Re: [asa] Neo-Darwinism and God's action

>>> "Chris Barden" <chris.barden@gmail.com> 2/15/2008 11:04 AM >>> asked me
for comments on this:

Ted,

I believe your analysis here is spot on, as usual. But I wonder a bit
about Asa Gray. In my reading of Darwiniana (don't have it handy so
can't point to page numbers), I recall him exuding much the same
confidence in revelation and science, and their ultimate consilience,
as in the review you quote here. Yet, especially in regard to his
response to Hodge, his confidence with respect to evolution sounded
sometimes as though he thought they would be harmonized through very
much the sort of evidence that Behe claims. Can we read anything into
his qualifier "with respect to cosmogony", such that he might have ID
sympathies at the level of biology or anthropology? Or have I simply
misread him?

***

Chris,

Gray talked about the "compatibility" of Christianity & science, including
evolution. What he had in mind by Christianity, was the views expounded in
the Apostles' & Nicene Creeds. He did believe that evolution was directed,
via divinely controlled variations (ie, mutations), which he believed would
turn out to be lawlike. He was wrong about that part, obviously. He saw
that Darwin's theory would give some people a reason not to believe in
God--quite prescient, I would say--but he also thought that design was
evident in the larger history of the universe & life.

What he rejected, was the older type of "harmony" argument based on
concordism. He rejected that explicitly, in the lectures he gave to Yale
divinity students in 1880. He found the view of the Bible implicit in
concordism to be inadequately historical, and he did not believe that any
scientifically useful information was embedded in Genesis. Thus, his
complementarity view.

Ted

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Received on Mon Feb 18 13:58:16 2008