[asa] Random thoughts

From: Alexanian, Moorad <alexanian@uncw.edu>
Date: Thu Apr 26 2007 - 10:58:50 EDT

One major problem in the integration of the Christian faith and the
scientific endeavor is how the Creator interacts with His creation. Now
God "entered' the creation in the flesh as Jesus the Christ, which
constitutes the apex of interaction, the very presence of God in Nature.
Of course, this past event is considered the essence of the Christian
faith. Therefore, there is evidence of God who interacts with Nature.
However, there is a multitude of ways to reconcile the "fact" of
evolution with the Christian faith.

1) Everything was in the initial conditions in the initial act of
creation. I guess the jargon is "front loaded." Problem, the existence
of life, conscious beings, free wills, etc. if, say, one considers the
Big Bang origin of the universe. In addition, this is a clear case of
deism.

2) God interacts with the universe in spurts. Somewhat like a Christian
"punctuated equilibrium." How to discern the time this occurred is
problematic.

3) The Christian view is that God sustaining the creation and so the
interaction is omnipresent. This would entangle God's actions with the
running of Nature and people so interwoven that it would be very hard to
disentangle. Is then best to consider the domain of science to be the
purely physical and suppose that the Christian faith would speak,
essentially, on the nonphysical aspect of all that exists. This may be
the track to follow. Of course, how the two extremes jibe in the middle
seems to be beyond human comprehension.

Moorad

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Received on Thu Apr 26 10:59:11 2007

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