>>4. Creation occured through evolution and there is nothing surprising
>>about its success - we would expect evolution to produce something
>>like what we see. Nevertheless, creation occurred at God's hand
>>and evolution was the tool. However, the fact that evolution got
>>started in the first place is surprising.
>
>Deistic Evolution?
Doesn't deism suggest a God who has no further interaction with
creation after the creation event itself? View 4 is compatible with
a concept of a God who is concerned with the world today, just that
he chooses to work within "natural law" to bring about his purposes.
Could view 4 then be described as deism?
>>5. As with 4. except the fact that evolution got started is not
>>surprising either. What is surprising is that the laws of the
>>universe and physical constants are just right for giving conditions
>>conducive for the commencement of a successful evolutionary process.
>
>Naturalistic Evolution
No. View 5 needs an answer for why "the laws of the universe and physical
constants are just right for giving conditions conducive for the commencement
of a successful evolutionary process." Doesn't NE say that it "just is"
and that there is no reason why we should consider our universe "surprising"?
>>6. As with 5. except that the fact that "the laws of the universe
>>gave rise to a successful evolutionary process" is not really
>>surprising. Nevertheless, creation occurred at God's hand.
>>
>Deistic Evolution?
Again, one could believe in a God interested in the affairs of the universe,
but choosing to work in a way which is not easily distinguishable from a
Godless universe.
>I don't know whether my labelling is correct. To my mind they can be
>represented on a decision tree:
>
> NO <- GOD? -> YES
> | |
> NAT. E. DIRECT? -> YES -> SHORT? -> YES -> FIAT C.
> | |
> NO NO
> | |
> THEISTIC E. PROG. C.
>
>It may be this is too simplistic (like all models). Direct means
>supernatural.
>
All my models had God in them, but in the earlier models, God played
more of a neccessary role in the _description_ of creation.
Look at God's role in each of the models:
1,2: God instantaneously created at discrete time points
3: God intervened in the evolutionary process to make it more successful than
it should have been.
4: God set an evolutionary process going that by natural means, would never have
got going.
5: God created a universe which would allow a successful evolutionary process to
arise. Without a God, such a universe would never arise.
6: It is not neccessary to fit God into our scientific model of origins, but we
choose, presuably for other reasons, to believe in God anyway.
In any of the views from 1-4, God plays a definite (but gradually diminishing as the
list goes on) scientific role in the description of our origins. If one of these
views is correct, science should, eventually (theoretically at least) be able to
discover that a postulate of God is neccessary for their theory. For example,
if 3 is correct, it should be possible eventually to model the evolutionary
process accurately enough to determine that the path evolution took was pretty
flukey making the notion of a guiding-God fairly reasonable.
Do people believe that at some point, God _must_ fit into our model for the
scientific description of our universe. That is, is God neccessary to fill in
a gap in our scientific description of the universe?
The alternative (theistic) view is that the "acts of God" in our universe (including
creation, sustaining etc) may all be described at a "low level" by scientific
theory without resorting to a concept of God, but that "higher level" things in our
universe _do_ require God - eg answered prayer etc.
What do people think about these ideas?
Mark Phillips.