Intelligent design goes Ivy League: Cornell offers course despite president denouncing theory

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | 04/11/2006

[puroresu]

#####IOW, the mere acknowledgment that "God had something to do with how we got here," at least by itself, without significant elaboration, I think takes you almost nowhere toward answering the question of how exactly the "getting here" occurred. There is some connection, especially if you do have an elaborated theological theory about God's relation to the world, but I think the two are for the most part distinct questions.#####

But ultimately there must be a connection or philosophical naturalism is correct.

[Stultis]

Most scientists probably don't confuse the two, but the ones that are very active in the evo-crevo wars usually do.

That's not my experience. In fact Dawkins is the only crevo-activist and scientist that comes to mind who is a "scientific atheist". (That is one who argues from science to atheism. Others may happen to be atheists, but without arguing that science, i.e. operational naturalism, is sufficient evidence for atheism.) Can you think of anyone else?

As for creationists confusing the two (operational and philosophical) more than scientists, it depends on which scientists we're talking about. Creationists don't confuse the two any more than most politically active evolutionists.

Again, this is not my experience. The argument that evolution implies atheism, which can only be based, at least in it's usual ipso facto form, on a confusion of operational and philosophical naturalism, is ubiquitous among creationists, both lay creationists and many of those with scientific credentials.

Doesn't theistic evolution confuse operational and philosophical naturalism?

No. I don't see how. In any case I don't think that "theistic evolution" describes a single or specific view. There are many possible and differing ways of reconciling evolution (or any naturalistic theory, or science generally) with theism.

I think you would find that most people, who may not have thought through the problem systematically or philosophically, view the position of "theistic evolution" as recognizing that there's more to creation than science can know or tell; i.e. that the scientific account, even to the extent it may be true and complete in its own terms, is not the full story or the complete truth. Isn't this attitude an acknowledgment, rather than a denial, of the limitations imposed by operational, as opposed to philosophical, naturalism?