When the truth hurts

Theistic evolution is not simply an act of faith, it is claimed to be based on the evidence of nature and reason.

This is not my understanding.

"creation scientists had an agenda, which was to defend the literal meaning of the Bible. But that is not what I.D. is about."

(1) 'Scientific creationism' (no reliance on Biblical revelation, utilizing only scientific data to support and expound the creation model). (ICR Impact No, 85, "The Tenets of Creationism", Henry Morris, July 1980) we turn to the other major work of creation "science", the book Scientific Creationism, published by the ICR in 1974 (Henry Morris, ed., Scientific Creationism, Creation Life Publishers, San Diego CA, 1974). This book, the ICR informs us, was written by "the scientific staff of the Institute for Creation Research" (p. i). It is, the editor declares, a work of science, and "makes no reference to the Bible or other religious literature as its authority, but only on the facts of science" (p. v): "It is possible to discuss the evidences relating to evolution versus creation in a scientific context exclusively, without reference to religious literature or doctrine." (p. 3) "The purpose of Scientific Creationism (Public School edition) is to treat all of the more pertinent aspects of the subject of origins and to do this on a scientific basis, with no references to the Bible or to religious doctrine." (p. iv) Morris emphasizes again that the book treats creationism in "a strictly scientific context" (p. iii) and as a "scientifically sound alternative to evolution" (p. iii). "There is nothing inherently religious about the terms 'creator' or 'creation', as used in the context of Act 590. Act 590 is concerned with a non-religious conception of 'creation' and 'creator', not the religious concepts dealt with in the Bible or religious writings. . . All that creation- science requires is that the entity which caused creation have power, intelligence and a sense of design." (Defendant's Trial Brief, McLean v Arkansas, 1981)

Published statements by DI associates confirm that "renewing our culture" by replacing "scientific materialism" with "God" or a "theistic understanding of nature" is indeed the only aim and purpose of "intelligent design theory". DI associate George Gilder wrote an entire piece entitled "The Materialist Superstition" which decries "the Darwinian materialist paradigm", and advocates replacing it with "intelligent design", which, Gilder implies (but is very careful not to explicitly state), is non-materialistic. ("The Materialistic Superstition", Discovery Institute Website, 2005). Other ID advocates, however, have at times been less circumspect. Phillip Johnson, who talks much more openly than the others about the explicit anti-atheistic goals of "intelligent design theory", specifically contrasts "scientific materialism" with "divine intervention"; "It is the alleged absence of divine intervention throughout the history of life -- the strict materialism of the orthodox theory -- that explains why a great many people, only some of whom are biblical fundamentalists, think that Darwinian evolution (beyond the micro level) is basically materialistic philosophy disguised as scientific fact." (Johnson, "The Unraveling of Scientific Materialism", First Things, November 1997, PP 22-25) "Science also has become identified with a philosophy known as materialism or scientific naturalism. This philosophy insists that nature is all there is, or at least the only thing about which we can have any knowledge. It follows that nature had to do its own creating, and that the means of creation must not have included any role for God. . . . The reason the theory of evolution is so controversial is that it is the main scientific prop for scientific naturalism. Students first learn that "evolution is a fact," and then they gradually learn more and more about what that "fact" means. It means that all living things are the product of mindless material forces such as chemical laws, natural selection, and random variation. So God is totally out of the picture, and humans (like everything else) are the accidental product of a purposeless universe." (Johnson, "The Church of Darwin", Wall Street Journal, August 16, 1999). "For now we need to stick to the main point: In the beginning was the Word, and the 'fear of God'- recognition of our dependence upon God-is still the beginning of wisdom. If materialist science can prove otherwise then so be it, but everything we are learning about the evidence suggests that we don't need to worry. (Johnson, "How to Sink a Battleship; A Call to Separate Materialist Philosophy from Empriical Science", address to the 1996 "Mere Creation Conference") Johnson explicitly calls for "a better scientific theory, one genuinely based on unbiased empirical evidence and not on materialist philosophy" (Johnson, "How to Sink a Battleship). Johnson doesn't tell us what this non-materialistic philosophy might be that he wants to base science on, but it is clear from the rest of his statements that he, like every other IDer, wants to base science on his religious beliefs. DI associate Michael Behe also makes the connection between fighting "scientific materialism" and "theistic understanding of nature" explicitly clear. "Darwinism is the most plausible unintelligent mechanism, yet it has tremendous difficulties and the evidence garnered so far points to its inability to do what its advocates claim for it. If unintelligent mechanisms can't do the job, then that shifts the focus to intelligent agency. That's as far as the argument against Darwinism takes us, but most people already have other reasons for believing in a personal God who just might act in history, and they will find the argument for intelligent design fits with what they already hold. With the argument arranged this way, evidence against Darwinism does count as evidence for an active God, just as valid negative advertising against the Democratic candidate will help the Republican, even though Vegetarian and One-World candidates are on the ballot, too. Life is either the result of exclusively unintelligent causes or it is not, and the evidence against the unintelligent production of life is clearly evidence for intelligent design." (Behe, "The God of Science", Weekly Standard, June 7, 1999, p. 35) "Naturalism is a philosophy which says that material things are all that there is. But philosophy is not science, and therefore excluding ideas which point to a creator, which point to God, is not allowed simply because in public schools in the United States one is not allowed to discriminate either for or against ideas which have religious implications." (Behe, Speech at Calvary Chapel, March 6, 2002) Another DI associate, William Dembski, makes the connection between ID and Christian apologetics even more explicit: "Not only does intelligent design rid us of this ideology, which suffocates the human spirit, but, in my personal experience, I've found that it opens the path for people to come to Christ. Indeed, once materialism is no longer an option, Christianity again becomes an option. True, there are then also other options. But Christianity is more than able to hold its own once it is seen as a live option. The problem with materialism is that it rules out Christianity so completely that it is not even a live option. Thus, in its relation to Christianity, intelligent design should be viewed as a ground-clearing operation that gets rid of the intellectual rubbish that for generations has kept Christianity from receiving serious consideration." (Dembski, "Intelligent Design's Contribution to the Debate Over Evolution", Designinference.com website, February 2005). Indeed, Dembski titled one of his books Intelligent Design; the Bridge Between Science and Theology (Dembski, 1999). In that book, Dembski makes the religious basis of ID "theory" explicit: "The conceptual soundings of the theory can in the end only be located in Christ." (Dembski, 1999, p. 210). Other statements by Dembski make it clear that his designer cannot be anything other than God: "The fine-tuning of the universe, about which cosmologists make such a to-do, is both complex and specified and readily yields design. So too, Michael Behe's irreducibly complex biochemical systems readily yield design. The complexity-specification criterion demonstrates that design pervades cosmology and biology. Moreover, it is a transcendent design, not reducible to the physical world. Indeed, no intelligent agent who is strictly physical could have presided over the origin of the universe or the origin of life." (Dembski, "The Act of Creation", ARN website, Aug 1998) "From our vantage, materialism is not a neutral, value-free, minimalist position from which to pursue inquiry. Rather, it is itself an ideology with an agenda. What's more, it requires an evolutionary creation story to keep it afloat. On scientific grounds, we regard that creation story to be false. What's more, we regard the ideological agenda that has flowed from it to be destructive to rational discourse. Our concerns are therefore entirely parallel to the evolutionists'. Indeed, all the evolutionists' worst fears about what the world would be like if we succeed have, in our view, already been realized through the success of materialism and evolution. Hence, as a strategy for unseating materialism and evolution, the term "Wedge" has come to denote an intellectual and cultural movement that many find congenial." (Dembski, "Dealing with the backlash against intelligent design", 2004) "But there are deeper motivations. I think at a fundamental level, in terms of what drives me in this is that I think God's glory is being robbed by these naturalistic approaches to biological evolution, creation, the origin of the world, the origin of biological complexity and diversity. When you are attributing the wonders of nature to these mindless material mechanisms, God's glory is getting robbed...And so there is a cultural war here. Ultimately I want to see God get the credit for what he's done - and he's not getting it." (Dembski, address given at Fellowship Baptist Church, Waco, Texas, March 7, 2004) "Even so, there is an immediate payoff to intelligent design: it destroys the atheistic legacy of Darwinian evolution. Intelligent design makes it impossible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." (Dembski, Why President Bush Got It Right about Intelligent Design, 2005) As the Wedge Document puts it: "We are convinced that in order to defeat materialism, we must cut it off at its source. That source is scientific materialism. This is precisely our strategy. If we view the predominant materialistic science as a giant tree, our strategy is intended to function as a "wedge" that, while relatively small, can split the trunk when applied at its weakest points. The very beginning of this strategy, the "thin edge of the wedge," was Phillip Johnson's critique of Darwinism begun in 1991 in Darwinism on Trial, and continued in Reason in the Balance and Defeatng Darwinism by Opening Minds. Michael Behe's highly successful Darwin's Black Box followed Johnson's work. We are building on this momentum, broadening the wedge with a positive scientific alternative to materialistic scientific theories, which has come to be called the theory of intelligent design (ID). Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions." (Wedge Document, 1999)

To all these "indications" of the existence of God the Creator, some oppose the power of chance or of the proper mechanisms of matter. To speak of chance for a universe which presents such a complex organization in its elements, and such a marvelous finality in its life would be equivalent to giving up the search for an explanation of the world as it appears to us.

... merely proposes that there is good evidence that some features of nature---like the intricate molecular motors within cells and the finely-tuned laws of physics---are best explained as the products of an intelligent cause, not chance and necessity.

Re "If that's how they are best explained, then let's see the explanation."

I'll second that!

Lenny, John Paul II said that wherever he looked in nature, he found evidence which proved that God existed.

Lenny, John Paul II said that wherever he looked in nature, he found evidence which proved that God existed.

Re "What scientific evdience did he present for this, again?"

Poof?

John Paul II says that science can neither affirm nor deny the existence of God, and that there is more than sufficent evidence from nature to prove God's existence.
Perhaps you understand what he is talking about Lenny, if so could you explain it to me please?

Where Darwin replaced the appearance of religiously satisfying divine design with the appearance of "chance and necessity" (gene mutation and natural selection), the CC replaces the appearance of scientifically satisfying natural "design" and reinstalls divine design by dictat.

"An unguided evolutionary process --- one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence --- simply cannot exist." (International Theological Commission, under Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger --- aka Pope Benedict XVI.)

Science says that it can, the CC says that it cannot.

We reject ID (DI) not because it is bad science, or even because it is fraudulent science, we reject it because it is religion masquerading as science. (Whether it is heresy is irrelevant, Shirley. It's religion stupid.)

Now ID (CC) (theistic evolution) does not even pretend to be science. It is proudly, openly and emphatically religion. The CC has concocted a form of evolution which it finds palatable to its religious taste. Fair enough, it is entitled to do that if it wishes, just as ID (DI) is entitled to do whatever it wishes with evolution in order to render it palatable to its religious taste, so long as it is honest about what it is doing and why.

Science cannot endorse any from of evolution which is predicated on the existence of an intelligent designer (least of all a divine one). The evidence renders the assumption of any kind of intelligent designer redundant. Nature apparently creates life's variety out of her own resources, so far as science can tell.

Theistic religion must necessarily render evolution into some form that it finds compatible with itself, or reject it wholesale. Rejecting it wholesale is certainly not compatible with science, and neither is rendering it into something utterly alien to it.

If the CC merely argued that it is possible that God could be responsible for the natural processes of evolution and that the Church believed this was true purely as a matter of faith, I would have no problem with that; but to assert that it is impossible that nature might be self-sufficient --- as the evidence suggests it is --- is simply to overrule and discount science.
Which is the less compatible with science, I wonder, to reject it wholesale or to overrule it?

John Paul II says that science can neither affirm nor deny the existence of God

Of course some IDers hate some theistic evolutionists and vice versa,but at the same time there is a close connection there too.
Behe and Schoenborn do not hate one another like poison; I am sure about that.

Of course some IDers hate some theistic evolutionists and vice versa,but at the same time there is a close connection there too.

Behe and Schoenborn do not hate one another like poison; I am sure about that.

However, this faith in a God who reveals himself, also finds support in the reasoning of our intelligence. When we reflect, we observe that proofs of God's existence are not lacking. These have been elaborated by thinkers under the form of philosophical demonstrations in the sense of rigorously logical deductions. But they can also take on a simpler form. As such, they are accessible to everyone who seeks to understand the meaning of the world around him.

The evolution of living beings, of which science seeks to determine the stages and to discern the mechanism, presents an internal finality which arouses admiration. This finality which directs beings in a direction for which they are not responsible or in charge, obliges one to suppose a Mind which is its inventor, its creator. To all these "indications" of the existence of God the Creator, some oppose the power of chance or of the proper mechanisms of matter. To speak of chance for a universe which presents such a complex organization in its elements, and such a marvelous finality in its life would be equivalent to giving up the search for an explanation of the world as it appears to us. In fact, this would be equivalent to admitting effects without a cause. It would be to abdicate human intelligence which would thus refuse to think, and to seek a solution for its problems.

Incidentally Lenny, since you have not explained what John Paul II means when he says that science can neither affirm nor deny the existence of God, and that there is more than sufficient evidence from nature to prove God's existence, would I be correct in assuming that like me, you have no idea what he is talking about?

(sigh) Well, if you want to view the Catholic Church as IDers, go right ahead. Certainly no one can stop you. (shrug)

The IDers, of course, know differently. Just ask them.

Ok, I shall take that as meaning you do NOT know what John Paul II is talking about.

He's, uh, not talking about science.

Want to know what IDers think of the Catholic church and/or theistic evolutionists? Ask them. They're not shy about telling everyone.

There's simply no point in my arguing with you over the matter, when anyone with an IQ above room temperature can simply email the IDers and find out for themselves, quickly, cleanly, unequivocably, and with no input at all from me. (shrug)

Re "To speak of chance for a universe which presents such a complex organization in its elements,"

Quantum theory speaks of "chance" in the motions of subatomic particles. Yet molecules remain intact, and solid objects stay solid (usually). Ergo, the presence of chance does not contradict complexity or organization.

Henry

John Paul II says that science can neither affirm nor deny the existence of God, and that there is more than sufficent evidence from nature to prove God's existence.

I have never claimed that ID and theistic evolution are identical; far from it, there are significant differences between them. (They are like the two different sects of Marxism, which you mentioned).

What I say is that they are both, fundamentally, just the bad old argument from design dressed in a cheap tuxedo.

Many people appear to believe that theistic evolution is a belief held on pure blind faith, but that is not true. The RCC only requires faith in order to know the personal nature of God; it claims that reason is sufficient to discern the fact that God exists.

The RCC argues that the footprints of God are all over nature - intelligent design. However God created life, whether it be evolution or otherwise, God is behind it. Science says that there is no evidence of intelligent design in evolution; science can present natural mechanisms to explain the appearance of design. The assumption of a designer is not warranted on scientific grounds.

ID tries to finger certain molecules within the cell as being designed by means other than the mechanisms of evolution. Science says bollocks.

The logical form of the argument from design is to argue from the physical to the metaphysical, from the evidence of nature to the existence of the supernatural.

ID and theistic evolution both involve the argument from design; they obey the same logical form.

In science one may only infer the physical from the physical, or the natural from the natural. Science does not deal in the metaphysical or supernatural.

Thus whilst ID and theistic evolution are logically compatible, neither of them are logically compatible with science.

Sorry, I meant to say the fingerprints of God are all over nature, not the footprints. Maybe both, who knows, after all he is made in our image... *chuckle*

I think I have it Popper, if I understand you correctly. If I understand that John Paul II is talking nonsense, then I do understand him correctly, because he is talking apologetics, and apologetics is just.. umm.. plain nonsense? Is that it?

I think I have it Popper, if I understand you correctly. If I understand that John Paul II is talking nonsense, then I do understand him correctly, because he is talking apologetics, and apologetics is just.. umm.. plain nonsense? Is that it?

Thus whilst ID and theistic evolution are logically compatible, neither of them are logically compatible with science.

Thus whilst ID and theistic evolution are logically compatible, neither of them are logically compatible with science.

The evolution of living beings, of which science seeks to determine the stages and to discern the mechanism, presents an internal finality which arouses admiration. This finality which directs beings in a direction for which they are not responsible or in charge, obliges one to suppose a Mind which is its inventor, its creator.

...since the vast majority of Christians have no gripe with science, and find science and their faith quite compatible, and since both IDers and theistic evolutionists find their views mutually incompatible and say so out loud, your conclusions seem pretty silly on the face of it.

— Lenny

Amen Leigh.