“on the Discovery site and on other ID sites, you will find endless complaints of exactly the type I have made, that various critics of ID – including Francis Collins, Ken Miller, Darrel Falk, Karl Giberson, Alister [sic] McGrath, and many others – have misunderstood or misrepresented the ID position.” – Eddie
Misunderstanding & misrepresentation would shrink considerably if the Discovery Institute (DI) showed the courage to face serious challenges from Christian scholars to its communicative behaviour of equivocating varieties of ‘design/Design.’ Do you agree or disagree, Eddie that the DI should clarify itself about their equivocation, given these respected Christian scholars’ pointed statements distinguishing IDT and ‘design argument’?
Now that William Lane Craig has initiated open, transparent communication in public about this, perhaps the DI will finally face the music too. Imo, the DI is long overdue to make a public statement on behalf of the IDM to clarify itself about varieties of ‘design/Design’. BioLogos could help this process by writing to the DI asking for clarification. For a randomly located IDT advocate, defender, proponent, etc. to suggest the DI doesn’t equivocate about varieties of design/Design, they would have to either be illiterate, intentionally deceptive or on the DI’s secret payroll.
“The main issue is how ID is to be defined, and who gets to define it.” – Eddie
If that’s really the case, then you should eventually return to the main point of the thread: ‘reclaiming design’ from the DI and IDists, i.e. from calls for a ‘strictly scientific revolution!’
The DI and their Fellows, who are leaders of the IDM of course should “get to define it”, ‘it’ meaning IDT. This is a rather small and obvious point (one which brings far too much pity-seeking amongst ‘misunderstood’ IDists). So, let me confirm to Eddie that I agree he is correct about that.
But the DI & their Fellows also need to (eventually, since they haven’t yet, even with Dembskian probabilism) provide ‘strictly scientific evidence’ if they insist on the ‘strict scientificity’ of their ‘theory’. They have provided thus far (20+ years) ZERO evidence of when, where and how the supposed uppercase ‘Intelligence’ engaged in a process of ‘designing’ nature; Zero, None, Nada, Zilch. That’s a serious problem for a so-called ‘strictly scientific’ theory!
The flip-side to this predicament is that the DI shouldn’t get to manipulate ‘design argument’ as natural theology into being a ‘strictly scientific’ theory, since design arguments have a much longer and deeper history than the DI’s ‘strictly scientific’ claims to theory. Do you agree or disagree, Eddie?
The main point of ‘reclaiming design’ really isn’t “what does IDT affirm or not affirm?” That’s based on a skewed personal view that simply reading more IDist texts will automatically make one accept IDism. This thread, however, is about varieties of ‘design argument’, not limited to (or even necessarily properly called) ‘IDism.’
The main points are rather:
1) why does the DI equivocate between varieties of ‘design/Design’ and not admit it publically, transparently, openly?
2) Why doesn’t the DI address the point of Christians like Craig, Gingerich, Barr, Haarsma and Falk, who distinguish uppercase ‘modern’ IDT (‘strictly scientific’) from lowercase classical ‘intelligent design’ (natural theology)?
3) And will the DI ever make a public statement to the effect that IDT is not and cannot actually be ‘strictly scientific’, but rather at its core part of a science, philosophy and theology/worldview discourse?
For all of his claims to speak on behalf of IDists and IDism, Eddie’s not really acting as a ‘bridge builder’ between the IDM and TE/EC that he would like to be in so far as he doesn’t address these important and now obvious questions.
“what we are talking about here, which is what ID’s theoretical (not political) position is.” – Eddie
No, sorry Eddie. What you would most like to talk and persuade people about pro-IDism differs from “what we are talking about here.” Instead of merely welcoming a monopoly by the DI over the term ‘design/Design’, we’re talking here about the possibility that the term ‘design’ could be equivocated and even could and should be ‘reclaimed’ by theists from the radicalisation that has happened to it over the past 20 years as a result of the DI and the IDM. That’s what I came back to BioLogos specifically to address.
That radicalisation by the DI is political, social, cultural, educational and religious; not just ‘strictly scientific’. To deny any of these realms from the conversation would only show that a person misrepresents the IDM or doesn’t acknowledge enough the dark side of the IDist bargain to be an ‘honest broker’.
After having spoken with DI leaders who represent the CSC, including West, Chapman, Nelson and Luskin, I suspect that Jantzen’s book is exactly the kind of the thing the DI doesn’t want because it threatens to expose its intentional equivocation over ‘varieties of design/Design’. Dembski’s 2004 band aid rhetoric wasn’t as medicinal as he’d have hoped, since many people have penetrated it since then. And like I said, once that equivocation is publically exposed, the IDM is in serious danger of collapse, both financially and ideologically.
Again, for Eddie’s sake: people who promote ‘intelligent design’ but don’t insist on its ‘scientificity’ are not actually defending the DI’s very specific definitions of IDT. Isn’t that you?
‘Design’ is one concept among many others in a wide and broad science, philosophy and theology/worldview conversation. The Christian God is much more than a ‘designer’. The DI’s IDM, however, is rather unbalanced and obsessively ‘design-centric’ and equivocates about varieties of ‘design’. This is a major problem with their public appeal that they have attempted to hide via equivocation.
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used a eucalyptus wand to create the world. It was the pandas 
he created that ate the forbidden bamboo 
(yes, there’s an emoticon for that too!) and brought sin and death into the world and made them an endangered species. At least, that’s the Code of Koala I was taught…
he created that ate the forbidden bamboo 
”