Talk:Theistic evolution/old

I've now archived this page. Please don't add new comments here. Please add them to Talk:Theistic evolution. --G Rutter 18:06, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Why this page has been reinstated from a redirect?
In regards to TE and EC, TE is actually the more commonly accepted term when discussing evolutionists who are also theists (quick Google check on the two phrases will show this). Furthermore, Evolutionary Creationism is itself a biased term that many of us TEs would rather disassociate ourselves from. In most C vs. E discussions, you'll find in the scientific discussions, TEs side with non-theistic evolutionists vs. the rest of the Creationists, so it is very odd to have us grouped on the Creationist side, hence our general dissociation from the Creationist group.

To put it in other words, TEs and other Creationists differ both theologically and scientifically, while TEs and non-TEs only differ theologically for all intents and purposes.

Furthermore, a lot of us feel there is a difference between Creation and CreationISM. Generally, us TEs will probably accept the following statement: We believe in Creation, we reject Creationism, and we accept evolution. If any other TE/ECs feel differently, feel free to respond.

Finally, this whole redirect was done two years ago by the creator of the Evolutionary Creationism article, without adequate discussion, and it was simply taken for granted. I have tried to promote discussion of this on the EC talk page, but no one seems to care, and that is why I have added the content of that article here and removed the redirect.Dracil 06:43, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Some changes from the EC article I made when I moved it over
I added that evolutionary creationism is the less common term, and I removed the Creationism sidebar, as I feel it is POV *unless* TE is put in its own special category separate from the Creationist beliefs. At the very least, it should be placed further away from YEC than ID, as TE is closer to naturalistic evolution than ID is.Dracil 06:43, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

CS Lewis
I agree that Lewis would support the quote about mythology, and a stance against Biblical literalism, but his inclusion on this page makes it seem as though he would support theistic evolution. I'm a pretty serious student of Lewis and I have only come across (a scant few) writings of his that indict evolution as a scientific theory. Linking his name in this context could lead people to believe that he supports theistic evolution, when old-Earth creationism would be a more accurate description of Lewis's beliefs. I think Tolkien is probably along the same lines. David Bergan 18:38, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Theistic Evolution redirect
I added a number of changes, added more examples of theistic evolutionists (Keith Miller, Haught, Polkinghorne, Darrel Falk, Keith Ward, Lamoureux, others). Added quote from John Paul II on "Bible says how to go to heaven not how the heavens go" and quote from St. Augustine. More material on Kenneth R. Miller. Added link to important International Theological Commission statement from July 2004 (signed by Ratzinger before he became Pope). And finally made the entry "Evolutionary Creationism" redirect to Theistic Evolution since they seemed to be the same page, thus redundant. Hope I did everything right as this is my 2nd day editing Wikipedia.

PhilVaz 11:39, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Undo redirect
Theistic evolution is not the same as Evolutionary creationism, and with everyone's permission, I'd like to make a Content fork between the two. I propose to bring out the contrast between two ideas:
 * 1) that God guided evolution, and that this is incomptatible with the usual scientific view; and,
 * 2) that God guided evolution in a way which is compatible with unguided evolution

Please bear with me, as I develop this article, and even join in (!) instead of simply reverting to a redirect. Uncle Ed 18:16, 28 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I think that you probably need to discuss this first on Talk:Evolutionary creationism, as I don't suppose as many people have redirects on their watchlists. I'm against this idea until you can provide references showing that people actually draw a meaningful distinction between the two terms. The previous discussions on this topic have failed to do this. --G Rutter 21:18, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

I did some complex moving around. Apparently there were two different articles, which never got propely merged. Here's the current situation: All this is without prejudice to whether the two terms really represent two distinct concepts.
 * The old history of Theistic evolution moved to Theistic evolution/old
 * Evolutionary creationism redirected to Theistic evolution

If they mean the same thing, at least the more common term is now the redirect target. Uncle Ed 16:55, 10 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Do you have some citations to support your assertion that these two are different ideas? In particular, I ask this because on more than one Wikipedia page it claims they are the same thing. We already have an article on Progressive creationism which may be closer to what you are proposing that your first case is while the current theistic evolution article is the second case. You don't need to content fork, it already exists. --ScienceApologist 16:59, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Actually, at this point I can't tell if they are the same or not. Which would be better, to have one page (which redirects to the other, as we have now) - or to have two distince pages? Uncle Ed 17:23, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

It's better to have one page until there is a source for the claim that the two are really about different things. It may very well be that "evolutionary creationism" should be "progressive creationism", but I'm not convinced. As it is, we don't need a third article. --ScienceApologist 18:07, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Re-writing my comment based on what the actual situation is (should've re-read the history of the two articles first) Whoops. Guess the situation's been flipped now. A fork may be ok. Evolutionary creationism *is* used by a few people who wish to place their emphasis of their belief more on the theological side, rather than the scientific side. At least, that's the only reason I've usually seen from people who use the EC term over the TE term and know of the existence of both terms. One nice thing would be that you could move that "Creationism series" sidebar to THAT page, and off of this one, which I don't feel it belongs here. Reason is many TEs would probably agree to this statement "I reject Creationism, I believe in Creation, and I accept evolution," because we usually consider Creationism as being an anti-scientific label, which would directly contradict the whole Theistic Evolution position. Dracil 19:43, 10 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Dracil, would you say that people who apply the "evolutionary creationism" label are referring to Progressive creationism? Because we could just switch over to that. --ScienceApologist 23:12, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't know what you guys are up to, but I thought we resolved this back in August 2005. I thought it was decided "evolutionary creationism" was going to be the term, to coincide with the forms of creationism box that is included with the article. In my opinion these are all equivalent terms: "theistic evolution" or "God-guided evolution" (most Catholics), "evolutionary creationism" (Lamoureux's term, etc), "fully-gifted creation" (Howard Van Till's term, etc), or "gradual creation" (Darrel Falk's term, etc). All of these accept macroevolution as God's method of creation and have no problem with modern biology. This distinguishes them from both "progressive creationism" or "old-earth creationism" (e.g. Hugh Ross, Phillip E. Johnson, etc) which rejects macroevolution. I prefer the term "theistic evolution" myself to make the distinction clear. PhilVaz 11:33, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, I generally use this page to differentiate between the terms. http://www.natcenscied.org/resources/articles/1593_the_creationevolution_continu_12_7_2000.asp  To an extent, it really is a continuum, and in some areas, it gets very blurry.  Kind of like, how many hairs can you remove before a beard is no longer a beard?  But of progressive creationism and theistic evolution, I would say evolutionary creationism is closer to theistic evolution. Dracil 19:45, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Under EC of that link, it talks about the differences being in theology, not the science, but doesn't go into details (I'd copy the quote but my browser is not cooperating with the copy/paste.) As for commonality of the term, one measure to check is search for "theistic evolution" (97,800) and "evolutionary creationism" (10,800 pages) on Google. Dracil 19:53, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Ed, I'm very surprised that you did this "complex moving about" without actually bothering to even try and get a consensus first. Also, you've left things in a bit of a mess, with Talk:Evolutionary creationism still going, while Talk:Theistic evolution redirects to here. Furthermore, as Phil points out, the last time we had this discussion the consensus was reached that the terms evolutionary creationism and theisitc evolution were synonyms. Dracil I think nicely illustrates this by arguing that it's only a difference in empahsis. He also illustrates why some people want to use TE- as they're embarrassed about using the word "creationism" (which is hardly an NPOV situation). We're going to need to cite sources otherwise this is just going to become a mess. For example, the article asserts that TE is used more than EC- can we actually prove that? More importantly, no-one in the above discussion has cited a source that draws any meaningful distinction between TE and EC. --G Rutter 11:54, 12 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I think User:Ed Poor has other things on his mind right now. It may be advisable to simply move the article back to its old namespace. --ScienceApologist 13:30, 12 December 2005 (UTC)