Re: Cross & ID

Hi Ted,

So let me see if I understand what you wrote. You reject the belief
that God is entirely omniscient ? For instance would you say that
some imperfect or evil things that happen or that people do are not
the result of His permissive will but take place in spite of His
will? You reject the belief that God knows all about the future or
that He is the ultimate source of all decisions?

~ Janice

At 12:22 PM 1/3/2006, Ted Davis wrote:
> >>> Janice Matchett <janmatch@earthlink.net> 01/03/06 12:01 PM >>>writes,
>concerning George Murphy's ideas:
>## I welcome George's correction if I'm wrong, but from what he's
>written, he appears to me to be attracted to one or more of the
>pantheistic ideas of the new age / process theology movement, so I
>would think that he probably leans toward holding the belief that
>nature operates according to general principles or laws and doesn't
>claim that God temporarily abolishes a natural law in order to
>perform a miracle, only to reinstate the natural law afterwards.
>
>Instead, I'd bet that he would say that the laws of nature now in
>effect are not the only laws that nature might have - that another
>set of natural laws might also be coherent.
>
>That he might argue something to the effect that God, whose mind is
>the ultimate guarantee of the coherence of nature, might change the
>natural laws if He thought that He could improve the cosmos that way.
>
>My opinion on the subject is merely that these "new age" ideas aren't
>new at all; they are merely variations on ideas that have been
>proposed many times before and are just being re-cycled.
>
>Ted comments:
>Obviously George Murphy can speak for himself on this. I will speak for
>myself.
>
>God in creating the world was not bound to create/place into existence any
>specific set of "laws of nature"; nor is God bound now to uphold the
>specific laws God chose to create, forever, without changing them. As
>Janice notes, these are not "new age" ideas at all. They are *classical*
>Christian notions, based on the assumptions (which I think Christians should
>still hold now) that God is transcendent over the laws and processes of
>nature, and that God is not bound by rational necessity to create/uphold any
>particular individual laws or set of laws of nature. Robert Boyle's
>position, for example, was just the position that I articulated above. So
>was Newton's position, for that matter.
>
>Having not followed the thread carefully, I won't comment on the part above
>about process theism, except to say that both George and I have serious
>problems with key components of process theism--although I am myself open to
>open theism, if I may put it that way. Open theism comes in various forms;
>when coupled with a denial of omnipotence, we typically end in process
>theism; but when omnipotence is affirmed alongside the more limited view of
>omniscience that open theism asserts (Namely, that God knows everything that
>can be known, but that some things about the future cannot be known by any
>agent), process theism does not result.
>
>Ted
Received on Tue Jan 3 13:26:12 2006