ID and public education

What is the problem with this idea? In NIV on every creation day it is 'Let there be …or let the … etc up to day six where it is “Let the land produce living creatures” This suggests use of an intermediate agent which I hasten to point out itself comes from God and is fully dependent on Him

2 Likes

@Ronald_Myers and @aarceng, we actually see a beautiful example of this in verses 1:24-25.

Here God says “let the Earth bring for the living creature…”

Gen 1:24
And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

And then here, creating a couplet to reinforce the idea that what nature does, God is doing as well:
God is made the agent for exactly the same statement of creation!

Gen 1:25
And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

1 Like

Hindus don’t have a deity named Bramah.

Sorry for my spelling mistake.
Brahma is a creator god in Hinduism. His consort is the goddess Saraswati and he is the father of the Prajapatis. He is depicted in Hindu iconography with four faces and is also known as Svayambhu and Vāgīśa.More at Wikipedia

ftr, yes I did read the official What We Believe page at Biologos and I’m still a bit confused.

Yes I know there is diversity of opinion in both Biologos and ID and I am talking about overall positions, so please don’t reply saying things like Biologos/ID is a broad church.

If God is active in the natural world does that include that He might have intervened in evolution at some points to add genetic information such as during the Cambrian Explosion, or do they hold that purely natural neo-Darwinian mutation/selection mechanisms are sufficient to explain everything from abiogenesis to man?

If God could have intervened in the process of evolution then how is their position different from ID which accepts evolution and deep time but claims that purely natural means is not sufficient to explain it?

Or does Biologos claim that God played no direct part in the evolutionary process even though God continues to sustain the existence and functioning of the natural world?

If this is the case I don’t understand the apparent antipathy between the two groups. Can you explain it to me?

2 Likes

@aarceng

That is a wonderful question, and there are different ways of answering it.

My way goes like this:

Generally speaking, BioLogos supporters are robustly inclined towards the view that Science has no opinion on God and his miraculous activities because there is no way to “control for miracles” in the field or in the laboratory.

Conversely, I.D. supporters tend to think that Science can prove God did something… in particular, engage in the process of changing DNA at specific times because of one of the following reasons:

a) waiting for non-miraculous assistance would lead to a necessary mutation being a minute too late;
b) waiting for non-miraculous assistance would lead to a necessary mutation being a year too late;
c) waiting for non-miraculous assistance would lead to a necessary mutation being a million years too late;
d) waiting for non-miraculous assistance would mean waiting forever, because nature would never be able to produce the desired design, ever.

Most of the snag is in point “d” - with the term “irreducible complexity” - - I.D. folks believe there is a class of mutations that can be proved are impossible to create without miraculous engagement (I prefer the term “engagement” as opposed to “intervention”).

Both groups start out with a creator/designer. This is my view which may well be biased, but the ID camp appears to be looking for scientific proof of design which would then lead to scientific proof of the designer, AKA God. EC know God is the Creator/Designer because the Bible tells us so. We don’t need, and many of the Biologos folks believe it is not possible to find, proof of the designer. We just take the Bible at face value.

The antipathy seems to come from the desire of the ID camp to disprove the theory of evolution. They certainly spend a lot of ink on this. Why this is so has never been clear to me. Perhaps they believe that if they disprove evolution then people would have to take the only alternative (in their view) ID and a creator. We know why the YEC folks oppose evolution.

3 Likes

@aarceng,

As we know, the YECs must (by definition) think that God specified every last spot of DNA on the plants and animals he created 6000 years ago.

But try to suggest something like that to some BioLogos supporters… and they start getting faint! I myself hold to the view that God specifies every amino acid of the genome… specifies every mutation on the genome, and specifies the exact time the mutation is going to happen.

BioLogos Mission Statements

Another way to describe the contention is that the ID people put forth arguments which can be classified as ‘God of the Gaps’ which routinely fail and bring the Church into disrepute. Arguments from improbability or we don’t understand" and the like are all in the end god of the gap arguments.

1 Like

Yes, but we also say that since then mutation & selection have operated so that genomes have accumulated many defects, and also that many new species have arisen within the created kinds. We don’t say that God specified every last spot of DNA on the plants and animals that exist today.

However I’m mainly interested in finding out what Biologos members actually believe and how they differ from ID.

The point is, in various statements and old banners, the God associated with ID is clearly the Judeo-Christian God:

image

However IDA’s stress that their arguments are based on what we do understand, rather than what we don’t understand.

On the other hand I find that evolution of the gaps is frequently invoked such as; “We don’t know how abiogenesis happened but it must have or else we wouldn’t be here.”

That is a telling statement, and goes a bit to what divides the camps. ID leans toward having nature run along on its own, then along comes an intelligent designer who zaps a bit of DNA here and there. EC tends to see God’s hand throughout the whole process, being the creator and ongoing sustainer of nature itself.
Also, some of the bad blood goes back to the beginning of ID itself, when it was formed to get creationism in the science class through deceptive means. To some of us, that poisoned the well.

2 Likes

@aarceng,

By “we”, I assume you mean you and your fellow YECs?

That’s right, you do not, generally speaking. There might be some calvinist types out there who do. But your statement is generally true.

But I don’t really see an important difference between our positions on this particular score. Creationists believe God can and did specify every gene 6000 years ago.

Many BioLogos supporters believe God used Evolution, in his Good Time and Space, to get the human genome to exactly where God wanted it… at least by the time of the birth of Jesus. I added that last part, because that is my personal conviction.

Thoughts, @aarceng?

1 Like

Which shows you don’t understand evolution. Evolution is what happens after life begins. Non-life can not evolve but life can.

2 Likes

All the arguments that IDA put forth deal with low probabilities and statements that information must be inserted artificially which is, in context, a statement that something is not understood. The central thesis of Signature in the Cell is that there is no better explanation so ours is correct. Here, showing an error in theory A does not prove theory B, it may be that theory C or even A’ is correct. Never the less I will think out that aspect of the IDA position .

With respect to the evolutionists, the multi celled, boned/shelled fossil record is being filled in as new fossil fields are discovered or opened up eg the Chinese fossils which are no accessible in the current geo-political situation. Soft celled organisms and single celled organisms do not fossilize well and so the evidence is lacking and may be impossible to find anyway. Evolutionists, IDAs and YECs all would do well to have some humility in this matter of abriogensis. Understanding abriogenisis is like documenting the lighting of the first artificial fire.

I think it also says a lot that 9th graders are the only group the Discovery Institute thinks they can fool into accepting their ideas. The DI knows they don’t stand a chance in a real scientific arena.

Their actions suggest that DI does care about the “real scientific arena.” I haven’t attended one of their executive meetings in a long time (cough, cough), but I believe their strategy was self-defeating from the start. DI was pursuing two separate courses to influence the culture – 1) Change the way science is conducted (methodological naturalism), and 2) Change the way science is taught. It was an ambitious agenda that did not work out, mainly because Culture War politics made the two goals mutually exclusive. Every political victory on front #2 was a PR disaster on front #1. Worse, even the early wins in the curriculum battles are now starting to be rolled back, as in Texas.

1 Like

First of all, welcome to this forum and thanks for your patience trying to understand the BioLogos position. A couple responses:

Not really a good summary. I consider myself EC, and that is not what I believe. I believe God has been active in creation throughout history, and is actively responding to his creation in his creative and sustaining process.

Some evolutionary creationists believe God directly intervened, or guided, or directed (pick your favorite agentive verb) others prefer to say that God used purely natural processes. A lot of it probably comes down to your philosophical definition of natural. What people generally agree on is that God’s action is not something science can detect because of the parameters of methodological naturalism which rule out supernatural explanations in science. That doesn’t mean God doesn’t act, or that God isn’t the designer. It just means science is the wrong tool for searching for that kind of knowledge.

ID claims design is scientifically detectable. EC says that although creation may clearly point our intuitions and spirits to its Creator, you can’t prove God exists via science. And ID caters to a crowd that does not accept common descent or deep time, so they constantly seek to throw shade on scientific consensus.

BioLogos claims that God created all natural processes, including the processes involved in mutation and natural selection, and he uses them to accomplish his will.

Much of many (but not all) ID proponents’ energy is spent attempting to discredit the evolutionary model and erode confidence in scientific consensus. Since many people aligned with BioLogos are professional scientists who accept that evolutionary model as scientific fact, they feel these efforts are antagonistic to the scientific community and oftentimes intentionally deceptive.

Abiogenesis is separate from evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theory starts with life already existing.

4 Likes

Agreed. Not sure if this is the place for it but I’d be interested in hearing how widely the opinions of people in this community may vary where abiogenesis is concerned. My hunch would be most if not all would assume inorganic chemistry only becomes organic chemistry by divine intervention. But I don’t see why a sufficiently long view of creation couldn’t place the potential directly into the inert materials present when the planet formed.

4 Likes