This attack on ID has two flaws, which are corrected by the following considerations: (1) ID is not theology, it is science, and should not evaluated as such. (2) The measure of faith is not whether it can be proven. Faith is the inverse of faithfulness. It is considering something or someone to be faithful, worth investing one's effort, life, or resources in. Jesus declared himself to be "The Truth" and challenged his followers to "consider the cost". This is no blind leap; it is a calculated decision. We are to "love the Lord our God ... with all our mind" -- not check our minds at the door when entering into faith.
Jeff A. Stucker | 11.21.05 - 10:14 am | #

To say that faith is belief without evidence is to fall for the two-story fallacy written about by Schaeffer and Pearcey. It's also tantamount to saying that faith is belief without thinking; or in other words, it's stupidity.

The best analogy to faith I can think of is that between two people. I have faith that my wife will act in a certain way because I have seen her consistently do so, and I understand much of her character. Those of us who have faith in God have the evidence of what he's done in the past--in the Bible, in church history, and in our lives--and we understand his character and believe he will remain consistent. We also believe that extends to statements about other works of his in the past, such as creation.
Tom Gilson | Homepage | 11.21.05 - 11:01 am | #

Nice, Jeff!

David, you're becoming one of my favorite theologians -- no offense! (heh)

We started going through _The Case for a Creator_ (Strobel) back in September for our Discipleship group. There was a lot of resistance at first, "We know that science is always changing, so it's dangerous to 'hook our wagon' to it." Now that we've completed Chapter 9 (DNA and Information), everybody is finally starting to grasp that exploring God's world, and discovering 'how God works' with the tools of science is a great way to worship the Creator!

It's been fun.
havoc | Homepage | 11.21.05 - 11:06 am | #

Mr. Heddle,
ID may in fact be bad theology in that it seems to posit that one can scientifically prove God. When that doesn't happen, it becomes a serious problem for the theist who ascribed to it.

Mr. Stucker,
ID is a funny science, seeing as how it presents no experiments and no tests, nor does it posit any mechanisms, timetables, etc. Plus, when the proponents give you material like the Wedge document which explicitly states its religious purpose, well only the truly faithful can continue to claim it is science with a straight face.
GCT | 11.21.05 - 2:33 pm | #

David. Good article. If i may add one more thing, and that is that these comments ignore the issue that everyone has to have faith in something. For atheistic evolutionists, they seem to have alot of faith that their brains, although developed unguided from mutated monkey brains, can reason properly and apprehend truth.
Alan Grey | Homepage | 11.22.05 - 1:10 am | #

Mr. Grey, that is completely wrong. If one does not accept the presence of the supernatural, that is a lack of faith, or a rejection of faith. It is not a positive assertion of faith.
GCT | 11.22.05 - 6:27 am | #

ID may in fact be bad theology in that it seems to posit that one can scientifically prove God.

GCT, why would that be bad theology? If God exists and science uncovers truth, that truth will be consistent with God's existence.

I believe Mr. Grey was using a definition of similar to this one from Answers.com:

# Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence
Randy | Homepage | 11.22.05 - 2:45 pm | #

David,

I agree that "faith" as in "for by grace you have been saved through faith" is not blind faith at all. What you are leaving out theologically in your post is that such faith has as its source God's gracious agency. Indeed, faith graciously given and sustained by God is not blind, but neither is it in anyway dependent on the ability of humans to provide material evidence for what that faith provides, a relationship of righteousness before God for Christ's sake. Theologically speaking, the objectives of IDism are neither necessary nor sufficient for the source and sustainance of faith.

Your statement "To think that science can be detrimental to faith is to imagine that God’s creation is orthogonal to God’s plan of redemption." may well be theologically valid to the extent that faith (graciously given) allow's one to experience and know one's self as part of God's creation. However, that says nothing about the (in)ability (or need for) of humans, by means of material observation of the universe, to derive the Creator's existence, agency or gracious relationship with the creation.

Cheers,

Shaggy
Shaggy Maniac | 11.22.05 - 3:18 pm | #

Randy, science in incapable of proving God's existence. If the IDers say that they can prove it and then fail to, well then it's not a good theological strategy is it?
GCT | 11.22.05 - 3:34 pm | #

Shaggy, As I think I've said numerous times, ID is not about proving God. It's about whether or not God left behind evidence of His creation. If ID were falsified, I would still believe in God.
David Heddle | Homepage | 11.22.05 - 5:44 pm | #

The problem that Ives, and many others (including GCT in his response to Mr Grey) is a failure to adequately think through what faith might be. The implicit assumption is that faith, when in regard to relgious belief, is "blind, whereas other sorts of faith, such as faith in metaphysical naturalism are not blind or are not faith at all.

It is very poor philosophy to define something one way in one circumstance and another way in another.

Most people think epistemology (how we know we know things) is simple and obvious; and they are wrong.

There is not the space here to argue the details of competing epistemological accounts of knowledge; but I can say that faith is a key element of knowledge in almost any epistemology that is internally coherant.

As an example, logical positivism was developed to rule out metaphysics from knowledge. However the very tenet it tried to eliminate formed its foundation, the statement that metaphysical statements cannot be verified therefore they cannot be knowledge. Upon reflection it should be clear that the above statement contains it's own refutation, much like the relatvist statement "there is no absolute truth".

In the end all we know is built up from our metaphysical assumptions, our metaphysical assumptions are not available to direct evidence and are therefore not scientifically assessable. Thus all our knowledge is based on an act of "faith" in certain metaphysical assumptions.

Thus we must be rigorous in how we define faith, what counts as faith, and what kinds of faith there are. The common failing seen in the arguments of people like Ives is a misunderstanding of knowledge, faith, belief, justification and warrent to name but a few.

Too often people will argue past each other, both arguing from different understandings of the same word, as I have seen happen here on a number of occasions. If we are going to enter this debate people on both sides need to be up front about their metaphysical assumptions, to wear them on their sleeves as it were. Or at least be willing to define them if asked.

Then we might actually make progress rather than simply calling each other names based on flawed understandings of each others metaphysics.
matt | Homepage | 11.22.05 - 9:33 pm | #

Hi David,

If ID is not about proving God and is also not science, what really is it? What purpose does it serve? What problem does it address?

The implication of your post seems to be that it is a search for evidence in the material universe to supplement the faith (not "blind" but from God) based relationship of creation and Creator. This seems theologically problematic for at least two reasons. One, it presumes one to know something about the nature of God's agency in acting as Creator that goes far beyond the faith-based creation/Creator relationship. Two, it implies that the faith that God graciously gives is not sufficient and in need of support by the clever inferential and reasoning abilities of the IDist.

God may well reveal God's self as Creator in, with and under the material universe through the vehicle of faith graciously given (as analogously God may do in, with and under the material elements of the sacraments). But the efficacy of God's doing so is no more supported or understood by the efforts of IDists than would the efficacy of the sacraments be somehow better supported or understood by the scientific examination of water, bread, and wine.

Cheers,

Shaggy
Shaggy Maniac | 11.23.05 - 11:00 am | #

Shaggy,

ID does not address any problem. It is the hypothesis that God left behind evidence of His creation.

"One, it presumes one to know something about the nature of God's agency in acting as Creator that goes far beyond the faith-based creation/Creator relationship."

I don't what you mean. But what it presumes is that God is the creator, therefore His creation will reveal something about Him. Maybe ID is part of that general revelation, maybe not.

"Two, it implies that the faith that God graciously gives is not sufficient and in need of support by the clever inferential and reasoning abilities of the IDist."

No, it doesn't. If ID falters, I'll still believe in God. Many believe in God with a saving faith while knowing nothing about ID or rejecting ID.

(in all these comments I mean cosmological ID)
David Heddle | Homepage | 11.23.05 - 3:18 pm | #

David, excellent points. I hadn't come up on this "faith must be blind" argument until I read it in your blog. But I'm always on the alert for arguments we may be confronted with so that I can discuss them with my Sunday school class and that we can be ready when approached with arguments like these. Christianity is a religion for intelligent and thinking people. Thanks for helping us think!! Especially those of us who didn't major in a science in college.
Tom | 11.26.05 - 1:44 pm | #

Matt,
I read Mr. Grey's intent as to be the old argument that "Atheists have to have faith in SOMETHING, so really they aren't any different from one who believes in God." My intent was to say that rejection of God does not constitute faith in non-God.

Depending on how you define "faith" we may not have a disagreement. I would, however, say that your definition is so broad as to not be at all useful. If I look at an object and I perceive it as red, then 100 other people perceive it as red, I can be pretty justified in thinking that it is really red. I can do tests on the material and figure out that it scatters light in the red part of the spectrum, which is what my eyes are picking up. I can do all of this in a way that other people can re-create and get the same results. Are you calling that faith? Perhaps it is a measure of faith to believe that reality is real and all the independent verification is real and that we aren't just somebody's dream, but that so dilutes the word as to make it useless.
GCT | 11.28.05 - 8:06 am | #

David wrote:

"ID does not address any problem. It is the hypothesis that God left behind evidence of His creation."

Another way of saying that "ID does not address any problem" is to say "ID does not answer any question"; it is clear from your statement that it is no hypothesis in any meaningful sense, but is rather an a priori assumption, as you state "But what it presumes is that God is the creator". So clearly ID is an extension of a theology if it is anything at all.

Here is the theological flaw that you said you didn't understand..."therefore His creation will reveal something about Him." On what basis do you make this assumption? Why should we assume that 1) the creator left fingerprints behind and 2) that creatures (as opposed to the Creator) would be able to discern them if they existed? Are you not really saying that to "get" ID is to receive revelation, i.e. a product of divinely given faith?

Cheers,

Shaggy
Shaggy Maniac | 11.28.05 - 11:14 am | #

I agree with Shaggy. I'll also add that it is an exercise is begging the question.
GCT | 11.28.05 - 11:50 am | #

It is not clear that it is a meaningless hypothesis. On the contrary, I would assume that even the atheist would find the hypothesis that God left behind evidence to be meaningful.

On what basis do I make the assumption? Romans 1:20, for starters.

Yes I am really saying that cosmological ID is part of general revelation. Just like looking at the stars, or at other natural beauty, just with more math.
David Heddle | Homepage | 11.28.05 - 12:04 pm | #

"It is not clear that it is a meaningless hypothesis. On the contrary, I would assume that even the atheist would find the hypothesis that God left behind evidence to be meaningful."

This might be true if it were really an hypothesis that could be falsified, but clearly your acknowledgement that it is a part of revelation makes it not so. What ID might better be labeled is a confession of faith. I'm not sure how that would be meaningful to an atheist.

Theologically, I still find it foolish (to use a term from the context of the passage you cited) to presume that scientifically produced knowledge is somehow any more effective as a vehicle of revelation than a walk in the woods or glance at the stars that were available to the pre-scientific subjects and objects of Paul's writing, who presumably, were recipients of God's action of revelation.

As a confession of faith, ID may be fine and dandy so long as it does not claim that any of its meaning or truthfulness derives from the discoveries of science apart from the revelatory agency of the Creator.

Cheers,

Shaggy
Shaggy Maniac | 11.28.05 - 3:44 pm | #