Re: Nature article on ID

Dave,

OK, maybe the power/program analogy is stretched a little too far. God is
clearly more than a power supply! [ Maybe God is the computer on which the
program runs .. ? No let's not even go there ... :-)]

Would you accept my main point however, that God's interventions in nature
are more to do with revealing Himself to us, rather than helping nature over
the tricky bits? (I think Richard Dawkins used this phrase in an article in
the UK Daily Telegraph). God creates a universe in which inevitably
intelligent creatures are going to evolve - it seems fantastic that this
could ever happen knowing the amazing complexity of life, but God's a much
better designer than anyone else. And when these creatures evolve, they are
going to ask deep questions Who am I? Where do I come from? Is it all a huge
fluke? etc. And God intervenes, often "supernaturally" at this point,
inspiring men to write down scripture under the inspiration of the Holy
Spirit, by performing miracles of healing, showing his compassion, and
ultimately by his sacrificial death on the Cross. It seems to me that all
the points in scripture where God has intervened are so that we might know
that he is God (e.g. the healing of the man born blind - John 9:3).

Iain

On 5/2/05, D. F. Siemens, Jr. <dfsiemensjr@juno.com> wrote:
>
> Iain,
> I know you don't intend to be a deist, but splitting power and program has
> that tendency. My point is that the work of God in creation and providence
> is seamless, that power and program cannot be sundered as they are in human
> devices. This does not mean that he does not intervene in creation. This
> involves time, but does not place God in time. Human beings were not present
> in the original creation though foreknown. Though Moorad seems to think I
> make God temporal, I know better. But we are so totally children of time
> that eternity is difficult to express. In John 1:1-3, the use of the past
> tense would normally indicate a previous time. But the Word was not in time
> until he became flesh.
> To note your alternate version, I do not believe that God intervenes when
> the "unfolding gets stuck." Nothing gets stuck when God is totally present
> in the entire process. Or, to note a later item, there is nothing to fix.
> That's where IDers makes a god a little smarter than they, but not bright
> enough to get it right. Even the old deists did better with a universe that
> ran properly without divine tinkering to keep it working.
> Dave
> On Mon, 2 May 2005 13:46:42 +0100 Iain Strachan <igd.strachan@gmail.com>
> writes:
>
> 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.
>
>
> --
> -----------
> There are 3 types of people in the world.
> Those who can count and those who can't.
> -----------
>
>

-- 
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There are 3 types of people in the world.
Those who can count and those who can't.
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