----- Original Message -----
From: "George Murphy" <gmurphy@raex.com>
To: "glenn morton" <mortongr@flash.net>
Cc: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Friday, April 28, 2000 12:40 PM
Subject: Re: Waco, final comments
> Glenn - Appreciate your summary. A couple of comments on your remarks
which I paste
> together from a couple of posts. (Is there a reason I got no "Waco, Day
2" - other
> than perhaps an inadvertent hit on the delete button?)
>
This has been the weirdest set of posts I have done. Day 1 didn't leave me
and had to be split. Day 2 went out--some got it some didn't. (it can be
found at http://www.calvin.edu/archive/asa/200004/0157.html ) I hope
everyone got Day 3.
> glenn morton wrote:
> .....................................
>
>
> > As I mentioned in my report, one Christian stood by the elevator in
order to
> > tell my agnostic friend Frank, that Schaeffer was not the best Christian
> > apologetics has to offer. Unfortunately, my feeling is that Schaeffer
just
> > may have been the best and when exposed, it is an embarrassment to look
in
> > the mirror.
> Is it possible that what the conference displayed was the weakness of the
whole
> approach of evidentialist apologetics & its implicit presupposition of
independent
> natural theology? (As you may guess, that's a rhetorical question.)
N.B., of course I
> don't mean that an apologetic, or theology in general, should make no
appeal to evidence
> at all! I refer again to my paper at last year's ASA meeting, which is
(I'm told) to be
> in the September _Perspectives_, as at least a pointer to an alternative.
> The inevitability of the result seems to have been built in because of the
> absence (from what I could tell from your report) of professional
theologians - or of
> any I recognized. "Of course - it's a science conference." Exactly, & so
what it'll
> produce is science &/or philosophy of science - & perhaps ill-advised
attempts to jump
> the gap to theology. (That without intending disrespect for Christian
philosophers -
> but that ain't the same enterprise.)
First, the problem is not one of citing evidence. The problem is citing
WRONG OR FALSIFIED evidence, which is what many in the ID and YEC groups
do. My comments about Dembski's missing knowledge about genetic algorithms
and Meyer's insistence that one can look at a sequence and tell it is
specified when spy-codes are designed to make a specified sequence look
random are cases in point. (and computers talk to each other in sequences
that would not look very specified to a human. As to the missing
theologians, I feel confident that they were not asked in for a reason--the
ID group wants to deal with science not theology. And frankly, I agree with
their approach here. With few exceptions (you being one of them) I don't
think theologians know enough science to punch their way out of a paper bag.
They don't know anything about it or how it should relate to theology and
their presence at the Baylor conference would merely have made us look even
worse. (sorry to any offended theologian's sensibilities, but I have found
that most avoided science in college and then preach with certainty about
things which they know not!)
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution
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