Daily Archives: 01/12/2011

One argument often heard against Intelligent Design is that allowing it into science would put pressure on people to believe in God, to the detriment of faith. In its most extreme expression, one blogger said that a scientific proof of God would put our generation at an unfair advantage over all the previous generations, who did not have that proof.

One of the things one often finds in discussion with theistic evolutionists, in particular, is an extension of the practical use of methodological naturalism to a, usually vaguely expressed, principle that God’s presence ought not to be detectable in nature. I exclude here those heterodox ideas of a God who doesn’t actually create, but leaves a quasi-sentient universe “free” to experiment with evolution, and so on. No, the people I’m talking about are orthodox (especially Bible-respecting) Christians who believe God is “behind” creation, but who hold that on principle one is unlikely to detect that fact through science.