Pretty much. But "mediated creation" is not my fundamental
theological starting point. That is the theology of the cross, God
present & active under the appearance of divine absence - as on
Golgotha. In creation, this means that natural processes through which
God works are, at the same time, the "masks of God" as Luther says.
> First of all I need to clarify three things - an that be all!
>
> 1) I may take a position and ask questions for the sake of arguing. Of course.
> 2) One thing is to learn and discover how the universe and all in it
> work (scientific pursuit) and another is the subject of origins. How
> far back or how close to the divine creative action can we go based on
> purely naturalistic models I don't know, but most christians expect a
> "break" where the natural is caused by the supernatural. Since we don't
> know how far back we can go I find logical to use naturalistic methods
> as far as they take me base on the data. BUT, should I discard ideas
> likes those of Behe, ideas that could possible develop into viable
> theories of evolutive-creation?
Given my statements above about the theology of the cross as the
key to seeing God at work in the world, you'll see that for me there is
strong theological reason to try to push explanation in terms of natural
processes as far as possible. God allows himself to be upstaged (or
"pushed out of the world onto the cross" as Bonhoeffer says) by his own
creatures.
At the same time I won't be dogmatic about how far back this can
go. I suspect that one implication of Goedel's theorem is that laws
which describe the universe can't be a totally closed system.
The _theological_ problem with the claims of Behe _et al_ & the
whole ID movement is that they insist that certain natural phenomena
_compel_ us - if we're intellectually honest - to acknowledge God at
work, & that independently of faith in Christ.
> 3) we are yet to determine is life can be reduced to physics. IMO as a physicist, even if ID turns out to be scientifically
viable (which I doubt) it will not be a vitalistic ID.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@imperium.net
http://www.imperium.net/~gmurphy