Bjoern -
Comments on just one aspect of your post.
.........................................
> It occurs to me that one essential part of the
> spreading of the argument is the teaching of it at
> seminaries. My wife studies New Testament at Trinity
> Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois, and
> here on campus one of the textbooks for the
> Apologetics class (taught by well-trained
> philosophers) is Phil Johnson’s Wedge of Truth. From
> my conversations with the students here it seems that
> the only viable option for connecting science and
> theology is the ID thing. Would that be true for other
> evangelical seminaries as well? Nevertheless, I just
> can’t help to ponder why the ID argument should be the
> best thing to do for an evangelical Christian. Is this
> due to any specific theological assumptions, or is it
> just the alleged advantage the argument gives the
> Christian apologetic?
First, there is something seriously wrong if apologetics is
taught by people whose primary qualification is that they are
"well-trained philosophers". Certainly such teachers should have some
philosophical competence, but apologetics is first of all a
_theological_ enterprise which (like all theology) makes use of
philosophy as one of its tools.
Perhaps you simply meant that the teachers of this class are
theologians who are trained in philosophy. The previous paragraph is
then inapplicable, but I would add that it is at least as important,
especially if arguments about design & evolution are major parts of the
discussion, that the teachers have expertise in science as in
philosophy. Johnson would disagree but he's wrong.
Second, the whole enterprise of evidentialist apologetics is
open to serious challenge. Rather than expand further on that here I'll
just refer again to my short piece in last September's PSCF.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
"The Science-Theology Dialogue"
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