[asa] Re: [asa] American Scientific Affiliation * Whatever happened to its mission?

>>> "Jack" <drsyme@cablespeed.com> 04/23/07 8:11 PM >>>quotes
"nullasalus" as follows:
"Honestly, even if TEs disagree with ID, I can’t understand why the two
camps don’t try to put aside their admittedly big differences and unite
against atheistic materialism. It’s one of the reasons that I find myself
more sympathetic to ID on a day to day basis - at least ID proponents engage
and argue against those philosophies. For TEs, they just don’t seem to make
the radar. "

***

Ted replies.

For a couple of years, I tried to persuade my friends in the ID camp to take a friendlier posture toward the kinds of TE positions found within the ASA (and there are various ones). Mike Behe is IMO a TE--he accepts UCD and has no theological objections to the type of position held by Ken Miller, Bob Russell, and John Polkinghorne--that God can work subtly through quantum processes to bring about specific results in the history of life. See, e.g., Mike's comments on pp. 357-8 of "Debating Design," ed Dembski & Ruse.

But this, apparently, is not good enough for Bill and for many other IDs. Let me quote from Bill's essay, "What every theologian should know about creation, evolution, and design," as follows:

<As far as design theorists are concerned, theistic evolution is American evangelicalism's ill-conceived accommodation to Darwinism. What theistic evolution does is take the Darwinian picture of the biological world and baptize it, identifying this picture with the way God created life. When boiled down to its scientific content, theistic evolution is no different from atheistic evolution, accepting as it does only purposeless, naturalistic, material processes for the origin and development of life.

As far as design theorists are concerned, theistic evolution is an oxymoron, something like "purposeful purposelessness." If God purposely created life through the means proposed by Darwin, then God's purpose was to make it seem as though life was created without any purpose. According to the Darwinian picture, the natural world provides no clue that a purposeful God created life. For all we can tell, our appearance on planet earth is an accident. If it were all to happen again, we wouldn't be here. No, the heavens do not declare the glory of God, and no, God's invisible attributes are not clearly seen from God's creation. This is the upshot of theistic evolution as the design theorists construe it.

Design theorists find the "theism" in theistic evolution superfluous. Theistic evolution at best includes God as an unnecessary rider in an otherwise purely naturalistic account of life. As such, theistic evolution violates Occam's razor. Occam's razor is a regulative principle for how scientists are supposed to do their science. According to this principle, superfluous entities are to be rigorously excised from science. Thus, since God is an unnecessary rider in our understanding of the natural world, theistic evolution ought to dispense with all talk of God outright and get rid of the useless adjective "theistic."

It's for failing to take Occam's razor seriously that the Darwinist establishment despises (yes I say despises) theistic evolution. They view theistic evolution as a weak-kneed sycophant, who desperately wants the respectability that comes with being a full-blooded Darwinist, but refuses to follow the logic of Darwinism through to the end. It takes courage to give up the comforting belief that life on earth has a purpose. It takes courage to live without the consolation of an afterlife. Theistic evolutionists lack the stomach to face the ultimate meaninglessness of life, and it is this failure of courage that makes them contemptible in the eyes of full-blooded Darwinists (Richard Dawkins is a case in point).>

The whole essay is here http://www.origins.org/articles/dembski_theologn.html

I like the fact that Bill tells people what he thinks, as clearly as he can--I try to do the same myself. If Bill disagrees with TE for the reasons stated, I have no quarrel with him for speaking his mind. Given his unquestioned status as a leader of the ID movement, however, and given the tone and content of the passage above (which I think fairly represents his views, and those of some other ID leaders), it shouldn't surprise anyone on his blog why it's been so hard for well intentioned people from both camps (TE and ID) to come together. Bill just doesn't think that TE has any cash value: it's an irrelevant embarrassment at best and a spineless jellyfish at worst. This view is widely shared among "camp followers" of ID, though it is not universally shared even among fellows of TDI.

Thus, when some TEs articulate their view that inferences to purpose/design involve more than science alone--that metaphysics and theology are part of the inferential nexus--they are often seen as attacking ID and/or abetting scientific materialism, even in cases when they are simply stating honestly and fairly what they believe, and why. We are very often seen as part of the problem, not part of the answer, to scientific materialism. It is all well and good to raise objections to various forms of TE--I do this often myself--but it is another thing entirely to define TE in such a way that TEs are outside the "Big Tent" of ID, and then complain about an inability to unite against what genuinely is a common enemy. I spent I don't know how many hours, trying to get many of my friends in the ID camp to see the cavern that separates a Polkinghorne from a Peacocke (it's called a high view of divine transcendence and of Christology, and it is a cavern), but (judging from the pos!
 ts they sent me) many had a very hard time seeing this, I believe b/c they did not have much familiarity with either Polkinghorne or Peacocke, to say nothing of many other thinkers who write about science and theology rather than simply ID vs "Darwinism." ID does its best to keep theology to one side, so this is not all that surprising--though it is still quite frustrating.

I keep coming back to this, with which I close. TE is not a "slam dunk" against Dawkins and company. It's too much a faith-based position for Bill and many other IDs. Their cultural agenda, clearly indicated in the private "wedge" document and numerous public writings (such as the promotional puff that Bill wrote for "Darwin's Nemesis," which made direct reference to the culture wars and the Dover trial), seems to require a "slam dunk," and that is what ID represents to many Christians. The subtler responses of Polkinghorne, McGrath, Barr, and several other theologically orthodox TEs are just not tough enough, in Bill's opinion. Indeed, he seems almost to loathe them, unless I am badly misreading him. If so, then nullasalus may have part of the answer.

ted

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Received on Tue Apr 24 10:09:49 2007