BobRyan said:
Some have started using the "Misquote" thread as a place to discuss the belief in Theistic Evolutionism - so I am starting this thread to see what interest there is in that belief.
I am not sure I entirely follow you here, but I'll play along for now.
Does your belief in Theistic Evol accept or reject ID?
Both.
When you say "theistic evolution" you imply a system where God used well designed natural systems to achieve His will and I think that this includes the possibility of intervention. I think that recognizing that these systems are ideal for accomplishing His will and by leaving open the possibility of intervention that you accept the general ideas behing ID.
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The specific ideas that what we call IDists have put forward thus far, I reject for lack of evidence. For example, Behe advocates for irreducible complexity with the argument that certain systems could not have evolved. The problem is that he is forced to ignore methods such as scaffolding and co-option in general and he is specifically forced to ignore papers that propose specific paths for things to have evolved which he calls IC.
Can a Hindu also be "your kind" of Theistic Evolutionist?
No. Why would you think so?
I do not know what their creation myth entails and I don't know what they think of evolution. But whatever their opinions may be, I can be sure that they do not accept God and thus cannot share my "kind" of opinion.
Do you accept the teaching of Romans 1 that even pagans clearly "see" the I.D. aspects of God "in what has been made"
I believe I answered this in my response to the first question.
Does your faith in Theistic Evolutionism cause you to seek excuse after excuse to reject Robert Gentry's scientific study on Palonium radio halos rather than objectively and openly accepting and studying the science first - and then coming to conlusions after getting actually reading Robert's own material and and rebuttal to those atheist darwinists that rightly object in devotion to their own faith and orthodoxy?
I have read enough of Gentry and the responses to him and his responses back to be sick of the whole matter. And I doubt that many of the responses were by "atheist darwinists." I imagine some were Christian and some were not. I imagine most were by persons in the physical sciences and not biological. I doubt that they were all by non-Christian biologists as you imply by your phrasing.
Even AIG, if they haven't removed it, had a page in which they claimed to have found halos in rocks that they say formed post flood. So I guess YEers only take halos to be proof of instantaneous rock formation in rocks that they want to be instantly formed and reject those halos that interfere with their presuppositions.
If anyone is interested in halos, you can find weeks worth of reading if you want, Google is your friend. The explanations quickly turn very complicated and very hard to follow if you are not a phycisists or geologists. In the ultimate analysis, many people who are phycisists and geologists have examined the claims and found them to be wanting.
A simple to understand way to look at it without getting into the details might be this. All of the rocks in question show other signs of how they were formed that are at odds with Gentry's assertions. Do you find it more likely that all these other signs about the way the rocks formed are wrong or that Gentry's sole indication, at odds with the rest of geology, is wrong?
Does it "matter" whether God really created mankind perfect, sinless, and in paradise of perfection - or just let mud evolve through carnage and disease until mankind groped it's way out of a cave - to then be condemned to hell?
I think that your phrasing of the question falls into the fallacy of poisoning the well, but to get at the essence of your question, no. We are sinfull and in need of grace. The only way it "matters" is if you try and force an interpretation on the Bible which is at odds with reality. If you are willing to build that strawman, then you will have no trouble knocking it over.
****** What I really want to know is why YEers are so willing to get in bed with IDers but not TE. There is a great gulf between most IDers and YEers and only a hairs difference between ID and TE.
Many of the leading IDers, Behe and Dembski just to name drop a couple, have no problem with common descent including humans. This is a huge difference of opinion with YEers. Why would you, as a YEer, want to have anything to do with a group that largely accepts man's descent from microbes and that accepts that ancient age of the earth?
In my opinion there is only a subtle difference between my opinions and those of many IDers. I accept that God may have intervened in places where required to fulfill His will but I have yet to see any specific cases that would have required such intervention. IDers claim some specific cases in which they assert it was necessary for God to have intervened. For me to move from TE to ID would only require one case that I accepted that required supernatural intervention and woud be only a small shuffle of a step.
To get to ID from YE would be to drop adherence to the fundemental aspects of YE and would be a huge, huge step.
So why is it that YEers draw such a stark line between ID and TE? In reality that line is diffuse and hard to find.
(And yes I know that there are also some IDers who are also YE, but it does not seem to be a central tenet of ID in general.)
