So ID needs to identify the Designer, which I know as God, and needs to come out and say who did what.

Um… nope. ID need do no such thing, since there are well qualified theologians out there who can make such assertions fully within the purview of their actual field. ID is not theology no matter how much you personally want it to be. It is, as Mike Gene said, a "nascent protoscience." Several 'lesser' hypotheses hoping to build a full theoretical framework for the study of biological phenomena.

Rob R.:

Further, he demonstrates, mathematically mind you, that Chinese actress Zhāng Zǐyí is the front-runner.

Hahaha!!! Well, at least Heddle's got a good sense of humor. But where did that +1 come from? Methinks he has fudged the numbers…

You've been warned.

Just a comment. When I go out and try to conclude which engineer did what, I have the added value that I know the system was designed. What I look for are the clues to determine WHICH engineer is was that did the design or was it a new engineer I've never seen before. When I do that, I annotate the documentation on the structure and put in the notes, after I verify, the engineer responsible.

So ID needs to identify the Designer, which I know as God, and needs to come out and say who did what.

What an awful idea: I am the slave of my own desires. Who could believe in a god who makes people the slaves of their desires.

I never paid much attention to details, though Presbyterians are Calvinists, and I married one too. It wasn't until I had babies and encountered infant baptism that I rebelled. Your basic "My God doesn't send babies to hell because some guy with a different degree than mine neglected to sprinkle 'em with water! Who the hell came up with THAT?!"* Only go to church these days for weddings and funerals (and to hear bro-in-law preach when I'm visiting).

[* PCUSA no longer considers infant baptism a salvation issue]

I can see a view, especially in a splintered modern age, that holds Christ's offer of redemption applies only to those who choose to accept it. What happens to everybody else may be covered in some other mansion in that many-roomed house. Getting condemned to hell by some uppity Baptist or whatever is nothing new, I'm sure non-Christians and non-religious people care even less than I do. But doesn't this put a crimp in the whole evangelism thing? I mean, why convert anyone who's going to burn in hell anyway? Is this another of those strange JW deals, where they have tens of millions of faithful adherents even though they firmly believe only 144,000 of them get into heaven?

That sure sounds despicably deceptive, if someone else's heaven has room to spare. Cruel even (if you really do believe it). Just after the potential tithes?

Freedom is a dilemma. A choice. Not determined by God or anyone else other than ourselves. We choose how “free” we are. No other life form has that choice.

There is no absolute freedom, there are only degrees of freedom. Nature hampers us plenty, as do our sociopolitical institutions. But I agree that it's a choice, because I've made it more than once. And I am freer than most people despite the boundaries I've imposed on myself. I could at any turn in the road have chosen to take a different fork.

But if I don't have a choice to make to accept the back door off the Wheel of Karma that Jesus Christ offered freely - because he didn't really offer it freely and may not have offered it to me at all - then there's certainly no sense worrying about it! And no reason for the evangelists to bother me. That in itself comes with quite the refreshing breath of freedom!

No. All this model says is at the time she sinned, her strongest inclination at the moment was to sin, so she sinned.

Rock,

Well, the prevailing atheistic view is that there is no free will. See Provine's comments in that regard. In that case, you are a slave to differential equations, the initial conditions of the universe, and maybe Heisenberg.

Of course if you have a better model of free will, I'm all ears. I like the Calvinistic model, although admittedly as described it is a 1st order model only. But I am comfortable it captures, roughly, what is going on.

And at any rate Joy didn't ask me to present and defend a model of the free will. She just wondered how predestination and free will are reconciled. That's how.

I dare say, all of human history is the attempt to figure it out. Not so much for each other as for ourselves.

What an awful idea: I am the slave of my own desires. Who could believe in a god who makes people the slaves of their desires. Sounds vaguely “anti-Christian” to me. See Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. Maybe only God himself is “free.”

Freedom is a dilemma. A choice. Not determined by God or anyone else other than ourselves. We choose how “free” we are. No other life form has that choice.

Your actions are determined, but not by an external power. They are self-determined. God is not a puppet master–you are a slave to your own desires.

So… Adam and Eve WERE predestined to eat the apples? And if so, why did God get so blasted mad at 'em for it? He's the one who used reverse psychology on them and all, by telling them they couldn't have any fruit.

Do YECs generally believe that God was surprised by the fall - don't subscribe to predestination? Did God simply *not* consult his own omniscience when creating human labor for his garden? And if he cared that much, why didn't he just give 'em good hearts in the first place?

Honestly, sometimes the contradictory concepts are mind-boggling. Self-determination is a fair correlate of freedom. Within physical, social and psychological boundaries, that is. Freedom is not a fair correlate of predestination, seems to me. But that's just me. And apparently the YECs too!

I've never seen how predestination and free will were compatible

It's actually not too complicated. In a nutshell:

1) Calvinism has the most libertine version of the free will. Namely, its version of the free will is you always do what your strongest inclination is at any moment. You never actually do anything you don't want to do, when all options and ramifications are considered. Your actions are determined, but not by an external power. They are self-determined. God is not a puppet master–you are a slave to your own desires.

2) Because of the fall, what you don't won't is God. That is what original sin means, to a Calvinist. You have no desire for God, therefore you won't choose him. Even though you have free will, your lack of desire makes it impossible for you to choose God. You are morally incapable of responding positively to the gospel. The best imperfect analogy I know is that a mother, who is in her right mind, cannot, in spite of her free will, choose to to place her baby in a microwave oven. She is morally incapable, even though she has free will.

3) The elect will, in due time, be regenerated. They will be given a new heart. The new heart has a desire for God. Therefore the regenerated person, with his free will, chooses God.

Nobody is coerced, either into choosing God or not choosing God.

That is a thumbnail sketch as to how how free will and predestination are reconciled. As I said, it is not very complicated.

If you're still around, I'm curious what your line of reasoning is that leads from front-loading evolution to front-loading the fall.

It's a little difficult to fathom from where I sit, Bilbo. Don't know how Ed would answer that. I suppose it might arise from a complete and total confusion of the material and the spiritual, where a front-loaded genome for diversification of life on Earth must also contain prescient determinism down to individual life forms' behaviors, activities and (at the human level) thoughts and choices too. Do YECs deny that the fall came as a consequence of choice?

That's a real question, maybe only a YEC could answer. I've never seen how predestination and free will were compatible, and the story of Adam and Eve is very specific on the 'sin' (disobedience) that caused all the trouble. Disobedience couldn't occur without a choice to disobey. I've never taken Genesis literally, but you can't have it both ways and still claim consistency in literalist readings.