And perhaps I missed Collin's statement on Christ's being an evolutionist, too. Where did he say that?
Indeed many advocates of intelligent design do not see any conflict between that belief and Darwinism but they also carefully avoid the identification of the intelligence with a god such as the Bible describes. I understand their reasons for so doing.
If there were no conflict between the teachings of Christianity and evolutionary theory or explanation for human origins then I would think there would be no need to develop something like NOMA to simply say, in a bit more polite terms, “mind your own business and stay out of ours”.
As an atheist, could you personally believe in an intelligent designer and be an atheist at the same time? It is that sort of dichotomy I see between Christianity and Darwinism, neo or oldo.
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“Perhaps I’m missing that part of Darwinism that allows or raises the possibility that other than entirely naturalist forces produces evolution.”
—Why would saying that evolution is a natural (or even entirely natural) process preclude design or purpose? To do so, Darwinism would have to somehow preclude design and purpose from the laws of nature, which of course it doesn’t. Darwinism says nothing about where the laws of nature came from, it’s merely a theory as to what occurs as a result of those laws. In this sense it’s no different than any other scientific theory.
“And perhaps I missed Collin’s statement on Christ’s being an evolutionist, too. Where did he say that?”
—Oh, that part I don’t know about. I’m guessing he’d say Jesus was, but I’m not sure if he ever mentioned that.
“Indeed many advocates of intelligent design do not see any conflict between that belief and Darwinism but they also carefully avoid the identification of the intelligence with a god such as the Bible describes. I understand their reasons for so doing.”
—Collins is very open and vocal that the God of the Bible is the Creator and used evolution. So are many other leading Darwinist scientists, such as Keith Miller, and Kenneth Miller (who like Collins wrote a book on the subject, “Finding Darwin’s God”).
“If there were no conflict between the teachings of Christianity and evolutionary theory or explanation for human origins then I would think there would be no need to develop something like NOMA to simply say, in a bit more polite terms, “mind your own business and stay out of ours”.”
—I think the idea of NOMA is silly myself. Just because someone is a scientist doesn’t mean that they have to bud out of religious matters; their religious thoughts are worth no more or less than anyone else’s. And if someone’s religious beliefs happens to include ideas that are contrary to what most scientists believe, such as that atoms don’t exist, or that the moon is cheese, I don’t think crying “NOMA” is going to convince them to remove those beliefs from their canon. NOMA wasn’t specifically created for the Creation/evolution controversy (although I’m sure it helped spur it) as the conflict (or perceived conflict) between religion and science hardly started with Darwin, it goes way way back before then.
“As an atheist, could you personally believe in an intelligent designer and be an atheist at the same time? It is that sort of dichotomy I see between Christianity and Darwinism, neo or oldo.”
—By definition, as an atheist I don’t believe in God, and so there is a dichotomy there, but someone doesn’t have to be an atheist to believe in Darwinism. In fact, from the polls, I wouldn’t be surprised if MOST Darwinists were not atheist.