Re: [asa] Re: Peacocke's theology and the meaning of "Christian"

On 1/13/07, Michael Roberts <michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
> I did not argue that you misrepresented AP's theology but referred to your
> statement about AP sent to this list on 26 May 2006; which KM said came from
> a digital recording of the meeting.
>
>
> Nelson: Ah, I would like to begin by actually responding to this slide from
> Jim. Ah, it's true that of these scientists named here, ah, are theists I
> think, Arthur Peacock I'm not sure would call himself a Christian, he has a
> rather heterodox theology, but they are all theists of one strip or another.
>
>
> Here's the problem though. All of them accept a philosophy of science that
> excludes intelligent causation by definition. Ah, for instance, ah, Keith
> Miller and I served on a panel that the, ah, American Scientific Affiliation
> assembled a few years ago to write a statement on creation, with a variety
> of viewpoints. Keith was defending theistic evolution I was arguing for
> intelligent design
>
> I presume Paul accepts this as an accurate transcript - otherwise he should
> have corrected it before.

Interesting, this exchange was blogged before by Ed Brayton
(http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/05/paul_nelsons_outrageous_lie.php)

What I find interesting is the claim that "all of them accept a
philosophy of science that excludes intelligent causation by
definition". Now I have heard this claim before from ID apologetics
and it suggests that what they really mean is that "intelligent
causation" is merely a placeholder for "supernatural causation".
As we all know, science and methodological naturalism do not exclude
intelligent causation by definition. Furthermore, even if these people
used such an approach for science, one cannot possibly conclude, based
on logic, that such people exclude "intelligent causation" especially
in the sense as used by the ID crowd to refer to "supernatural
entity(ies)" (preferably singular).
It's this kind of silliness that makes ID not just scientifically
vacuous but worse, theologically dangerous.

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Received on Sun Jan 14 20:38:06 2007