On Wed, 17 Nov 1999 22:36:33 -0800, Cliff Lundberg wrote:
[...]
>SJ>Indeed it is because I believe that God has supernaturally intervened at
>>strategic points in the history of life, that I do not believe it *was*
>>evolution. The correct term for such a supernatural-natural process is
>>*creation*, ie. Mediate Progressive Creation.
CL>Stephen, do you have a table of these points?
I don't have a table of each of these strategic points where God
supernaturally intervened because there could be *millions* of them!
But the broad categories I would hypothesise that there probably has been
supernatural intervention by God would be: "when good theological or
philosophical reasons are present, such as when certain theological or
philosophical reasons would cause us to expect a discontinuity in nature
where God acted via primary causation (e.g., the origin of the universe,
first life, basic "kinds" of life)." (Moreland J.P., "Theistic Science &
Methodological Naturalism", in Moreland J.P. ed., "The Creation
Hypothesis", 1994, p59).
To the above broad categories of: 1. universe; 2. first life; 3. basic kinds of
life; I would add to the following: 4. the Earth-Moon system; 5. irreducibly
complex molecular machines; and 6. the origin of human consciousness (man's
body is already covered in "basic kinds of life" above and is of course
interrelated).
By "basic kinds" I mean the new *design features* which make the natural
group of organisms possessing them a uniquely separate major group.
Of the above, only 1., the creation of the raw materials of the universe, I
would maintain was by immediate, ex nihilo (out of nothing), creation. The
rest I would hold was by mediate, ex materia (out of existing materials),
creation.
Steve
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"Since we hardly know anything about the major types of organization,
suggestions, and suggestions only, can be made. How can one confidently
assert that one mechanism rather than another was at the origin of the
creation of the plans of organization, if one relies entirely upon imagination
to find a solution? Our ignorance is so great that we dare not even assign
with any accuracy an ancestral stock to the phyla Protozoa, Arthropoda,
Mollusca, and Vertebrata. The lack of concrete evidence relative to the
"heyday" of evolution seriously impairs any transformist theory. In any
case, a shadow is cast over the genesis of the fundamental structural plans
and we are unable to eliminate it." (Grasse P.-P., "Evolution of Living
Organisms: Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation", Academic
Press: New York NY, 1977, p17)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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