In reading your opening post, it occured to me that it all depends on what your definition of the word "IS' is.

Liberals have Global Warming, and Religious Conservatives have Intelligent Design.

Both are unproven fantasies designed to fit their ideology and mobilize their following.

Your equivalence is stunningly ill considered. The "mobilization" of intelligent design is narrowly applied and with the motivation of not having the group's understanding of the world locked out of the public square.

Global warming, by contrast, is used as cover for any number of left-wing policy preferences, most of which involve dictating behavior well beyond the inclusion of a particular point of view in the public education that children receive.

Justin,

I disagree that the two possibilities you listed are inherently opposites, specifically because John West holds them both to be simultaneously true. It's West's position that God intentionally directs the development of life towards a specific end, therefore God did not use evolution to created human life, because even God himself cannot know how evolution will turn out.

That's West placing evolution outside of the means that God is able to use to achieve His ends, not me placing a limit on the meaning of "directing".

Andrew,

Unless you're bringing in information from something else that West has written, I think you're attributing to him an extremity of position that doesn't accurately apply. His reference to evolution is (quoted from memory): "If evolution is an unplanned process." What you're attributing to him is "evolution must necessarily be an unplanned process and is therefore false."

It's the word "unplanned" that brings you and he within the range of semantics with "directs," inasmuch as your hypothetical about choosing the desired evolutionary course is clearly a planned process.

I haven't attributed any position on the truth or falsity of evolution to West. I'm saying that he's saying -- and I think I've got this right -- that if evolution is a random process, or more precisely, if evolution is driven by a random processes, then God is somehow diminished.

But even more precisely, what West is saying is that if evolution appears from our perspective in the universe to be driven by a random process, then God is somehow diminished. That assumes that our human perspective can be as wide as that of an omnipotent God, which is not a good assumption.

But you're playing with the idea of randomness. West emphasized a particular (albeit perhaps dominant) vision of evolution as "an unplanned process." He describes the "Darwinian worldview" as one in which "even God himself cannot know how evolution will turn out." That's the strain of evolutionism against which he is arguing.

To argue against him, you presented the possibility that (1) evolution is planned [by modeling] and (2) God knows exactly how it will turn out. Where's the difference?

I think you let CC off the hook too easily, Justin. The parallels between Darwinism and Global Warming science are many, and easily proven. In both cases, powerful establishment organs (i.e. NCSE, IPCC) have been formed to prevail in the political argument that the science has spawned. In both cases, the skeptics are mocked and vilified while their real arguments get ducked. In both cases, mainstream media are overwhelmingly decided on one side of an unresolved (and in the case of "origins", scientifically unresolvable) issue. As far as I am concerned, anyone who watches the animations of messenger RNA transcription, and says "oh yeah, natural selection can explain that" is a powerfully deluded individual, bordering on the fool.

My point is that the best scientific description of the creation of life that we may ever be able to come up with -- where "scientific" means that which is based on observable and repeatable phenomena, the realm that science is limited to -- may appear from the perspective of mere mortals to be driven by random processes. If so, that description imposes no limitations on God. We don't have to add a disclaimer to the biology, just like we don't have to add a disclaimer to the physical theory of gravity adding that God can make objects that normally attract repel, lest God be viewed as less powerful than gravity.

And just to be clear about what I'm not arguing: Scientists and others who think they can draw moral conclusions based on the fact that the concept of randomness is useful for describing the processes they study in their fields aren't making any contribution to science, and usually precious little to philosophy, theology or any other.

And furthermore, upon re-reading the badly constructed 2nd paragraph of my last comment, I feel I need to be clear about what I'm being clear that I'm not arguing.

I am saying, definitively, that scientists and others who think they can draw moral conclusions based on the fact that the concept of randomness is useful for describing the physical processes they study in their fields aren't making any contribution to science, and usually precious little to philosophy, theology or any other field.