Re: [asa] ID/Miracles/Design

The aspect of the ID movement that got any significant attention is the
attack on "naturalism" and the claim that science can't explain the origin &
development of life without appeal to God (by whatever name). Simply as a
claim that design can be detected it would have provoked some discussion
among academic scientists, philosophers & theologians but would never have
become a "cause" with numerous conservative Christians latching onto it,
attempts to get it into school curricula, &c.

The ID movement lost whatever credibility it had at Dover. That may have
been a battle the ID cadres whom Ted names would have preferred to avoid,
but that's the case with a lot of battles. (Gettysburg wasn't in the plans
of either Lee or Meade.) Their claims now that they're just talking about
design detection, if taken seriously, a sign of a degenerating research
program - if not one in full retreat. (& note that I have given the
movement the benefit of the doubt by referring to its research program.) Of
course this won't stop people from promoting ID, trying to get it into
schools, demanding to "teach the controversy," &c.

Shalom
George
http://home.roadrunner.com/~scitheologyglm

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ted Davis" <TDavis@messiah.edu>
To: "David Clounch" <david.clounch@gmail.com>; "Cameron Wybrow"
<wybrowc@sympatico.ca>
Cc: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Thursday, April 23, 2009 10:40 AM
Subject: Re: [asa] ID/Miracles/Design

> If the waters have been muddied, David, in your words "so badly that
> almost everybody thinks thats TD is ID and ID is TD. Everyone seems so
> concerned that some transcendental agent is at work," then IMO it is
> mainly if not entirely b/c leading ID advocates themselves have turned the
> ground under them into mud.
>
> I mean especially Phil Johnson, none other than the "father" of the ID
> movement, with his campaign to use ID as the "entering wedge" to topple
> naturalism, which he in turn sees as the cause of so much moral and
> cultural depravity. And, I mean Bill Demsbki, who (in the preface to the
> Festschrift for Johnson that he edited) wrote, following the Dover trial,
> that "school boards and state legislators may tread more cautiously, but
> tread on evolution they will — the culture war demands it!”
>
> When 2 of the 3 top guns in the movement (the other one is Mike Behe) say
> such things, it's somewhere between extremely difficult and impossible to
> separate the ideas from the culture wars and thus from the religious
> component. Ditto for the refusal publicly on the part of ID to pronounce
> a view on the history of nature (i.e., the big bang, the old earth, the
> historicity of the fossil record), which allows YECs to make up a good
> part of the camp following. Ditto for the attack dog mode of UD and
> Denyse O'Leary, which apes what it abhors (namely, the attack dog mode of
> Dawkins and company) and plays to the culture of talk radio and sound
> bites. This isn't what the genuine pursuit of truth about God and nature
> should be about, IMO. But, if you somehow rid ID of all of those
> associations, you might end up with half a dozen nerds sitting around a
> table talking serious stuff, not a movement large enough to effect change
> in how science is taught in public schools. And that, f!
>
> or Johnson and many of his friends and followers, is the bottom line.
>
> Ted
>
>
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>
> To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
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Received on Thu Apr 23 11:25:56 2009