Theistic Evol vs ID vs Hindu religion

I am not sure I entirely follow you here, but I'll play along for now.

Both.

When you say "theistic evolution" you imply a system where God used well designed natural systems to achieve His will and I think that this includes the possibility of intervention. I think that recognizing that these systems are ideal for accomplishing His will and by leaving open the possibility of intervention that you accept the general ideas behing ID. ******

The specific ideas that what we call IDists have put forward thus far, I reject for lack of evidence. For example, Behe advocates for irreducible complexity with the argument that certain systems could not have evolved. The problem is that he is forced to ignore methods such as scaffolding and co-option in general and he is specifically forced to ignore papers that propose specific paths for things to have evolved which he calls IC.

No. Why would you think so?

I do not know what their creation myth entails and I don't know what they think of evolution. But whatever their opinions may be, I can be sure that they do not accept God and thus cannot share my "kind" of opinion.

I believe I answered this in my response to the first question.

I have read enough of Gentry and the responses to him and his responses back to be sick of the whole matter. And I doubt that many of the responses were by "atheist darwinists." I imagine some were Christian and some were not. I imagine most were by persons in the physical sciences and not biological. I doubt that they were all by non-Christian biologists as you imply by your phrasing.

Even AIG, if they haven't removed it, had a page in which they claimed to have found halos in rocks that they say formed post flood. So I guess YEers only take halos to be proof of instantaneous rock formation in rocks that they want to be instantly formed and reject those halos that interfere with their presuppositions.

If anyone is interested in halos, you can find weeks worth of reading if you want, Google is your friend. The explanations quickly turn very complicated and very hard to follow if you are not a phycisists or geologists. In the ultimate analysis, many people who are phycisists and geologists have examined the claims and found them to be wanting.

A simple to understand way to look at it without getting into the details might be this. All of the rocks in question show other signs of how they were formed that are at odds with Gentry's assertions. Do you find it more likely that all these other signs about the way the rocks formed are wrong or that Gentry's sole indication, at odds with the rest of geology, is wrong?

I think that your phrasing of the question falls into the fallacy of poisoning the well, but to get at the essence of your question, no. We are sinfull and in need of grace. The only way it "matters" is if you try and force an interpretation on the Bible which is at odds with reality. If you are willing to build that strawman, then you will have no trouble knocking it over.

****** What I really want to know is why YEers are so willing to get in bed with IDers but not TE. There is a great gulf between most IDers and YEers and only a hairs difference between ID and TE.

Many of the leading IDers, Behe and Dembski just to name drop a couple, have no problem with common descent including humans. This is a huge difference of opinion with YEers. Why would you, as a YEer, want to have anything to do with a group that largely accepts man's descent from microbes and that accepts that ancient age of the earth?

In my opinion there is only a subtle difference between my opinions and those of many IDers. I accept that God may have intervened in places where required to fulfill His will but I have yet to see any specific cases that would have required such intervention. IDers claim some specific cases in which they assert it was necessary for God to have intervened. For me to move from TE to ID would only require one case that I accepted that required supernatural intervention and woud be only a small shuffle of a step.

To get to ID from YE would be to drop adherence to the fundemental aspects of YE and would be a huge, huge step.

So why is it that YEers draw such a stark line between ID and TE? In reality that line is diffuse and hard to find.

(And yes I know that there are also some IDers who are also YE, but it does not seem to be a central tenet of ID in general.)

 

Theistic evolution is an oxymoron. If you believe in God, you should believe in His account of creation, not Darwin's.

 

For some strange reason I am going to go down the path of trying to get you to answer a simple question again. I wonder how many pages this will take.

Can you give us your own answer to your own first question? Tell us if you accept or reject ID? Do you think that folks like Behe and Wells and Dembski and all the rest are on the right path or are they on the wrong path?

Let us know what you think of ID yourself.

 

Here we go...

None of it is clear to me.

I am just asking for a simple statement declaring what you think of mainstream IDist as they exist today. Do you think they are on the right path? Do you think their work is flawed in some way? Do you think that Christians should or should not be supporting their work? Why or why not? What should they be doing different?

Your phrasing of your first question seemed to indicate that you were criticizing TE for not embracing ID. Do you embrace ID as it exists today?

 

It is a very simple question.

Can you either say something like "Yeah, those IDist are really out there doing God's work and I fully support their efforts."

Or something like "Those dirty, rotten IDers. They are little better than folks who accept TE. You need a program guide to tell those two groups apart."

Or something in between. This really is not that hard. All I want is an unambiguous statement of what you think of ID as it currently exists and works.

 

I still do not know what you are talking about. I have stated this several times and you merely repeat yourself. There is nothing to highlight for you because I see nowhere in which you come close to answering what I want.

Some sentences sound like you strongly disagree with ID. Some sound like you strongly agree with ID. I still don't know what your full opinion of ID is.

Instead of continuously repeating yourself with posts full of random quote marks and capitalizations, can you not dumb it down a bit and just answer my question in simple terms. It really is easy to do.

Do you think the IDers are the greatest thing since sliced bread? Are they fatally flawed? Something in between.

For once again, I must say that I cannot follow your ramblings and would instead like a simple, concise answer.

 

I am not asking anything about some "pagan's ID model."

I am asking what you think of the work of people like Wells and Behe. Good? No good? What?

How many times do I have to say that I have no idea from your multi-repeats what you think of regular old ID?

It's like I am a foriegner who doesn't speak English and you think I'll understand if you say it enough times and loudly enough. Well I don't get it.

I have told you I don't get it and you just repeat what I have said I don't get. Could you please respond with some other combination of words?

I have even given you examples of the kind of response for which I am looking. Any chance that I'll get a straight answer?

 

Fishing expedition?

What you write, sounds like you are fishing for Bob to give you the answers that you want him to say. I cannot read your mind - and I doubt that Bob can either.

But, my guess would be that he does not care what anyone defines as ID. He does not care what Behe defines as ID. Personally, I have not read him and do not have time to do so.

I know that I do not care what any of them say. I personally believe that God revealed the most accurate description of Creation ever written.

I think that stating that God used ID in His Creation does not limit us to any ONE's personal theory(ies). IMHO. I think that Bob and I and the account in Genesis are in 99.999999% agreement. Where we disagree - God was right in Genesis - we just don't have His knowledge.

 

Yeah I am fishing.

And I was very explicit in my first post on this thread for what I am fishing.

YEers like to pretend that there is scant difference between their opinion and those of IDers. YEers frequently bring ID arguments to the plate. YEers rarely if ever act like they have any problem with ID.

But, from my point of view, it is ID and TE that have scant difference between them and YE and ID have a great gulf between them.

The way I put it was this. Many in ID accept common descent. Those in TE and those in ID both accept that GOd may have intervened in the process. The one difference being that IDers think they have found a few necessary places to intervene and most TEers, speaking for myself really, have not yet found anywhere they they think intervention was likely.

I don't know why you see YEers constantly railing against TE and going along with ID like they are one and the same with YE. They are not. They are hardly distinguishable from TE.

So I'd either like to see the same courtesy, or benefit of the doubt, extended to TEers as is extended to ID. Or if you really cannot accept common descent, then I'd like to see ID quit being given a seemingly free pass and recognized for what it really is. For I see little difference between ID and TE.

And since Bob made a point that his first question is about ID, I'd like him to answer his own question and tell us straight up if he accepts ID.

 

I saw a DVD where he specifically addresses at least one of those proposed paths. He doesn't say that it is impossible that I recall... simply like I have said before... he indicated that it was so unlikely as to be unreasonable.

 

Yes, and at the Dover trial, he was presented with 58 articles decribing just the evolution of the immune system. Most of these he admitted to not having read but he was still confident enough to dismiss them all a priori.

The reason he dismisses them is that he is constantly shifting the goalposts. He was how he phrased it himself under cross examination. "Not only would I need a step-by-step, mutation by mutation analysis, I would also want to see relevant information such as what is the population size of the organism in which these mutations are occurring, what is the selective value for the mutation, are there any detrimental effects of the mutation, and many other such questions."

Most people quote IC to say that some things could not have evolved. If there is a possible pathway, then it is no longer impossible, no matter how small you may think the odds are.

 

Here is what Behe says on the matter of common descent.

This is from Darwin's Black Box.