Ben Carson was the keynote? Wow. How the mighty have fallen.
The ID movement crashed and burned when their “teach the controversy” push against evolution in science curricula also crashed and burned in 2018-19. (I wrote about it back then for ASA: Teaching the Controversy in Texas.) The Texas State Board of Education (elected) approved it for the 9th grade biology curriculum, which is when high school biology is taught in Texas, but textbook publishers refused to include the BS, and teachers sued because they were on their own to find materials and the DI’s suggested stuff (like population genetics and organic chemistry) was far beyond 9th-graders’ heads. Courts agreed that it was ridiculous.
With its education initiative and academic journal, Bio-Complexity, dead in the water, Discovery has spent the last five years unsuccessfully trying to latch itself onto the MAGA culture war, hence the “America Is at Stake” tag on the conference and Ben Carson as the keynote speaker.
Discovery Institute is playing in the minor leagues now. They’re irrelevant to the larger conversation.
More like 50:50 old vs young earth, based on lists of DI fellows and conference presenters.
The ID leadership deliberately don’t discuss age-of-earth topics in order to maintain their marquee and not lose a lot of their support. Some of them, eg Stephen Meyer, are extremely cagey regarding their views.
Wouldn’t young earth just equal YEC? To me, the YEC position is an Intelligent Designer, AKA God, created the initial life forms and then all those needed after the flood.
And here I am having lost my program so I can’t tell the players apart.
It is tough to tell the players. Ultimately, instead of there being clearly defined separate camps, outside of the people who are shareholders in the various organizations, most everyone is a mosaic of a lot of views, with lots of shades of gray. Lots of EC people believe God may have intervened at critical points, but that mainstream science is still the best explanation for how creation works.
Another point of confusion is in definitions. Again, what I find useful is to consider all creationists to believe in intelligent design, whether YEC, OEC, or EC. Intelligent Design with the capital letters is reserved for the particular views of the Discovery Institute, sort of like the difference in the Catholic Church, and the catholic church.
No doubt you know this, but some may not, so forgive me if I am preaching to the choir.
They do want to keep their tent as big as possible - a savvy political move these days. And I don’t contest the appraisals here that I.D. is almost certainly all creationist, despite the big oval I gave it in my hastily assembled diagram. I suppose I could change it to small letters “i.d.” to reflect that in a broader sense, many of us non-YEC theists do think in terms of an ultimately designed universe even while we reject the specific ways that the Discovery Institute’s “ID” purports to explicitly identify God’s fingerprints, attempting to enlist them for “gotcha” apologetic purposes. We may be willing to think of various constants and parameters as being a kind of “setup job” for a life-producing universe while still allowing that these are not slam-dunk apologetics for faith. Faith is just consistent with them.
So if I was going to show that in my diagram, I could have the YEC and OEC circles be much larger so as to fill up much more of the I.D. space. That - or I’ll just change it to a small “i.d.” to reflect the broader, more inclusive sense - a sense that could even include some falling outside traditional theistic circles perhaps? (as in some might think in terms of aliens seeding life, or other kinds of religious, possibly creative spiritisms falling outside traditional theisms).
Good job. I was looking for who would fall outside the diagram, but have not found anyone thus far in the religious community who is not represented. Will continue my search and let you know if I do
While not a common position these days, and having no prominent organization to promote it, gap theory was pretty popular in my youth, with an old universe, but a young earth, accommodating some science and still a literal interpretation. I suppose that could be shown by an overlap of YEC and OEC. Or, maybe it is just another flavor of OEC.
There are some regions in the diagram (as it is) that could well be empty sets (even in addition to the explicitly shown question mark). Are there any Christian creationists that do not fall into either the EC, the OEC, or the YEC camp? I.e. - maybe if really and truly drawn, the entire Christian circle should be divided into three pies apportioned to those three camps? Because I can’t think of any other camps one could be in. But maybe there are Christians who have not even given origins nary a thought. Brand new believers who only just know Jesus and haven’t thought anything else through yet. Or young children who may be believers but don’t know enough (and haven’t yet been indoctrinated into) any specific answers about origins. Maybe they could still be outside of YEC, OEC, and EC. …of course I did label the circle “Christian creationists” though, so that does imply they are creationist something.
Also … ECs who are outside the “i.d.” camp (broadly construed) might be an interesting (or non-existent) set.
All yec would be within that, but only a portion of OECs, I suppose, right? And maybe an even smaller portion of ECs I imagine? So would it be a circle around YEC that stretches to include some of the OEC and EC one as well?
From what I have noticed from American politics in general, it appears that a similar approach is utilized for a wide variety of different topics. For whatever gosh darn reason, the Republicans and Democrats (not conservatives and liberals, but the parties themselves) have each decided on a specific list of stances on issues and any Lee-way from these stances is considered betrayal.
For example, take global warming. The Republicans have taken the stance that, yes the planet is warming but it’s actually just a natural cycle I’ve seen countless interviews, podcasts, and all sorts of discussions from prominent Republicans (not conservatives in general, mind you, but the major party members) that point out the “obvious science” that proves that global warming if fake, such as the fact that we are still in an ice age and the melting ice is just the planet leaving the ice age.
The Republican Party (whom I have some past experience with, so that’s whom I feel most comfortable talking about) also seems to tout themselves as the party of Christianity. Fox News would actually have a Christian band or someone come onto their morning show every Sunday to try and appeal to their Christian audience.
Considering the craze surrounding Trump and how many Republicans (not conservatives in the wider sense, mind you) feel the need to try and appeal to Trump in order to get votes, I wouldn’t put it far from a “scientific” Christian organization to try and appeal to those major Republican talking points to try and make this not only a matter of “facts” but also the safety of society in general. I had unfortunately seen this when reading Baucham’s “The Ever-Loving Truth,” where he tried to appeal to Republican policies to try and explain why society is going downhill. Actually, it was much of this non-stop appeals and tribalism that caused me to leave the realm of politics a little while ago.
The ONLY way I can see this argument working would be if they brought up the idea of Social Darwinism during the Gilded Age, where it was advocated that poor people who couldn’t keep up with survival would die off as animals in nature that are weaker will be killed off. It was up to charitable organizations like church’s to try and keep these poor souls alive.
However, this still has holes in it. The main antagonists of the Gilded Age were terrible people in general, and this idea just gave an excuse for their poor treatment of workers. It should also be noted that one of our great protagonists of the Gilded Age, Mr. Theodore “Bull Moose Progressive” Roosevelt himself was ALSO a Darwinist, but ALSO a Christian as well! Indeed, he said that reading Darwin’s theory informed his understanding of the nature he saw around him. Yet, he still maintained a Christian faith.
