From: Steve Petermann (steve@spetermann.org)
Date: Tue Sep 23 2003 - 11:03:34 EDT
Howard,
I'm curious about the compatibility of ID with your RFEP. As I understand
it, your system does not rule out supernatural activity. Does this mean
that RFEP is amenable to the possibility of some sort of ongoing divine
intelligent design activity?
Steve Petermann
----- Original Message -----
From: "Howard J. Van Till" <hvantill@chartermi.net>
To: "Ted Davis" <TDavis@messiah.edu>; <asa@calvin.edu>; <kbmill@ksu.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2003 9:39 AM
Subject: Re: Creationists Running for School Board
> >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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