"Kremlinology"? Discovery Institute's Glass House

[DennisVenema]

@agauger

Let me ask you this. What is the most convincing evidence of unguided evolution for you? Is it the signs in the genome that point to common descent? Or is it something else? For you it is clear that God used evolution to create life, leaving no trace that you can see? But you still glory in His Creation, right? Surely we have that in common.

I know you’re not fond of ch4 in Adam and the Genome (although I disagree that my critiques of ID there are ad hominem arguments - direct arguments, yes, but they are arguments against the content of ID, not the persons behind the arguments…) but there’s a little section in that chapter where I talk about evolution as design, rather that evolution vs. design. I see evolution as God’s design for creating life, plate tectonics as his design for making continents, gravity as his design for making solar systems, and so on. I just don’t think the place to look for design is where “natural” explanations have not yet been worked out. I think it’s all designed.

I used to hold the ID view. But I no longer find ID arguments convincing. Every example held up by ID as something that natural processes cannot explain falls apart for me upon closer inspection. In principle I’m open to the idea that God could have used miraculous means for parts of natural history. I just haven’t yet seen evidence that suggests to me that this is the case. I recognize that you disagree here.

I’ll provide two quotes that get to the heart of how I see this issue. One is the Bonhoeffer quote that I include in Adam and the Genome (at the beginning of chapter 4). The other is much older (from John Donne). I can’t really say it better than either of these luminaries.

And yes, I do glory in God’s creation, and I’m glad that this is something we can share as fellow believers. Thanks for being willing to dialogue graciously with those of us who take a different view.

@John Donne

There is nothing that God hath established in a constant course of nature, and which is therefore done every day, but would seem a miracle, and exercise our admiration, if it were done but once: nay, the ordinary things in nature, would be greater miracles, than the extraordinary, which we admire most, if they were done but once: the standing still of the sun, for Joshua’s use, was not, in itself, so wonderful a thing, as that so vast and immense a body as the sun, should run so many miles in a minute; the motion of the sun were a greater wonder than the standing still, if all were to begin again; and only the daily doing takes off the admiration. But God then having, as it were, concluded himself in a course of nature, and written it down in the book of creatures, thus and thus all things shall be carried, though he glorify himself sometimes, in doing a miracle, yet there is in every miracle, a silent chiding of the world, and a tacit reprehension of them, who require, or who need miracles.

St. Paul’s, Easter 1627

@Bonhoeffer

Weizsäcker’s book The World View of Physics is still keeping
me very busy. It has again brought home to me quite clearly
how wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the
incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of
knowledge are being pushed back (and that is bound to be
the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is
therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what
we know, not in what we don’t know; God wants us to realize
his presence, not in unsolved problems but in those that
are solved.