Re: On being a noncombatant in the culture wars

---- Original Message -----
  From: David Opderbeck
  To: D. F. Siemens, Jr.
  Cc: tdavis@messiah.edu ; asa@calvin.edu ; kbmill@ksu.edu
  Sent: Saturday, March 04, 2006 2:26 PM
  Subject: Re: On being a noncombatant in the culture wars

  Non-deistic TE positions do not necessarily say that we can't explain the development of life without reference to God.

  Sure they do, but maybe we're using a different understanding of what I mean by "reference to God." Here is my thinking: If you find a naturalistic explanation of how life arose, and you still hold a TE position, all you've done is pushed the "God" question further back. I can't see how you can hold that Providence directed the evolution of the universe and not also hold that God caused the universe and that the universe is contingent on His will. If you hold that God caused the universe and the universe is contingent on His will, the universe cannot exist without Him. The universe is of necessity then not self-sustaining. Therefore, a strictly naturalistic explanation of the universe is untrue and inadequate. If a strictly naturalistic explanation of the universe is untrue and inadequate, you cannot (truthfully) explain the development of life without reference to God.

  At this point I'll just comment on your response to me. The question of why there is any universe at all - "Why is there something rather than nothing" - is a question of metaphysics, not science. The Christian doctrine of creation is one answer to that question (though the doctrine is not limited to that issue). The atheist may chose to dodge the question & say with Bertrand Russell, "The world as a whole just is, that's all. We start there." (Of course I don't regard that as satisfactory but that's another matter.)

  But given that there is a world, & that it is the creation of the God revealed in the cross-resurrection event, there is good reason to believe that while God is continually active in the world, that action takes place as much as possible through natural processes that that can be explained from within the world in terms of rational laws. (That's a big claim & I won't spell out the arguments here. See the article at http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2001/PSCF3-01Murphy.html or
  The Cosmos in the Light of the Cross.)

  This does not mean an absolute denial of miracles which science can't explain. But there is no theological reason for insisting that the origin of the first living thing was miraculous in that sense.

  Shalom
  George
  http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
Received on Sat Mar 4 20:00:09 2006