glenn morton wrote:
>
> ----- 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!)
Thanks for the compliment but Russell, Peters, Pannenberg, Barbour, Hefner,
Polkinghorne, Jaki, & Peacocke for starters are better known than I & certainly don't
match your description.
You're right that the ID people want to to avoid theological discussion, as I
can affirm from my experience of submitting a paper with theological discussion of the
design concept to _O & D_. I suspect that the reasons for this are
a) a desire to play the "nobody here but us scientists & philosophers" game &
b) a desire not to have their theologies subjected to serious criticism.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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