Re: My article "Intelligent Design on Trial"

My comment below.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ted Davis" <tdavis@messiah.edu>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>; "Charles Carrigan" <CCarriga@olivet.edu>;
<gregoryarago@yahoo.ca>
Sent: Friday, March 03, 2006 9:36 AM
Subject: RE: My article "Intelligent Design on Trial"

>>>> Gregory Arago <gregoryarago@yahoo.ca> 03/03/06 6:56 AM >>>asks me the
> following question:
>
> Ted wrote in his article "Intelligent Design on Trial":
> "In order for ID to provide a plausible alternative to evolution, its
> proponents would have to address the one issue they least want to face:
> the
> age of the earth and the universe ." (Winter 2006 Issue)
>
> The question 'which evolution' has been asked, but no one has yet
> responded. If (big if) ID (hypothetically) limits itself to pattern
> recognition and specifying complexity, for example, I see no reason why it
> *must* address the issue of the age of the earth. Likewise, it may provide
> an alternative to a specifically defined type of evolution, say,
> information
> evolution, but not others.
>
> Can this be agreed upon or would it redefine what ID is trying to do too
> far from reality?
>
> Ted responds:
> The context in my brain (and in the unedited, longer version of my
> published essay) is as follows. I buy Kuhn's idea (p. 77 in Structure of
> Scientific Revolutions) that scientists abandon a paradigm only when
> another
> paradigm is sitting there as a more plausible alternative. We can argue
> about that, but I agree with hit and its a premise for my claim. Thus, if
> evolution presently functions as a "theory of everything" that can tell us
> when/where/how things have come into being, such as dinosaurs and the moon
> and the Milky Way, then ID will need to do the same thing in order to
> become
> a new paradigm. ID will need to spell out an age for the universe, etc.
> And when they do, as I've told my ID friends many times, the wheels will
> come off the wagon. Popular support will largely disappear, as the many
> creationists who support ID will no longer do so; and the leading IDs
> themselves will no longer agree on parts of their "paradigm" as they
> articulate it.
>
> t
>
Bob's comment:

On this point, I agree with Ted, both on his application of Kuhn and his
assessment of the YEC/ID big tent political strategy. As I've said before,
the crowds of church-bussed folks who fill the auditoriums at school board
meetings about criticising evolution and supporting the teaching (or even
the mention) of ID know very well who the "designer" is: He is the biblical
God who created the world in six literal twenty-four hour days. And if the
ID advocates were to clearly offer a paradigm that the designer has created
an old universe, the tent's exits will be clogged.

The Dover and El Tejon cases illustrate the dilemma the ID propagandists now
face, for both in the Dover trial and in the El Tejon legal settlement, it
was made very clear that YEC proponents were using ID as a stalking horse
for directly (as in El Tejon) or indirectly and eventually injecting
biblical creationism into the classroom as science (as in Dover). In the
"Episcopal Life" Feb. article on the Episcopal Catechism of Creation which
dealt with ID (http://www.er-d.org/26724_1701_ENG_HTM.htm), Bruce Chapman of
the Discovery Institute took pains to distance ID from biblical creationism.
His problem is that the distinctions he and his colleagues have made are not
going to make much of a dent unless the IDM does what Ted and I think it
must do. It has to come right out and take a position on the age and
history of the universe. Since most of the advocates who have spoken have
indicated that they accept an old earth, if they do come clean, the tension
between the two groups will lead to a fracture. YECs like the late Henry
Morris (requiescat in pace) and Gary Parker are cognizant of this difference
but have been willling to live with it for political advantage. But since a
young earth is a core issue, they would have to speak out, and the game
would be up. The YEC believers in the pews are not likely to be happy.

The ID folks have this bed for themselves. Now they have to weigh the risks
of lying in it or getting out of it.
Received on Fri Mar 3 11:12:48 2006