Any Intelligent Designists in this forum?

Common descent is my main problem with ToE in general. I find the IR argument very compelling. I don't quite understand how Behe can argue IR and still consider common descent. It seems to me that the two are not compatible.

Yeah, IC... not sure where IR came from. Must be thinking about work too much.

Yes, it may be that many hold to a form of "progressive creation" in which life did appear in a series of sequences over billions of years with this "rapid infusion of genetic material", resulting in what the naturalist would see as puncuated equilibrium, I suppose.

But think about that for a minute. That is not proposing any new special creation, but working within existing species to make new species with this new genetic material. Kind of like force-fed evolution. We would still see a progression from fish to mammals, for example, without a new creature created out of nothing. The only difference is that God would infuse into the earlier species what was necessary to cause the changes that make up the progression.

That is still evolution from a common ancestor, or at least ancestors (since we don't know how God started the ball rolling), if you ask me, just "God-guided" evolution. And this is very much what TE's say, it is just that most of us are willing to accept a God powerful enough to have built in all these processes at the very beginning so that it happens pretty much on its own from there on out. But I have no problem with the idea that God intervened all the time, either. The point is that this ID theory still fits with the evidence we have and does not contradict Scripture, either. It is only a distinction of what is happening "behind the scenes" and the way in which God used the evolutionary process.

_Paladin_ said:

Well in that sense, no matter how evolution occurred it would not contradict scripture unless you hold to strict yecism.

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Exactly.

Vance said:

But think about that for a minute. That is not proposing any new special creation, but working within existing species to make new species with this new genetic material. Kind of like force-fed evolution. We would still see a progression from fish to mammals, for example, without a new creature created out of nothing. The only difference is that God would infuse into the earlier species what was necessary to cause the changes that make up the progression.

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Would something like this really need any type of selection (natural or otherwise)?

Remus said:

Would something like this really need any type of selection (natural or otherwise)?

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Well, since we know that natural selection occurs and effects genetics (all agree this is observable), this approach could say that after God infused the creatures with the new genetic material necessary to create the major changes, He let the rest of the evolutionary process we observe today, including natural selection, work to create diversity within the (I can't believe I am about to say this) "Kind".

Someone like Hugh Ross, a progressive Creationist, believes that the gaps in the fossil record (explained by puncuated equilibrium by the ToE today) would be where God stepped in and did some special creations of new species. This ID approach seems to be another attempt to work WITH the fossil record, and explain the gap with a rapid infusion of genetic material rather than popping new species into existence out of nothing. Kind of a God-induced PE, followed by a period of gradualism for that particular population group.

Remember that evolution, even with PE, does not say that these more rapid changes happened to all species at given points in history, but that they occured within each population group at various times, such that at any given time, many population groups would be experiencing a period of puncuated equilibrium while others were in a more gradualism stage (all due to the pressures to change being applied by their environment). So, with this God-infused PE, it would also be happening all the time somewhere, with all population groups experiencing it at various times.

This approach would seem to address a lot of the difficulties that Creationists have with evolution: naturalism, randomness, gaps in the fossil record, IC, the need for additional information, etc, while still agreeing generally with the evidence we have for both an old earth and with the fossil record.

Not bad, really. I just don't see the need to go there since I accept that God could have set it up from the beginning to do the very same thing on its own.

Vance said:

I just don't see the need to go there

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Well, at least we agree on this part. This all seems like too much effort.

Remus said:

Well, at least we agree on this part. This all seems like too much effort.

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Yes, the whole thing is a bit complicated as a process, no matter how you look at it, even if you maintain a strict "special creation of all at once basically as we see it now" approach.

But we have this fossil record and evidence of an old earth, and here we have three potential explanations (not the only three, but good enough for discussion), which seek to explain the evidence as we have it. All three would explain most of the evidence the same way, the genetics, the biogeography issues, the morphology and cladistics, etc. All would agree that these evidences are explained by the development of species over time. The three are VERY different explanations, however, when it comes to how that development occured and their explanation of the gaps in the fossil record are interesting:

1. The theory of evolution says punctuated equilibrium.

2. The progressive creationists (ie Hugh Ross, etc) say new special creations along the way.

3. The ID'ists seem to be also be saying (at least some of them) that God took special actions along the way, but that it was in the form of the genetic information needed to make the "macro" changes happen.

The TE's would most often say it was a combination of 1 and 3: God built the entire process so that it would all play out as He intended, with new genentic processes happening as needed, etc. Many would also accept a degree of randomness in the process, with God allowing many things to happen as they naturally would according to the processes and laws of nature He established, just as He does now with natural processes. Complete control and foreknowledge, of course, but still natural processes.

there is an anti-ID essay at:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/4/27/03541/2520

that is getting a lot of discussion online.
worthwhile the time to read.
and i don't think i've seen it referred to here yet.

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