Wednesday, June 25, 2008

ID Wrestlings

Steve Matheson has an interesting response to a claim on the "Uncommon Descent" blog that theistic evolutionists are 'spineless appeasers'. From the post:

I embrace evolutionary explanations because they have explanatory power. For the same reason, I embrace naturalistic explanations for the development of the human brain, and for the causation of cancer, and for the formation of the Grand Canyon. All of these explanations involve mechanisms that are referred to as "random." In fact, randomness and chance are interesting topics for Christians of all kinds and in nearly every aspect of scientific inquiry (if not all of life). In my view, to focus on these issues exclusively in the context of biological evolution is a huge mistake. If I thought the ID movement were really about wrestling with the notions of chance, providence and design in the analysis of God's world, I'd be happy to join the conversation. It's not, and I'm not.


That's certainly part of my attitude, as well. It does seem that by and large the ID movement is only interested in wrestling with the people they've marked out as opponents, and not in wrestling with the actual phenomena in the world given to us.