Grey Thoughts
26.4.06
 
Creation vs Intelligent Design (ID)
There is a fair bit of talk about a recent Christianity Today article on ID being opposed by creation scientists. Answers in Genesis' (AIG) response to ID is available on their website. David Heddle, my favorite Old Earther, has also commented on the article.

Of course, it seems when talking about his beliefs, David seems to resort to rhetoric more and more. For instance
The creationists argue that ID has forgotten its first love, a hyper-literal interpretation of Genesis, and has become, because of its meteoric rise, too full of itself. As such, it is doing more harm than good.
Hyper-literal? Actually, taking genesis as literal is the best exegetial (sp?) approach due to it's historical-narrative style and structure. It is the old-agers like David that need to justify their departure from this clear exegesis. Conveniently, all departures from taking genesis as literal due to it's historical narrative style fit with the non-christian culture's current ideas about how old the earth is. Simply using rhetorical phrases such as 'hyper-literalism' is a fairly poor way to approach the topic as well as being significantly misleading

I think David also misreads the point Ken Ham made
"I don't think the ID movement would be where it is even now if it was not for the general creation movement," says Ken Ham, president of AiG. "They're riding on the coattails of the creation movement."
This David seems to interpret as
Ham argues first that ID is the son of creationism
This misses the point entirely. It's a simple fact that the vast majority of ID supporters are religious (which is not to say that ID is religiously based), and much of the ground work for pushing people away from the idea that the origin of the species had to be by the unguided processes of natural selection on mutation over time was done by creation scientists.

My biggest problem however is with David's "Answer"
The answer: Christians who are scientists should do science the same way as their atheistic colleagues. They should then turn to the churches, and to the youth groups, and to seminars, and to debates, and to the high-school and college clubs, and to unbelievers—and discuss how the amazing discoveries of science point to a creator God whose name is Jesus Christ.
Atheistic scientists do their 'science' on the assumption that doesn't exist. As such, it is logically, well, stupid to believe that we should approach science in that way. For instance, 2 of the major assumptions of the Big Bang Theory, homogeneity and isotropy, are built on the presupposition that God doesn't exist and so couldn't have created the universe. As an example Hubble, on finding that we seemed to be at or almost at the center of the universe found such a conclusion unacceptable because of his atheistic presuppositions. Heck, the whole idea of a big bang itself is based on the idea that as the universe is expanding, then at some point in the past it must have been really really tiny and something must have caused it to expand....ignoring the possibility that it was created at some point before the extrapolation into the past made it infinitesimally small.

This is why AIG and creation scientists argue against naturalism (as does ID founder Philip Johnson)

I'm not saying that we should try to assign God as causative agents for every unknown, but instead to entertain the possibility that God did cause some events, most specifically the ones mentioned in the bible as historical narrative.

Ultimately, I appreciate ID for it's usefulness in showing the inability of atheistic science is bankrupt. As such, it is a good middle point for accepting that a super natural god exists. Once there, it is a far less logically conclusion to accept God could have miraculously created the universe less than 10,000 years ago. As CS Lewis said
If we admit God, must we admit miracles? Indeed, indeed, you have no security against it. That is the bargain. Theology says to you in effect, ‘Admit God and with Him the risk of a few miracles, and I in return will ratify your faith in uniformity as regards the overwhelming majority of events.”

Comments:
"For instance, 2 of the major assumptions of the Big Bang Theory, homogeneity and isotropy, are built on the presupposition that God doesn't exist and so couldn't have created the universe."

Um...right.

You're kinda ignoring the fact that Georges Lemaitre of Friedmann-Lamaitre (the starting point of all BB models) fame was a Catholic priest.
 
Not at all. You are just mixing up what Lamaitre proposed with what the current big bang cosmology says.
 
I honestly don't see any difference.

But, then again, I think the sentence I highlighted is nonsensical to begin with.
 
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