George - first, another excellent post, and thanks for engaging with the question.
Quite honestly, that IS mostly what I hear. I certainly listen to YEC arguments, but they start from their view of the Bible, and fit the data into that narrative, and to me, too much of it is forced. But there’s really no point, as we have discussed, taking on their narrative unless they can see that their interpretation of Day in Gen 1 is not necessary. So I don’t spend much time listening to YEC folk talk science.
As far as Biologos being the only site, you must visit reasons.org also. Like biologos, not perfect, but lots of interesting and useful stuff.
I am in Boston and probably don’t get exposed often to the YEC stuff people in some parts of the country do. But where ID is used to argue YEC, I’d prefer to see them stop at the proper boundary of the ID arguments, which is merely that an Intentional Intelligence must exist.
I agree that we cannot reproduce supernatural events. You and I may be in agreement that such have happened, and that the data supports that view equally as well as the Evolution-only narrative. I am convinced Evolution needed help, and got it. But my point is that the approach is pretty similar, spinning a narrative and showing how the data fits. Sometimes, as with YEC, the data really doesn’t fit.
I’m sorry that I don’t have time to respond more completely to your posts. I’ll just push back on this one area you both brought up. I find these arguments pushing for scientism, a philosophical argument that philosophical arguments are not allowed. Science by its nature can only find naturalistic pathways. (See also the title of this thread.) It’s like the person looking for his keys under the street light when he dropped them a half block away because “the light is better here.” Yes, the light is good in science, but the keys may not be there.
@Marty, you write: “I am convinced Evolution needed help, and got it. But my point is that the approach is pretty similar, spinning a narrative and showing how the data fits.”
The only difference, then, is that I.D. supporters think they can prove this with science… while most BioLogos think we cannot.
Then why is it that you think we owe some sort of “agreement” more than what we already agree upon?: that God helped?
ID turns off lights by omission and misrepresentation, while misrepresenting itself as science.
We’ve already covered an example of this with Meyer. He writes a chapter about the RNA World hypothesis, omits the main empirical prediction of the hypothesis (we’ll find ribozymes performing nonredundant essential functions that could not be replaced by evolution), then misrepresents the Nobel-winning, strongest evidence for the hypothesis (the most abundant RNA in your body is a ribozyme performing a nonredundant, essential function–protein synthesis).
Whether it is the result of dishonesty or incompetence, Meyer’s readers will have zero illumination.
“But for the purposes of this thread, I’ll make one key point: it seems to me that the argumentation used is philosophically the same as that used by ID - marshalling scientific data to argue for an overall narrative. To those here who state “ID is not science”, based on this article and the style of reasoning used in it and applying the same standard, would it also not be true that “Evolution is not science” either?”
You were arguing that ID is as scientific as the theory of evolution. I was merely showing that this isn’t true. The theory of evolution meets the requirements of the scientific method (e.g. testable hypotheses) while ID does not.
If you want to argue that the scientific method is not a reliable method for inferring how the universe works, then go ahead. However, when you try to argue that ID is science in order to make it seem more reliable, or argue that evolution is not science in order to make it look less reliable, you are implicitly arguing that science is a good method of modeling the universe.