RE: It's the Bible or evolution

If life is created in the lab, that is precisely the sort of stuff that will
be shaken up. That's the point I was trying to make. - cheers, Denyse

"The concept of /creatio continua/ is well
established in the Christian tradition as well as /creatio ex nihilo/, and
providence, God's ongoing action in the world which may take place through
secondary causes, is part of creation in the traditional sense. But to say
that "special creation ... may not be special divine creation" would then be

seen to be self-contradictory, a sentence of the form "A is not A.""

--
Read brief excerpts from my book, By Design or by Chance?: The Growing
Controversy On the Origins of Life in the Universe (Augsburg Fortress, 2004)
at
http://www.designorchance.com/press.html
Study Guide:
http://www.arn.org/arnproducts/books/b088sk.htm
Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0806651776/qid=1109790930/sr=8
-1/ref=pd_csp_1/104-8617533-8799957?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
My blog:
http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/ 
(go to other blogs from here)
Denyse O'Leary
Tel: 416 485-2392
Fax: 416 485-2392
oleary@sympatico.ca 
www.designorchance.com
-----Original Message-----
From: George Murphy [mailto:gmurphy@raex.com] 
Sent: Saturday, October 01, 2005 10:33 AM
To: Denyse O'Leary; 'Ted Davis'; randyisaac@adelphia.net; asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: It's the Bible or evolution
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Denyse O'Leary" <oleary@sympatico.ca>
To: "'Ted Davis'" <tdavis@messiah.edu>; <randyisaac@adelphia.net>; 
<asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Friday, September 30, 2005 10:26 AM
Subject: RE: It's the Bible or evolution
> Ted, just this:  Special creation is special creation. It may not be
> special
> divine creation - that's another story.
>
> But if/when scientists can create life forms from scratch in a 
> laboratory, they will demonstrate that special creation can definitely 
> occur without divine intervention.
>
> Special creation will then be a fact, not an argument.
>
> If scientists arrive at the point where they decide that special 
> creation, like ftl time travel, quantum freezing of large objects, or 
> the calculations of LaPlace's demon, is not practically possible in 
> this universe, that would
> be evidence for a divine origin of life.
>
> I think you are not giving enough credit to the contribution that 
> humans,
> as
> intelligent designers, can make to the question, by ruling various
> possibilities in or out.
A great deal of confusion is caused by the ambiguous use of the word 
"creation."  Of course sometimes it's used in purely secular contexts where 
there's not likely to be any confusion - e.g., when we talk about the 
"creations" of a fasion designer.  But when the subject under consideration 
is precisely the relationships (or lack thereof) between science & theology,
between natural processes & divine action, it would be much better to 
restrict the word to its theological sense & use it to refer to divine 
action.  The word "create" then would have something like the sense of the 
Hebrew verb /bara'/.  Atheists then could say unambiguously that they don't 
believe in creation & theists (including Christians) could say unambiguously
that they do.
This does NOT mean that the word "creation" would then refer only to direct 
unmediated divine action:  The concept of /creatio continua/ is well 
established in the Christian tradition as well as /creatio ex nihilo/, and 
providence, God's ongoing action in the world which may take place through 
secondary causes, is part of creation in the traditional sense.  But to say 
that "special creation ... may not be special divine creation" would then be
seen to be self-contradictory, a sentence of the form "A is not A."
Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/