Waiting is hard. I agree.
But did you show it to them?
There has been a lot going on in both ends. I did show it to them, but told them not to worry about it till we published and edited it. As you know, we had to frame some parts of your review in a softer way, and I had to write an editorial note. It wouldnât have made sense to ask them to engage with the early draft. We just showed it to them early as a courtesy.
I think they will engage with you. I know they want to engage with you, and other secular scientists.
Iâll point out too that weâve had to exhibit far more patience with ID, YEC, and BioLogos. In most cases, they just do not respond ever. In this case, I think we can expect a response. It will just take time.
OK, Iâll wait. Weâll see.
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John Harshmanâs article is well-written, and raises reasonable questions. I do think the RTB people should make their claims more precise, in the areas where he has pointed out a lack of clarity. Clarity and precision are always helpful.
I have often wondered how RTBâs created âkindsâ relate to traditional classification â species, genus, family, order, etc. One would think that their âkindsâ could be very broad, since they think the earth is much older than YEC folks do, and there would be time for lots of âmicroevolutionâ (to use that term in a popular way that is too loose for many here) to diversify things. But I donât get the impression that their âkindsâ are much broader than what YEC folks mean by kinds. And if thatâs the case, then the longer ages allowed by RTB people are functionally irrelevant, as far as evolutionary change is concerned â the extra hundreds of millions of years wouldnât have produced much more natural variety than if the species had been around for only 6,000 years. It would be helpful if some of them committed themselves in print to a coherent exposition of what constitutes a âkindâ and how much ânaturalâ evolution they allow within the kinds. If anyone knows of any article in which any of the RTB people have written forthrightly and in detail on this question, it would be helpful to have some hyperlinks or at least references.
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The second would follow from the first, so thatâs the important question. And also how they would recognize kinds.
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I think the reality is that there is a wide range of views among even scientists employed at RTB. One I know essentially equates kinds with species. With the exception of Sapiens, another is closer to equating kinds with phylums!
I think John Harshmanâs article is valuable because it presses them on how they have managed this diversity, essentially by cloaking it in ambiguity.
For scientists to take seriously their approach, they need to specify some details. I donât think this needs to be univocal. For example, they could specify an approx species=kind model and also a phylum=kind model. Doing so would encourage the right type of internal and external scientific dialogue.
Before even dealing with evolution, some thought needs to be given on how evidentially discriminate between those two models (species vs phylum). If that they canât come up with an evidential way to adjudicate this question, I donât know how they could hope discriminate between the phylum level model and universal common descent. The exercise could make this clear to them.
Now, even if thatâs the case, I donât think they are dead in the water.
They could instead focus on building a model that isnât in conflict with the scientific evidence, and finds epistemological support from philosophical or theological reasoning. This is a respectable path I encourage, which would take them out of the disputing evolution game without actually having to agree with it.
They would still be old earth creationists, not evolutionists. So they would still be able to play a critical role in triangulating evolution with YEC and ID.
But wouldnât that model have to incorporate universal common descent? They would be creationists (or not) in exactly the same way that Michael Behe is a creationist (or not). Would you call him a creationist?
Letâs not even attempt to evaluate a hallucinated model they have not even actually proposed. 
Hey, you brought it up and you stated the requirements. A model consistent with the data must include common descent. Note also that they explicitly deny guided evolution for theological rather than scientific reasons. Maybe they need to work on the theology rather than the science.
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That is my impression, which makes it harder to find the core elements that make a position a âprogressive creationistâ position.
Sure, I have no problem with that. Suppose that RTB scientist A, speaking only for him- or herself, championed kind = species, and RTB scientist B, speaking only for him- or herself, championed kind = order. Then each of those positions would be concrete enough to be analyzed and discussed, both within RTB and with outsiders. But an amorphous position â "we all believe there were created âkindsâ but donât ask us to define âkindsâ " â doesnât aid in understanding, analysis, or criticism.
Indeed, this is akin to the problem I constantly had with BioLogos, which had an amorphous collective position on how God was connected with evolution, one in which God was sort of involved and sort of not-involved, sort of hands-on and sort of hands-off, and one in which God maybe determined particular outcomes of evolution but maybe wanted to leave evolution âopenâ out of ârespect for the freedom of his creaturesâ, etc. With no individual BioLogos columnist willing to say, âspeaking only for myself and not for my colleagues at BioLogos, here is how I conceive of the relationship between God and evolution,â it was impossible to assess or even understand even what individual BioLogos leaders believed, let alone what BioLogos collectively asserted. Neither BioLogos collectively nor any individual BioLogos leader offered any thesis regarding the connection of God and evolution. The tendency was always to remain with bland, âsafeâ generalities â the sort of thing itâs hard to criticize.
Hopefully RTB will eventually generate some theses about âkindsâ and the barriers between them, rather than safe, bland generalities.
I donât want to derail this from the focus on RTB, except to say that this is not the same issue as BioLogos. The two organizations are structured very differently and operate by very different sets of rules.
RTB, in particular, welcomes criticism from outside its camp and is genuinely seeking dialogue with secular scientists. That much I am sure about. In the case of RTB, they are very top down, with Hugh Ross at the top. If there isnât agreement about details, it doesnât usually go public. At the same time, it isnât like there is a code of silence about it either.
There is not real reason to discuss BioLogos any further on this thread, except to say there is a totally different set of dynamics at play.
3 posts were merged into an existing topic: The Confusion Between RTB and BL
Wow. âEdward Robinsonâ, pseudonymous ID champion and participant in a 1000-post thread in which he completely failed to present any Intelligent Design hypothesis, despite claiming to know of one, is expressing frustration that some-one else didnât present a testable thesis.
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its interesting to note that according to the jewish tradition there were probably other worlds before the current one:
We donât need to open old wounds. Compared to other ID fellows here, Eddie is a lot more reasonable.
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The problem with that model is taxonomic levels are largely arbitrary and subjective. There are no objective rules for what makes a genus, order, family, etc. If we wanted to we could put all of the apes (including humans) into the same genus. There are 1,600+ species in the genus Drosophila, as another example. For this reason and others, biologists have adopted cladistics and moved past Linnaean taxonomy, even if they still refer to traditional Linnaean groups. Equating kinds to taxonomic groups is just kicking the can down the road.
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There is one exception: equating kinds with species, as thatâs the only rank with anything like an objective definition. Of course there are problems, since species are also fuzzy, and we see populations in all intermediate degrees of speciation. So itâs hard to put kinds there too. And of course you would still need some real criterion for identifying kinds, as well as a justification for that criterion. So far, nothing on that front from anyone inside or outside of RTB.
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And have very different personnel, BioLogos being more of a haven for ârecovering fundamentalistsâ. 
I agree. I was not trying to change the topic to BioLogos, but merely noting a parallel, that parallel being âfailure to offer a clear thesis capable of being understood, analyzed, and criticized.â Just as John Harshman expresses frustration at the lack of a testable RTB thesis in biology, so I once experienced frustration at the lack of a testable BioLogos thesis in the academic field called âtheology and scienceâ. My parallel was a one-time aside for those interested, not an attempt to start discussing BioLogos.
As for RTB being âtop downâ, you may be right â I donât know the people involved very well. If it is âtop downâ, however, I donât think thatâs a very healthy model for good science. Science is supposed to be meritocratic, not hierarchical. In principle there is no âhead scientistâ to whom other scientists owe deference; scientists should all constructively criticize each other. Also, you said that if there isnât agreement at RTB about details, it doesnât usually go public; but thatâs precisely the opposite of real science, where scientists go public with disagreement over details in the journals, at conferences, in books, and in other ways. But this is another aside.
I wish John Harshman good luck in prodding RTB to be more explicit about their notion(s) of âkindsâ. They will benefit not only him, but themselves, if they take his polite criticism seriously.
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The big difference is RTB seems to claim that they have a scientific model for created kinds. I havenât seen anyone at BioLogos claim that God guiding evolution is a scientific model.
On that same note, if RTB stated that their claims are entirely faith based and are not expected to be scientifically testable then we could probably just leave it there. They could even go farther and claim that the evidence is entirely consistent with common ancestry and evolution, but they still believe, through faith and unsupported by science, that species were separately created. I would just tip my cap and move on because there is nothing left to argue at that point.
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