Pearcy: Why ID Will Win
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Nancy Pearcy explains five reasons why ID will ultimately triumph in the public square over Darwinism:
(HT: Challies)
- The affirmation of design is good for science.
- Contrary to the way it is often portrayed, ID does not thrive on "gaps" in science but rather on the growth of science.
- ID incorporates the insights of the high-tech world of information theory.
- ID recovers the unity of truth
- ID accords with the ideals of a free and open society.
(HT: Challies)
posted by JT at Saturday, December 03, 2005
6 Comments:
Why is it assumed that this is a good thing? ID leaves God out of the equation, it proposes an 'Intelligent' designer without commiting to just who that designer is.
There are also many involved with the ID movement who are not Christian and would be appalled if God was brought into the picture.
With great sadness I have to say that I think that Christians who are involved with the ID movement are practicing deception.
If you believe in God as creator then say so, don't try and get in by some sort of back door.
Have the God given strength to speak the truth, that God is the one and only creator.
Glenn,
I agree with you about ID. Both atheistic evolution advocates and many Christians on the other side seem to fail to understand ID. Christian colleagues at our college seem to think that to advocate for ID is to advocate for the Genesis 1 kind of creation, which it actually is not.
But isn't there a place for incrementalism? (I agree, Paulos, that ID can't be taught as Genesis 1!) I'm just questioning the apparent assumption that something must go all the way in order to be helpful and appreciated.
JT
It is not "deception" when observing a bacterial flagellum to conclude that it looks designed, but admit we have no idea, according to the bacterial flagellum, who or what the designer may be. ID plays by the rules of science, which simply makes tentative assertions based upon observable data.
You may respond with Romans 1:20 and so on that we should say that the no designer is God. But we only have this knowledge via Scripture. It does not come to us via scientific observation. The crux of the matter, therefore, is an issue of authority and most fundamentalists revile against the idea of the Word not having supreme authority over science. But fundamentalists aren't taken seriously by anyone in this culture.
ID works within the disciplinary framework of science. When is ID marginalized as "religion" by the secularists it reveals the bias in how "religion" is defined: anything that doesn't agree with materialism. John Bloom delivered a paper at the ETS arguing ID is good for Christian apologetics because it removes to roadblocks to saving faith that permeated within our secular culture:
(A) A two-tier model of God and nature wherein God is so removed that he does not – or even cannot – interact with the material world in any substantive manner.
(B) The prevailing sense in much of our culture that naturalism offers adequate explanations for all of reality.
I am very saddened that you think people like me; Doug Groothuis, Nancy Pearcy, Phillip E. Johnson, and William Dembski are practicing deception. That is hardly the case. Those people will say by the authority of Scripture that the designer is God. But they will not say that on the authority of science. The data simply cannot be interpreted in such a way.
If anything we are being intellectually honest about the claims we make in the names of whatever discipline we are working in.
JT,
I would not agree with Glenn's "deception" statement.
I agree with you about incrementalism.
My only concern is that so many Christians greatly confuse ID science with a biblical doctrine of creation.
Some of these responses indicate a failure of the public school system to teach simple logic. There are multiple ways of knowing (anything) so when the lessons are limited to science, it is presumptious to make leaps of faith or to criticize those who don't. Revelation is quite different from scientific bases for belief so it would be premature to (in a science class) leap to the same understanding of origins that we hold by faith and to call it science.
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