> From: "Howard J. Van Till" <hvantill@novagate.com>
> To: Tim Ikeda <tikeda@sprintmail.com>, asa@calvin.edu
> Subject: Re: What does the creation lack?
> Date: Mon, Oct 29, 2001, 8:57 AM
>
> >From: Tim Ikeda <tikeda@sprintmail.com>
>
> > The mechanism is irrelevant, possibly even in
> the case of natural,
> > extra-terrestrial designers because we'd
> probably never know the details.
> > The question isn't about which back door a
> "designer" would use to futz
> > with a system, but whether a particular system
> can make the transformation
> > from state-X to state-Y without help from
> outside the immediate system.
>
> Here is where Peter Ruest's proposal differs from
> the usual episodic creationist and ID approach.
> Peter suggested in his Communication to PSCF (the
> ASA Journal) that all relevant formational
> capabilities are actually present so that no
> creaturely system would have to be forced to do
> anything beyond or contrary to it capabilities.
>
> > If the system can't make the transition to where
> you want it to go without
> > your tweaking, then I wouldn't say that it had
> "all requisite formational
> > capabilities" or that such action wouldn't be
> "violating or overpowering
> > the natural capabilities of any creaturely
> system."
>
> Here is where the Ruest approach (similar to the
> approaches of Wm. Pollard and Bob Russell)
> technically avoids the idea of "violating and
> overpowering" by proposing that God
> surreptitiously chooses from among several
> possible outcomes the particular one that advances
> things in the desired direction. What the system
> in question does is within its capabilities.
>
> At that point I think you and I would probably ask
> the same question: Why was this divine choosing
> action required? Peter's answers (if I correctly
> understand him): (1) because the probability of
> the creaturely system making the optimum choice is
> too small, and (2) because this allows the Creator
> to insert information into the universe --
> information that the universe needs if it is to
> accomplish the intended formational development.
>
> > If you change
> > probabilities to determine which slugs will live
> and serve your ultimate
> > goals by evolving into the perfect, live-animal
> prop for a particular
> > Star Trek episode (perhaps evolving photogenic
> beauty was at one time
> > outside the formational capabilities of
> "pre-intervention" slugs),
> > you're messing with natural capabilities big
> time.
> >
> > So what we're talking about here sounds like a
> classic variant of
> > progressive creationism. Let's just call it
> that.
>
> It may not be a "classic" variant, but I'm
> inclined to agree that it is a variant of
> progressive creationism. The replacement of
> capability gaps with improbability hurdles seems
> too small a modification to get out of the PC
> territory.
No, they are fundamentally different.
Capability gaps: unforeseen, design imperfections, even goofing, ...
Improbability hurdles: foreseen, inherent in the optimal design of the
system-as-a-whole, necessary for showing God's loving involvement in
providence, necessary part of the planned natural mechanism of
development of the creation.
Peter
> I would say that the values of the
> relevant probabilities are part and parcel of the
> universe's formational economy. If these
> probabilities are too small, the universe's
> formational economy is lacking something that it
> needs for development without intervention. The
> Ruest proposal has modified the character of the
> interventions, but has not made form-effecting
> interventions altogether unnecessary.
>
> Howard Van Till
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