Allen Roy wrote:
> From: Glenn Morton <glenn.morton@btinternet.com>
> > >God directed and or altered the path of the asteroid's orbit to
> > >intersect with the orbit of the earth.
> >
> > WOAH, WOAH!!!. You said no miracles and now you have God altering the
> paths
> > of the asteroids. You are contradicting yourself. Either the asteroids
> > followed natural laws invented by God or they didn't. They can't do both
> at
> > the same time.
>
> For God to alter the course of the path of asteroids would be no different
> than for me to turn the steering wheel of my car to change it's path. God's
> altering of the paths, perhaps by the influence of his power through his
> thoughts, is no different. I use my hands, God uses his thoughts. No
> difference but for capabilities.
The possibility that God arranged an asteroid impact by adjusting
initial conditions of orbits within a range of parameters allowed by chaos +
quantum theories can't be ruled out. But you have a more serious theological
problem here in that you have put God at the level of other causal agents in the
universe. God as primary cause normally acts through secondary causes -
gravity, your hands, &c - to act in the world. If you want to argue that God
acted without the mediation of secondary causes in that "his thoughts" play the
same role as your hands, you are speaking about intervention which goes beyond
the capacities of creatures, whether or not the result "looks" miraculous.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
"Theologia naturalis delenda est!"
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jan 11 2001 - 09:10:42 EST