Thank you. I agree with your statement wholeheartedly. It is good to identify what we agree on as believers.
Which as YEC I also believe. We all have the same evidence in nature.
I understand and accept that we come to differing conclusions from our interpretation of our commonly shared evidence.
So what? does “Intelligent Design” deny a Designer? If it does, why not call ID a “Rational Universe” theory, which neither proves the existence of God nor needs a Designer?
How do you define science?
How are you going to discover that there is a Designer who from outside space and time and who works through ‘unknown’ means into material reality? How are you going to identify his products’? All you have is gaps, a designer of the gaps, and it doesn’t have to be an uppercase D.
When there are more than reasonable hypotheses as to how things work, when there it has been demonstrated that information and complexity introduced via mutations in DNA, you are going to sit on your hands and say “We have evidence for an intelligent designer!” No, you don’t.
But more than that, we know we have a God who works in material reality in his providence without countermanding any of the natural laws he has instituted. I hope you are part of that we.
It’s as simple as this, Craig. Science has rules, and if you don’t want to be accused of breaking the rules, then don’t break the rules.
I’m not going to accept arguments and examples that do not stick to the rules that apply to every area of science. You should not expect anyone else to either.
Of course if I’m misunderstanding or misapplying the rules, or if I’m going beyond them, or if you want to challenge their validity, then you can object, but you need to back up your objection with evidence and sound reasoning.
There are computer algorithms that depend on the ability of natural selection to add new information to the genome. The fact that they work as intended is evidence enough that your claim here is a lie.
Fine tuning. Which is an argument that only works if we accept that the universe is 13.8 billion years old and the earth is 4.5 billion years old.
Say what?!!?
If you really believed that the measurements of the age of the earth, the size and age of the universe, DNA sequencing, geology, fossils and so forth are accurate and true, you would not be a YEC.
The whole foundation of YECism rests on an insistence that they are not.
Of course, there are volumes written on that which are accessible to all. To ask me to summarize them is an unreasonable ploy.
Of course, much of what evolutionists claim as evidence is not reproducible, because the evidence is in the inaccessible past, not the present. The same for ID. Both positions must appeal to the preponderance of the evidence.
Science does not have rules. Scientists do. And for evolutionary scientists, the rules are rigged–“Head I win, tails you lose.” The reasonable rule is that science is a search for the truth wherever it leads. That means that if the evidence points to design, we cannot exclude that evidence because it does not lead to a naturalistic conclusion.
ID sees evidence for design as evidence for a designer (small d). ID does not speculate on the identity of the designer.
Everything we claim as evidence is here in the present. This includes the distribution of characteristics in living species, the morphology of fossils that exist in the present, the DNA sequences of species living in the present, and DNA that came from past organisms that exists in the present (ancient DNA).
ID continually fails at explaining the patterns we see in these sets of evidence. For example:
No, it isn’t. Science is a method. If you aren’t following the method then you aren’t doing science.
Perhaps you are thinking of philosophy?
You first have to demonstrate that you have evidence for design.
The evidence is all around us.
Echo location and sonar and navigation systems were in creation before human engineers developed them.
There is the nictitating membrane of the falcon’s eye, and engineers have in essence copied this design with the cone at the opening of jet engines.
What about slug slime which has been studied to develop a super-wound glue.
Scientists have studied the unique structural design of the penguin feathers to develop an ice-free membrane.
Scientists are studying the hair like structures of the gecko and are thinking how to create a self-cleaning, water-repelling fabric for your next piece of clothing.
Homing pigeons have a built in magnetic compass, long before humans developed the compass.
Velcro was invented by a scientist who observed “Velcro” in nature.
In developing more effective solar panels that can efficiently use sunlight from almost any angle, scientists are copying the common rose butterfly’s wing structure of nanoholes with their randomized sizes and locations.
The cicada’s wing design is the first known physical structure that has been shown to kill a bacterium. No chemicals are needed. Scientists are working to see how they can use this design to make anti-bacterial surfaces in hospitals and public areas such as subways.
The examples of scientists using design in nature to develop helpful tools and processes are almost endless. It would be an insult to engineers and scientists to attribute their design work to blind and random processes. It is also a insult to the Creator to attribute his designs and engineering to natural and random processes.
John 1:1-5 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
What is excluded in “all things?” Nothing.
By his providential sovereignty? Not to mention his vastness, beyond space itself, including his antiquity, beyond time itself, and the little detail that it shows his omnipotence as well.
Aren’t you neglecting your Bible?
How are any of those evidence for design?
Why isn’t it an insult to decry his providential sovereignty?!
I believe in an intelligent Designer, I just don’t believe in ID. He executes his designs using evolution, undetectably with marvelous results, just like he does in his providential interventions for his children, not breaking any of the natural laws he has instituted.
You again neglect your Bible. There are no truly random processes. Sure, from a human perspective and especially an unbelieving human’s perspective there are, but for you to say there are says something else, if that is what you are saying.
The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.
Proverbs 16:33
I’m sorry Craig, but that’s a straw man argument, and you know it as well as I do.
No-one is expecting you to summarise everything. That’s a cartoon caricature and a gross distortion of the point I actually made. You only have to summarise the points immediately relevant to your claims, and provide links to any supporting literature for anyone who wants to check. There’s nothing unreasonable about that whatsoever.
That is not how reproducibility works. We’ve been over this before, time and time again. The “were you there?” argument is a lie. When lake varves, ice cores and tree rings all agree with each other, that is reproducibility. When radiometric dating and GPS measurements of continental drift agree with each other, that is reproducibility.
There’s nothing “evolutionist” about this whatsoever. It’s how things work in every area of science.
Nonsense on stilts. In fact, to call it nonsense on stilts is an insult to nonsense on stilts.
Of course science has rules! To claim that science does not have rules is to claim that science is a free pass to make things up and invent your own alternative reality. If science didn’t have rules, you would be able to claim that mermaids were evidence for a young earth, because treknobabble.
As for the rules being rigged—is mathematics rigged? Is measurement rigged? Of course not! The idea that there’s anything “evolutionist” built into trigonometry, logarithms, complex numbers, differential equations, error bars, linear regression or SI units that discriminates against creationism is quite simply patent nonsense.
Sorry, but young earthism needs to sort out its compliance with the rules that aren’t rigged before even starting to discuss whether there are other rules that are.
I am not saying that I believe that there are no truly random or undirected processes. Undirected processes may communicate better than random processes my understanding of the secular evolutionary community view. Is that a correct understanding?
Am I also correct then in saying that as an evolutionary creationist, you see evolution as a divinely directed process? If so, it seems EC differentiates itself from the secular evolutionary view, and even puts you at odds with it–divinely directed evolution which the secular evolutionary community rejects versus undirected evolution which EC rejects.
Then isn’t divine direction in evolution a supernatural intrusion into natural processes? Just trying to understand the EC view.
As a Christian who praises God for his sovereignty over time and space, timing and placing, I am saying that. (We could talk about God’s omnitemporality, but that is for another time and place. ; - )
No, because that is what the science says. It is no more secular than plumbing is secular. God’s direction is invisible to science whether the scientist is Christian or not. Can you tell if a Christian plumber or an unbelieving one plumbed where you work or live? (Hopefully either way, they did a good job. ; - )
Not all ECs believe that. Not all believe in God’s sovereignty as much as I do. Some might think that God ‘let go’ and ‘waited’ (a time-based word that I argue does not apply to our omnitemporal God), and waited to see what he had to work with, or something to that effect, maybe with variations. So my choice of moniker you will have noted is ‘evolutionary providentialist’.
Not from the science… not from the plumbing. There is no such thing as the secular evolutionary view with respect to the actual science. It’s the plumbing.
There is no such thing as the secular evolutionary community, it’s the plumbing. Christians and unbelievers work side by side in the sciences and do the same work with the same evidence. How can it be different?! They also draw the same scientific conclusions. It’s how the plumbing works.
Let me try and elaborate on that a little. The plumber can be a Christian or an unbeliever, but the copper, and the atoms in the Schedule 40 or 80 PVC pipe, the atoms in the PEX and so on – all the basic materials are the same for either one, right? Likewise with science, all the basic material to work with is the same for either scientist.
I reject undirected evolution as a Christian who believes in God’s providence, and of which I’ve been privileged to see quite a bit of in my years (I’ve been saying that I’m in my early to mid-geezerhood. 
) But science is not going to prove the existence of providence. I believe there is very good empirical (as in factual) evidence for it, but one of my newest favorite quotes is this:
The grounds of [true] belief in God is the experience of God: God is not the conclusion of an argument but the subject of an experience report.
I have experienced God’s providential interventions into my life, but he hasn’t needed to break any of the natural laws he has instituted. Some may consider this sacrilegious, but think about it: Jesus didn’t have to break any natural laws to calm the storm on Galilee. A man in a boat said something during a storm. The storm just happened to stop. (Also note: “And it became completely calm.” So the disciples had to row all the rest of the way, demonstrating that it is better to believe, not be afraid, and trust God. )
So yes, providential interventions and ‘directed evolution’ are ‘supernatural intrusions’ into natural processes. But they are not scientifically detectable because no natural laws have been broken. And YECs seem to universally ignore this:
This is what the LORD says: If I have not established my covenant with the day and the night and the fixed laws of heaven and earth…
Thank you. I appreciate that.
Undirected and random are essentially synonyms in many cases. For example, the scientific consensus is that mutations are random with respect to fitness. This is the same as saying mutations are not directed by fitness. Some of the confusion comes from people saying that mutations are random without tacking on the “with respect to fitness” bit. It gets a bit tiring to repeat the whole phrase over and over, so it is often truncated to just random.
It is also worth mentioning that randomness in science is a statistical statement, not an ontological one. We create models of what a random outcome would look like, and then we compare that to the results of an experiment. If the observations match the model then we say the outcome is statistically indistinguishable from a random model. We don’t say that there is some deeper ontological conclusion that processes are “truly” random. Only that they look random from a statistical point of view.
It is an ontological statement to say what a random (undirected) outcome should look like. Should it be uniform? Should it be chaotic?
I can’t help but marvel how this is hardly more apparent than when the universe in its absolute totality can be considered a random (undirected) outcome.
One other thing that was brought up in the ChatGPT interview is that God is not always tweaking:
…your description of evolutionary creation makes it sound like God is constantly stepping into systems of natural processes and performing miracles to make those processes go the way God wants them to go.
My thought immediately goes to God’s omnitemporality and his freedom from the constraints of time because of the time dependent language in that thought, and that he doesn’t constantly perform miracles in his providence, violating the natural order.
And then it immediately gives a description of providence:
God’s activity is seen as working through the laws of nature and the natural processes that God has set in motion. This way of understanding God’s activity in the natural world emphasizes God’s sovereignty and wisdom, rather than a need for constant miraculous interventions.
Is it an ontological statement to say that 1 million coin tosses should give approximately 500,000 heads and 500,000 tails?
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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