Re: [asa] Origins: Francis Collins and ID

 You know, it's just so weird to me that some people can't believe in Creation unless God dumbs Himself down and interferes in His Own Process in the exact same way that some idiot human would do it if they were God.? But, God didn't just set it all in motion and leave, EITHER!? God is immanent in the total, instant to instant animation of every infinitesimal bit of the unknowably vast sum of Creation.? Creation IS God and IT is ONGOING now and forever, transcending any human ability to even trivially conceive its scope and purpose no matter how much we think we might know about it.? You think DNA is the engine of evolution?? In a thousand years they'll be talking about evolution in a way that will make our current understanding of natural selection seem like Copernican crystal spheres.? Bet on it.

God doesn't need to interfere in His own Creation to confirm the primacy of our faith, NOR did He "set it all in motion" and then vacate in order to confirm the primacy of our reason.? Jesus!? I hate to rant, but I just don't get it.? How hard can it be?? God is both immanent and transcendent.? What we think we know is extremely valuable but extremely limited leaving? our clear and instinctive faith in the Source of all Purpose to forever make up the difference.? Survival is to reason as evolution is to God.? You can't just work one independent of the other.? You can't think your way to faith any more than you can believe away the facts on the ground.? Get used to it.?

The simple answer is gone forever because it never existed.? You can't properly understand
what you know without intuiting what you don't.? Doing that takes the
elevation of instinct, intuition and faith to the position of equal
partner to reason. ? Faith is not just about God, it's about a thousand
parameters of the unknown as it infuses every aspect of human life.? It's about taking on the enormous responsibility of finding out everything you can about what is known and placing that into the proper context of what is ostensibly true as it lies forever arrayed beyond that knowledge.? Get
used to it.?

(Sorry again about the rant. I'm having a crushingly frustrating week.)

-Mike (Friend of ASA)

-----Original Message-----
From: PvM <pvm.pandas@gmail.com>
To: Dehler, Bernie <bernie.dehler@intel.com>
Cc: asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Tue, 4 Dec 2007 11:02 am
Subject: Re: [asa] Origins: Francis Collins and ID

On Dec 3, 2007 11:25 AM, Dehler, Bernie <bernie.dehler@intel.com> wrote:
>
> " What do you see as a problem for evolution here?"
>
> The problem is seeing how a mindless nature can create something so complex
> as an eye. The eye is just one example. As I said, I work at Intel in CPU
> design, and I see how much work it takes to make an advanced CPU. There is

Is there any similarity between CPU's and complex systems like the
eye? As I pointed out, despite some people's inability to grasp how
evolution can have resulted in an eye, it seems that science indeed
has shown how intermediates exist.

> no way it could be done without pushing every brain cell that we have.
> However, life itself is so much more complex (the eye, DNA, etc.). So on
> one hand I see the evidence of evolution in the genome, on the other hand I
> can't comprehend how nature can do this without an intelligent guiding hand.
> Is there something unscientific in thinking that God guided evolution? Is
> the most reasonable conclusion that God guided evolution? Did God directly
> manipulate DNA as a programmer writes a software program?

Of course, we can always invoke the guiding hand of God but to replace
our ignorance with an appeal to God runs the risk of a gap argument.
Is it necessary that God guided evolution? Is it sufficient to set in
motion evolution? That may mostly be an issue of faith. Personally, I
see nothing wrong with accepting that God set it all in motion a long
time ago. What does it mean for God to 'guide evolution'? How do we
limit God to a mechanism that can be studied by science? Should we?

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Received on Tue Dec 4 16:43:20 2007