Ted,
I believe that your analysis is essentially correct here. The sad
thing is that we have made zero progress over the past 15 years. I
wrote my review of Phil Johnson's Darwin on Trial in 1992 ( http://
www.asa3.org/gray/evolution_trial/dotreview.html ). I applauded,
welcomed, and joined the attack on atheistic materialism. I did spend
some time criticizing some of the anti-evolutionary arguments.
In late 1993 I became involved with Phil's evolution reflector and
actively advocated my pro-evolutionary creation viewpoint with all
the key players of the ID movement--Johnson, Behe, Nelson, Wells--I
don't remember Dembski being part of that round of discussion. I
interacted with Mike Behe extensively during this period and as a
result was invited to "debate" Mike at the ASA meeting at Bethel
College in the summer of 1994. I still remember the greeting I got
from several of the reflector participants upon meeting me, "Ah...,
so you're Terry Grayi." That interaction with Mike is also on-line at
http://www.asa3.org/evolution/irred_compl.html
Serious discussions between us came to an end in the spring of 1994
when Phil labeled my position as vacuous (similar to Dembski's
superfluous as found below). I even got the venerable Alvin Plantinga
to challenge Phil on that claim but to no avail. The evolution
reflector eventually migrated to Calvin under my management and the
ID guys all left within a few months and started another group to
which I wasn't invited. It has always seemed to me that the ID folks
are the ones pushing out the TE/EC folks. I have pleaded with them
from time to time to link arms in the resistance of atheistic
scientific materialism--the ASA has NEVER lost its commitment to
that. One of those pleas can be found in my review of Johnson's
Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds on the web at http://
tallship.chm.colostate.edu/gray/opening_minds.html . But they won't
do it--they think that our willingness to accommodate evolution is a
fatal error and so they, like the YEC's, put us in the enemy camp.
Interestingly, at the Messiah meeting, Bill Dembski admitted that TE
was a viable orthodox position. Someday, I'll get that video on the
ASA web site. So, maybe there is progress--although you'd never
believe he said such things based on recent postings on UcD.
The public version of the evolution group ran for another 5 years and
is archived on the web at http://www.asa3.org/archives/evolution
The ASA list started in Feb 1996 with the hope that it would be
broader than the evolution/creation debate. You all can judge for
yourself whether or not that has been successful.
I think Dembski is wrong in his claim about us. I for one have
resisted moves to compromise our explicit Christian/evangelical
commitments. Howard Van Til's move into process theology is
regrettable in my opinion and I have been outspoken on the list in
that move. The paper here http://www.asa3.org/gray/
GrayASA2003OnHodge.html describes some of that. I am troubled by the
way that we are embracing non-reductive monism in our anthropology. I
think that it was comments about this topic that first prompted
Denyse's blog entry. I would argue that the "hiddenness" of God in
creation is paralleled by the "hiddenness" of the soul in human
anthropology. Just because we think we can explain many aspects of
the human mind in terms of known processes, it doesn't mean that
there's not a non-material "substance" present. [Bill's talk of
Occam's razor is nonsense in my opinion--my belief in God, his
governance, design, the soul, etc. is not based on science--it's
based on divine revelation in scripture and in Christ and personal
knowledge through the Holy Spirit--of course, unbelievers will scoff
at such claims--isn't that what we expect?] While some would make a
Biblical case for non-reductive monism, I'm not convinced and follow
John Cooper from Calvin (and nearly all theological traditions in
Christendom) on the exegetical and theological issues. However, there
is no anthropological statement in ASA's statement of faith so it's
open for discussion. Also, I have no reason to question the Christian
faith commitment or the commitment to scripture of folks like Nancey
Murphy or Malcolm Jeeves. These are hermeneutical issues that the
Christian community needs to hammer out.
Well, sorry to be so autobiographical and self-promoting here. (While
I'm at it, I may as well point folks to the accounting of my
experience on faith/science issues in the Orthodox Presbyterian
Church, found on the web at http://www.asa3.org/gray/evolution_trial/
index.html .) The bottom line is that we should stand on our
convictions, cooperate with those with whom we can, defend ourselves
if necessary from false witnesses, and carry on in the cause of truth
and Christ's kingdom.
TG
On Apr 24, 2007, at 8:09 AM, Ted Davis wrote:
>>>> "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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________________
Terry M. Gray, Ph.D.
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Received on Tue Apr 24 13:07:53 2007
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