SteamDoc@aol.com wrote:
> Bryan Cross has asked a couple of times for evidence of Phil Johnson not
> allowing God to create providentially as some of us assert.
I went back and looked through all my posts, and I never asked for evidence that
P. Johnson does not allow God to create providentially. I am already almost
positively certain that Johnson believes that all life forms could not have
arisen without some direct divine action, so I would not ask for evidence for a
claim that I already believe and have solid independent reasons for believing.
What I did challenge was the claim that Johnson's position implies both deism
with interruptions and a rejection of the doctrine of providence. That claim
remains unsubstantiated. Also, I asked for substantiation for the claim that
according to Johnson "macroevolution disproves God". That too remains
unsubstantiated. The quotation from Johnson listed below does not state or imply
that if macroevolution were shown to be true, God would be disproved. Rather the
quotation below (from what I can tell) simply claims that those who talk about
God as having created by natural processes alone are not talking about God as He
really is. It is a theological statement about the nature of God, not a
counterfactual statement about what would be entailed by the scientific
demonstration of macroevolution. To read into this quotation that Johnson means
or implies that were macroevolution shown to be true, God would be disproved, is
therefore unjustified.
- Bryan
>"I therefore put the following simple proposition on the table for
>discussion: God is our true Creator. I am not speaking of a God who is
>known only by faith and is invisible to reason, or who acted undetectably
>behind some naturalistic evolutionary process that was to all appearances
>mindless and purposeless. That kind of talk is about the human imagination,
>not the reality of God. I speak of a God who acted openly and who left his
>fingerprints all over the evidence."
>This seems to be pretty clear that Johnson thinks that a God who created
>providentially through "natural" processes is not worthy of being "our true
>Creator." God has to leave scientifically detectable "fingerprints" if he is
>to win Johnson's approval.
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