Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Intelligent Design

  • Theisms, Creationisms, and Evolutionisms: An Exercise in Definition

    The debate about labels is one of the most interesting aspects of the creation-evolution controversy to me, and at the same time one of the most frustrating. Since my primary training is in Biblical languages, and by my own efforts in linguistics, the way words are used simply fascinates me.

    There is plenty of influence of the PR efforts, particularly those made on the intelligent design side, but also by those of folks in mainstream science. I’m not writing to complain about this. I think it is a natural thing for those who think they are advocating a true or valid position to try to label themselves and the issues in the most favorable fashion. Often this will seem to them as the most accurate labeling as well. After all, they are presenting a “true” position!

    My attention was brought back to this topic a couple of days ago when I read this entry on the Panda’s Thumb which shows that [tag]Bill Dembski[/tag] rejects common descent. I then looked around for some evidence, because I thought I remembered that [tag]Michael Behe[/tag] accepts common descent. And sure enough I found it on Telic Thoughts in an article complaining about the use of terminology:

    In reality, it is more accurate to label Behe a theistic evolutionist, as this label would accurately communicate that a) Behe is an evolutionist and b) believes God was involved in the process of evolution. And in fact, this is how most people interpret theistic evolution, as some sort of God-guided process. How most people interpret a label is the most important point.

    (more…)

  • Defining my Position on ID and Creation

    A couple of questions have arisen about my position on these issues, and though I’ve stated all these things before, they have generally been in longer presentations. So I’m going to try to state my position.

    I see three easily demarcated positions on design:

    1. The universe is designed as a fully functional system, and the origin and diversification of life can be explained by natural processes within that universe. A theist in this sense believes God created the universe, but is not required to interfere.
    2. The universe was established in such a way that a particular result would occur through apparently natural processes. This is an approximation of “front-loading” which some equate to intelligent design.
    3. The origin or life and/or its diversification cannot be explained by solely natural processes. The designer (God, despite claims to the contrary) interferes at particular points. This is the ID position, and is the one I was addressing in my post The Common Thread in Modern Creationism yesterday.

    The second option might be divided between those who think God’s interference can be detected, and those who don’t, but I don’t think that is of great consequence for my purposes here.

    When I say that I believe the universe is designed, I mean in the sense of #1. God ordained the universe to exist, including the natural processes of variation by whatever means and natural selection, and that is an adequate explanation. I do not mean that variation and natural selection explain everything, but other elements to the explanation will also be natural. My statement that the universe is designed is in no sense a scientific statement. I’m not a biologist. I am not professionally involved in any of the natural sciences. I’m a Bible teacher. That statement is theological and faith based.

    I do not exclude the possibility of option #2, but I have no expectation that God’s action will ever be detected, and I see no difference between completely indetectible (even in principle) interference and no interference at all. Certainly one can never actually know in an objective sense.

    I think there is a strong desire to find this interference, either through front-loading or through ongoing interference because there is a desire in Christian theology to believe that the existence not just of life, but of intelligence, and specifically human intelligence was foreordained. I do not believe that must be the case. Should intelligence appear on another plant in an arthropod form, I would regard that creature to equally bear the image of God.

    I believe the universe is bigger, less predictable, and more risky than we in the theological world have ever believed. On this topic I would commend to your attention the book God after Darwin by John Haught.

  • The Common Thread in Modern Creationism

    It’s hard for me to work with the terms “creationist,” “creationism,” and “evolutionist,” because if I’m completely honest I consider myself to be a creationist who accepts the theory of evolution. The two do not clash in my mind in any way. The term “evolutionist” seems to suggest that I accept evolution as some sort of philosophy of everything, which I do not. I accept gravity, but do not call myself a gravitationist. I accept creation, but to call myself a creationist would invite confusion with the likes of [tag]Kent Hovind[/tag], a fate diligently to be avoided.

    When I teach comparative literature, which is much closer to my own field of study than biological evolution, I always remind students that in order to produce valid comparisons, one must consider both the similarities and the differences. If one ignores differences, one can make very dissimilar things appear almost identical. The reverse is also true.

    Thus I do have some problem with those who call intelligent design merely “warmed over creationism,” if by creationism. There are differences as well as similarities, though most of the differences appears in the presentation, not in the substance, and one of the major differences is that ID tries to say so much less than either young or [tag]old earth creationism[/tag].

    But there is a common thread between all of these varieties of creationism, including ID, and it was illustrated by Dembski’s comments on the flagellum at the University of Oklahoma, discussed here by Dr. Philipp Klebba, here at ERV, and also at The Panda’s Thumb.

    The key point in which I am interested was made in the Panda’s Thumb article:

    Klebba’s relentless questions forced Dembski to admit that

    … [N]o amount of detail would ever convince him of evolution. No matter how much evidence you had, he wanted ‘evidence + 1’. I shit you not, Dembski retreated to the YES [sic/YEC] fossil defense– For every fossil you find, you create two more gaps. Dembski modified this to for every step in the evolutionary process science discovers, it creates two more half-steps to explain. He even pulled a classic-quack move, and made a plea to quantum mechanics.

    And here is my major point. The common thread through the three varieties of creationism is that they are all looking for the break in the natural processes of variation and natural selection such that God must intervene in the natural processes in some way. Whether that intervention is at the biochemical level or whether it deals specifically with speciation events, there needs to be a gap showing where God is “necessary” to the universe.

    In contrast, as a “creationist” who accepts the theory of evolution, I believe that the entire universe is designed. That universal design is the biggest problem there is for IDC, because IDC requires places that are less and more designed so they can detect the differences. IDC doesn’t try to demonstrate that the universe is designed, as many people, especially Christians, believe it does. Rather, it is attempting to prove a variation in God’s involvement.

    Of course Dembski will not admit an evolutionary pathway no matter how many steps you discover. Why? Because that would mean totally abandoning everything he has worked for. If all the animals truly are equal, and none are more equal than others, then what is there for Dembski and his ilk to detect? The field is different, but the method is the same as the constant attack on new fossil discoveries by the young earth crowd. One new specimen, in their propaganda, simply means two new gaps that must be filled. And of course they have no similar requirement to fulfill.

    When the United States set out to send a man to the moon, there were those who believed it couldn’t be done. Their task was very easy–just say “no!” The folks who went to the moon, and those who made that trip possible had a much harder task. They had to actually produce the appropriate hardware and make the trip.

    Scientists are faced with a similar situation with IDC. They must fill in every gap, while the ID crowd stands by and announces that they can’t. Every time they fill one in, someone mentions how many more there are to fill in. But the only people who are actually doing anything are the working scientists who are filling those gaps, and of course making two more in the process. Because that is what scientists do. They make discoveries, but almost always a discovery simply opens up a whole new array of things we don’t know. That is the strength of science, and it is also what IDC tries to present as its weakness.

    I understand the desire to find God’s fingerprint in nature, a desire shared by all these branches of creation. But that search involves finding holes in God’s creation, places where it didn’t quite work. No matter how much you change the field of study, the method is still going to look very similar, as [tag]Bill Dembski[/tag] showed at the University of Oklahoma.

  • Barbarians? What Barbarians?

    Mark Olson responded to my post Why the Creation-Evolution Controvery is Important with a post of his own, Barbarians at the Gate. It appears that was his gentle way of telling me that I’m a bit over the top, at least about my comment on the assault on the integrity of science. Kudos to Mark for method! I don’t see any barbarians, or at least I see only barbarians acting in a very civilized way, but I do see some danger.

    I would first like to point out that I said what I said in the context of the case of Dr. Richard Colling at Olivet Nazarene University (start with Where Teaching the Controversy is Prohibited). I didn’t specify that in my own post, because I was responding to some of the responses I received to my posting on that issue. Where precisely is this “assault on integrity” going on? I believe it is happening in Christian churches.

    I’m not, however, talking about the dearth of Biblical knowledge, though I do think that is a problem. I’m talking about the way in which some Christians try to pressure other Christians into accepting a war between religion an science–a war which is quite unnecessary. The most guilty parties are advocates of young earth creationism, but old earth creationists join in when the target is theistic evolutionists, and the ID crowd joins right in.

    I’ve already expressed by view on this a few times before and particularly in more recent discussions of the situation at Olivet Nazarene University. But I lived this in my own life. There was certainly no effort to “teach the controversy” in my Seventh-day Adventist education. The entire effort was to indoctrinate me as a young earth creationist. I had very little idea what evolutionary theory actually was even after I received my graduate degree.

    But there is something faintly amusing to me about getting painting as one proclaiming there are barbarians at the gates. The ID movement is one of the noisiest “suppressed” movements out there. They are truly claiming that the barbarians are at the gates–in this case “Darwinist” barbarians. But is that cry justified?

    I think it is not. First, of course, they seem to have an abundance of ways in which to make themselves heard. Second, they are not taking the appropriate road to scientific recognition, which is the production of science.

    There are two ways to obscure truth. On the one can attempt to suppress those who speak it. But on the other hand we can present so many untested things as truth that it’s hard to determine what is valid and what is not. In order to prevent the second of these, we have peer-reviewed journals and we have results that can be replicated by other scientists. Those are the proper gateways through which thing should pass to become part of the general body of science.

    As a counter to that restriction we have free flow of information generally. The ID advocates who feel that they are being suppressed can write and publish books, they can write blogs, and everyone who wants can read. They can assault the gates of science all they want. That is freedom of speech. But it is essentially also freedom of speech for those scientists who peer-review the literature and who try to replicate results to say, “No, this doesn’t meet the standard.” The rest of us get to decide who we will believe.

    Someone is bound to ask then why I don’t think Olivet Nazarene University is within their rights to suppress Dr. Richard Colling? Of course they are within their rights. They are a privately funded university, and they can set their own standards. They might fall afoul of accreditation committees, but that has not proven too much of a problem for many, many schools who would not allow the teaching of evolution as valid.

    But this is the church. You see, I care more about the church than I do about the rest of the world. I’m a Bible teacher. That’s where I live and work. It’s important to me. When I see there’s a problem with integrity in the world, I am concerned. When I see it in the church, that’s striking close to home.

    People who have gone to secular universities rarely understand my point on this. They feel that they spent their lives fighting for recognition, and that any religious ideas are suppressed in that atmosphere. Personally I suspect them of being a bit over the top, but I can’t be sure. You see, I never spent a day in a public school classroom. I’m part home schooled, part private schooled, and all Christian schooled.

    I would like Christian education to be ahead of everyone else, and to represent the very best that there is to offer. I’d like to see better training in all fields, but especially in science. If there is any place where Christians should demonstrate a sound education, rather than a thorough indoctrination it is in our church educational systems, from Sunday School to church sponsored universities.

    To do that we need to model free inquiry. Exploration not indoctrination.

  • On Design

    I try to keep my eyes open for clear discussion of information and design written so that non-experts, such as me, can understand them. Jeffrey Shallit’s post On Design seems to suit. It’s part of a discussion with Michael Egnor, but I think it will stand alone quite well.

  • Rejecting ID, but is it a priori?

    On a previous post Ray commented:

    A religion or naturalism arrived at as a result of following the evidence where it leads, is quite acceptable, and even to be expected in most cases for it is a conclusion arrive at after an objective analysis of the evidence. It is therefore a reasonable conclusion.
    Naturalism or a belief in ID, arrived at as a conclusion read into the evaluation of the evidence by, amongst other things, the exclusion of other potential conclusions on an ” apriori ” basis is quite another.

    To either assume or exclude a Designer on an “apriori” basis, seems to me, to be fatal to an objective analysis of the question.
    Nevertheless, I see that I will only be repeating myself and irritating the rest of you( not my intention). I’ve said my piece and I wish to thank all of you for your time.
    God bless.

    I don’t mind this topic at all, and as I commented in response, I don’t believe my rejection of ID is a priori (with a specific exception noted below). I immediately need to clarify that I do not reject a designer as such, but rather intelligent design as a scientific concept. From a theological point of view, I hold that the universe is designed and that God is the designer. I simply believe that the design is consistent and that it does not show “wrinkles” in the natural universe. I (intelligent design) and its claim that the designer can be detected scientifically at particular points in nature.

    The problem seems fairly simple to me. One could say that science deals with two categories of processes or entities, which I will loosely call “things.” There are things that scientists do understand and things they don’t. Good scientists would like to improve their understanding of things they already understand and learn to understand those they don’t.

    ID proposes to divide the things that we don’t understand into two categories–those we can theoretically hope to understand and those that must be attributed to a designer. Now as a scientific layman, I am mystified as to what benefit is to be derived from this new division. All it does is attempt to put a stop sign in front of certain processes for which it is assumed we will never find answers in the natural world.

    And it is an assumption. Everything we understand about the natural world was once not understood, and in many, many cases there were people who assumed it could never be known. One of my frustrations in reading Michael Behe’s book Darwin’s Black Box was in the number of discoveries that Behe relates, and even does such a fine job of explaining. Yet he uses this progress of knowledge to support the claim that there’s a roadblock in the way now. Saying we can’t know something we don’t know is silly–after all, we don’t know.

    Let me also dismiss the notion of a non-supernatural intelligent designer. There are two reasons. First, if the intelligent designer is itself natural, then it will simply require explanation as well. How did it come into existence? Second, if we are looking for a natural designer, it makes sense to try to discover the nature of that designer in order to be able to guess capabilities, limitations, intentions, and so forth. One piece of evidence that ID is not scientific is simply that its proponents show no curiosity about the nature of the designer. This very lack of curiosity indicates that they do know who they are proposing–God. But in the United States they need something that will pass church-state muster.

    So now if we are looking for a supernatural designer, what exactly happens? First, we must assume that this designer is one who intervenes in the natural world and who does so in a detectable way. There is no reason that the designer must be detectable. The best design of a universe might well run its course (assuming it has one) without any intervention at all. Intervention need not be detectable. Supposing that some element of nature was made to appear completely random. With any care, our hypothetical supernatural designer could altar the random input in such a way as to be undetectable.

    Second, if we assume that the designer is supernatural, it automatically operates outside the natural laws. Should a scientist come upon one of these unexplained processes, and attribute it to the designer, then he steps beyond something he can investigate using the methods of natural science. Here is where I could properly be accused of arguing something a priori. I think that by design and definition, scientific methods are not suited to studying the supernatural. If it is truly supernatural, then you cannot limit it by natural laws, thus it can do anything, and can be fitted anywhere. But that does not exclude a designer a priori, merely the detection of the designer by the methods of natural science.

    If we have an intervening designer, what we will find is that there will be a number of points in nature that are not explained. We won’t know whether they could be explained naturally or not. Every system which has a Darwinian explanation for its development was once a system for which there was no such explanation. ID has not added anything whatsoever to our knowledge. Without a designer we have some things that are explained and some that aren’t. With a designer–same thing!

    ID does have a massive disadvantage, however, in that once you claim something cannot theoretically be explained, you reduce or remove the motivation for studying it and learning what can be learned. And considering that there are things once declared irreducibly complex that have since been “reduced” so to speak, that roadblock in the path of knowledge is not a good idea.

  • Where Teaching the Controversy is Prohibited

    I have suggested many times before that before one believes what IDC (intelligent design creationism) advocates say about their goals, one should look at the way they handle the matter where they are in control. I’m sure that I will be accused of unfairly lumping ID and creationism together, but if they don’t want that to happen they should make efforts not to look so similar.

    While names have changed, and a slogan like “teach the controversy” has become popular only more recently, I can recall the same theme from my own childhood to the present. Evolutionists need to allow the teaching of creationism along side evolution. It’s only fair. At the same time, evolution was never given a fair presentation on the church side. I never heard in Sabbath School (I was raised Seventh-day Adventist) that there were such people as theistic evolutionists, nor did I learn anything about how they would view God as creator. It was always a war between light (creationism) and darkness (evolutionism), the first God’s own truth, and the second the devil’s deception designed to lead one to hell.

    Today I found this column from the forthcoming Newsweek, that tells about Richard Colling, who has written a book Random Designer. Now I haven’t read his book, though I will certainly set out to get a copy now. By the description it sounds very much like he and I would be on the same page philosophically and theologically. He’s a professor of biology at Olivet Nazarene University, where his book is now effectively banned. He doesn’t get to teach a basic biology course he has taught for years, and his book can’t be assigned reading.

    This action shows some of the destructive potential of ignorance, but it also removes any fig-leaf of respectability from the “teach the controversy” argument. The advocates of creationism generally do not want the controversy taught. They want to win. If they were to win a court case allowing their materials into the public school classrooms, their next move would be to prevent critical examination of those ideas, and then to prevent the teaching of evolutionary theory itself. I simply don’t believe the public propaganda. I never have, but the evidence that it is pure propaganda just keeps building up.

    And here I would note that while I oppose inclusion of intelligent design or any other variety of creationism in high school science classes until such time as it becomes mainstream science (don’t hold your breath), I’m perfectly happy to have any theory discussed in higher education. It should be critically discussed, which, in the case of IDC, would mean that it should be thoroughly shredded.

    But at Olivet, apparently, they don’t even want students to have to read about the views of a theistic evolutionist. I believe that the Olivet example is what theistic evolutionists such as myself can expect from the ID movement. They want to shut us out. They certainly don’t want to “teach the controversy” about ID, a controversy that is very much alive amongst Christians.

    You see, “teaching the controversy” is good when you want to wedge your way into the public schools, or force your way into universities. It’s not so good when someone wants to fairly examine the controversy inside a Christian school. They want a “heads we win, tails you lose” situation.

    Hat tips go to Metacatholic and Higgaion, both of whom have excellent comments on this story themselves.

  • Great ID Cartoon

    It’s at Faith and Theology, with hat tip to Metacatholic. Enjoy!

    Also, I’ve added Metacatholic to my blogroll, and my RSS subscriptions. I’ll probably be linking there more in the weeks to come.

  • Teach the Controversy about Geocentrism

    In my previous post The Danger of Teaching the Controversy, I suggested that one of the problems with teaching the controversy was just which controversies one should teach. There are always plenty of crackpot theories floating around not to mention sound attempts to modify existing theories. These need to be tested by scientists using scientific methods with accountability through peer review.

    In discussing this, I said the following:

    More importantly, however, let’s consider how this “teach the controversy” principle would work in public schools. Should science teachers be asked to teach the controvery on geocentrism? I know some people are just about to explode on that one. “Nobody believes that any more, or at least only a few kooks.” Well, that may be true, though I believe there’s even a kook with a PhD who tries to teach geocentrism. But this does illustrate the problem. We argue for teaching the controversy on creation and evolution or on intelligent design and evolution, but we are unwilling to invoke the same phrase for all controversial issues.

    And to prove my point, one Mark Wyatt posted this comment:

    “…Should science teachers be asked to teach the controvery on geocentrism? …”

    Yes.

    And Here are the recommended text books.

    Mark

    Well, well, well. Though I will often debate with people who probably should be ignored, even I will not bother debating geocentrism. But I think my point is made. Theories need to be tested scientifically before becoming part of the curriculum. No exceptions should be made, even for especially controversial ones, or we will dilute education. There really isn’t any idea so stupid that it can’t find advocates somewhere!

    For those who believe someone is being suppressed here, note that even a person so far out there as to advocate geocentrism has two books published and a web site. It’s getting very difficult to suppress ideas. The problem that creationists and others have is that it is also getting extremely difficult to blunt criticisms of dumb ideas.

  • Random Mutations and God

    JuliaL, in a comment to my previous post, Don McLeroy and his Big Creationist Tent . I’m going to copy the comment here and reply, because I think it brings up an important point that deserves a post of its own.

    Here’s the part that mystifies me:


    Consider natural selection of random mutations. If they’re random mutations, they can’t be God-directed, and if they’re naturally selected, you can’t hav, quote, “God-selecteds.”

    Is the claim being made that there is no such thing as a mathematically random process, such as the choosing of the winning number in a lottery? Or, is McLeroy saying that a process can indeed be mathematically random, but in some magical fashion then God is incapable of being any part of it? So God is completely excluded from lotteries? And if we want to cut God out of any issue, we need only introduce randomness (like “Russian roulette” with a gun before pulling the trigger), and God is forced to stand by helpless? I’ve seen people pick a Bible verse to read by closing their eyes, letting the Bible fall open, and then putting their finger to the page to pick a random verse to mediatate on. Does this process mean that God is now excluded from the event and must stand around looking incompetent?

    As for natural selection, is the claim here that anything selected for/against by nature thereby excludes God from any role? Nature pretty much destroys certain kinds of plants I attempt to put in my yard; the heat, humidity, and alternate drought and flood kills them off. Does installing such plants mean that I have managed to ban God from my yard?

    This seems a strange view of God, not as the ground of all being or as the wholeness of which everything else is a part, but as a separate, discrete individual who can be pushed aside through math and nature processes that we all normally acknowledge exist.

    The thing that has mystified me for a long time is that so many people seem to view a natural process as something which separates something from design by God. From my theological point of view, the universe exists because God wills it so, therefore everything is designed. Supposing I create a machine that automatically produces some other device. Would that secondary device not be considered my design? God goes one better, and designs and elegant and simple algorithm that produces huge variety. It’s still God.

    Intelligent design creationists (IDC) are not satisfied to have God ordain laws and processes. They want God to intervene along the way, and see indications of that design. The Holy Grail of this idea is that one process or system that simply cannot have been produced by the simple combination of variation + natural selection. They keep claiming to have found it, but as knowledge of the evolutionary process advances, ways are discovered. IDC requires a severe deficit in imagination.

    The requirement for detectable intervention ties intelligent design to creationism. If that were not the case, they could embrace people like me who believe in God and believe that the universe itself exists by the will of God. That means everything we see is designed at some level or another. I’m not a metaphysical naturalist. But IDCs do not embrace people like me. Why? Because the simple statement that the universe is designed is not their real goal.

    Their goal is to prove elements of the Biblical story of creation, specifically that there are “kinds” that cannot produce one another, boundary lines that can only be crossed by special divine intervention. That’s the point of trying to find detectable footprints. It’s not design/non-design so much as it is the detectability of design, and even more specifically the detectability of limits that require divine intervention at particular points.

    On this young and old earth creationists can agree, because their understanding of the Genesis story, while not the same, agrees in hearing it as narrative history. They just disagree in the level of symbol involved. They both need divine intervention in a way that should be detectable. (There’s some discussion of this right now because IDCs want to deny part of their roots. This has been discussed recently by Nick Matzke, Ed Brayton, and from the IDC side by Rob Crowther.

    Now to the word “random.” That is largely a scare word, since evolution is not, in fact, a random process. Natural selection is quite directed. There are a number of definitions of the word random, but in this case non-mathematicians are generally thinking something like “lacking a definite plan, purpose, or pattern” (Merriam-Webster). Though this is not the mathematical definition, it will work for our purposes.

    In A Wonderful Life Gould suggested a thought experiment rolling back the movie of the history of life on earth from the time of the Cambrian explosion onward, and suggested that it might unroll in different ways because random events might occur differently. But there is a view of determinism that would say that everything that occurs is totally caused by previous events, thus if we had sufficient knowledge we could tie every event right back to be big band, down to movements of subatomic particles. With this level of determinism, someone with my view of evolution could claim that God did design not just human beings as such, but me in particular, by the way he “set off the big bang.” Everything would be determined by the arrangement of particles (and whatever) at the moment “cause” came to have any meaning. Thus intelligent design without that identifiable time of intervention.

    (For those who want to think more about this, let me link to two series by Peter Kirk at Speaker of Truth. I’m not specifically endorsing everything Peter says, and I gather that he isn’t either, but that’s not because I disagree with any substantial portion. I simply don’t understand the physics well enough for my agreement to make any difference. The important thing is that he is here working with concepts from physics, and relating them to theology and origins, and deals some with the issue of causation. The posts are Kingdom Dynamics Introduction, Beyond Causality, The Boundaries, and The Crunch, followed by The Beginning part 1 and part 2.)

    IDCs would like that, however, because it wouldn’t give them their “kinds” with boundaries between them. In the view of some of them, front-loading would come with the creation of the first life, which should have DNA capable of producing everything that happened later.

    But there is no necessity that absolute determinism is true. It’s just a possibility. There could be events that are not caused in our sense of the word at all. For example, we have no way to speak sensibly of the “cause” of the big bang. I have had people I regard as reliable tell me that quantum physics shows that the universe is truly deterministic, and others I regard as equally reliable tell me it proves that there is true randomness. I don’t understand their arguments so I cannot comment on who is right. But it’s interesting that it appears to be a debatable issue!

    Some other theists who are scientists, especially physicists, see the subatomic realm as a place where God could intervene, for example, to cause mutations at the appropriate moment, without us being able to detect that intervention at all. Again, this wouldn’t make IDCs happy, because they want to find God, and also, for the most part, to prove that he created the world in a way that can be related to Genesis. Don’t ever be deceived by the rhetoric–Genesis will show up sooner or later.

    I don’t really understand the how of it at all. I would be satisfied if God simply created the process, and the process produces everything else. I think variation + natural selection is a very powerful process. At the moment I don’t see any example of demonstrated intervention. I would simply say that as a theist I hold that even if the process is random in its input (variation) it is random because that is the way God ordains it to be. That is not a scientific conclusion, however. Science must simply observe whether it is random or not and report.

    Finally, I do believe that the IDCs come up with a bizarre idea of God, a God who is more active at some points than others, and one who designed a process to diversify life, but it didn’t work right, so he has to tinker. Somehow they think this is a positive think and work very hard to prove that it happened, at the same time proving, in my view, that God is incompetent. That’s not a conclusion I’d prefer to come to!