Re: [asa] Wells and traditional Christianity

Vernon - With all due respect, it seems to me that you've got your origins and your processes all jumbled up. First, you say ditch Darwinism. And then you point your finger at TE's. This is not nice.
   
  Don't you know evolution requires something first (cause) in order that it could 'evolve'? Evolution is a process philosophy - evolution is about processes (c.f. efficient and material causes), not origins or destinies (final causes) - don't let the title to 'Origin(s) of Species bmo NS...in the Struggle for Life...' deceive you. Flux, change-over-time, continuity, variation, adaptation, fitness, instability, etc. It really just seems to be the process theology that's involved in a TE approach that you're setting up as false.
   
  But what about a person who reverses the order? Let's say, hypothetically, that I'm an 'evolutionary creationist' (EC). That would mean I believe in Creation (the grounding concept in the categorical duo) - and ASA believes in creation! Hurrah! But I also accept God's work in an evolutionary (bio-physical unrolling/unfolding?) process. Do you really wish to *censor* my vocabulary and even banish the word 'evolution' and all of its inflexions from the English (and many other) language(s)???
   
  Even if Darwinism is ditched, you've still got to deal with evolution after Darwin. Are you prepared to do that, even just in geology? Perhaps if you went up against Keith or Michael or Roger, telling them 'nooo evoluuution - don't speak that laaanguage, pretty please --> instead you've got to find theoretical science in the Bible, which we all respect' you'd be in quite a pickle? I know those three would all educate me in geology something fierce (just like Lamoureux worked over Johnson with biological knowledge in Regent's Darwinism Defeated?).

  At the same time, I'm a bit surprised and even confused by what Ted says to you. "[T]his is completely independent of evolution; the age of the earth is what it is, regardless of whether or not evolution produced all of the living things that have lived here."
   
  Ted has said at ASA before, he doesn't think of evolution as a 'mere theory' - he thinks it is THE modern creation story, a theory of everything!! (Echo voice of Gimli announcing the mines of Moria). 'Evolution produces,' evolution makes, evolution does electricity - sometimes I think evolution could be a person's name in Ted's mind, selecting, selecting. And yet evolution doesn't account for the age of the earth?? Thus, there is some prior committment - something like a philosophy that comes *before* or *above* the science?
   
  Ironically, though it may seem I'm just being a bit sassy (please excuse), like Michael Roberts has been lately in response to how I challenge his evolutionary philosophy/theology, the 'IS what it IS' view of the age of the earth brings Ted and I into our closest agreement yet! As a social scientist, that is exactly how I conclude how relevant the 'age of the earth' is (with all due respect to geological thought and practise) - it 'is what it is' and doesn't affect what I'm actually studying and researching almost at all.
   
  So then evolution and ID are not really about age of earth. The age of the earth is about (the) Creation. And an open door happens then when someone knocks and asks about your theology. That'll likely inspire a person more than bickering about OEC's, YEC's, TE's and IDs! It's why Pannenburg used the word 'obsessive' about evolution in the USA.
   
  God is still in the house...continuing to create...from beginning to end (and back again).
  
G. Arago
   
   
  p.s. I shook Wells' non-traditional hand in the DI a few years ago - does that somehow make me an accomplice?

                 
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Received on Thu Aug 31 20:11:51 2006