From: Howard J. Van Till (hvantill@chartermi.net)
Date: Tue Sep 23 2003 - 10:39:58 EDT
>From: "Ted Davis" <TDavis@messiah.edu>
3 questions, with an invitation to pose answers (which I shall do with
unmitigated candor):
(1)
> If [Johnson] and his camp were to disavow the YECs, what would be gained?
The right to be considered less concerned about the strategy of winning
popular support and more concerned with speaking their actual beliefs
forthrightly.
(2)
> Would the scientific establishment suddenly warm up to ID?
No, the ID leadership would still have to demonstrate that they are offering
anything more than a highly verbose way of saying, "In the absence of
complete and detailed causally specific natural explanations for the
evolutionary development of every biotic system and subsystem, it is
logically permissible to posit that some of these systems and subsystems
were assembled, at least for the fist time, by some unidentified,
unembodied, choice-making agent who is not necessarily God."
ID leaders could also gain respect by, a) saying forthrightly that their
movement is driven not only to defeat maximal naturalism, but any other
viewpoint that questions supernaturalism (viewpoints that posit coercive
divine intervention), or b) ceasing to blur the important distinctions among
maximal naturalism, minimal naturalism, methodological naturalism, and
naturalistic theism, and c) admitting that the word couplet "intelligently
designed" is mostly a marketing slogan that substitutes for "assembled by
supernatural intervention" and functions as a facade in front of the
religious motivation that is essential to the movement.
(3)
> Would they [the "scientific establishment," whatever that is] cease
> calling ID advocates, "intelligent design creationists," in an effort to
> dismiss their arguments without engaging them?
ID propositions would be much easier to engage if ID rhetoric used
terminology that more honestly and straightforwardly expressed what ID
proponents actually want to posit. If, for instance, words like "design,"
"intelligence," "chance," "complexity," and "specified" had their
conventional meanings instead of being given unconventional meanings subtly
inserted by ID writers, critics could engage ID propositions with far
greater clarity.
Howard Van Till
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