User talk:Ed Poor/evolution

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I get along all right with Young Earth creationists, but in case my contributions have not shown it you should know that I support Intelligent Design (as a scientific critique of naturalistic evolution) and that I am an Old Earth creationist.

Evolutionists tend to lump together all three groups: Young Earthers, ID supporters and Old Earthers. This may be an effective political strategy, but it doesn't help anybody write an encyclopedia article. Encyclopedias should clarify distinctions where they exist, and not blur them. We will leave the blurring of distinctions to partisans.

I count among my direct lineage a scientist, a businessman and an engineer. I believed in science before coming to believe in religion, and I still do. However, I conceive of science as a process with unlimited scope - while Evolutionists like Eugenie Scott insist on limiting scientific inquiry to the physical world alone. That is, they equate "science" with physical science.

This leads to problems in psychology, e.g., questions like free will vs. determinism. If human beings are more than just a physical ("meat") body, and there is an eternal spiritual part (some call it the "soul", while St. Paul referred once to a "spiritual body") - then physical science has a limitation. Much of human emotion, thought and will (if not all of it) would be outside the naturalistic realm and thus outside of what Eugenie Scott et al. would call "science". But they confuse scientific *inquiry* and *methodology* with scope. It is possible to study human behavior, human motivation, human emotion and thinking, and the products of human thought such as music and literature and mathematics in a scientific way - provided one does not cripple oneself by refusing to extend the sphere of scientific inquiry to the non-physical realm.

Just as evolutionists suspect ID supporters of having a "wedge" motive (to open the science classroom to the supernatural creativity of God), many creationists suspect evolutionists of having an "anti-wedge" motive (to limit science to the pre-conceived conclusion that natural causes alone are sufficient to account for evolution). --Ed Poor ^Talk 11:38, 31 August 2007 (EDT)

This surely leaves scope for a further distinction, between Old Earth ID who believe in some sort of 'guided evolution' (if that is not a contradiction, I don't think so) and Old Earth ID who believe planet created 4 bn years ago or whenever, and all species created about 6,000 years ago as per Genesis. Or perhaps another in between accepting existence of dinosaurs at the generally accepted dating (i.e. more than 60m years ago) but humans being created by God in the Biblically accepted way. Possibly more distinctions besides. WilliamofOcham 11:12, 18 December 2007 (EST)

BTW I promised myself I would not get involved in any of this stuff, given my area of specialisation almost completely unrelated to evolution and astronomy. But I am intrigued nonetheless. WilliamofOcham 11:12, 18 December 2007 (EST)