Schwarzwald,
We entirely agree that natural theology in any form, including ID, just can't produce the Christian God. No need for me to say more about the depth of our agreement on that.
However, I do think that an "unevolved mind," which Dembski has elsewhere called an "unembodied mind," which is the source of the order we find in nature (whether biological or physical), is a functional equivalent of a "god" in the usual sense. I see nothing unreasonable about this statement.
If we were talking more simply about an "unevolved mind" that was responsible merely (if that's the right word, which I doubt) for order in the biological world, and not also for the order in the physical world that makes biology possible in the first place, then I might be less quick to draw this identification. In the context of what I quoted from Dembski, you could fairly say that is as far as it goes, and if that were the end of the story I would concede the possibility of something other than a "god."
But, we're not--so far as I can tell, every ID proponent thinks that the order in the physical universe comes from the same designer; or, at least, they will say that the universe itself is designed, no less than biological organisms. I agree with them on both points, incidentally, but I'm not reluctant to call the designer "God," i.e., a specific kind of "god." My main contention is that if you can design universes, than you can fill in the job description with "god," if not "God."
Ted
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Received on Fri Nov 13 10:11:17 2009
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