Re: [asa] Random and design

If a random system shows no evidence of being guided naturally and we insist that it can still be guided divinely, is there really any meaningful influence? Or are we just making an untestable faith claim?

These questions IMO epitomize why theistic evolution is not more widely accepted by Christians. The belief that God was somehow involved can only be a faith-based assertion. The world in principle could have turned out the same if God had not been involved. If it's possible that God was not involved, why assume he exists? The possibility that God was not involved generates deep fear in some Christians, fear that leads some to reject findings of science and to accuse theistic evolution of being tantamount to atheism. In other words, deal with the fear by dismissing the possibility.

If only scientists had come up with firm evidence that the world was about 6000 years old! Then practically everybody would believe at a minimum that the God of the OT really existed and communicated intelligibly to humans. Our faith would have a firm foundation.

(Firm but wrong. A major reason God keeps himself so well hidden in nature is to make idolatry difficult: He wants faith to depend on a relationship with him, not on some material icon, not even on a Book.)

Big problems started when it became apparent that Genesis 1-11 could not be interpreted straightforwardly as history. TEs argue cogently that just because evolution looks aimless and haphazard doesn't mean God was not involved. (But it doesn't mean he was involved, either.) IDs seek proof that God was involved. Concordists spin their intricate arguments to show how the revelation can be made to fit historical data and thereby salvage God's reputation. But none of these are quite as satisfying as being able to take the revelation at face value.

All the substitutes for a childlike acceptance of the revelation call for raging floods of verbiage that overwhelm the hearers. And all those words come without the authority of the original that we used to take for granted.

Don

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Randy Isaac<mailto:randyisaac@adelphia.net>
  To: asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
  Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2006 6:08 PM
  Subject: Re: [asa] Random and design

  Dave,
      Although I usually agree with you, this time I would suggest that, at least for me, the issues are reversed. Though there may be hermeneutical questions remaining regarding Gen 1&2, the ones you cite don't seem to create a significant problem for TE as far as I can tell. Nor does the mechanism. Whether natural selection is sufficient or whether other mechanisms play a role doesn't have much impact on TE.
      But I do struggle with the randomness question. I've said that before and I haven't resolved it yet. I would state it a little differently than Gage but I do think that is the core problem. We often glibly say that scientific randomness does not preclude divine guidance. But wouldn't a system subject to supernatural guidance of any kind show, in some small way, a physical deviation from randomness? If not, then is there any significance to the divine guidance?

      Let's think of an example. Consider a collection of radioactive atoms. Physics can tell us quite precisely the probability that any given atom will undergo a radioactive decay in a given period of time. If under divine influence an atom decays earlier than it would have without that influence, then to keep the divine action 'hidden' there would have to be some compensating atom whose decay is delayed so that the aggregate stays within the scientific expectations. (ok, so we can't detect individual atoms but it's the principle!) Such a scenario would indeed be quite indistinguishable scientifically from the case without divine guidance. But would it really have resulted in a significant effect on our universe?

      Another way of talking about it is to speak of systems as canonical ensembles. The behavior of the ensemble is well defined but the individual elements may have random behavior. If the behavior of that system were subject to divine guidance, the ensemble would need to be invariant (to avoid scientific detection) but the elements might vary. Yet any element whose behavior is modified must be countered by another modified element to keep the ensemble behavior coherent.

      In other words, if a random system shows no evidence of being guided naturally and we insist that it can still be guided divinely, is there really any meaningful influence? Or are we just making an untestable faith claim?

      Randy

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Received on Thu Nov 16 14:04:15 2006