Re: Nature article on ID

Thanks for all the replies - I don't have time to address all of them, but
I'd like to respond to this one..

>
> But the point I was trying to make is that there are no "cliffs" when God
> is on top of everything every yoctosecond. You get the possibility of
> "cliffs" when the program with all its algorithms has to be specified so
> that it can run without supervision. This latter is essentially deistic,
> not theistic. Omniscience is competent for this task, to be sure, but
> denies the Lord's constant providential care.
> Dave
>

I certainly would not consider myself to be a deist (in the sense of God
lighting the blue touch paper at the start and then standing well back - a
position that also implies that God is constrained in time). But I don't see
God's "providential care" as helping evolution to scale the cliffs by
lending a miraculous helping hand now and again (not sure if that's what you
meant, but that's the way I took it when you said there were no cliffs when
God is on top of everything all the time). This sort of view of God is one
of a fallible software programmer who releases his product on the public
(like Microsoft Windows XP) and then continually provides bug-fixes as
problems occur. But this, it seems to me is in direct contradiction of
Genesis Ch 1, which I do take seriously, that in the beginning God created
everything there is and it was "very good". The creating and the unfolding
are two separate processes, and I don't find it a helpful idea to think that
God intervenes when the unfolding gets stuck.

Instead I see God's providential care in that the universe keeps on running
("creator and sustainer") - if you pursue the algorithm analogy, it's what
supplies the power to the computer that's running the algorithm. Or as
Stephen Hawking put it in the last chapter of "Brief History of Time" :
"What is it that breathes fire into the equations?".

But more than that, surely God's providential care is exhibited in the fact
that he has revealed himself to us through Scripture, and in the ultimate
intervention, as Jesus Christ, giving us the gift of everlasting life. But
these interventions are to do with His relationship to us, and not in fixing
an imperfect creation so that we might come about. I would suggest that he
got that bit right, right "in the beginning".

Iain.

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