Re: Tales of the unexpected

Fair play, Andrew (though one might ask, in that sense, is anything capable of precluding "a theological account of creation" and doesn’t this set up a dualism of it’s own?)

Withal, your earlier point was also well-made.

I would suggest that the ID argument might be more telling if an element of postmodern playfulness, of story-telling, of prophetic sign-posting, were introduced into the stolidly rationalist argumentation. By all means subvert the scientific worldview, but do so principally as an act of re-imagining creation rather than of scientific revisionism.

My only response to this is that unless the scientists are enabled to undertake scientific enquiry, they cannot provide the poets and story-tellers and philosophers with the subversive material with which to be playful…and by similar token, it may be too much to expect scientists excited by the (apparently philosophical) implications of their scientific insight to avoid rationalistic interpretations…

(And, whilst I am surely whistling in the wind in hoping for anything other than many more rounds of head-breaking debates in the mainstream cultural forum, am I also expecting too much to hope that within the OST forum we might hold differing view in tension, without needing to dismiss either ‘camp’ to a place outside our own ‘camp’, if you follow?)

On a less direct issue of debate, I wonder whether the natural and supernatural dualism to which you referred can be considered a biblical categorisation?

The sense I was trying to bring out earlier was that whilst we might not expect certain evidence, or rational "proof" of God to be provided by science (and, as you say, it is not needed for a theologically grounded worldview), surely it is reasonable (sic) and biblical to expect that the natural order, the creation, would provide evidence that demonstrates and points towards his attributes of power, order, purpose…telos…design?

In similar vein, without expecting too much time to be given to it, I would value your expanding what you ascert is a vital distinction between "creator and designer."

shalom! - john (eternalpurpose.org.uk)