>See my other post, its not completely a matter of choice, in some instances
>we are given no room for choice. If God were constantly performing
>miracles why would we even come to understand an idea of ordinary
>providence at all? It seems to imply a God outside the world that needs to
>"tinker" to keep it running right, rather than a God that is intimately
>involved in all things.
Dear Joel,
God is in constant interaction with the physical universe and we are
conscious of His presence through our spirits. We would not be without that
interaction. If I may put it in terms of a physics analogy. It is as if the
free part of the hamiltonian is God. He exists without the need of
interactions. Whereas, we are part of the interaction with no free part. [I
know this may be meaningless to non physicists.]
>Moorad, there was a very interesting comment by either George M. or John B.
>recently (I can't remmber which and don't have to go through the archive)
>on the wine and this issue. *** I think a repost of this would be
>appropriate here if anyone has it on hand. ****
>The gist was that if we tested the wine it would be wine and sure it would
>look like it had the appearance of age but we would NOT expect that wine to
>have evidence of having been made in a particular jar from a particular
>winery the next town over. In other words, it would have the
>characteristics of wine but a test of residual DNA wouldn't show that the
>the wine came from some particular grape bush. That is what would be
>deceptive.
I do not know what a scientific test of the wine would have concluded
regarding its origin. It may have pointed to its miraculous origin or else
to some sort of earthly origin. For all I know, Christ may have "used" the
grapes from the nearest vineyard for the source of the miraculous wine. I
really do not see that as a deception. I rather see that as disobedience on
our part to refuse to admit the miraculous nature of the wine and insist in
doing scientific tests on it. Remember we have two ways of knowing, our
scientific research and the Word of God.
>My speculation is that without the forknowledge that a miracle had created
>the wine the best we might be able to confirm is that it was wine and we
>might be left with a mystery, even given the advancement in our ability to
>trace substances, as to the source. In fact, someone might come along and
>suggest that because its origins can't be pinpointed that it must have been
>CREATED in some other fashion.
I am sure that even if we could not pinpoint the origin of it, we can always
invoke some scientific origin other than a miracle. That is what science is.
>How does this differ than YEC claims? There claims as well as AoA
>(appearand of age) asks us to believe that God created in such a way that
>examination of the evidence clearly points us in the direction of common
>decent, long earth processes, etc.. rather than just a MYSTERY that can't
>be explained by invoking orinary providence. The same with the wine, I
>would say scientific evidence would lead us to a mystery not chemical/DNA
>evidence that the wine came from Joe Smiths winery and was aged in vat #12
>in a particular year.
If God created, there will be no way that science can say ANYTHING about how
He did that. No way! The only way is through what is written already in
Scripture or from further revealed truths. I do not preclude that God can
reveal someone how He created what we see. That is my attitude as a
scientist, a physicists, and as a Christian. I suppose that for biologists,
geologists, etc. who are Christian, the situation is different because the
issue of origins may always come up. As a physicist--who has done work on
the early universe, the cosmic background radiation, and astrophysics--when
I practice my present interest in quantum optics, the issue of how the
universe came into being is totally irrelevant. I go back to the statement I
always make: it is not self-evident to me that the question of origins is a
truly scientific question. The example of the wine proves it.
Take care,
Moorad