creation through travail [was: Re: Ohio Votes 13-5 to Adopt Lesson Plan Critical of Evolution]

Re: Ohio Votes 13-5 to Adopt Lesson Plan Critical of EvolutionHoward Van Till wrote:

.."Intimately" does not at all necessarily imply "coercively" or "supernaturally."
..The "argument from personal incredulity" ...carries no weight outside of yourself.

I agree on both. Actually, a robust world that could do it all on its own would fit quite well into key elements of my personal theology, and it's possible that one day I'll come to embrace that view. Right now, though, I choke on it, and I can't really say why. It's just not how I see either God or the world.

My inability to accept your RFEP in no way detracts from my respect for your use of it as a tool against materialists.

HVT: a) Does your version of "interventionist" entail the idea that God is both willing and able to act on the world in such a way as occasionally to impose new forms on material systems, forms that the universe was never (by divine choice, presumably) equipped to actualize?

DW: The universe of course was physically capable in principle but on its own would not have done in a finite time.

HVT: b) Do you envision the character of God and of God's relationship to the universe to be such that God is both willing and able to intervene on some occasions by directly re-arranging atoms and molecules into new or different structures?

DW: Perhaps my key thesis is that God acts on and through creatures that "beg" him to act: creation through travail. All life forms interact at some level with God all the time. A particular one may go happily a million years but then confront a crisis. At that point the life form cries out with groans too deep for words. God hears, and in collaboration with the life form itself comes up with something new. (A common alternative is extinction.) So yes, God can and does rearrange the physical components, but in response to the creature's travail and through its collaboration. I can imagine God punctuating the equilibrium in this way, causing large changes over short times.

I think God's activities as described in the Bible involve the same kind of dynamic. Even though God much of the time is portrayed as taking the initiative, in reality it's the people's travail that he responds to. In a sense it's the people who bring on the intervention.

The more "intelligent" or spiritual the life form is, the more capable it is of successfully interacting with God to make something new. So that's why it took the one-celled plants & animals a few billion years to get anywhere.

As for bare molecules, it must have taken them longer still. That lends plausibility to the idea that life originated outside our solar system and was seeded on Earth by spores.

These ideas are less than half-baked. But if I expose them, maybe someone will be able to run with them better than I, or give useful feedback. Down deep some such mode of creation through travail appeals to me in a way that no other scheme has yet done. God does not fiddle with his world but partners with it.

Don

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Howard J. Van Till<mailto:hvantill@sbcglobal.net>
  To: Don Winterstein<mailto:dfwinterstein@msn.com> ; asa<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
  Sent: Monday, March 15, 2004 6:42 AM
  Subject: Re: Ohio Votes 13-5 to Adopt Lesson Plan Critical of Evolution

  On 3/15/04 3:31 AM, "Don Winterstein" <dfwinterstein@msn.com<mailto:dfwinterstein@msn.com>> wrote:

    I don't know how God has done his creating, but (1) I perceive God as being intimately involved in his world and (2) my life-long experiences of the world give me no confidence that it can do a lot of constructive creating on its own, at least, not when it comes to living organisms and their interactions. In other words, apart from the Bible, just gut feelings.

  (1) but "intimately" does not at all necessarily imply "coercively" or "supernaturally."

  (2) This is called the "argument from personal incredulity" and carries no weight outside of yourself.

     I'm working on an interventionist creation scenario that is consistent with God and the data (to the best of my knowledge), and someday I may present it here for criticism. But of course it's based to a considerable degree on speculation, so the only chance it would have of acceptance is if it strikes enough people as more plausible than the alternatives.

  Questions for clarification:

  a) Does your version of "interventionist" entail the idea that God is both willing and able to act on the world in such a way as occasionally to impose new forms on material systems, forms that the universe was never (by divine choice, presumably) equipped to actualize?

  b) Do you envision the character of God and of God's relationship to the universe to be such that God is both willing and able to intervene on some occasions by directly re-arranging atoms and molecules into new or different structures?

    Just as people have always needed myths of origins even if absurd, it would help to have plausible scenarios of creation even if speculative. They would provide a basis against which to compare ongoing experience. In fact, Howard Van Till's fully robust world is one such speculative scenario that some find plausible, just not I.

  Creation myths appear most absurd, I would suggest, when their figurative elements (elements that had profound meaning to ancient and non-Western cultures) are concretized by Westerners who have no appreciation of ancient non-Western cultures..

  As a scientific or meta-scientific principle, the RFEP (Robust Formational Economy Principle) is not is not really comprehensive enough to qualify as a myth, which ordinarily speaks of far more than the material world alone. One of the reasons that I find the RFEP to be credible is that its adoption as a working principle has functioned to launch the historical natural sciences into their most productive era ever. That's not proof, of course. But it is, I believe, more than a mere personal whim.

  Howard Van Till
Received on Tue Mar 16 03:47:49 2004