Still Looking for Ken Miller's God

Published way back in 1999, Ken Miller's book "Finding Darwins God" was a major event in the Evolution/Creation/Intelligent Design battles. A friend loaned me a copy and I finished it today. A few observations:

Miller has an absolute commitment to naturalism as essential to science. And he is opaque to that being a problem for many theists who believe in a God who is outside of nature. He writes: "Presented modestly and accurately, evolution is a simple scientific idea. It claims only that material causes, the laws of physics and chemistry as played out in living things, are sufficient to account for the history and complexity of life. If evolution is neither more nor less than this simple scientific idea, then why does it engender such hostility?" (167)

The Second Punch Always Draws the Flag

We've seen it countless times in sports. Player 1 provokes player 2, probably several times during the course of a game with verbal jabs or some illegal form of holding, punching, grabbing, all just out of the sight of the official. Then player 2 in frustration retaliates with a push or a punch and the whistle blows. Player 2 is penalized, ejected, suspended while player 1 gets away with no penalty. We all agree player 2 should have kept his cool. But we wish player 1 would be held accountable.

I wonder if we don't see a similar scenario in the theological debates between the "conservatives" and the "progressives" that keep bubbling to the surface in news reports, the latest being the flap over Rob Bell's new book "Love Wins".