The "New Creationism"

 
Jerry Coyne has "coyned" a new term to describe people who accept most of science but still want to have their cake [HuffPo screws up evolution again].

I’m coyneing the term “New Creationism” to describe the body of thought that accepts Darwinian evolution but with the additional caveats that 1) it was all started by God, 2) had God-worshipping humans as its goal, and 3) that the evidence for all this is that life is complex, humans evolved, and the the “fine tuning” of physical constants of the universe testify to the great improbability of our being here—ergo God. New Creationism differs from intelligent design because it rejects God’s constant intervention in the process of evolution in favor of a Big, One-Time Intervention, and because these ideas are espoused by real scientists like Kenneth Miller and Simon Conway Morris. (Note that Miller, though, has floated the possibility that God does sometimes intervene in the physical world by manipulating electrons.) New Creationism is bad because, while operating under the deep cover of real science, it tries to gain traction for dubious claims about the supernatural.

This is pretty good but let's not insist that New Creationists have to postulate humans as the only goal of evolution. Some of them do and some of them are content with any kind of sentient being. The common characteristic is that they envisage some kind of purpose to the way the universe has unfolded.

"New Creationism" is a much better term than "Theistic Evolution" and I think I'll use it from now on. It has the advantage of putting the emphasis on "creationism," where it belongs. (Note, this is small-"c" creationism.)

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