I have for a couple of years now been lecturing (rarely as yet actually
writing) on the ID movement in varous venues (on one occasion at Princeton
University). I've also been invited to speak at one specific ID conference
(as a "critic", that's the term the conference employed) and to observe at
another. I will be involved in an ID-related function (not open to the
public) later this year. I know personally all or almost all of the
leadership of the ID movement, and have known some of them for many years.
I say all that to establish some basis for my comments. I entirely agree
that ID is a "big tent"--I've used that phrase often myself--for it includes
YEC, OEC, at least one geniune TE (Michael Behe, whose views are pretty
close to those of Asa Gray--but by gosh don't tell anyone that he fits this
category), and a wide range of people theologically. The "triumverate"
(Johnson, Dembski, and Behe) represents the three major branches of
Christendom (which frankly I find a point in favor of ID), but beyond that
leading advocates include a few agnostics and at least one member of the
Unification Church, as well as lots of conservative Protestants. I also
agree that they *typically* (not always) decline to discuss several issues
that divided other antievolutionists in the last century: the earth's age,
the amount of common ancestry for organisms, the intepretation of Genesis,
etc. And I agree that they do this mainly for political reasons--they want
a coalition large enough to impact public education, that's what they're
really about--though my friends in the movement always tell me I'm wrong
about this.
As for TE, that's an even bigger tent, in some ways. Let me elaborate. On
the one hand, TE is much smaller b/c everyone by definition more or less
accepts evolution and what comes with it (big bang, old earth, common
ancestry, figurative interpretation of Genesis if the Bible is considered at
all). And everyone is some type of theist (probably, though if I think hard
I might change my mind). On the other hand, the tent is mighty big
theologically. There are in fact probably more varieties of TE than there
are of ID--partly b/c ID guards its public face so well. For example, one
could drive a pretty large truck between the views of Polkinghorne and those
of Peacocke, as I have noted several times before. Throw in David Griffin,
John Cobb, Sally McFague, Richard Bube, and Ken Miller (all of whom fit the
TE label), and you have a cornucopia of theological positions. And this has
been true since the late nineteenth century. Indeed, in my forthcoming book
I will argue that perhaps the largest driving force behind fundamentalist
opposition to evolution in the 1920s, was what they perceived to be (and I
share their perception in several cases) the excesses of liberal
interpretations of evolution. You can find almost anything you can imagine
under that label.
You can, for example, find Asa Gray affirming the "compatibility" (his
word) between evolution and the Nicene Creed; or, on the other hand, Edwin
Grant Conklin denying a personal God, immortality, and the efficacy of
prayer, all on the basis of what he himself called (as many others did) "the
religion of science." And yet both saw themselves as religious
evolutionists, in some sense as Christians. And you have people who call
eugenics the way of salvation (I kid you not). So it's a huge tent.
Ted Davis
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