The Origins Controversy and Religious Motivation
by Cowboy Bob Sorensen
Evolution News and Science Today is run by the Discovery Institute, the leading proponents of Intelligent Design. Despite what propagandists for universal common descent evolution claim, ID is not creation science in disguise.
An article on that site, "Are Proponents of ID Religiously Motivated, and Does It Matter?" inspired this one. The author, Dr. Jonathan McLatchie, made some excellent points in his response to a critic, especially noting that logical fallacies were utilized — which is typical of advocates of evolutionism.
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| Image by Cowboy Bob Sorensen, modified with FotoSketcher |
Dr. McLatchie pointed out that when the critic of ID claimed that they were religiously motivated, it was a genetic fallacy (also, it poisons the well). What is too often ignored is the fact that secularists are religiously motivated themselves, as many have religions without deities.
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| This screenshot from X (formerly Twitter) shows a religious attitude toward Dragon Ball Z |
Indeed, I have had many occasions where atheists and other evolutionists rejected creation science material, preferring "unbiased" sites — then they list sites they prefer that are biased toward naturalism and evolution! No, old son, nobody is unbiased. Also, anti-creationists and anti-Intelligent Design jaspers have a nasty habit of misrepresenting what we believe and teach. Jonathan wrote a separate article taking on what the critic said about irreducible complexity.
While ID people make many excellent arguments refuting evolution, there are serious limitations built in. One concern is that it is such a "big tent" movement that includes various religious or irreligious views, they only argue for vague theism at best. ID seems to take a neutral ground approach, which is essentially leaving the Creator out of it and acceding to the rules of secularists.
Far too often, when "neutral ground" is used so someone can make up their own mind about the evidence, people tend to become Deists. Those people are just as lost as any atheist. (I was surprised to learn that Dr. Günter Bechly, who held a Deist-type position, is now a Christian. He does not show any fondness for biblical creation science, but we can pray that he sees that light as well.) Neutral ground does not exist, but God does work and convince people through evidence.
Other biblical creation science organizations and I take a presuppositional apologetics approach. We presuppose that the Bible is true, which tells us that unbelievers know full well that God exists and evidence is all around them, but they suppress the truth (Romans 1:18-23) while presupposing matter is all that exists. We use intelligent design arguments (and have done so for years), but usually keep a framework of biblical presuppositional apologetics with the evidence.
The ID folks leave out biblical material even though there are professing Christians under the big tent. One thing that I find a mite disturbing is that we keep reading that unguided evolutionary processes do not work. True, very true, but I can't help but wonder if some of the ID people are implying theistic evolution: It works, but God used it to create. I hope not, as TE is wrong on many levels beyond the scope of this here article. But so as to not leave you hanging, a good start can be found here and here. Explore those sites and you'll learn.
If you want to carefully read the article that got me all het up, see "Are Proponents of ID Religiously Motivated, and Does It Matter?"