Is there such a thing as a theistic evolutionist?
Panda’s Thumb writer Pim van Meurs gave an irony award to Salvador Cordova whom he quotes as saying:
Darwinian TE (Theistic Evolution) just doesnt cut it scientifically.
That is ironic, considering that young earth creationism makes many assertions that contradict archeology, not to mention geology. Young earth doesn’t even match the written record.
But this statement does remind me of all the reasons I don’t like the label “theist evolutionist.” I’m a theist and I’m an evolutionist, but the two about as unrelated as any two ideas. As a theist I see nature as God’s handiwork, and thus evolution as God’s elegant way of producing diversity. But that doesn’t change what I see when I see nature.
There really should be no difference between a theistic evolutionist and any other variety in the field or in the lab. Now I’m not a scientist at all, but I don’t keep inserting “and God did that” between the lines of every science book I read.
Two commenters on Panda’s Thumb, Raging Bee and Doug S make extremely cogent comments.
As I’ve argued in my response to The God Delusion, my theist is emphatically not a scientific thesis, nor do I claim scientific evidence for it. So in answer to my title question, I think not. But we’re probably stuck with the term to describe people like me no matter how weak it is.
Bingo. And thanks for pointing out the two comments, too.