is messiah! Impact on ID?
Sender: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu
Precedence: bulk
Shuan Rose wrote:
> Presumably ID is supposed to be a big tent uniting theists (all of whom
> believe that God is the creator?/designer? against antireligious
> evolutionists, like Dawkins, Dennett, Provine etc. Yet it has not worked out
> that way, with many religious thinkers attacking ID. Why? Are'nt Phillip,
> Jonathon et al. on our side , fighting against the forces of darkness, led
> by the Lord of Hellfire himself, Dawkins? (OK, maybe he isn't THE Lord of
> Hellfire, but IMO he may be one of his minions :-)
> Well, Glenn, George? Do you think you are giving aid and comfort to the
> enemy by "lining up" with , say, Dawkins & Eugene Scott against defenders of
> theism like Phillip Johnson and Jonathon Wells.? Even if they are wrong
> about a few technical and theological issues, shouldn't we being lining up
> with them ?
First, theism & 75c will get you a cup of coffee. It can be a form of
idolatry, which is in many ways more misleading than atheism. The
latter may at
least be honest. So the fact that someone "believes in God" doesn't mean that
I'm going to side with him/her.
Having said that, it's true that Johnson & many other (probably almost
all) IDers are not just "theists" but Christians. I do not at all deny their
Christian faith but their theology - which isn't the same thing - is poor. The
fact that they sometimes don't seem to see much difference between generic
theism & belief in the Trinity is particularly unfortunate.
& so in many ways & on fundamental theological issues I would indeed
stand with them over against Dawkins et al. But on the particular issues
related to ID as a putative scientific program they are wrong &
non-theistic (as
well as theistic) evolutionists are right. Moreover, they encourage bad
theology (though of course not deliberately) & thereby weaken the Christian
community. Getting people to accept ID claims may appear to be a way of
safeguarding faith but that is only in the short term. In the long run, when
people realize that ID just doesn't work, people may lose faith.
There do come times when it's necessary to choose the lesser of two
evils. But now - 2002 in the United States - we do not have to chose between
Dawkins et al. & ID. There are plenty of clergy & other theologians and
scientists who are Christians who have a clearer view of evolution & related
matters than either of those parties. What we need to do is to get them to see
that presenting a clearer understanding of evolution in relation to creation is
an important task for churches. This may not be easy but it isn't a hopeless
task. We need to work for greater scientific and theological literacy rather
than swallow the ersatz science & theology of the ID movement.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
"The Science-Theology Interface"
--------------C64C0C1FDA5A51EAA3BBCA04
Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">
--------------C64C0C1FDA5A51EAA3BBCA04--
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29
: Mon Jul 15 2002 - 13:07:29 EDT
<html>
Shuan Rose wrote:
<blockquote TYPE=CITE>Presumably ID is supposed to be a big tent uniting
theists (all of whom
<br>believe that God is the creator?/designer? against antireligious
<br>evolutionists, like Dawkins, Dennett, Provine etc. Yet it has not worked
out
<br>that way, with many religious thinkers attacking ID. Why? Are'nt Phillip,
<br>Jonathon et al. on our side , fighting against the forces of darkness,
led
<br>by the Lord of Hellfire himself, Dawkins? (OK, maybe he isn't
THE Lord of
<br>Hellfire, but IMO he may be one of his minions :-)
<br>Well, Glenn, George? Do you think you are giving aid and comfort to
the
<br>enemy by "lining up" with , say, Dawkins & Eugene Scott against
defenders of
<br>theism like Phillip Johnson and Jonathon Wells.? Even if they are wrong
<br>about a few technical and theological issues, shouldn't we being lining
up
<br>with them ?</blockquote>
First, theism & 75c will
get you a cup of coffee. It can be a form of idolatry, which is in
many ways more misleading than atheism. The latter may at least be
honest. So the fact that someone "believes in God" doesn't mean that
I'm going to side with him/her.
<br> Having said that, it's true
that Johnson & many other (probably almost all) IDers are not just
"theists" but Christians. I do not at all deny their Christian faith
but their theology - which isn't the same thing - is poor. The fact
that they sometimes don't seem to see much difference between generic theism
& belief in the Trinity is particularly unfortunate.
<br> & so in many ways &
on fundamental theological issues I would indeed stand with them over against
Dawkins et al. But on the particular issues related to ID as a putative
scientific program they are wrong & non-theistic (as well as theistic)
evolutionists are right. Moreover, they encourage bad theology (though
of course not deliberately) & thereby weaken the Christian community.
Getting people to accept ID claims may appear to be a way of safeguarding
faith but that is only in the short term. In the long run, when people
realize that ID just doesn't work, people may lose faith.
<br> There do come times when
it's necessary to choose the lesser of two evils. But now - 2002
in the United States - we do not have to chose between Dawkins <i>et al.
</i>& ID. There are plenty of clergy & other theologians
and scientists who are Christians who have a clearer view of evolution
& related matters than either of those parties. What we need
to do is to get them to see that presenting a clearer understanding of
evolution in relation to creation is an important task for churches.
This may not be easy but it isn't a hopeless task. We need to work
for greater scientific <u>and</u> theological literacy rather than swallow
the ersatz science & theology of the ID
movement.
<p>
Shalom,
<br>
George
<p>George L. Murphy
<br><A HREF="http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/">http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/>
<br>"The Science-Theology Interface"</html>