>From: Peter Ruest <pruest@pop.mysunrise.ch>
> I don't know how a gambling casino computes its profit (= bias) from the
> individual operations, probably just by a certain predetermined function
> of input and possibly maximum output. But the casino metaphor doesn't at
> all reflect biology. Geochemistry has no bias for or against life, and
> biochemistry has no bias for or against a novel functionality.
An honest gambling casino assures itself a profit by depending on the true
randomness of each game so that it can determine the payout rates from the
computable probabilities.
How do you know that geochemistry and biochemistry (plus all other phenomena
that contribute to the Creation's formational economy) has no bias toward a
system of life on earth? If you present that as your belief, that's fine. If
you assert that as a self-evident truth, then I think it needs to be
contested.
> It's only
> after the mutation that selection sets in (if it does at all). And the
> mutational biases probably required for life and novel functionalities
> to emerge are different for different cases. This means that if this
> problem is to be managed by a single predetermined divine function of
> the environment, this function would have to be transastronomically
> complex, certainly even much more complex than the set of selections
> (bias values) which would have to be applied individually whenever
> needed ("hidden options").
A "single predetermined function"? That sounds a bit hyper-Calvinist to me
:) I see no reason to imagine that all details of the Creation's formational
history were predetermined. I see contingency as authentic.
> And we would be back to my question: where
> was this function (a tremendous amount of information) stored between
> the big bang and the time it was needed - in the creation or only in the
> mind of God?
If I understand you correctly, getting away from a wholly deterministic
picture eliminates the need for this huge function that specifies all of
that detail. Potentialities (present both in the mind of God and in the
nature of the Creation) become actualized as that formational history
occurs. God's intentions, however, might be something like that of the
owners in my (admittedly imperfect) casino metaphor: Some general type of
outcome is assured (profit at the end of the day; sentient & morally aware
life appears), even though lots of details (the outcome of each game; the
particular species that are actualized in time) are open to contingency.
....skip a lot....
> I don' think you can show "God's hidden options" have anything to do
> with coercive interventions. And you know that I don't believe in
> process theology; I don't see any points of similarity between divine
> persuasion and hidden options, but maybe you can show me some. And I
> don't think there is only the space between coercive intervention and
> process theology's divine persuasion.
Think of the following as a sequence of concepts regarding the way divine
action affects the outcome of creaturely events/processes:
1. coercive (overpowering, as in supernatural intervention)
2. selective (your proposal)
3. persuasive (as in process theology)
4. independent (as in classical deism)
.... skip a lot ....
I had said:
>> My hypothesis is that the creaturely system to which God has given
>> being (which includes atoms, molecules, cells, organisms and every
>> physical, chemical and biological thing they are capable of doing) has
>> the capabilities to actualize -- without divine intervention -- every
>> type of life form that has ever appeared on the face of the earth. Of
>> course, atoms, molecules and cells are themselves systems actualized
>> from even simpler components.
Peter replied:
> If I understand you correctly, this means, in scientific language, that
> life and all its complexity - up to humanity - arose by purely natural
> means and in an undirected, random way, by self-organization of chemical
> compounds available on the prebiotic Earth into living systems, by the
> emergence, out of nothing, of an ever-growing functional complexity of
> the living systems, by means of the action of environmental natural
> selection and chance on living systems.
The reference to "out of nothing" is very confusing. I have consistently
spoken of potentialities (resident in the Creation as part of its God-given
being) being actualized by the exercise of the Creation's God-given
formational capabilities.
> Now, this sounds thoroughly
> deistic. Where is God's continual providential action? He doesn't seem
> to have anything to do after the big bang. I don't believe you are a
> deist, but I don't understand the link, in your view, between
> "formational capabilities for actualizing these potentialities" and
> scientific reality in the realm of biology.
Here is where I find process theology interesting and potentially fruitful.
It speaks of God's non-coercive action as an essential aspect of every
event/process. Divine action is ubiquitous, non-coercive, but yet effective.
That eliminates atheism, deism, and coercive interventionism simultaneously.
Howard
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