheimers entered
the world via altered DNA? Or, for that matter, where was the Creator when
any of the over 3,000 genetic diseases, resulting from genetic defects,
entered into the stream of humanity? If God personally intervenes to
introduce new life forms, He is curiously absent in the introduction of
genetic disease. This, as I see it, is the prime flaw in the ID method of
apology.
A better explanation would be that the Creator ordains nature, which
through its own process causes new life and life forms to come into
being. In short form: God > empowers > nature > sculpts > life forms. By
this method of apology, biologists are right in searching for purely
natural causes without puzzling over where divine intervention enters in,
and theologians can marvel over a God who can know the end results from the
foundations of the earth without manipulating the outcome as He goes
along. Divine intervention is only necessary if our Creator is just as in
the dark as we are as to what the future holds. A God who knows the
outcome in advance need not impose upon nature in order to bring about
desired results.
Dick Fischer - The Origins Solution - www.orisol.com
"The answer we should have known about 150 years ago."
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