Re: ASA, ID, Blogs and my observations

I would like to throw in my 2 cents on design:

Gould (I think) said that if you were to run the universe over again we would be sure not to appear. This is consistent with the once proposed definition of evolution from E. Scott that E was undirected, unplanned, ungoverned... Evolution is thought of as truly contingent and in some way random. Walter Alverez (sp) once said that "every once in a while the earth has a very bad day" in reference to the KT asteroid.

I would suggest that all of us in ASA would not subscribe to that degree of out-of -control-ness.

We would mostly agree on

1. the astronomical/physical fine tuning arguments (to one degree or another)

2. if the universe were run again, we would be here again (as would Christ) - even if the precise details were somewhat different

3. God COULD, CAN and DOES act in the universe. Prayer is not just whistling in the dark to feel better (Polkinghorn) - we would differ on how this works out

4. God COULD, CAN and DOES use many secondary causes to accomplish MOST of his dealing in the world and we are not wrong to call them miracles (in a sense)

I think the idea that the ASA should have offered even more of a audience and forum for the ID people in the 90s, the ID movement might have had a different history.

Al McCarrick
Received on Wed May 25 10:41:04 2005