Don Winterstein wrote:
Can't say for sure your reading
is not correct, but Peter Ruest and I appear to differ with most on this
forum in believing that living physical beings are just too darn
complicated to have emerged in all their messy glory entirely through the
functioning of natural processes without some explicit intervention from
God.
The first verse of Genesis tells us that much. It would be curious
to believe that God created a planet capable of sustaining life but was
caught off guard completely when life suddenly emerged. Life
appeared on earth about as soon as the earth could provide a viable
habitat. I think most of us on this list would say that our
Creator-God had a hand in that directly or indirectly. And although
we all have philosophical positions, I don't think any of us knows for
sure whether God simply created a fertile environment in the beginning or
whether He sweated over a bunsen burner for billions of years.
Peter (if I understand
correctly) believes the input was in the form of persuasion, whatever
that means, while I'm drifting towards a belief in the need for some form
of coercion--making stuff do what it ordinarily would not have been
capable of doing.
I must confess I've been influenced by some of the presentations by ID
people at a recent conference at Biola. They effectively made the
point of high complexity in living cells, etc. My emotional
response was, "Here's proof that God had to have done
it!" But emotional proof unfortunately is not scientific
proof.
ID says that a Creator was actively stirring the pot at critical
junctions so that organisms can perform necessary biological functions,
or develop novel adaptations, or speciate - and left no trace of His
divine interventions! In fact, He had to have taken great pains to
make it appear to be attributable to natural processes. And why
after countless interventions did we wind up with junk DNA, genetic
diseases, infectious diseases, cancer, insect pests?
Call me a heretic if you like, but had God asked me when He created
mosquitoes and chiggers we wouldn't have any today. In other words,
if God was active in the process, He could have done a better job.
Did you hear any of that at Biola?
Dick Fischer -
Genesis Proclaimed Association
Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History
www.genesisproclaimed.org
Received on Mon May 3 11:07:24 2004