Re: [asa] Cosmologial vs. Biological Design

Dave,
    I think you are right that most ID, including Dembski, would not promote or agree with an "either-or" scenario. He essentially said as much at the symposium at Messiah College last year.Too often, anti-ID folks express concern that ID is an either-or scenario and that in an ID scenario God isn't involved in the part of nature that can be explained scientifically. I think that's a misunderstanding of ID. Most ID folks seem, instead, to say that while God is the creator and sustainer of all things, we can particularly (not uniquely) detect his involvement in creation where the pattern of design is most clearly seen, especially in high complexity type of systems. They are concerned, mistakenly I think, that TE's trivialize or downplay the significance of such unique evidences of design to the point where any miraculous direction by God is precluded.

    Perhaps another way of saying it is that ID seems to be not an "either-or" but a "both-and" scenario wherein God is involved in both natural and supernatural phenomeno. The "and" is the additional evidence that arises in the patterns that seem to indicate a designer.

    The last point is sometimes expressed, as Bob Newman did in a recent talk here, as "..an Intelligent Designer is the best of the possible explanations..." I disagree with that perspective since the comparison "best" implies that an intelligent designer "explanation" is somehow at the same level as a natural explanation and therefore reverts the "both-and" back to an "either-or".

Randy

----- Original Message -----
  From: David Opderbeck
  To: David Campbell
  Cc: asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2006 2:58 PM
  Subject: Re: [asa] Cosmologial vs. Biological Design

  ...
  I also agree whole-heartedly with the theological point Ted raises from Irons & Kline. However, I'm not sure that evangelical concordists like Ross, or evangelical ID theorists like Dembksi, really promote the either-or fallacy. Most evanglicals who think about it would agree with Irons & Kline's general point about God's sovereignty. ....

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Received on Thu Oct 5 21:29:42 2006