Re: [asa] Two Amino Acid Difference in Gene May Explain Human Speech

Rich,

ID is not committed to opposition to evolution. Dembski has said this, Behe
has said this - what they are opposed to is "unguided evolution". I will
admit that there are ID proponents who do deny evolution writ large, or
common descent, etc. But if your problem is not with ID, but with
specifically anti-evolutionary ID, I share some of your concerns - and I
wish you'd make that clearer more often.

However, I reject your example. Whether or not God does or does not use the
evolutionary process, we're still left with a God who permits death, permits
complications in the life of man, etc. Whether God does this by special
creation or an evolutionary act makes little difference. Further, your
reading of God's mind (taking the inference of design in the case of
malaria, and then deciding what motivations God had in doing this, what
goals, etc) does not persuade me. Bible verses are not usually how I
emphasize my points, but God's response to Job seems apt here.

Regardless of all this, my point stands: Neither Behe in particular, nor ID
in general (even anti-evolutionary ID) is "giving a club" to atheists. As I
said in another thread, they weaponized science and evolution quite a long
time ago. ID's sin is, for lack of a better word, playing by the same rules
everyone else already was.

On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 4:46 PM, Rich Blinne <rich.blinne@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 1:08 PM, Schwarzwald <schwarzwald@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>
>> What's more, ID proponents are not "handing Dawkins a weapon" any more
>> than they "handed Darwin a weapon". Dawkins does not take orders from Behe -
>> he and others have been in essence arguing that science is capable of
>> detecting design *since the Origin of Species*. What's more, they've done
>> this with the response from the academic community largely being one of
>> turning a blind eye, or even endorsement of this practice. Then ID came
>> along and decided to play by these rules - rules that, until that point,
>> treated design as a question science could answer so long as the answer was
>> "there is no design".
>>
>
> We are not talking about detecting design. We are talking about disproving
> (or minimally raise serious questions concerning) so-called unguided
> evolution which ID claims to do. It's because of this narrower claim that
> there is great resistance in ID to people like myself who would promote a
> synthesis between TE and ID. By claiming that "science" can disprove
> unguided evolution it also means that "science" can prove it and if this
> short hop pans out even further, then this will be a huge club. It's not ID
> per se that's a problem it's anti-evolutionary ID that's a problem.
>
> Also, note the theodicy problem that Bernie's reply implies. If God does
> not use the evolutionary process to produce drug-resistant malaria parasites
> then He deliberately created them in the last few years to deliberately
> thwart our efforts to eradicate them. The drug-resistant versions did not
> come out immediately so they weren't there to select from. Thus, if they did
> not come through random mutation they were done by special creation in the
> 20th Century. Behe said he wasn't trying to prove the Christian God and he
> succeeded. The god he proved bears little resemblance.
>
> Rich Blinne
> Member ASA
>

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Received on Thu Nov 12 16:56:32 2009