Here is a post from Jerry Coyne’s blog: http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/07/17/selective-creationists/. (H/T Retha from Christian Rethinker)
Coyne is a radical atheist and evolutionist. And he is also a very prominent biologist.
He writes:
Only a tad more than one in four teachers really accepts evolution as scientists conceive of it: a naturalistic process undirected by divine beings. Nearly one in two teachers thinks that humans evolved but that God guided the process.
Can we count those 48% of “guided-by-Godders” 0n our side? I agree with P. Z.: the answer is NO. Yes, they do accept that our species changed genetically over time, but they see God as having pulled the strings. That’s not the way evolution works. The graph labels these 48% as believers in intelligent design, and that’s exactly what they are, for they see God as nudging human evolution toward some preconceived goal. We’re designed. These people are creationists: selective creationists.
To count them as allies means we make company with those who accept evolution in a superficial sense but reject it in the deepest sense. After all, the big revolution in thought wrought by Darwin was the recognition that the appearance of design—thought for centuries to be proof of God—could stem from purely natural processes. When we cede human evolution to God, then, we abandon that revolution. That’s why I see selective creationists like Kenneth Miller, Karl Giberson and Francis Collins as parting company with modern biological thought.
Just to let you know, Ken Miller and Francis Collins do not think that science can perform experiments and detect that an intelligent cause is the best explanation for some effect in nature. They are committed to explaining every effect in nature as the result of natural processes, before they ever sit down in front of a microscope to look and see. That is their faith commitment – naturalism. I.e. – God didn’t do anything in nature that we can know about using objective measuring.
Theistic evolution versus atheism
Who was the foremost evangelical proponent of theistic evolution? Well, one of them was Howard Van Till of Calvin College. Why do I say “was”? Take a look at this event he did for a FREETHOUGHT group a while back.
Excerpt:
FROM CALVINISM TO FREETHOUGHT: The Road Less Traveled
by Howard J. Van TillProfessor of Physics and Astronomy, Emeritus
Calvin College
Presented 5/24/2006 for the Freethought Association of West Michigan
Lightly edited 5/26/2006Precis: Born into a Calvinist family, shaped by a Calvinist catechism training, educated in the Calvinist private school system, and nurtured by a community that prized its Calvinist systematic theology, I was a Calvinist through and through. For 31 years my
teaching career was deeply rooted in the Calvinism I had inherited from my community.During most of that time it was a fruitful and satisfying experience. Nonetheless, stimulated in part by the manner in which some members of that community responded to my efforts to practice what I had learned from my best teachers, I eventually felt the need to extend my intellectual exploration into philosophical territories far outside the one provided by Calvinism. Did I complete the lengthy journey from Calvinism to Freethought? The listener will be the judge.
Freethought is atheism, by the way.
I think that either God can interfere or he can’t. Theistic evolutionists and atheists think that he can’t intervene – at least not in a way that is independent of “faith” – by which they mean blind belief ungrounded by evidence. What theistic evolutionists are really saying is that God interferes where we can’t test in a lab (the resurrection), and he doesn’t interfere in the area that they can test in a lab (science). This allows them to appease their wives and churches with pronunciations of orthodox beliefs (of course I believe in miracles, honey), and also to appease their scientific colleagues (God didn’t do anything that we can know objectively). Well. Isn’t that convenient for them AND THEIR CAREERS as scientists?
WINTERY KNIGHT 
This kind of “faith interference” is patronizing, demeaning, and I would venture at times dishonest.
LikeLike
It’s like they think that claims about God are on a different footing than claims of fact. They would never mark physics tests on the basis of wanting to avoid other people with wrong answers, but they pussy-foot around religious claims.
LikeLike
By Coyne’s comments it seems that TE (who want parts of both sides) end up with neither.
LikeLike
One problem with the first article cited here is where the author says, “That’s not the way evolution works.” He’s arguing from his own philosophy of science, not from science itself. He goes on to say, “When we cede human evolution to God, then, we abandon [Darwin’s]revolution. That’s why I see selective creationists like Kenneth Miller, Karl Giberson and Francis Collins as parting company with modern biological thought.”
See what I mean? He’s pushing a philosophy here, not a science. He should have said “parting company with materialism.”
LikeLike
But this is what the proponents of evolution mean by evolution. They mean delusion-free evolution.
Theistic evolutionists put an unnecessary unicorn to ride on top of a fully naturalistic theory, which they accept. They just add the unicorn on to please faith-based people so that they are not alarmed about their children learning that the universe can be explained without God. The actual cash value of “God” in lab experiments is ZERO. Theistic evolutionists and Darwinian atheists agree on that much.
LikeLike
I think you’re making a crucial mistake here, Wintery Knight.
For one thing you say: “The actual cash value of “God” in lab experiments is ZERO. Theistic evolutionists and Darwinian atheists agree on that much.”
Well, the problem is that creationists would also agree. Even the creationists who have their own journals – to my knowledge – will never say “there, totally scientific proof that God intervened in my lab experiment”. The best you can get are, say.. studies on the effectiveness of prayer on healing. And there, the best you can hope for is an improvement in healing – you do not get “God” in your laboratory.
“Theistic atheists and non-theistic atheists agree that the lab and the fossils show no evidence of intelligent causation. Oh, I mean theistic evolutionists not theistic atheists.”
Some do, and those who take that rack are ridiculous. But some simply thing that science is utterly incapable of deciding on the question – which means that, to them, science is incapable of discerning God ‘in the lab or the fossils’, *even if God played such a role*.
LikeLike
You need to go out and buy Stephen C. Meyer’s “Signature in the Cell” and read it. You can do experiments in the lab, and you can infer to intelligent causes as the best explanation.
LikeLike
You can infer to “intelligent causes” by Meyer’s lights – but not God specifically. Every leading ID proponent I’m aware of admits this, from Behe to Dembski. In fact Dembski explicitly says that the “responsible agent” for ID can be anything from aliens to impersonal telic processes to computer simulating a universe, etc. Again: Even according to both creationists and ID proponents, you can’t find God in the laboratory. Expecting to is like expecting to pick up God on radar.
And again – there are TEs who believe that God guided evolution, and that therefore both the evolutionary processes and the fossils ultimately are due to “intelligent causes”. Now, I agree that some TEs don’t agree with this – and those are clearly ones with a big problem. But the ones who do agree with this would simply say that the question of “intelligent causation” of this sort is not the sort that science can either prove *or* disprove – it’s a question of metaphysics and philosophy. Not all reason comes from science, of course.
LikeLike
This a good comment and I agree with you and stand corrected.
LikeLike
Melissa, the real question is what do we see in the lab experiments and in the fossil records. Theistic atheists and non-theistic atheists agree that the lab and the fossils show no evidence of intelligent causation. Oh, I mean theistic evolutionists not theistic atheists.
LikeLike
Evolution is impossible without God says Christian Philosopher Alvin Plantinga. See http://www.booksandculture.com/articles/2008/julaug/11.37.html . Plantinga also debated Dennett on the subject which one can look up on youtube.
There are many different views of evolution such as ID Michael Behe who denies natural selection but believes evolution occurred. Evolutionary Creationist Denis Lamoureux says, “Evolutionary creation claims that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit created the universe and life through an ordained, sustained, and design-reflecting evolutionary process. This view of origins
fully embraces both the religious beliefs of biblical Christianity and the scientific theories of cosmological, geological, and biological evolution. It contends that the Creator established and maintains the laws of nature, including the mechanisms of a teleological evolution. In other words,
evolution is a planned and purpose driven natural process.”
Also one can find former YEC and OEC who are now atheists so your Van Till example only shows that people change worldviews.
LikeLike
Plantinga means that God REALLY DID SOMETHING DETECTABLE. He is therefore not a TE.
Lamoureux and P.Z. Myers and Jerry Coyne agree on everything that can be observed in scientific experiements – they both think that God did nothing detectable apart from wishing and hoping. In that sense, Lamoureux is a functional atheist, with some unsubtantiated God blah-blah-blah on the side. Probably to deflect criticism a Bible-believing mother-in-law and to get respect from his atheist friends at work. Sorry, but have you seen the movie Expelled? This is reality.
Behe thinks that the intelligent actions are detectable by science. He is not a TE.
Please name a YEC or OEC who is now an atheist on the caliber of Van Till.
LikeLike
The problem that Lamoureux and others have with the ID teaching of God specially creating creatures at various gaps in history. As the quotation I gave from Lamoureux shows they do see design and purpose in an evolutionary creation. There are many different ways to understand evolution. The great christian scientist Stanley Jaki held to evolution but denied Darwinian evolution. Do you not realize that there are many different theories of evolution?
I don’t know what popularity has to do with a person converting to another worldview but Bart Ehrman and atheist apologist Ed Babinski both grew up inerrantist and YEC who no longer hold to either view.
LikeLike
Yes, Lamoureux has the same objections to God acting in nature as atheists do. He has to – or his atheist friends would think less of him. In addition to having a FULLY MATERIALISTIC VIEW OF NATURE, he just has some additional untestable personal preferences where he uses Christian language to describe his personal feelings and tastes. These personal feelings and tastes ARE NOT DETECTABLE USING SCIENCE. They are just his fashionable delusions that he expresses in order to be accepted by a gullible Christian community. He is basically claiming belief in unicorns to appease the Church of unicorns, and then he goes to work and tells his science colleagues that there are no unicorns because science cannot discover them, and of course he would be happy to engage in witch hunts against intelligent design people. He would love to out them and speak against them. Because he agrees with atheists that God doesn’t DO ANYTHING IN NATURE THAT WE CAN DETECT.
Lamoureux is expressing his favorite flavor of ice cream when he talks about God. He is expressing his subjective delusions that have no objective reality out there in the real world that we can know.
LikeLike
Starting with the standard three:
1. Change over time.
2. Micro-evolution.
3. Neo-Darwinian synthesis.
What possible others are there? If TE, it requires an explanation to circumvent an apparent (if not actual) contradiction. It seems to me TE confuses the distinction between agent causation and event causation, and maintaining the laws of nature differs from designing or even intervening.
LikeLike
They don’t think that an agent did anything that can be detected in an objective way. They think belief in God is literally the epistemological equivalent to belief in Santa Claus. That you just say the words “Santa is real TO ME” and then you just don’t care that all the physical evidence denies that Santa Claus does anything. I.e. – what actually happens is that the parents put the gifts under the tree. What a theistic evolutionist would say is that Santa Claus puts gifts under the tree, but what we can actually see with our own eyes is parents putting gifts under the tree.
LikeLike
Hi Joe, I’m an agnostic, not an atheist:
Agnosticism: Reasons to Leave Christianity
by Edward T. Babinski
http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/religion/leave_christianity.html
Edward T. Babinski: If It Wasn’t for Agnosticism, I Wouldn’t Know What to Believe!
http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/leaving_the_fold/babinski_agnosticism.html
LikeLike
You make many assertions Wintry but nothing backing your assertions up.
Have you read Plantinga’s paper or listened to his lecture or debate on evolution? He argues that evolution is proof of God’s existence and that it disproves atheistic naturalism. Are you aware that there are other theories of evolution other than Darwinian evolution?
I think you fail to make the distinction between philosophical presuppositions and the findings of science. Richard Dawkins even admits to design when he says,”It is as if the human brain were specifically designed [by God] to UNDERSTAND
Darwinism [atheistic evolution], and find it hard to believe.” Dawkins naturalistic/materialistic presuppositions will not allow him to see the evidence of God in the evolutionary process. On the other hand Lamoureux, because of his presuppositions sees design in an evolving creation, when critiques Philip Johnson he says,”To summarize, after Johnson incisively exposes the imposition of scientism on certain sectors of society, and then correctly underlines the powerful reality of
intelligent design reflected in nature, he gives the impression that Christians are left with only one option–the acceptance of his anti-evolutionary biology. However, it is
logically possible that all the design in the universe, which so powerfully testifies to
the work of a Creator, could have come about through a God ordained and sustained
evolutionary process–ie, a teleological evolution. In other words, the Father, the
Son and the Holy Spirit could well have employed physical laws and processes to
create all the glorious life seen today in a manner similar to when God used physical
laws and processes to craft us in our mother’s wombs.”
I think your quotation from Jerry Coyne above is an example of the evolutionary creation position not being a very popular one among Lamoureux’s fellow biologists.
LikeLike
Please listen to the following debate with a TE:
https://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2010/10/25/radio-debate-between-michael-behe-and-keith-fox-on-intelligent-design/
And quote me where the TE says that God did anything detectable by science. You won’t find it. Because theistic evolution is functional atheism. God DIDN’T DO ANYTHING that science can detect. When a theistic evolutionist explains how the world works, they give the exact same speech as atheists do, appealing only to time, matter and chance, and then at the end they say, “praise be to the pink unicorn”. That’s theistic evolution. God doesn’t DO ANYTHING IN THEISTIC EVOLUTION THAT CAN BE DETECTED SCIENTIFICALLY.
OR link a peer-reviewed paper by a TE that says that we can infer an intelligent cause from scientific discoveries acting in time subsequent to the Big Bang.
Lamoureux sees design in nature the same way as a child sees santa handing out gifts. It’s not an inference based on scientific evidence, it’s a sop to the church that he has blind faith in the same things they do. But what actually happens is that parents put the gifts. And what actually happens in Lamoureux’s view is that GOD DOESN’T DO ANYTHING THAT SCIENCE CAN DETECT – MATTER IN MOTION DOES EVERYTHING.
Lamoureux and the atheists are one on what actually happens. Lamoureux just adds some subjective God-jibba-jabba to sound like a Christian to people who think Christianity isn’t actually true. I am not interested in Lamoureux unfounded beliefs. I want to know what happens when we go in the lab or the fossil record and look for evidence of intelligent causes. Did God do anything? Lamoureux, TEs and Richard Dawkins agree – GOD DID NOTHING IN NATURE. Theistic evolution and atheism are identical on the matter of scientific evidence.
LikeLike
I beleive that TE’s would agree that the fact there is something rather than nothing shows a “supernatural” act of God.
Actually, in a sense, Knight, you sound more like a Deist when you imply that natural law and processes are not the hand of God acting. you might be making a false distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ that isn’t real. If the distinction is indeed false, then this isn’t really a big issue as I see it. Science merely understands the work of God from a theist point of view, or the purely material process to an atheist.
What about the earth revolving around the sun? Is this a God-less process of nature goverened by laws he set up? Can the science of physics detect God in this process? Or is it his hand guiding the whole thing? If so should God, show up in the analysis that explains how it works?
LikeLike
I have already listened to the Behe London tour.I thought both Behe and Fox did a very poor job in the discussion. I think you are right about Fox denying design but where has Lamoureux said something like that?(Quotation please)Are you aware that there are various theories of evolution? As I quoted above, even Dawkins sees design in the evolutionary process. The difference between ID and an evolutionary creation approach is not whether one sees design in the creation or not but whether God brought things about by evolution or whether He appears at random times in history to create a fully developed creature instantaneously. The main thing the ID movement has challenged is natural selection and not evolution. There are many atheist scientists questioning natural selection as well. Most of the debate is not over design or no design but HOW GOD HAS BROUGHT THE DESIGN AS SEEN IN HIS CREATION ABOUT.
LikeLike
“Darwin’s theory has to be sifted carefully, because it’s actually a mixture of several, unrelated, entirely separate ideas: random mutation, natural selection, and common descent”.
“Evolution from a common ancestor, via changes in DNA, is VERY well supported. It may or may not be random.”- Michael Behe
From “The Edge of Evolution” by Michael Behe.
LikeLike
For “a mixture of several, unrelated, entirely separate ideas”, read “a synthesis of several connected ideas”.
LikeLike