On the Use of the Term "Creationism" in Popular Debate in the Past Century or So

The design is “front-loaded” before the moment of creation. That is the only part of the process that is necessarily divine. For goodness sake, Mr. T., you and I watched the very same Behe video months ago.

It’s relatively clear. And now you are playing word games to win a circular argument.

What has recently gone wrong is that Behe produced his latest book which is practically incoherent… @Eddie, you are going to have to come to terms with this incoherence.

If God guides evolution, he guides the good evolution and the seemingly bad evolution. Period.

@Roy

Let’s be sure we are not confounding the term “Front-Loading” with some of the earlier applications of the term: there used to be those who argued that the genetic imprint for whales was already 100% present within the mammalian genome… and that the whale was just a specially revealed mammal.

This is not how @Eddie and I use the term front-load, and it looks like this thread has been adequately clear about avoiding this old application of the term.

If you want to restrict front-loading to occurring only before/at creation, that’s fine - but if @Eddie wants to do that, he’ll have to reconcile it with Behe’s claims that certain biological features wouldn’t evolve naturally.

The problem with Behe’s argument is elaborated on here:

You’ve even commented in that thread, so I don’t know why you are acting like you aren’t aware of these problems.

Then how is the billiard’s shot implemented? What is the chain of causation starting with God and ending with the mutation appearing in nature? Is any link in that chain a supernatural act?

If that is what Behe believes, then why doesn’t he expect irreducibly complex systems emerging in the lab? Why doesn’t Behe expect to see new mutations that functionally improve proteins in living populations?

Behe attempts to do just that. Mutations that don’t produce irreducibly complex systems or functionally improved proteins is when God is not designing, according to Behe.

@Faizal_Ali

What I’m objecting to is that there IS a way for a scientist to endorse the Billliard Ball scenario. Behe’s problem is not that he thinks God is the designer … his problem is that he thinks we can tell from observations of nature which ones are God’s design, and which ones are not.

Yes, @T_aquaticus, and he is in error for attempting this… he is not in error because of his Billiards Ball scenario.

OK, I get you. I agree with that. I don’t agree with the whole “billiard ball” thing in the first place, but theists are free to talk about it amongst themselves without causing me any offense.

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It’s your responsibility to provide sources; no one should have spend even 15 seconds searching for them. It’s obvious you have no training in the humanities, or you’d know this. You should have provided the information without my asking for it.

Again, you are making an inference. Are you not familiar with the difference in meaning between “Behe asserts” and Behe implies"? Again, lack of training in the humanities is evident.

No, I’m not trying to mislead. But to be blunt, it no business of anyone here who my current employers are etc. So you can all lay off this line inquiry, because I’ll say no more. And if you think that’s an unreasonable position, it’s exactly the position Mercer took on other sites when he used pseudonyms, before he retired.

Yet when I asked Eddie to provide examples of quotes he had attributed to others in this discussion, how did Eddie respond?

The only thing consistent about Eddie is his inconsistency.

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I already did, in my reply to Rich Hampton above.

No, it’s not design because Behe categorically rejects a thomist/catholic view wherein front loading is indistinguishable from evolution because unintelligent processes are all there is after the “pool shot”. He makes this claim in an interview that I can provide if you don’t want to google it.

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Yeah, sure. Back in the day, I used to believe Darwin’s theory was correct. I’m a Roman Catholic, and I went to parochial schools, and we were taught kind of a theistic evolutionary idea that God created the universe and it’s laws. And if he wanted to make life by natural process as well, who were we to tell him he couldn’t? And that sounded all fine to me. But, after a while, when I was an associate professor at Lehigh in the mid '80s, I read a book called Evolution, A Theory in Crisis. By a guy named Michael Denton who’s a medical doctor and geneticist in Australia at the time.

And in it, he pointed out a whole number of problems for Darwin’s theory that I had never heard about, even though I was, at that time, a faculty member, biochemist, and I should have heard about this. And, thinking back, I found that nobody in my science classes looked critically at Darwin’s theory. It was all pretty much assumed.

And so at that point, I got ticked off. I was mad because I thought I was being led to believe something not because of the evidence for it, but just because that’s the way we’re supposed to think these days.

I ignore your typically pedantic, hair-splitting claim that adding the word “traditional” to “natural theology” forces the discussion into purely Christian territory. Most writers see natural theology in the Christian era as exhibiting continuity with arguments found in pre-Christian writings. I won’t bother going through all the books I have here that demonstrate this usage, but the article on “Physicotheology” in the 8-volume Encyclopedia of Philosophy is one place where the continuity is stressed.

I can’t say much for your Latin scholarship. Aquinas uses different phrasings at the end of the various Five Ways arguments. He interchangeably employs “and this we call God” “and this all (men) call God” “and this all (men) name God”. “All men” (which translates omnes) clearly means all human beings, not “all European Christians of this era”; and even if he had used “we” every time, since he is making a broad philosophical argument, it wouldn’t necessarily pertain to only Christians. Your pedantry, and your research sloppiness, are showing here.

The God whose existence can be verified without any need for the Bible can be identified with the God referred to in the Bible, with extra information possessed by Christians, but the argument established only a generic God, not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The reference to the Bible is in no way part of the argument.

But I already adjusted my claim, so your continued attempt to score a debating point is petty. Even “offered” could be taken in a weak sense, but I will settle for “presented”; the point is that he regarded such arguments as within the province of philosophy, requiring no theological commits or assumptions derived from Christianity.

I did not offer this as my own definition, or if I did, it certainly is not the one I usually offer here. It is too vague, and could cover a great deal, or very little, depending on how it is read.

I said several times that by evolution I meant “descent with modification”, and elsewhere have added that the descent runs all the way from one or a few simple organic forms down to all later organic forms, including man. And I have correctly stated that Discovery has taken no position against evolution understood in this sense. Individual Discovery writers, speaking for themselves, have expressed doubts about evolution, but Discovery itself has said that evolution is not incompatible with ID theory. Many times.

Show me where, in the four books by Denton published by Discovery, he argues against evolution. If Discovery was against evolution on principle, it would not publish Denton’s books.

Note that Johnson employs scare quotes, an indicator that he is using the word “creationist” in a sense different from what many readers might understand by the term. I would submit that Johnson is distinguishing an “evolutionary creationist” from a “creationist” as typically understood, i.e., as I have outlined in my article above. Another way of putting this is that ID is not, as such, against “evolutionary creation,” where evolutionary creation is understood as a planned or guided process. (Contrast with most BioLogos and most ASA versions of evolutionary creationism, whose proponents wriggle and squirm when asked to commit to guidance or planning of any kind in the evolutionary process.) Johnson’s statement is not out of line with anything I’ve said, or any definition of ID on Discovery.

That doesn’t follow. A theory can exist in partly developed form, not yet ready to be included in science class.

Heh. Behe’s ignorance of basic evolutionary biology sure shines through in that interview. He also comes across as a slightly bitter old crank IMHO. The rest was just the usual DI supplied propaganda talking points all ID-Creationists rely on.

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Yes, but since it is done at the very start of the universe, it is not an “intervention” into nature, not a “miracle” in the usual sense of the word. Most people, when they speak of miracles, are talking about God jumping in and breaking his own laws of nature. And I think you will admit that when you speak of Behe on interventions and miracles, you do not have in mind God merely setting it up and then letting nature run. Your remarks have repeatedly shown that you think Behe envisions God sticking his finger in on many occasions to break natural laws. In fact, I am pretty sure that is what all of Behe’s critics here have in mind when they think of Behe. And I’m making the very limited argument that Behe never explicitly asserts that such interventions have happened, or that they are required by ID theory. Maybe it’s implied by some of the conclusions he draws, but he never asserts it. Will you concede that he never asserts it, so that we can be done with this ridiculous debate? Or else provide a passage containing the assertion?

Your long-winded reply avoids answering the question. I gave a direct quotation from Tim. Do you agree with the quotation, or not? If you will not answer this simple question, I will rightly infer that you are afraid to answer it.

But Behe rejects front loading, both theologically and scientifically. It’s right in the interview.

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