Re: [asa] Random and design

*The rest (the physical) seems by and large to have its own rules and
trajectories (by design), so why resist the idea that it is doing what it is
designed to do without God's sustaining presence to make it so?*

I think you need to clarify what you mean by "sustaining presence." The
doctrines of creation and of God's sovereignty include the idea that the
universe is contingent on God's continual sustaining power (see, e.g., Col.
1:16-17: "For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on
earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or
authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all
things, and in him all things hold together.") If you absent God
from "natural" process, you suggest the Deist's god. But there's a
distinction between a "sustaining presence" that isn't visible to us and
miraculous activity.

**

On 11/16/06, Jim Armstrong <jarmstro@qwest.net> wrote:
>
> A good and reasoned (or I suppose more correctly, resonant!) response.
> The question addressed is important.
> Newton started out with an understanding that God pushed the planets
> around actively, causing them to move in circular (perfect) orbits. At the
> end of the (his) day, the gravitational forces were found to accomplish this
> motion. That is a microcosm of the fear-generator, to wit the slippery slope
> argument concerning where this sort of erosion of God's involvement could
> stop. At the limit, a possible answer is "No involvement".
>
> But isn't it sort of apparent upon some reflection that God's primary
> purpose in Creation was not some sort of playground where active but
> mindless plate-spinning is required to keep everything in orderly motion and
> development? It seems to me that the focus and locus of men's hearts and
> souls is that which (as near as I can tell) more likely to hold God's
> attention. The rest (the physical) seems by and large to have its own rules
> and trajectories (by design), so why resist the idea that it is doing what
> it is designed to do without God's sustaining presence to make it so? [Not
> saying this is the only way of conceptualization, just not out of bounds.]
>
> When we hunt for God's guiding hand and insertion into the physical, the
> outcomes of the searches tend to be unrewarding and even retrograde as we
> learn about things like gravity and germs and DNA. That too suggests to me
> that God's purpose and hope and even involvement is likely to be less in the
> physical than the "other" realm of existence and activity.
>
> Our inclination is to sort of conflate these two realms, when the clear
> and irreducible message of Scripture seems more to be about the latter. For
> that reason, I suspect there is a disservice being done in attempting to
> make God too much the captain of platespinning, at the expense of His role
> as champion of righteousness and redemption and their realizations in our
> hearts which in turn operate in the external context of the physical.
>
> JimA
>
> Don Winterstein wrote:
>
> *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 <randyisaac@adelphia.net>
> *To:* 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
>
>

-- 
David W. Opderbeck
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