Terry wrote:
<< Hi everyone,
Just feeling a need to throw in another perspective.
My "resistance" to ID in general is that in my thinking (from a "hard-core"
Calvinist perspective), all design is "proximate", because all things are
governed by God. God not only sets creational potentialities (a la
HVT--"distal design", I guess), but he directs each and every creational
action along the way of exploring that space. He does this in a regular way
and this regularity and lawfulness and faithfulness in his governance is
the basis for regularity and lawfulness in creation. (Don't read any
exclusion of miracles here!)
So, I'll say it again. Just because we can give a scientific/creaturely
explanation for a given phenomenon does not mean that God is not doing
anything. God is actively controlling "whatsoever comes to pass". (I know
that all the Calvinist critics are shuddering at this, but, that's a
longstanding theological debate.) Personally, I think that this perspective
is what made it so "easy" for the late 19th century/early 20th century old
Princetonians to accept evolution.
An implication of this is that from God's perspective, there is no
randomness, there is no self-organization, there is no quantum
unpredictability. These descriptions are perfectly legitimate, however,
from a creaturely/human perspective. So when I say that systems
self-organize based on "intrinsic" properties, I'm speaking entirely from a
creaturely/human perspective. From God's perspective there are no
"intrinsic" properties nor is there any autonomous "self".
In many ways this is a purely theological assertion. This is why in the end
my science looks nearly identical to the non-theist's science and why my
criticisms of ID sound nearly identical to non-theists' criticisms. Phil
Johnson has called my position "vacuous" and despises it because it makes
no "threat" to the non-theist scientific community. As I've said many times
before, the critique that we ought to be making of the atheistic scientific
community is at the philosophical/theological level and not at the
practical science level. On the fundamental philosophical/theological
issues I agree whole-heartedly with Phil Johnson and eagerly desire to join
ranks with him, but he does not welcome me, but rather actively opposes me
(calls my views "vacuous", claims that I'm duped by the secular scientific
establishment, accuses me of fearfully trembling before the secularly
controlled granting agencies and scientific journal editors, etc.).
For the record,>>
I do not usually comment on this issue; but, just for the record, I think
this is an excellent statement.
Paul
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