David:
> Thanks, Keith (and all). How would you distinguish divine guidance
> generally from discontinuity? At one pole perhaps you have God
> inserting fully formed organisms into the tree of life, at the other
> pole you have God ensuring that just the right set conditions,
> mutations, and interactions occur so that life in all its complexity
> arises as it has. In either case, isn't there an insertion of divine
> agency that results in discontinuity with what otherwise would have
> occurred? Is there a philosophical principle that makes one type of
> discontinuity more palatable than the other, or is it just a matter of
> how the proposed types of discontinuity match the observable data?
The question of divine agency is a theological one not a scientific
one. I believe that God is active in the creation of each new
individual organism (Psalm 104:27-30). I believe that every human
being is created by God. Is there any scientific way of demonstrating
such action? No. Also, from my theological perspective God never
intervenes in anything. Why? Because God is always there.
Intervention implies that God is somehow less present before and after
the intervention.
If God does not break chain of cause and effect there is nothing for
science to "see." If God has acted in the history of life in such a
way as to break such causal chains then such discontinuities would
simply be places where scientific descriptions fail to provide a
plausible explanation. However, and this is critical, there is no way
to distinguish such current explanatory gaps from current ignorance.
Science as a discipline will simply state there is no current
satisfactory scientific explanation and scientists will continue to
search for such explanations. In fact, it is the currently unknown
that drives science forward. It is what energizes the work of
individual scientists.
So, science as a discipline cannot demonstrate divine action.
Keith
Keith B. Miller
Research Assistant Professor
Dept of Geology, Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506-3201
785-532-2250
http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~kbmill/
Received on Fri Jan 13 19:05:33 2006
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Fri Jan 13 2006 - 19:05:34 EST