RE: ASA, ID, Blogs and my observations

Glenn wrote:

The day we Christians give up on design, we fall into what my good friend, Wil Provine fell into. Without design, there is little reason to belive in any form of theism. This is why Provine left the faith. He personally told me that. When he realized that this was a world without design, he could find no reason to keep God in it. Thus Wil became an atheist. I for one, think Wil is right. No design, no designer; no designer, no God.

The problem lies in the word "design" which in addition to its Websters' Unabridged definition has taken on a life of its own, thanks to the ID movement. And so, those of us who believe profoundly in our Creator must find words to describe what we believe and how we think He interacts with nature without invoking the "d" word which has been preempted.

Also, the design advocates use examples favorable to their point of view. The flagellum is a nicely functioning piece of bacterial hardware, and thus is cited as an example of God's handiwork, while the poor panda wasn't gifted with a functioning conventional thumb, and was left to fashion a wrist bone to enable him to strip bamboo leaves so he could eat. Evolve or die.

For as many examples you can cite of what appears to be God actively at work designing novel adaptive features for organisms, there are at least as many examples of bad design and genetic blunders. Maybe the Intelligent Designer was so busy working out the problems for one special creature he didn't have time to devote attention to another creature. And once a mistake occurs, apparently the "designer" is powerless to change it.

The point is this: the whole ID premise is based upon citing successful examples while ignoring the screw ups and what the implications may be. ID is not a comprehensive theory that explains what we observe in nature. It is simply a Pollyanna explanation for what it would be like if we lived in a perfect world.

Dick Fischer - Genesis Proclaimed Association
Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History
www.genesisproclaimed.org
Received on Mon May 23 11:37:06 2005