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To: AndrewC
That quote was from someone antipathetic to creationists and IDists some of whom are not creationists. The implication was drawn by himin his attack on ID, and not attributed to a creationist. Nice straw man.

What difference does the source make? Circumstantial ad hominem. That the stated problem presents itself is obvious. Indeed it's been obvious, in some form, to Christians and other theists all along. They only debate is about the solution to the problem, or if there is a solution.

Frankly I think God does, as The Bible has him say of himself, "create evil." Or, rather, in my view, he invests the world and all the things in it with being, and some of those things are "evil" in the sense of tending to thwart human wants, needs and desires. Tough toodies. That's the price that must be paid for the wonderful diversity, multiplicty and dynamism of the creaturely world.

Well, that's the "problem of evil". There is also the "God of the gaps" problem here, or what might also be called "the unintended promotion of deism". I don't think you're so obtuse as to fail to see how that arises, or at least tends to, in creation science, and maybe even especially in ID.

The problem doesn't arise for me, as I hold that the world is not in any sense apart from God, but is rather a manifestation of (a portion of) God's own being. (I think there are also aspects of God's being that are expressed non-materialy, and exist beyond the world, so I'm not a pantheist positing that God and the world are co-equal. In terms of a very rough analogy, I suspect that the world is like God's "body", or maybe even just a portion of His body, and that other aspects of God, including his mind, transcend the world.)

ID, OTOH, is all about saying, "these things were the product of a designer because they couldn't have been created by natural causes." The corollary to that is that things that things which can be explained by nature cause need not be attributed to God. Creation science is likewise about arguing that there is evidence of God acting in the world in this or that instance or respect.

The problem is that all these arguments point to a God (or "intelligent designer") who is present and active here and there, now and then, in the world. But a God that is occassionaly present is also one who is occassionaly absent, and this is deism rather than theism.

4,268 posted on 07/18/2003 5:13:12 PM PDT by Stultis
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To: Stultis
What difference does the source make?

I thought I made it clear. You don't want Jerry Falwell teaching biology, and I look askance at creationist arguments put forth by one antipathetic to creationists. Simple isn't it.

4,270 posted on 07/18/2003 5:16:24 PM PDT by AndrewC
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