From: Dr. Blake Nelson (bnelson301@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Feb 07 2003 - 13:32:12 EST
Re: Haphazard/random -- how about if we say
"particularly unpredictable". I think that is
accurate for most such "chaotic" and quantum
processes. And particularly unpredictable does not
necessarily connote random or haphazard, simply that
it is beyond our set of known variables to predict
particularly (some of these processes are obviously
probabilistic, and in large numbers we can predict
probabilities accurately).
I would second George's comments on how satisfied we
may be with theology in light of a scientific
understanding of these events and God's causal nexus
with the world.
--- Robert Schneider <rjschn39@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> Don, Jim and Blake,
>
> I am enjoying this discussion, one of the more
> thoughtful recently on a topic that interests all of
> us. I'd like to comment briefly.
>
> It seems to me that one consequence that an
> evolutionary paradigm of the creation leads to is
> that positing any notion of divine action in an
> evolving creation makes it difficult to separate
> theology from a scientific understanding of the
> creation in a even more complex way than when
> theology worked with earlier models (e.g.,
> Newtonian/mechanistic). I don't mean that theology
> should be in the business of telling science how to
> understand evolutionary processes scientifically,
> but that theology is challenged to be less than
> content with a simple notion that God works
> immanently within the evolutionary process.
> Considering different ways that have been proffered
> to account for God's immanent creativity, I believe
> that theology has to find some balance, on the one
> hand, between the notion that God is hands-on with
> every action in the universe, e.g., the notion that
> God is working in quantum process, and that God is
> involved in every mutation that leads to descent
> with modification; and on the other hand, that God
> merely sustains the existence of creation in every
> instance but does not intervene in any respect with
> the processes God built into the creation at the
> instant of its appearing.
>
> (SNIP)
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