Re: [asa] serious talk about ID and TE

 Ted said: *Perhaps I should not be so frustrated when others are
frustrated with me.*
I respond: This is a more systemic problem -- in our American culture
generally, and I think particularly in many parts of the evangelical
subculture, it is difficult to discuss things in the highly nuanced ways
that we academics are familiar with. So when you start talking about these
fine gradations between varieties of natural theology, many people just
don't have the background and interest to understand. Unfortunately, some
public figures who should know better play on that. This is something our
Christian liberal arts college professors have to fix, I think :-)

On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 11:47 AM, Ted Davis <TDavis@messiah.edu> wrote:

> >>> "David Opderbeck" <dopderbeck@gmail.com> 8/29/2008 9:00 AM >>> writes:
>
> I can't understand why being able to detect design in creation would be in
> any way theologically unorthodox. Of course, we have a loaded term here
> in
> this words "detect" and "design."
>
> Big <SNIP>
>
> My good friend George Murphy will probably chime in on this, and
> (rightfully) caution us again about the dangers of an independent natural
> theology, and of the importance of viewing the creation through the eyes of
> the crucified and risen Maker of heaven and earth. George, in combination
> with Polkinghorne's emphasis on either the same or a very similar point,
> has
> been very persuasive to me on both points. I sense however that George and
> I still do not quite share the same view of natural theology; I don't think
> he values it as highly as I do, although I fully accept his cautions: I
> agree that natural theology without the cross can lead us to worship the
> wrong God, and one of the things I like about most TE positions (vis-a-vis
> the official ID view) is that it's so openly theological and specific about
> who the designer is, from the get-go.
>
> From my exchanges with the folks at UcD, it's even clearer to me that two
> specific theological claims are attributed to TE generally, and often by
> clear implication to all TEs, whether or not accurately. These are (1) the
> claim that God cannot or must not do miracles in natural history; and (2)
> that God must or should "hide" himself within the creation, such that it
> can't be possible in principle to find scientific evidence for God's
> existence.
>
> Neither of these points of criticism, in my view, is without justification
> in terms of specific TE writers, but neither is accurate as a broad
> generalization. Mainstream science is absolutely insistent on (1), insofar
> as mainstream science makes theological claims either implicitly or
> explicitly, through the rules it imposes on the study of nature, which are
> often glibly taken as rules binding on nature itself. This is what
> Hooykaas
> called the "horror miraculi," and MN is equivalent to this limit being
> placed on the study of nature; whether those limits are properly placed all
> of the time on "nature" itself (which monotheists believe to be the
> creation
> of a free creator, whose hands cannot be tied if the word "free" really
> applies), is the key point here IMO. MN is not IMO the real problem here;
> but of course ID proponents very loudly state that it is, and that it leads
> inevitably to the view that the creator, if he/she exists, is being taken
> in
> shackles out of the court of rational discourse. I strongly reject (1),
> and
> with it Howard Van Till's principle of the "fully gifted creation." Who
> are
> we, as mere creatures, to tell God how he must create and govern the
> creation? I've always been with Newton & Clarke, not Leibniz, on this one.
>
>
> As for (2), I'm somewhere in between where ID and this claim come out.
> With Einstein, I would say that God does not wear his heart upon his sleeve
> (contrary for example to the emblematic tradition of the Renaissance,
> according to which there were emblems of the divine presence all over the
> landscape); like Pascal and Dostoevsky, I believe that an act of faith must
> take reason further than reason alone will go. On the other hand, I don't
> think that the divine presence is completely hidden from view, even from
> the
> view of unaided reason. There are what Polkinghorne calls "general hints
> of
> the divine presence," and I believe that science can provide some of those
> hints. To go beyond those hints, however, to real conclusions, involves a
> lot more than science, and more than science and reason combined. One does
> IMO need some idea of the identity of the designer, before the design
> inference can be made to stick.
>
> The subtlety of my view about science and the nature of the design
> inference is a source of constant frustration to me--I'm not frustrated by
> my viewpoint, not at all; I believe it's the correct view both
> scientifically and theologically. I'm frustrated by those who will not
> recognize its legitimacy--by those who insist that I must admit that the
> design inference is fully scientific, lacking an essential theological or
> metaphysical component; and by those who conclude that I don't believe in
> design arguments at all, or that I am a strong fideist who can't give
> rational support for his faith--or, even worse, that I won't endorse some
> other view, when all is said and done, b/c I can't stand up to peer
> pressure. Perhaps I should not be so frustrated when others are frustrated
> with me.
>
> Ted
>

-- 
David W. Opderbeck
Associate Professor of Law
Seton Hall University Law School
Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology
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