On Thursday, Nov. 1, 2001, Howard Van Till wrote:
Bob,
I'm still trying to understand what you envision as the extra divine action
that initiated each "stage." You wrote:
> Let me add some details to the idea of staged developmental creative
> activity. Each stage had its own purposes or goals and the means to
> accomplish them. Also its own time frame. In general the goal of each
stage
> was to provide the raw material and fundamental conditions needed for the
> next stage.
What is the basis for these concepts? Do they come primarily from biblical
considerations? theological? scientific? other?
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Howard,
Sorry for the delay in responding. I was out of circulation with a case of
the flue last week.
My concept of developmental stages comes from the field of human development
in the social sciences. Human Development was a new, interdepartmental
committee at the University of Chicago when I did my doctoral studies there.
The human life span was divided into the familiar stages of infancy,
childhood, preadolescence, adolescence, young adulthood, etc. We studied the
stages from the biological, psychological, and sociological perspectives. At
each stage the developing human faces intrinsic tasks that need to be
accomplished. These were called Developmental Tasks. Failure to complete
the task(s) at one stage could lead to dysfunction at a subsequent stage.
Thus "developmental stages" comes from the social sciences and education. A
far cry from astrophysics, right?
The concept provides a heuristic framework with which to conceptualize some
natural phenomena that change over time.
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> With some new ingredient, (which someday we may be able to
> discern), the next stage was able to accomplish its own goals.
VT: Could you give me an example of "some new ingredient"? New material? New
formational capabilities? New configurations that, once present, would
reproduce? Would atoms and molecules, for example, behave differently after
the introduction of a "new ingredient"?
DH: I call your attention to the first cell and as example. As Franklin
said, "It follows that the heart of the abiding mystery of the origin of life
is not the abiogenic origin of genes and proteins, it is on the spontaneous
generation of cells." [Harold Franklin, A Study of Bioenergetics (Freeman,
1986) p. 170.] Later he said, "That life did spontaneously originate on
earth is a necessary article of faith if the subject is to be explored
experimentally, but how it came about passes understanding." (p. 172).
Franklin uses the word "spontaneously" because as he said, "At the end of the
day, only cells make cells." (p. 564). The first cell therefore must have
been generated spontaneously. Mechanisms, creaturely pathways, are unknown.
I can’t be more specific than that. But as you know the first cell was
irreducibly complex, and had to perform all the functions of life from the
git go.
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> I think the
> stages are not hard to discern--prebiotic, unicellular life on earth;
complex
> metazoan life, sentient life in the image of God.
VT: What is it that makes it "not hard to discern" the divisions between these
stages? What are the traits of these boundaries that make them so easy to
recognize?
DH: I did not say the divisions or boundaries are easy to discern. It’s the
contents of the stages that are easy to see. It is easy to see the
difference between prebiotic life and unicellular life; that from 543 million
years ago to the present earth is in the stage of complex metazoan life, and
since 4-6 million years ago in the stage of human development. Each stage
is built on the previous ones.
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VT: To be candid, however, I see no need to introduce a supernatural
intervention at any place in the process. I use the term "supernatural
intervention" in the sense that David Griffin specifies: a divine action
that interrupts the continuity of the creaturely cause/effect system and
supersedes all creaturely action; a coercive divine action that functions as
the sole cause of some occurrence/event.
Your statement is irrelevant to my position. I do not accept Griffin’s or
your description of my position.
Divine action does not interrupt continuity. Divine action kicks in when
a given stage has run its course, accomplished its purposes, and prepared the
way for a subsequent stage to follow.
Divine action does not superceded creaturely action. It uses all
processes and materials that are available as needed from previous stages,
and adds the new dimension that is peculiar to the new stage. In the case of
the origin of life, the addition is irreducible complexity, purpose, or
teleonomy (as Franklin calls it).
Divine action is not the sole cause. The divine action is part of the mix of
creaturely/divine actions that initiate the stage.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Bob
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