> "While theists can have a variety of legitimate views on life's
> evolution, surely they must maintain that the process involves
> intelligence. So the question is: Can an intelligent being
> userandommutations and natural selection to create? No. This is not a
> theological problem; it is a logical one. The wordsrandom andnatural
> are meant to exclude intelligence. If God guides which mutations
> happen, the mutations are not random; if God chooses which organisms
> survive so as to guide life's evolution, the selection
> isintelligentrather thannatural.
The Bible states that God uses random processes. God's action was seen
in things like the casting of lots. God is actively involved in
upholding all natural processes, but that is different from arguing
that the means by which God exercises that providential control must
itself be visible to science.
Random processes are actually highly predictive. With large numbers of
events they follow probablistic laws. An example is radioactive decay
rates, in which the decay of any particular atom is completely
stochastic with the result of a constant half life. Many natural
processes are fundamentally random or chaotic -- weather is a good
example. Yet all of these natural processes are upheld by God's
providential action. God brings the rain, or withholds it -- yet those
atmospheric processes can be clearly described by chaotic processes.
Lastly, humans use random processes all the time to accomplish desired
ends. Why should this be outside of God's providential action? In
artificial selection we take advantage of random mutations to direct
evolution along desired directions.
Keith
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Received on Tue Nov 6 12:53:02 2007
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