I think that phrase works great as it is.
At this point, @dga471, you are also a confessing scientist.
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Perhaps I will start referring to my views as “CAES”…
Yes. But confessing scientist should be the model for Christian scientists regardless of their specific views on creation and divine providence.
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And I’d rather we were all defined by this than our position in origins. Let that detail be a mouthful, to force people to start drawing lines in different ways.
That being said, you could just say you are aligned with PS. That would explain quite a bit.
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A good summary paragraph, Daniel.
The last sentence of that first paragraph is important. The key point for me is that ID folks aren’t saying that wherever we can detect design (supposing we can), God is there, but wherever we can’t, God isn’t there, and only natural causes are operating. They are often accused of believing or implying that by TEs, and therefore of diminishing God by denying his omnipresence in creation. In fact, there’s nothing in ID that rules out the possibility that God is everywhere, in every little nook and cranny of nature; however, because ID’s methods of design detection aspire to be part of natural science, not of theology, they can’t talk about where God is and where God isn’t. They can only talk about where design has been reliably established, and where it hasn’t. The point is that ID isn’t trying to be theology, and therefore can’t be accused of holding a defective theology simply because it can’t confirm design everywhere.
If you ask ID people (I mean, the majority of them who are Christians) whether, as religious believers, they think God is found only in demonstrably designed things, and nowhere else, they would laugh at the idea. Their views on God tend to very traditional, theologically, and so they are going to believe that God is everywhere, and that his power is active everywhere. You can find some people in the TE/EC camp who imply or explicitly say that God does not extend his control over all things (people like Polkinghorne or Oord), but I don’t know any Christian in the ID camp who would say that.
So one little thing that TE leaders could do to reduce friction in these debates is to stop suggesting that ID folks have an inadequate theology on the basis of their statements about the limited sphere of design detection. “Your Christianity isn’t as orthodox about God’s omnipresence as our Christianity” is likely only to raise temperatures, not lower them.
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I can attest to this both in discussions I’ve had recently with family members, and my own personal journey. As someone who has struggled for a long time with trying to reconcile science with an “evangelical” theology tied closely to YECism, BioLogos was my first encounter with others that affirmed the science as while holding a theology close to my own. While I had real problems with the way they reconciled the science with their theology, it at least provided affirmation that I wasn’t necessarily crazy or heretical for trying to find a reconciliation.
The discussions here (particularly those related to theology) have brought me much closer to seeing ways to fully reconcile an inerrant scripture with science. To the point where I’m almost willing to express and defend this position with a highly YEC Christian environment.
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This relates to the puzzle / exercise of what to save when facing a cataclysm. The set-up is that a cataclysm is about to destroy most of physical records on Earth but there is a storage facility that will survive. You’re asked what irreplaceable objects to save for future civilizations (human or otherwise), within the constraints of a limited space.
So, do you save works of art or science textbooks?
The answer seems to be: save art, literature and cultural artifacts, because they are unique and irreproducible. Works of science such as chemistry & physics, and mathematical works are always there to be rediscovered, regardless of the culture (or species).
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Would you like me to dig out passages from ID folks which indicate the opposite? Or would it be better to agree that some ID folks do this and some don’t. The problem with much of this ID, EC/TE discussion is the massive over-generalizations used. (and partisanship)
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Can you tell us more about what was helpful?
I am uncomfortable changing interpretation of scripture to match science. At Peaceful Science, I’ve encountered different interpretations of scripture based on careful study of the scriptures (in the original languages), culture of the day, etc. I guess you could say different interpretations that are based on strong heurmeneutics, and exegisis. These to me are valid reasons to reconsider my interpretation. In some ways it’s just an added bonus that these interpretations also provide a better reconciliation with science.
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It’s the other way around…
Save the science…
Art is intrinsic to human expression… we can’t lose it.
That seems reasonable.
However, we all make our own interpretation of scripture to fit modern culture. It should be obvious that scripture itself was originally for a very different culture. So we have no choice but to find a reading of it consistent with our own culture.
For me, growing up with an interest in science, finding a sensible way of reading scripture automatically meant finding a reading that was consistent with science. Just as you are unfortable changing your interpretation to match science, I would have been uncomfortable changing my interpretation to deny science.
This is why there is such a diversity of ways of reading scripture.
To take an example, consider @Greg. I have engaged in discussion with him (at PS). And it is clear that is never going to accept evolution. For @Greg, to accept evolution would be to deny what he sees as the central message of scripture. However, for me, to deny evolution would be to deny the central message of scripture. So @Greg and I are never going to agree on evolution. But we can still respect one another as humans. There’s no point in us fighting about it.
What I really want @Greg and other YECs to take from this, is an understanding that people can have different ways of reading the scriptures that they nevertheless take to be a natural reading. So maybe we can learn to all get along with one another and accept those differences.
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Is it just as problematic if people campaign for the idea that there is something outside of nature?
I have qualms about mixing the two, and I am an atheist scientist.
How do you do OOL research based on supernatural origins? It would seem to me that the scientific method is currently the only tool we have for doing research on this subject.
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I’ll jump off your comments to be more accurate in my statement. I should have said
“I’m uncomfortable changing interpretation of scripture just to match science”.
In other words, science and scripture cannot conflict (given they both originate from the same God). When there is a conflict we should seek to resolve it. However it doing it, we must be very careful not to simply take an interpretation of scripture that we like based on it’s ability to reconcile with science. Any new interpretation must come from careful study of the scriptures. If that leads to an interpretation that can be reconciled with science - fantastic. If it doesn’t we must continue to hold to the interpretation that study convinces us is right, while understanding that either our interpretation is wrong, or that science has got it wrong. We have a tendency to want to resolve these type of conflicts, however sometimes we just have to admit we can’t come to a reconciliation with the information we have available to us at this point it time.
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From what I have seen, the ID method is to look for structures and events that could not be produced through natural processes. This is why they argue so vehemently against natural processes like evolution. Even Behe states that observing evolution producing an IC system would falsify ID.
It would seem to me that the middle ground between ID and MN lies outside of MN, and providence seems to be the best word to describe it. If Behe’s ideas on the falsification of ID is incorrect, then what would falsify ID within MN? Hypotheses need to be falsifiable, and if we go with Denton’s metaphysical views on how ID works then ID isn’t falsifiable in the scientific sense.
ID supporters really need to figure out where they stand with MN, and how it fits with their theological views. We keep hearing that science isn’t all there is, but at the same time there seems to be a view within the ID community that ID has to be considered scientific in order to be valid. The ID community says one thing, but acts in a very different manner.
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Well said. I agree.
I freely grant that some ID folks say things that might sound as if God is only present in things that can be detected by design inferences. But their TE critics who seize upon such statements are not debating in good faith. Those same TE critics know that in point of fact those ID proponents go to churches like theirs, and every Sunday sing similar if not identical hymns about how great God is, how he can be found all through his Creation, etc. So they know that despite what certain statements might seem to imply, the ID folks in question can’t possibly be intending that construction. So the appropriate dialogical strategy is not to shout, “ID is bad theology!” It’s to ask a question, e.g., “Does your position about design detection imply that God is not found where you can’t detect design?” Then the ID person could clarify: “Oh, no, no. It’s not like that. What I mean is…”
This:
combined with this:
bring to the fore a question that’s been on my mind as this discussion has progressed. I’ve perused the PS website but not quite found the answer.
What is the purpose of PS? Is its reason for existence more or less captured in what cdods said - to provide a place where people can see a way through the “science and Christian faith are inherently at loggerheads and you have to choose one or the other” false dichotomy?
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I have many times pointed out to you and to others that in virtually every case, Behe explicitly or implicitly (from context) prefixes the qualifier “Darwinian” or “neo-Darwinian” to such expressions. If evolution is a process that works by blind search for fitness (pruned by natural selection), then of course the regular production of IC systems by evolution would falsify ID. But if evolution is a process that involves things other than blind searches, then it might be that it could produce IC systems; but in that case, while evolution might be true, Darwinian evolution (or any method of evolution that worked essentially the same way) would be false. For example, if evolution has a teleological thrust to it (as Lamarck thought), it could conceivably produce IC systems. It would be the same if evolution were driven by an elan vital like that of Bergson. Or if evolution were somehow “front-loaded” so that such systems were eventually produced.
I would agree with you and other critics that not everything ID supporters say about MN is clear or consistent. I think the problem is not with MN itself, but with the way that some people apply it. When someone says he is going to investigate the possibility that life arose by wholly natural causes, while fully admitting that it might have originated by a supernatural cause, MN is not a problem. In that case, MN simply says: “In these experiments that I am designing and performing, I am testing various natural scenarios for plausibility.” There is no problem with that. The problem comes only when, in discussions of origins, it somehow comes to be taken for granted that a naturalistic origin is the one that actually happened, and that the only question remaining is which naturalistic scenario. At that point, MN has slid (even if unconsciously or unintentionally) into PN, philosophical naturalism, i.e., “nature is all there is.” ID folks need to make clearer that the problem is not MN as a working method of scientists, but the slippery way it is handled by some debaters about origins.
Also, as a scholar, I’m trained to try to understand a position as articulated in its strongest possible form. We are always discouraged from shooting down weak arguments for a position and declaring that because we have defeated the stupidest advocates of a position, we have defeated the position itself. I wish that people who attack ID proponents on the subject of MN/PN would show that they have gone out of their way to read for themselves (not pick up from Wikipedia or Panda’s Thumb or hearsay) the best articulations of ID thought on MN/PN, and comment on those articulations, rather than lesser and more confused ones. Paul Nelson has written some very careful things on this subject, which one can find in various places, including the Crossway volume. Meyer and Hunter have also discussed the subject with some care. But rarely do I find that people have gone out of their way to collect writings (not snippets) of these people, in an effort to master their overall argument, before they react against the argument. The idea that one might spend a month of research and reading specifically on Nelson’s position on MN/PN, and another month on Hunter’s, etc., seems alien to most people with strong opinions about origins. Yet this is exactly how scholars prepare to debate about the views of Marx, of Hegel, of Kant, of Aquinas, of Schleiermacher, of Calvin, of Arminius, etc. And scholars who enter such debates who appear not to have prepared for them by extensive reading are not respected by other scholars. I’ve been trying to make these debates more scholarly, by pressing people to read more extensively in the writings of people who hold the various positions, and not rely so much on secondhand or thirdhand summaries. But I have not found that most people have the patience to do a significant amount of scholarship before they engage in argument. Given a choice between studying for 60 hours in preparation for 20 hours of debate, and studying for 1 hour in preparation for 79 hours of debate, most people on these websites seem to prefer the latter course.
The what I thought was a false dichotomy between evolution and design is one thing that has just very recently been resolved for me, but not because of the intentional ‘purpose of PS’. In my reading here, one of the implicit purposes of PS has been anti-ID. I still don’t know if ID can be scientifically proven, and I would be glad if it could, but it does not need to be (and that includes OOL).
I can now see God’s providence at work in an evolutionary understanding, not the ‘how’ of how he does it, of course – I expect that will continue to be a wonderful mystery. But I am happy now to be able to legitimately infer design, with that design executed through evolutionary means. And yes, bacterial flagella are driven by motors. 
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That’s what I mean by evolution, so there’s no need for the other demarcations.
This also begs the question of why an intelligent designer could not design life so that it blindly searches for adaptations. Couldn’t ID be consistent with blind evolution?
Why is it a problem if some scientists believe in PN? It seems that this one position is being singled out for criticism while other positions are not. Why is that? If one scientists believes that there isn’t anything outside of natural causes, how does that hamper the work of someone else who does think there is something outside of nature? I don’t see the need for the Thought Police on this one.
As far as our scientific views go, both @swamidass and I agree on nearly everything. I am skeptical of there being something outside of nature, but he is not. However, we agree on the science. Our philosophical differences don’t affect the science.
You claim to have read this material, so we are relying on you to cite references showing how we have misrepresented any ID claims.
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