So you think the TEs are reasonable to accept miraculous events that leave no evidence?
You think they are doing a service to “good science” by arguing that the causal nexus was never broken in the origin of life, the Cambrian explosion, etc., while giving a free pass to getting up from the dead, feeding 5,000 people with the food equivalent of 7 Happy Meals, parting seas for just the right amount of time to let tens of thousands of Israelites and all their property through, and closing them at just the right time to drown every last soldier and horse of Pharaoh’s army? You think that accepting such things uncritically is good for science as you conceive it?
I find it odd that you are scientifically outraged that someone should suggest that the origin of life required design, but don’t blink an eye when TE leaders say it’s perfectly compatible with being a good scientist to hold that God violated the causal nexus countless times between the era of Abraham and the era of Pentecost, but never before or since.
That’s because Venema, etc. are concerned with apologetics. I’m not. I’m concerned only with what seems to be “the best explanation” for a phenomenon – at the moment. If “the best explanation” at the moment later turns out to be false, due to new information, then a new “best explanation” can be adopted. The apologetic side of things doesn’t concern me.
I think you have the impression that I lean to a designed origin of life in order to shore up Christian belief somehow. That’s not the case. I think design is the best current explanation for the origin of life, and I’d think so if tomorrow someone proved the entire Gospel account of Jesus was a fraud cooked up by the early Church. If the best current explanation happens to dovetail with what the Bible and Church teach, that’s a bonus, but it’s not the reason why I regard design as the best explanation.
The problem with BioLogos folks is that their whole motivation is apologetic – apologetic for a particular harmonization of faith and science. My motivation is theoretical, and that’s why I never got on well with the BioLogos folks. Most of them don’t have a theoretical bone in their bodies – when it comes to philosophical matters, anyway. Most of them are scientists in one compartment of their brain, and pious believers in another, and they tend to keep the compartments separate. No philosopher can rest content with that kind of non-integrated approach to reality.