hi timothy. so if a self replicating watch is an indication for design. then a self replicating motor like the flagellum is an indication for design. do you agree with this argument?
@dcscccc
Bringing hypothetical self-replicating machines and flagella up in every conversation is off-topic.
Maybe you could interact with what people are saying on this thread instead of pursuing the same rabbit trails that countless people have already run down with you before.
The topic under discussion here is the differences between the concepts of design and theistic evolution and where the concepts are or are not compatible.
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Merv, a note to your 3 options listed above.
You use the term ‘determines’ in each of the options. Eddie responded in defense of a rather deterministic position. Most of BioLogos columnists, from what I can see, fit into your #2 category. My opinion is that Eddie makes them more into deists than they really are; they are just not ‘external interventionists’ like IDists, but rather more immanence-oriented in their natural theologies. The ‘designs, intentions and teleology’ language is fine when it is used in the right places (e.g. in Timothy’s skyscrapers), but sounds inharmonious when out of place, as with IDism.
In case you haven’t looked at it, you might wish also to consider the medieval distinction between occasionalism, conservationism and concurrentism. IDists often come out on the quasi-occasionalist side, but resist speaking about it in public. (It comes across as too causally deterministic.) Conservationism seems to be the position that Eddie resists the most. Yet it also appears that concurrentism is the mainstream consensus in the Christian Church today and is consistent with the position that accepts limited evolutionary biology in natural history, i.e. theistic evolution or evolutionary creation.
As with skyscrapers, we ‘adapt’ our creations/manufactures as we are creating/manufacturing new ones. That’s the story of innovation, where ‘designing processes’ can be undertaken and also studied, along with the lowercase human designers.
To me, the occasionalism, conservationism, concurrentism comparison of ideologies is helpful and direct on the question of “if God ultimately is the first and direct cause of everything, including whatever occurs and exists in nature, can there be any causal activity on the part of creatures?” Of course, it is a philosophical and theological question, not a scientific one (just like “how does God control evolution?” or “what does God have to do with the evolutionary process?”). One therefore cannot even entertain the Discovery Institute’s notion of uppercase ‘Intelligent Design’ for such a question because it is claimed as a ‘strictly scientific’ theory.
Rather than discussing occasionalism, conservationism and concurrentism, notions of concordism and accommodationism, however, have been the ideologies more regularly discussed around here. In any case, Merv, glad to hear if you find it helpful.
Gregory - You mention the medieval distinction between occasionalism, conservationism, and concurrentism. I have never heard that terminology used, and it sounds very interesting. Could you provide a reference or two so I can do some background reading?
Or anyone else: if you know of a good resource, please reply.
Thanks!
- Chris Falter
Hi, Gregory, Chris … Quick reply before I retire for the evening. It’s been a while since I’ve read up on those terms Gregory, and it will be good practice for me to try to remember their definitions here --subject to later correction by you or myself if I can find the time to read up on them again tomorrow.
But meanwhile here is what I remember, Chris: Occasionalism is the belief that all phenomena are God’s direct action and that all things we observe are just the ‘occasions’ through which he chooses to do things. Conservationism, on the other hand, is near the other end of the spectrum where all phenomena must remain strictly “natural” --no tinkering allowed; i.e. the “laws” are conserved. Concurrentism is the allowance that God is or may be at work in the natural progression of phenomena, so that it is both natural but also part of God’s plan at the same time. And of course concordism (which I suppose overlaps in various ways with the other -isms above) is the belief that all apparently historical / factual references in Scriptures (especially Genesis) do correspond with or “concord with” an actual scientifically describable historical event, even if the Scripture reference is veiled or encoded somehow. I.e. you might hear concordists waxing passionately about how this or that word in the opening verses of creation must certainly refer to the big bang event, or a day of creation corresponds to this or that epoch of earth history, etc.
Now I head for bed, and let Gregory or others come in and clean up after my sloppy recollections. Hopefully I got most of that close to right. But I look forward to discussing this more.
Hello Chris,
Nice to ‘meet’ you here. I’ve been researching the topic for a few years as a non-expert in medieval philosophy and am fascinated by it. Hopefully you’ll find some themes of interest to you too. 
Glad to respond with links:
http://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/papers/conserv.htm
http://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/papers/pitfall.htm
If you’re connected to academia.edu, then here’s a dissertation on concurrentism: https://www.academia.edu/325769/Concurrentism_A_Philosophical_Explanation or here’s an abstract if you’re not: "Concurrentism: A philosophical explanation" by Louis A. Mancha
Much better than just ‘sloppy recollections’ and well-compacted in one paragraph, Merv.
I must admit I was a bit surprised that you didn’t follow up on the determinism (OK to #1) displayed in response to your question above. You instead digressed from determinism (or the doctrine of strong providence) to turn to ‘chance’. I take it that there is a great hesitation, not only from the so-called TE/EC position (which evidently I see considerably different than you, Eddie and Jon Garvey, all authors at The Hump, as recommended above), but also from people who are either creationists, IDists or not sure how to label themselves in the conversation of evolution, creation, intelligent design and Intelligent Design Theory, to openly discuss open theology and process theology.
It is, after all, much easier to dogmatically polarize ‘design and chance’ than to actually get into the meat of discussing “what does God actually do in the evolutionary process” in a positive sense, that is mainly philosophical and theological rather than scientific. After all, if one is a hard core determinist, they aren’t likely to welcome ‘open’ topics into the discussion because little (99%) or nothing (100% is ‘open’ according to them. Opponents of open theology usually just throw out the term here as a pejorative, without really getting into it.
So, I try to turn back the digression into ‘chance’ to return to the main theme of the OP.
As for IDists facing occasionalism, Eddie gives far too much credit to Stephen Webb’s views. I’d read both Meredith’s article and Webb’s rebuttal, as well as listening to Webb’s radical IDist podcast with Casey Luskin before making my suggestion above re: occasionalism, conservationism and concurrentism. Webb was anxious to respond to feedback on his critique of Meredith at First Things, but one commenter imo got the best of him, noting “the objection to ID as ‘occasionalism,’ seems still sustainable,” to which Webb finally stopped responding. The jury is still out on IDism in the public sphere and discussing the 3 ideologies above may prove fruitful.
Depending on the IDist/‘cdesign proponentsist’ (& they have so many different ‘opinions’ about what IDT is anyway), indeed, IDism can look very much like occasionalism. It’s supposed to be a ‘big tent’ after all and the DI will let just about anyone in who hollers ‘design!’ in an attempted ‘revolutionary’ way. That’s the sign of an intentional ‘Movement’, a movement quite unlike the mainstream ‘TE’ position in the Abrahamic faiths. For some in that Movement, everything is (past tense) ‘Intelligently Designed*, which establishes a point of contact with occasionalism, in which God causes everything.
As I mentioned above, in response to Merv’s questions about the spectrum of ‘determinism’, it seems to me that concurrentism is the mainstream consensus in the Christian Church today and is consistent with the position that accepts limited evolutionary biology in natural history, i.e. theistic evolution or evolutionary creation. Be welcome to discuss or even debate this if interested.
Here are the links for those interested:
Meredith: Looking for God in All the Wrong Places by Stephen Meredith | Articles | First Things
Webb: Intelligent Design Might Be Wrong, But Not the Way You Think | Stephen H. Webb | First Things
Unfortunately for Eddie, he didn’t re-read the Webb article before slamming Meredith: “he couldn’t even be bothered to take the time to learn the standard usage for the term ‘occasionalism,’ and showed a less than undergraduate understanding of the term.” In fact, Webb himself admitted: “Meredith’s definition of occasionalism is accurate.” So, it would be honourable of Eddie to at least take back the “less than undergraduate understanding” condescending remark. Ok?
I am pleased that both Meredith and Webb (although the latter starts properly, he later reverts to the DI’s preferred PR strategy) use what I consider the proper capitalisation of ‘Intelligent Design’ to refer to the DI’s particular ‘theory’ and not to the belief that all Christians, Muslims and Jews traditionally hold regarding the created universe. This is a distinction that BioLogos president Deb Haarsma has also made and I can only reiterate that I think it helps the conversation greatly in terms of communicative clarity. So far, Eddie refuses the distinction, but perhaps eventually he’ll come around.
And indeed, I do think Meredith’s article has merit, even while it has weaknesses too (e.g. diversions outside of the core argument). How if not ‘occasional’ would IDists classify the ‘external interventions’ that the unnameable ‘Intelligence’ they posit acts as they have erected it in their ‘theory’, e.g. bacterial flagellum, Cambrian diversification (they still call it ‘explosion’), etc.? As I said above, at least some IDists show signs of occasionalism in their IDism, in which everything is everywhere and always ‘Designed’ by that scientifically unnameable ‘Intelligence’. For them, there simply is no answer to the question: What is not designed?
Webb, as has become standard for IDists, turns back again to place blame on Darwin, and ends the article with the totally absurd notion that ‘Darwinism’ is a “scientific version of occasionalism.” First, occasionalism is not a ‘scientific’ notion. And second, Darwin’s evolutionary theory had no room for a divine Creator, whereas that’s what occasionalism is all about. Thus, to conclude, rather than ‘correcting’ Meredith, as Eddie suggests, the DI’s representative Webb (in this case a theologian) has simply displayed more IDist folly and fetish with Darwin’s contribution to human knowledge, disrespecting because of misunderstanding a fellow Christian along the way.
“I would object to Gregory’s use of the term ‘ideology’ to describe conservation, concurrence, occasionalism, etc. Nobody in the academic fields of systematic theology, philosophy of religion, philosophical theology, or history of Christian thought refers to these things as ‘ideologies’.” - Eddie
Well, I didn’t expect you to agree with me, Eddie, though my post was addressed to someone else. Ideologies can be understood as ways of understanding, organising and making sense of ideas, including the relationships of power between them as they are held in societies. They are not simply a pejorative ‘false consciousness’ as Marx called them, nor are they restricted to political notions, as you seem to have been taught. Updated views of ideology, e.g. Terry Eagleton or Anthony Giddens show otherwise. We all have many ideas, definitions and connections between the terms we use and the way we order and prioritise them and when we highlight one particular term and apply it to a wide range of things, it often becomes ideological. English language is particularly valuable in this sense where the ‘-ism’ is usually, though not always, used to denote the ideology.
Creationism, evolutionism and scientism are every bit as much ideologies as are laissez-faire capitalism, democratic socialism, feudalism, fascism and communism. I used the term ‘ideology’ regarding occasionalism, conservationism and concurrentism because it seems suitable, especially in the linguistic sense. Darwinism is also an ideology, not ‘just a scientific theory,’ as are Marxism, Taylorism and Fordism. I don’t expect Eddie to concede an inch that what I have just described is a possible fruitful way of framing ‘ideology,’ but there you have it anyway.
As far as “Extending the term ‘ideology’ beyond its traditional use” being ‘confusing’ goes, well, ironically enough, that’s exactly what the DI and it’s politically-motivated IDM has done by taking the traditional ‘design argument’ out of natural theology and trying to force it into being a ‘strictly scientific’ theory. Is their ‘over-extension’ confusing? I doubt you’ll ever hear Eddie complain about or admit that. 
Sorry that I don’t come close to keeping up in all this, and even now – this comment is squeezed in to a break I’m taking in my work day. Let me possibly here represent the group of us that cannot dedicate huge chunks of daily time to this; (maybe that will be a group of just me, which is fine, but I suspect there are others.) And having no dog in the Webb vs. Meredith assessments since I have read neither, my discussion will be limited to the direct subjects over which these authors have no doubt produced much great material. You both are ahead of all of us (or me anyway) in having read them, but I will not join in intellectual chest thumping contests over who all I’ve read. I’m more interested in the same things that apparently interested them. I know it means repeating things that have been argued thousands of times by others, but we are here now and with the time allotted. The greats may certainly join us, vicariously, through those who have read them.
The reason I focused on chance or randomness earlier was that it seems to be a recent focal point within these ancient disputes about what can be said to be (or to not be) God’s work in the world. To address chance successfully, if indeed we can, is to probably take down the largest of the spectres that have been set up as allegedly being contrary to any sound teleology or theology. I’ve had Eddie largely in mind in trying to delve into that, but I know he is not alone. And while I may not align with his concerns in exactly the same way as he has expressed them, I still want to take up his challenge to TEs everywhere to assert specifically how God works (if this can indeed be determined by any non-theological tool sets), or at the very least assert where God does work --which is the easier task and the most likely to just be dismissed by those who want scientific demonstration as so much hand-waving. It may be that we have to live with the latter characterization, but for those of us who don’t look to science to address every last question about life, it still may be useful to clarify just the same.
Again, I know all this has been beat to death by thousands of minds much greater than ours (or mine anyway), and my apologies to them all as they spin in their graves agonizing over our modern ignorance. But here I am, ready to beat on it some more and rediscover some insights for myself.
Merv,
Thanks for this. I don’t have much time either and will be cutting back my participation here as our academic year has just begun. Also, it doesn’t seem like BioLogos staff are ready or willing to discuss several topics and relevant questions that I’ve posed to them, critical or exploratory of their ‘evolutionary creationist’ approach. James Kidder, Jim and now most recently Brad have all dodged my questions about humanistic evolution and evolutionism. They seem to want to change and yet are still stuck hesitating.
“I still want to take up his challenge to TEs everywhere to assert specifically how God works (if this can indeed be determined by any non-theological tool sets), or at the very least assert where God does work” – Merv
If you really want to challenge TEs, you first need to get over the facile argument that they are ‘mainly Protestant evangelicals.’ I hope you don’t think this because it simply is not true. Most TEs are Roman Catholics Plenary Session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences; inauguration of the bust in honour of Pope Benedict XVI (27 October 2014) | Francis, who make up by far the largest branch (‘denomination’) of Christians in the world. Eddie usually targets up to a dozen TEs (mainly because they are anti-IDism) that he regularly (and mistakenly) casts as ‘TE/EC leaders’. He is sociologically incorrect and my sociological work on the IDM and ‘evolutionists’ shows this.
On the question of “specifically how God works in evolutionary processes”, please understand that this is an IDist fetish, rather than a proper TE topic. Theistic evolution does not require ‘scientific’ proof of divine action in natural history. If you think it does, Merv, please explain why, that is, not just as an exercise in wishful thinking.
IDists have provided exactly ZERO scientific evidence for “HOW God works in evolution” (not to mention when or where), and yet a few of them demand, sometimes aggressively, that TEs should provide scientific evidence of this for them instead. This is, frankly, an unhealthy approach and I suggest you re-evaluate whether an unaffiliated IDist ‘theologian’ is right for you to follow in promoting such a position. Your partnerships at Jon Garvey’s blog, as has been noted at BioLogos already, suggest IDism may be clouding the more important topics and questions.
It had seemed you accept limited biological evolutionary theories too, Merv. If so, we’d be on the same page and as for me, I don’t demand or require (or even spend time wishfully thinking about) ‘strictly scientific’ proof of divine action in natural history. Thus, whether or not you self-label as a TE/EC is secondary. Nonetheless, it still does not appear that you endorse IDism, which I take as a good sign.
“I see nothing in the theory of evolution inconsistent with an Almighty Creator and Protector.” – John Henry Newman
Let me recommend one scholar who directly addresses what you are asking re: chance. Rev. Michael Heller, winner of the Templeton Prize for “affirming life’s spiritual dimension”, is a Catholic priest educated in physics, philosophy and cosmology. His book “Philosophy of Chance” (Copernicus Centre Press, 2013) answers your question about chance above directly and also refutes the naive IDist position that would try to “eliminate chance through small probabilities”. Eliminating chance, really Merv, do you think it can be done or even should be tried in (deterministic or fatalistic) temptation?
To my ears, the IDist position is in the end both silly and potentially dangerous and also displays fear in a theologically distorted way. One doesn’t need to be an IDist to challenge the theology of anyone ‘liberal’, nor the majority of Abrahamic theists who accept limited biological evolution and who are fine with ‘chance’ occurrences in the world being consistent with a divine Creator.
“Divine providence does not exclude fortune and chance.” – St. Thomas Aquinas
“It is accidental to us, not to God.” – Blessed J.H. Newman
“Chance is, in fact, the hand of God.” – David Wilcox
“Those who would eliminate random events from our world do not realize that without chance our world would cease to function.” – Michael Heller (Philosophy of Chance, 2013: 224)
“God delights in using chance as part of His design” – C.S. Morrissey
Morrissey, of course, like most thinking Catholics, means lowercase design, not uppercase IDT. (And Gregory now braces himself that all of the above quoted people will be ‘thrown under the bus’ for IDism!)
The reason I researched several translations of Scripture above was to show that the term ‘creation’ is much, much more important for the Christian tradition, ancient, medieval and contemporary, in terms of ‘divine action’ than ‘design’. Christians are not questioning whether or not the world was created, unlike IDists who simply wish to establish whether or not the world was ‘designed’ before it was created. Nevertheless, the ideology of creationism has caused untold damage to the Church, especially in evangelical Protestant churches in the USA where YECism via biblical literalism has flourished and sadly continues to this day.
There are, no doubt, people who think that ‘design’ is ‘only in the mind’, that it is a strictly mental construct, and that ‘creating’ can and should be compartmentalised from ‘designing’, i.e. that one cannot ‘empirically’ study ‘designing.’ Yet God’s ‘creation’ is what has been traditionally studied in Christian theology and by Christian scientists, rather than invoking the modern → post-modern term of IDists: ‘design.’ The IDM is undeniably a post-modern movement, with its ‘strictly scientific’ claims, which would not have made sense in an ancient, medieval or pre-modern epoch.
As for “intellectual chest thumping contests,” I dislike them as much as you, Merv. If one works professionally as a scholar, then they should publish in scholarly venues and not hide their work from the public mysteriously (though sometimes it takes years or even decades for this work to come to light). As a scholar working on evolutionism, creationism and IDism, I have published articles in journals that reference IDT, but just as an aside to the main themes which I find much more interesting, fruitful and provocative.
That said, I have no problem at all admitting to my opponent here that I might indeed pay attention and read his professional work if Eddie actually ever published something on Intelligent Design in a (preferably peer reviewed) journal or in book form. When using one’s real name in the audience of one’s peers who can (and often do) challenge one directly, I find the ‘scholarly attitude’ and tone is quite different from making blog comments that need bear no responsibility, especially when pseudonymous. For now, it seems that Eddie has not added anything substantial to IDism beyond copying what the DI has already offered and I’ve challenged the DI in ways that they have not yet acknowledged, so Eddie’s views are not surprising.
Let me now turn your question back to you, Merv, in case you would allow it. If you have any natural scientific evidence of what “God has to do with the evolutionary process,” please share it here. Do you? If you have no such evidence, then saying so is no disgrace.
As for me, I don’t know a single person on the planet who can present such evidence, neither TE/ECs, IDists nor YECists. And atheists, of course, reject the possibility of such evidence up front. Eddie’s proclamation here that “God controls evolutionary outcomes” is fine and dandy as a ‘strictly theological’ personal expression, whether he is affiliated with any actual ‘live’ particular Church or not. No matter whether conservative or liberal, it is already covered by natural theology’s lowercase ‘design’ and TE. IDism, however, imo adds nothing concrete, empirical or constructive to this view and the significant ideological damage it has caused (which IDists themselves are least likely to acknowledge) is still socially uncounted.
I’m glad you haven’t fallen into the IDism wormhole, Merv; it will save you much time, energy and probably sanity in the end.
Now I need a break! 
“We can now see how long was the route covered by philosophical reflection since Aristotle. Chance ceased to be a breach of rationality – it became not only a creative element of the order of the world, but also found its own place in God’s Great Design. In this respect, the views of today’s proponents of the so-called Intelligent Design constitute a serious throwback. In trying to minimise the role of chance in the contemporary theory of evolution in order to underscore part of Intelligent Design (a return to physic-theology), they invoke (maybe even unconsciously) Aristotle’s idea that chance cannot be reconciled with the Intelligent Design.” – Heller (2013: 82)
It may be helpful to consider what we mean by chance in these discussions, and then discuss what may be random. Chance to our usual senses includes an anticipation that something may occur - it presents possibilities and can be viewed as creative (an artist examines his subject and considers a rage of possibilities, and then chooses some to create in an apparent spontaneous manner). Chance to a scientist is part of a system that may be regarded as phenomena, and from an understanding of the conditions, she can determine a range of probabilities. Often pure theoretical work may be viewed by some (including myself) as much an art (or state of the art) as science.
Random is used in an odd manner within the biological sciences, often synonymous with automatous or implied in the very odd phrase “the blind watchmaker” by Dawkins. I often think it means events that are within a poorly defined system, and until we can better understand such systems, we will inevitably think such events are random (unpredictable and not sufficiently analysable). The notion that random means self-propagating, but without having an end result (until that is reached) is odd by any stretch - yet we have the familiar statement, “if we re-wind” (bio) evolution we may get another outcome than that now observed. The suggestion that an outcome is unpredictable, by definition, cannot be scientifically tested - so how can we regard such things as random in a scientific sense? Others have tried to use statistics to give a random notion a scientific meaning, but in the world of genomes and phenotypes, their maths give astronomical odds against such a notion.
A tricky problem for any outlook, be it theistic or atheistic.
“he looks like another of these modern writers (McGrath, etc.) who has a bee in his bonnet about ID without understanding it.”
Eddie, such comments display (hyper-anti-modern) folly, not understanding or awareness. Heller is a more reputable and distinguished scholar and theologian than anyone in the IDM. Period.
Behe is philosophically D-league compared with Heller. They’re both Catholics and I’m quite sure Behe would admit this.
As it is, you’re now making a judgement of a scholar without having read his work. This is bad form, Eddie. Don’t you agree?
Yes, I read your ‘occasionalism’ post and unsurprisingly disagree. Is it worth the time to ‘rebuke’ you in public (Proverbs 28:23)? You defend ‘ID people’ too far, way beyond believability. Speaking about being ashamed…