[asa] Dawkins new book

There's an atheist book club meetup that I will likely join, and they are reviewing Dawkin's latest book "The Greatest Show on Earth." I glanced at the book the other day. I think most of it looks like evidence for evolution (what's new?), but I did notice an interesting section on theodicy. (And yes, it looked like it may be shallow in not bringing forth and quoting the best arguments from the critics.)

Anyways, Dawkins mentioned that for believers, there's a thing called 'the problem of evil.' He says 'they even have a name for it- theodicy.' At first I thought that was kind of patronizing to say 'they even have a name for it' then as I thought about it more I realized that theodicy was something only that God believers have to deal with. I know that is obvious, but it wasn't that clear in my mind before, esp. from seeing it from the other side now (not as a Christian).

Anyway, I suspect this book will make a stir in the area of pushing evolution on to the American people. The Christians will be forced to make a response, unless they want to put their head in the ground. And so it will be interesting to see what the best/biggest home brands (William Lane Craig and Ravi Z.) in Christianity put forth... are they going to testify or deny evolution? The Bible Answer man is anti-evolution.

Here's my forecast because I'm seeing hints already. There will be a louder ID response that is straddling the fence with accepting evolution. It is really a God-guided TE. Just like Denis Lamoureux is TE but invented a new name (Evolutionary Creation, along with his new ideas of hermeneutics), this newer ID is TE but goes by the name of ID (this is Behe with his IR and 'edge of evolution' ideas).

Summary:

Category: TE

Group 1: Aka: Evolutionary Creation
Leader: Denis Lamoureux
Distinctive: Science/History/Theology distinctions; hermeneutics for 'incidental' science and history in scripture

Group 2: ID (there are also ID definitions; ID in itself is vague like TE is vague)
Leader: Michael Behe
Distinctive: God-guided evolution, Irreducible Complexity, edge of evolution

There are other groups- just noting this new ID TE group. They are "TE" but won't say it (because of their distaste for the term 'evolution' as atheistic).

So anyway, I think this new book is going to push Behe and ID (God-guided evolution) more forward, as a general evangelical Christian response in the USA.

...Bernie

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Received on Fri Oct 23 12:27:57 2009