> Howard Van Till wrote:
>
>>My proposal is that Christians ought to lead with a card from their strong
>>suit: the historic Christian doctrine of creation. Whatever the universe is
>>and is capable of doing must be seen as a "gift of being" from the Creator.
>>In the context of seeing the universe as a creation, every one of its
>>resources, potentialities, and capabilities can then be experienced as a
>>manifestation of the Creator's creativity and generosity. Instead of looking
>>for evidence of gifts withheld (that is, looking for things that the
>>creation is unable to do) Christians can celebrate every formational
>>capability that the sciences uncover. The essence of God's creative action
>>is not in occasional form-imposing interventions, but in the giving of being
>>to a creation fully capable of accomplishing the Creator's intentions for
>>its formational history. Where is there evidence of God's creative activity?
>>Everywhere!
>
Bryan responded:
> I agree that we should praise the Creator for the greatness of creation. You
> rightly affirm the importance of the doctrine of creation, and how that ought
to
> affect our approach to nature. The problem line for me is "fully capable of
> accomplishing the Creator's intentions for its formational history." How could
one
> know this, or be justified in asserting it?
To say it as carefully as I can, I neither claim to have a knock-down,
irrefutable argument for the truth of this (whether on the basis of the
doctrine of creation or any other basis) nor do I think that by asserting
it, it thereby becomes true. What I do wish to say as candidly as possible
is that on the basis of both scientific and theological considerations I
find this proposal to be highly probable. You are free to disagree and to
adopt the concept of a less than fully gifted creation with gaps in its
formational economy. The majority of the evangelical Christian community
will be on your team.
> It appears to be derived from the
> doctrine of creation and the character of God. But it appears to be a rather
> tenuous theological abduction. Theologians used to argue that geocentrism
> necessarily followed from the Christian doctrines. Skeptics today argue that
if a
> good God existed, He would not have made a world which contained evil. These
show
> that reasoning from God's character to the way in which He would do something
> involving the exercise of His free will is tenuous at best. Moreover, it seems
> clear that God either could not or chose not to create humans in such a way as
to
> avoid divine interventions in redemptive history. In fact, an even greater
> creation would not even require providence; the need for providence is a sign
of a
> not-fully-gifted creation. The need for fine-tuning could be seen as a
deficiency
> in creation; a fully gifted multiverse would need not such subsequent and
> unsightly tinkering. I'm sure you've heard all these rejoinders before, but
I'd
> like to hear your reply if you have time. Thanks.
I'll reply only to the last pair of assertions.
1. The need for fine tuning is a deficiency???? I just don't follow your
line here at all. If fine tuning was built into the being of a
single-universe creation, then I would take that to be the product of God's
conceptualization of the creation and God's choice for the character of its
being. Fine-tuning is not something forced onto a pre-existing creation as
would be the correction of (or compensation for) some deficiency in a
universe to which being had already been given. Hence, fine-tuning does not
have the character of "tinkering."
2. I have no theological objection to our universe being but one universe in
a multi-universe creation. Even a multi-universe creation must be fine tuned
to have an array of universes that includes at least one like ours. Merely
postulating an infinity of universes falls far short of assuring that our
universe will be represented. That infinity must be formed by some specified
set of variations in universe characteristics. One could imagine lots of
infinite sets of universes in which ours would not be found. In any case,
imagining them does not give them being, unless, of course, you are a
Creator who can give being to what you first imagine.
Howard Van Till
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