Re: [asa] Origins: Francis Collins and ID

From: Jim Armstrong <jarmstro@qwest.net>

I guess I'm a bit surprised, in light of your expansive view of
Creation, that you feel that God must conduct every increment of human
evolution. Does that really seem necessary, or just feel right?

YO, Jim!? How are you, my man?? I'm doing well this AM.

That's a really interesting question that I didn't think anyone would, like, notice to ask, I guess.? I'm pretty sure the answer is that I say that God conducts every increment of our evolution because, indeed, it feels right.? But in my world view, "feeling right" is not "just feeling right" as you phrased it.? To my way of thinking, in many aspects of life feeling is our sole means of apprehending Creation and we do so on levels that our sense of reason translates the best it can (causing much of the world's needless agony in the process, I fear).? All words are rational symbols and as such we do the best we can to string them together in a way that refers to feelings we have that have no local immediate rational reference or physical evidence other than as "the way we feel."? We make analogies for these feeling, the elements of which may exist in the real world but the overall structure of which resides commonly only in our feelings.

To me, that's entirely what we are trying to do when we talk about God.? To me God is perceived directly as the object and source of all things in which my feeling of faith is both reflexively and willfully invested.? To me my reason is a point in space that looks out and assembles an arrangement of the local world from my physical senses, while all my feelings instincts and emotions are the whole universe as it relates back to me at this point in space.? These words are my best attempt to symbolize the nearly impossible to symbolize presumption of God.? My instincts for God is an unmistakable feeling for the ultimate context of "all things seen and unseen."? My words for God are commensurately inadequate but whaddayagunnado?

So yes, I feel that God conducts every increment of our evolution in the same way that I imagine you think the universe enables every increment of our evolution (I think that as well). ? I don't think there's a difference really.? I feel that neither of us can sufficiently symbolize in words what is going on with respect to God and human evolution, but that we both are compelled to try and that we are both doing a bang up job given our current level of evolution. ?

I ask
that because it seems to me that God's objectives in creating an
evolving creation are more likely to ultimately transcend the physical,
given that the trajectory of evolution has - at the present state of
"sophistication" - brought into play things like abstraction,
communication, relationships and interactions that even in our very
limited plane of existence transcend the mere physical.?

I like the sound of what you say above just fine.? I might just comment that "transcending the physical," as you understand it, to me includes what I call the paramount element of "feeling" as the only tool we have to perceive anything beyond "the mere physical."? (I have a strong suspicion, as do many, that our instinctive brain wiring is holographic in structure).

Also, (OK, this is really nitpicking), aren't the gaps you refer to
still really the [immense] spaces between the findings of science,
since an implied integrity of "God's infinite design" presumeably would
not accommodate any gaps?''

The gap analogy is flat wrong, no matter how you try and use it.? I see human knowledge of God's infinite design as a spiderweb in a football stadium.? The web doesn't even completely enmesh the corner it's attached to much less the bleacher's on the other side of the field.? Sticking God's design in the gaps of science is like saying the football stadium only exists were the spider web holds it together. Sticking science in the gaps in God's Design is like saying the football stadium becomes MAN's design wherever the spiderweb touches it.?

-Mike (Another friend of ASA)

JimA [Friend of ASA]

mlucid@aol.com wrote:

  
I'm not sure I follow
all your specific objections about the gap argument, but I do
understand the frustration of not knowing all the criteria for the
various existing paradigms, not to mention actually getting corralled
into one of them.?

For brevity's sake I can can say with confidence for myself that God is
intimately conducting every increment of human evolution and that
natural selection and epigenetics are excellent if significantly
insufficient indicators of the nature of God's hand in the matter.?

I guess personally I find it easier to argue that science is in the
Gaps of God's infinite design.?

-Mike (Friend of ASA)

From: IW <iaincw@hushmail.com>

  
  
On Wed, 05 Dec 2007 02:02:25 +0900 PvM <pvm.pandas@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Dec 3, 2007 11:25 AM, Dehler, Bernie <bernie.dehler@intel.com>

>wrote:

I am with Bernie I think. Before I joined this list several years

ago I did not even know what the gap theory was or what half the

acronyms here meant. I have no issue with accepting evolution and

the evolutionary process. However....

>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.

Why is the assumption that invoking God's guiding hand is utilized

to explain something we are ignorant on? I do not argue original

sin to explain humanities depravity because outside religion I can

find no decent explanation for that depravity.

If one wants to argue that suggesting God was involved and remains

involved in his creation at all times is a "Gap argument" then why

cannot the same accusation be leveled at every believer on this

list? Why are we believers at all - surely thats just a human

weakness to assign to a deity that which we cannot

define/explain/handle?

If we can be "unscientific" enough to believe in a deity which

cannot be proven through the scientific method then what difference

is that between those who see God intimately involved with his

creation at all times.

I understand that one does not want to simply assume "God did it"

when we run into a moment of ignorance on a topic in science. I

agree that when we get stuck on some point of evolution that we

cannot just turn around and say, "Well at this point God did x and

now we move on to Y which we can scientifically explain".

But I do not see that as the same thing as arguing that God is or

could be intimately involved in his creation prodding and poking

until today. Why should he not? In fact, based on scripture I would

argue that if God is not intimately involved then there is no God

at all. The bible shows a God who cares and is present at all time -

 his work is never finished. And intimate involvement does not

proscribe the idea that God may have been fiddling in his

evolutionary driven creation since the beginning until now. Can we

prove that? No - no more than I can prove God''s existence or

Christ's resurrection.

What are miracles if not direct interventions in the established

system of things?

>Is it necessary that God guided evolution?

Actually, yes - in the sense I am thinking. If not then I would

argue we are theists not Christians. I think the bible is clear

that God did not just create and then stand back to watch us sink

or swim. If God is active in the lives of Christians today -

guiding them and acting on their lives I fail to see how he would

bizarrely be absent from his other forms of creation. What, God is

only half involved? Only works part time?

>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'?

The same thing it means when we say God created the heavens and the

earth. The same thing we mean when we say Christ rose from the

dead. The same thing we mean when we say God works in our lives.

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Received on Thu Dec 6 12:46:46 2007