Re: Signs of Scientism

> I wonder however if we aren't too often misrepresenting the ID
> position. Several people on this list have indicated that ID means
> that God is present in that which is unknown and not in that which is
> explained through science. Perhaps that is true of some, but not the
> ID folks that I know and talk with. Their focus seems to be that God
> sustains all natural processes but we can clearly detect that
> sustenance in certain patterns of information growth. Abiogenesis is
> a rather major step in specified complexity so it is a prime candidate
> for detection. But Demsbki and other ID leaders would probably not
> feel that ID was invalidated if science could and did explain
> abiogenesis.

My point is that their error, as I see it, is that they insist that
God's action must be empirically detectable. This is made very clear
by Dembski in the book Mere Creation.

I quote a short passage below (please go a read his entire essay for
context).

"That said, intelligent design is incompatible with what typically is
meant by theistic evolution. Theistic evolution takes the Darwinian
picture of the biological world and baptizes it, identifying this
picture with the way God created life. ... Within theistic evolution,
God is a master of stealth who constantly eludes our best efforts to
detect him empirically." (p.20)

That last part is central -- they demand that God's creative action be
detected empirically. I see that as a very fundamental error. Divine
action cannot be detected by scientific test. Such an expectation
places science in authority over theology -- observation over faith.
It gives science the power to demonstrate the existence, or
non-existence, of God.

>
> The issue isn't the absence of God in the physical processes that we
> understand but it seems that the real issue is providence and the
> immanence of God. If science can "fully" (at the biochemical level
> that is) explain the origin of life, it wouldn't eliminate God's
> involvement but many people would feel that God is somehow one step
> further removed.

And that is the popular "feeling" that is encouraged and supported by
the nature of ID arguments. It is setting people up to see scientific
explanation and description as a threat.

Keith

Keith B. Miller
Research Assistant Professor
Dept of Geology, Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506-3201
785-532-2250
http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~kbmill/
Received on Mon Jan 16 23:40:25 2006