Re: God's Intervention (was Developmental Evolutionary Bi.

Tim Ikeda (timi@mendel)
Sat, 4 May 1996 16:08:43 -0800

Terry wrote: [...]
> This is one reason by I am dumbfounded by Steve's claim that if the
> origin of life is shown to have occurred apart from some miracle that
> the Christian faith would crumble. Unbelievers WILL suppress the truth--
> they used Newtonian physics and atomism to deny a role for God. But
> coming to a scientific understanding of how God governs/governed does
> not in the least remove him from the picture. Steve, Phil Johnson and
> many others confuse the reality of the situation from the perspective
> from the unbelieving heart.
[...]

I agree as well, and heck, I'm not even a believer (or an unbeliever).
I do not see how the interplay of "natural" processes involved in
evolution (or the world in general) would necessarily disprove the
existence of a God. At worst it will only cause a problem for a
particular, limited idea about God.

Personally, I find it hard to envision a scenario where a progressive
creationist explanation could possibly be ruled out. This is
especially true if as Steve suggests, God might occassionally shuffle
a few DNA base pairs around over long periods of time. Even if we were
able to observe "large-scale" evolutionary events in our lifetimes or
were able to find a incredibly smooth line of transitional forms, there
is no way of eliminating PC as a possible explanation of past or
present transitions. Then again, considering there seems to be no idea
of what to do once one invokes a PC explanation, or how one develops an
explanation for the patterns of life using PC as a starting point, or
even whether it is necessary to invoke PC at this time, I wonder what
is to be scientifically gained from promoting PC. Thus, I really do
not understand the motivations for marginalizing the scientific
methodology of TEs. If anything, it seems to undercut whatever scientific
common ground Christians and non-Christians can have (or theists/non-
theists as well).

Regards, Tim Ikeda (timi@mendel.berkeley.edu)