Greg:
I’ll reply to your contents only in sketch form here; the rest we can discuss privately, probably next week or the week after.
1-- I wasn’t offering that statement about neo-Darwinism as what the word mean historically; if you want to know that you can of course read Mayr, or Gould’s Structure of Evolutionary Theory. I was merely remarking on its use in Behe and many other ID writers, who tend to use it more loosely.
2-- Extended evolutionary synthesis. If you want Behe’s reaction to some of the key proposals of the synthesis, read Darwin Devolves. He argues the extended synthesis fails to solve the problem that Darwin and classical neo-Darwinism couldn’t solve: the origin of significant new biological innovation. I’m not here to argue that Behe is correct about this. I’m merely pointing out that for him, it’s not a good use of time to worry about whether the extended synthesis is a mere expansion on neo-Darwinism, or a partial correction of it, or whatever. The point is not the label, it’s the thing itself. In the end it relies largely on what he calls unguided mechanisms, i.e., relies too much on chance. (And I trust you have read Behe enough to know that he allows that chance can do some things, a point he repeats and stresses in DD.)
3-- Discourse about design vs. chance. Yes, it can get very tricky, as I know from the past four decades of reading Aristotle, Plato, Hume, Paley, Darwin, Bergson, and many others on the subject. I was not denying that the subject requires careful treatment. I was merely noting that it avoids something which “creation vs. evolution” discourse commits one to: that either creation or evolution is true, and the two conclusions are therefore at war. I decided, long before I had ever heard of ID, indeed, before Discovery even existed, that “creation vs. evolution” was an unreasonable polarization, and had abandoned it. Yet Creation Science had insisted on that polarization, at most allowing, grudgingly, some “microevolution” (as it calls it). On the other hand, when I picked up my first ID books, what did I find? Behe – accepted common descent. Denton – accepted common descent. In other words, at least as far as our bodies go, we come from primitive ancestors. That’s not creationism or creation science or scientific creationism or anything of the sort.
So you could be an ID proponent and not be “anti-evolution”. Sure, there are many ID proponents who are anti-evolution, but that is their personal judgment, often based on a particular Protestant reading of Genesis; it’s not an ID position as such. Being suspicious of the power of unguided mechanisms to (by themselves) create major organic change does not in itself commit one to opposition to common descent, even universal common descent. Thus, the way is open within ID for “God created through a process of evolution” – and there is at least potentially some overlap between ID and TE/EC.
4-- Unfortunately, due to cultural and personal factors (of which no small one is that a large number of the leading Protestant TEs – Isaac, Falk, Venema, Giberson, Haarsma, Murphy, Lamoureux – started out as creationists, or at least were raised in strongly creationist communities, or were at one point converted to and for a time defended a creationist form of belief), there has been bad blood between the groups (ID and TE/EC). I do not think this will be gone until the last of the generation that quarreled in their churches and denominations and seminaries over The Genesis Flood has slithered off this mortal coil. The personal investments, religiously and professionally, of that generation of fundamentalists-turned-TEs, are too great for it to envision dialogue with even the most evolution-friendly of IDers. The scars of the battles of the 1960s through 1980s still hurt too deeply. But this time is fast approaching. Already the older TE/EC leaders most prominent in the most trenchant attacks on ID are in their late 1960s; most of them no longer have university teaching or research positions. A generation of Christians, interested in origins, is arising who really aren’t interested in rehashing old debates the 60-70-year-olds heard in the 1970s between Duane Gish and some atheist, etc., a generation capable of taking the best ideas of both ID and TE/EC. I look to them. The old guard of anything never changes its mind, it just dies off.
5-- May I mention two of the best books about ID written by non-ID proponents?
Del Ratzsch – Nature, Design, and Science
Rope Kojonen – The Intelligent Design Debate and the Temptation of Scientism
Both these authors treat ID with respect. They are critics of it, but they grant it some value. If every ID critic wrote like these two, the whole debate over ID would have taken a much more constructive course, better for science, better for education, better for avoiding polarization in the culture. Unfortunately, most criticism of ID has not been so careful or measured, not even criticism from Christian quarters.
6-- Thanks for clarifying your relationship to BioLogos and Templeton. I also understand the limited purpose of your chapter in question. I was just trying to explain why some ID folks might react the way they did to some of your points.
This is all I will say here, but you can drop me that private email, and we can continue later.