Re: [asa] Romans 1:20 (disregard my last post)

Logan Paul Gage said in the November Issue of *Christianity Today*:

  So the question is: *Can an intelligent being use random mutations and
> natural selection to create? No.* This is not a theological problem; it is
> a logical one. The words random and natural are meant to exclude
> intelligence. If God guides which mutations happen, the mutations are
> not random; if God chooses which organisms survive so as to guide life's
> evolution, the selection is intelligent rather than natural.
>
> *Theistic Darwinists* maintain that God was "intimately involved" in
> creation, to use Francis Collins's words...
>

 I hadn't noticed this up to now is what the label that is being applied to
us. Not evolutionary creationists or even theistic evolutionists but
theistic darwinists. Some big tent.

Also note this:

> Can an intelligent being use random mutations and natural selection to
> create? No.

Why not??!?? This turns the question of whether God *did* do it to whether
God *can* do it. God *can* and *does* use both First and Second Causes. Just
because God chooses to use Second Causes does not imply He didn't guide
those selfsame Second Causes. Both IDM and Richard Dawkins commit the same
non sequiter here. Except that Richard Dawkins can show that so-called
random mutations and natural selection has and is happening. Apply modus
ponens and say Buh bye God.

IDM presents itself as a way -- no, the best way -- no, the only way -- to
fend off the Richard Dawkinses of the world. In reality, it's the Alister
McGraths who are doing a much, much better job here. In fact, IDM is getting
in the way of McGrath's apologetic because it gives Dawkins an entirely too
cheap an argument. To extend Ted Davis' basketball analogy from a while
back, IDM goes for the slam dunk and breaks the backboard so that those of
us trying to take a jumper cannot even take a shot.

For the non-Americans on the list:

Slam Dunk: a shot where the ball is "slammed" into the top of the basket
with a high probability of making it. The phrase is used to mean an easy
choice or argument with a low probablility of failure. For example, George
Tenet was reported to have said that finding weapons of mass
destruction would be a "slam dunk". If that isn't a cautionary tale for IDM,
I don't know what is.

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Received on Tue Nov 20 11:00:18 2007