Re: Cross & ID

At 01:33 PM 1/3/2006, George Murphy wrote:
>Janice -
>
>The correction that you welcome is that you are
>way off base. I don't feel required to list all
>the wrong guesses here & would only urge others
>not to regard what you've said as an accurate
>description of my views. I do accept what
>Thomas Torrance (a fairly conservative Reformed
>theologian) has called "the doctrine of the
>contingent rationality of the universe" - an
>idea that is, BTW, included in the ASA Statement
>of Faith. But why anyone would think that that
>has anything to do with New Age thought I cannot
>imagine. Denial of it implies a denial of the
>doctrine of creatio ex nihilo in its basic sense.
>
>I suggest that you read some substantive pieces
>that I've written in the area of theology and
>science before you start speculating about what
>I think. I've mentioned some previously in this
>thread & you can find others listed in the
>bibilography at my website - or at the ASA one for PSCF.
>
>Shalom
>George
><http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/>http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/

## Not to get tooooo picky, but would you add the word "purely" to contingent?

I apologize - seeing that I mistakenly typed,
"pantheism", when I meant to type "panentheism"
-- even though panentheism agrees with pantheism
in rejecting the belief that the world is a
purely contingent creation of a deity who could
have existed apart from this or any other world.

Would you say you'd agree with this
statement?: "Although God is distinct from the
world and our particular world exists
contingently, the existence of a world of finite
entities ­ some world or other ­ is as fully
natural as is the existence of God."

~ Janice

>----- Original Message -----
>From: <mailto:janmatch@earthlink.net>Janice Matchett
>To: <mailto:dopderbeck@gmail.com>David Opderbeck
>; <mailto:gmurphy@raex.com>George Murphy
>Cc: <mailto:asa@calvin.edu>asa@calvin.edu
>Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 12:01 PM
>Subject: Re: Cross & ID
>
>At 08:21 PM 1/2/2006, David Opderbeck wrote to George Murphy:
>
>>Interesting, George. As to folks like Dawkins
>>who are intelligent and well educated yet don't
>>see evidence for God in creation, wouldn't
>>Paul's comments about God abandoning some
>>people to the hardness of their hearts also have something to do with it?
>>
>>Just curious -- do you reject the idea of natural law as well?
>
>
>## 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.
>
>~ Janice
>
>
>
Received on Tue Jan 3 14:32:43 2006