No, Eddie, it’s 100% incorrect. ID cannot assume anything. People assume things.
Again, there is no such thing as “ID theory.” You can’t even come up with a single empirical prediction.
Even if there were more than a sketchy hypothesis to ID, it can’t possibly “take a position” on anything. And “transformation of species” is just gibberish.
Eddie, here’s an intellectual challenge: start a thread about one or more actual evolutionary mechanisms and discuss your problems with the mechanism while referring only to the mechanism and to the evidence–NO NAMES. No meaningless babbling about “neo-Darwinism.” Be specific. Be scientific.
Ah… I see, You want to decree what [evolutionary creationism or theistic evolution] should intimate—([if] it’s understood as the very limited generic proposition that God created through evolution.)
Any further elaboration on evolutionary creationism or theistic evolution is out of bounds, because Eddie says so, or else—Eddie will go [hostile]—for example;
How does our understanding that God created through evolution change our interpretation of the Biblical story? And… What are the implications for us collectively, and individually? Here are a few examples of your hostility taken from: The Talpiot Tomb Discovery—Does it Destroy the Physical Resurrection of Jesus Story;
“If you think the Bible is so deeply riddled with confusion and contradiction, why not just junk it? Why spend so much of your time studying it, arguing about it, etc.? And why be a Christian at all? You seem to want to hang on to the Bible and to the designation “Christian” while denying any coherence to the Bible and disagreeing with most of the Christian tradition. Why not just cut the umbilical cord, abandon the sentimental attachments to the past, and walk away from the Bible and Christianity altogether?”
"Thanks. The short summary of your answer is: You do not accept or endorse any form of traditional historical Christianity. To you, all denominations are seriously wrong, albeit some more seriously wrong than others. You also do not believe the entire Bible is divinely inspired; in fact, you think that large parts of it teach falsehood. So the only reason you hang on to the Bible and the tradition is to quarry parts of both to make up a syncretistic religion of your own. And that’s your right. But of course no orthodox Christian of any stripe (Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant) is going to adopt your syncretistic religion. So your “target market” will have to be those who are estranged from all traditional forms of Christian belief, but want to hang on to this or that Christian “symbol” while playing with all kinds of non-Christian teachings. And perhaps there are such people out there. But very, very few of them will be readers of BioLogos, so it would seem that you are fishing in the wrong pond. I would think that a Theosophy website, or perhaps one run by the followers of Rev. Moon, would provide a bigger “catch’ for your net.”
Are you sure you understand what you are saying here? “Sometimes the majority is wrong and the minority is right. It has happened before in the history of science, and will happen again.”
Very true Eddie… for the turning of the tide is here.
What about what you say here? “Especially when the main debating tactics of the majority against the minority are deliberate misrepresentation of the minority view, abusive language, sarcasm… rather than rational argument.”
It’s plainly clear that what you are accusing TE/EC proponents of doing to ID proponents is what you (an ID proponent) are doing to me (a TE/EC proponent). Karma always comes back to bite you in the @#%$, Eddie! You still haven’t learned your lesson… have you???
Your reaction to the direction that TE/EC investigation is leading to (discovering the true facts of the Biblical story) is very telling indeed;
What’s the problem with harmonizing the Christian faith with evolutionary theory so that it perfectly fits together? People should rejoice with happiness concerning the new metaphysical findings in philosophy, theology, and science. We’re at the dawn of a new age, a new beginning where all our questions are being answered. Come on… don’t be a Grinch, a party-pooper, a stick-in-the-mud!
I think you’re afraid of a lot more than just spraying decaf coffee through your nose all over your computer screen. I’m aware that I’m imputing motives to your thoughts but, it’s unavoidable—your walking right into it. Surely you can see that it’s clearly visible to everyone?
You are mistaken here Eddie… the soldiers are in their trenches—it’s White or Black—there is no middle Grey area.
First you say that, “the TE/EC leadership—a large fraction of which used to be creationist—is still stinging from painful personal conflicts over creationism going back 30, 40, or even 50 years, and they associate ID with creationism.” Then you say that, “the ID leadership, many of whom were brought up to think that evolution was of the Devil, a rank materialistic and degrading teaching which lowers the dignity of man, can’t imagine that God might have created through evolution.”
Don’t you realize that the differences you are imputing to both camps are in fact what one of the camps (TE/EC) has gotten away from (Creationist ID dogma)? Those who are still stinging from painful personal conflicts over creationism going back 30, 40, or even 50 years ago are the same ones who were brought up to think that evolution was of the Devil, a rank materialistic and degrading teaching which lowers the dignity of man and can’t imagine that God might have created through evolution. The ID camp is the camp that is still suffering the delusion of (Creationist ID dogma).
As I said Eddie, the soldiers are in their trenches—it’s White or Black—there is no middle Grey area.
The task of TE/EC to turn Christians who don’t accept evolution into Christians who do is but to reveal the facts about the nature of reality to them. The ID camp in attempting to convince the general culture that Dawkins, Dennett, etc. are wrong in their metaphysical materialism because there is evidence for design in nature are, in reality, attempting to keep people under the same delusion of (Creationist ID dogma).
Just as Copernicus’ heliocentric view of the universe was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church and brought to trial as being an heretical teaching in contradiction to Holy Scripture, so too today, is ID, that same force again against the new found science of Evolutionary Creationism. However, today the tables have turned.
As Dr. T.J. Reddish just recently wrote in his blog post; Learning From History?—The Absorption of Scientific World Views into Theology.
“There are times when I wonder if some Christians have fully grasped the significance of the Galileo trial because, in certain quarters at least, the science and Christianity debate has a strong sense of déjà vu about it.”
I have to chuckle, reading your comments about open theism, because they prove my point.
The very word “flirtation” implies that it would be sinful to embrace open theism. The word “accuse” in “accuse anyone … of … open theism” also implies that it would be sinful to embrace open theism. You may disagree with open theism. You may feel it lies outside what you define as orthodoxy. That’s all well and good. It’s just funny to me that your verbiage continues to assume everyone agrees with you that it’s a scary gangrene infecting the body of Christ. Personally I’m undecided, but I don’t see it as such a horrible thing.
I’m not sure what you mean by “maintained strongly on BioLogos.” I learned about the newer syntheses that incorporate multiple motors for evolution other than random mutations and natural selection on BioLogos. It may have even been in the series responding to Meyer. I don’t care to go digging through the archives now, but you might want to, if this point matters a lot to you.
[quote=“Tony to Eddie, post:62, topic:3358”]
I think you’re afraid of a lot more than just spraying decaf coffee through your nose all over your computer screen.[/quote]
Eddie’s afraid of evidence IMO.
[quote] I’m aware that I’m imputing motives to your thoughts but, it’s unavoidable—your walking right into it. Surely you can see that it’s clearly visible to everyone?
[/quote]I really don’t think that Eddie can see that.
Amen to that, Tony.
And they can protest all they want, but the ID movement is just as pseudoscientific as the creationist movement–maybe more so. They have their very own journal, Bio-Complexity, that has published ZERO papers in 2015: http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/issue/archive
In 2014, there was only one empirical paper, which tested a straw man evolutionary hypothesis, not a real evolutionary hypothesis nor an ID hypothesis.
Massive amounts of rhetoric with tiny helpings of fake science.
[quote=“Eddie, post:59, topic:3358”]
And I find that the leaders do not want to discuss those commitments – especially not the theological ones – in any detail.[/quote]
Eddie, have you ever considered that maybe they just don’t want to discuss them with you?
[quote]This is of course frustrating for someone whose academic training is in the field of “theology and science”…
[/quote]Maybe they’d prefer to discuss them with actual practitioners in the field instead of those who rant about training.
So how many OLD EARTHER NON-EVOLUTIONISTS
do you think there really are?
If you are going to “bite your lip” over the phrase “comprised of”
instead of “comprises” - - you are going to suffer quite a bit.
I recommend chap stick.
If you want to “package” the concept of Theist as predominantly
Christian (or monotheist?), how is that different from my packaging
“pro-Evolution” into the phrase “Old Earther”.
“Old Earth creationism is typically more compatible with mainstream scientific thought on the issues of physics, chemistry, geology and the age of the Earth, in comparison to young Earth creationism.[2]”
FN 2
The Creation/Evolution Continuum, Eugenie Scott, NCSE Reports, v. 19,
n. 4, p. 16-17, 23-25, July/August, 1999.
The term references a part of the continuum … but doesn’t say how many
of these folks there really are.
In any case, I don’t use all 3 words - - just the parts of the continuum
that fit: “Old Earth”-ers.
Tony,
I am familiar with the new findings in science. Can you tell me some of the new metaphysical findings in philosophy and theology so that I may consider rejoicing in them? Thanks
Old earth, young earth … How about stating facts like the Earth is 4.54 billion years old. That is young compared to the 13.8 billion year age of the universe but old compared to the time humans inhabited the Earth.
Nobody is an evolutionist. Evolution is a fact. Either you accept the facts or you don’t. Not very complicated and you don’t need any adjectives before the word evolution to describe further describe it.
