Re: [asa] Has a Christian Evolutionist written this yet?

 I'm with John.? I've been trying to say that the designs of God are beyond our characterization since I got here and it's like I'm talking to the wind.? The problem I guess is that people think, if the Bible is correct, then we can rely on it to show us all the designs of God that there are. Well, even the Bible says we can't know such immensities because we're imperfect.? It always comes back to human arrogance.? Science thinks it can fully describe the immanence of God.? Short of an eternal investigation, it cannot.? The faithful think that they can fully comprehend the transcendent will of God.? Short of our deaths, we cannot.?

To me the problem with Bernie's # 1 is, what the heck difference is there between "to have happened naturally" and the designs of God?? They are one in the same.? How could they not be????? It's like saying that God's will has to be recognizable by humans as separate from the natural order of things in order to be Sacred?? I just don't get the mindset, and I see it in almost every argument of this nature that I hear.? Maybe one day I'll be blessed with a flat-out mind-blowing miracle of God's will.? But I don't need one to believe.? I don't need to be blown to my knees in awe by some monumentally inexplicable phenomenon in order to see miracles in every facet of Creation.?

-Mike (Friend of ASA)?

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-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Armstrong <jarmstro@qwest.net>
To: asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 12:08 am
Subject: Re: [asa] Has a Christian Evolutionist written this yet?

Bernie,?
?

I remain puzzled at the confidence in 1.?

Either God is capable beyond our imagination, or is not. Most of us
would concur with "capable beyond our imagination".?

So how then can we confidently conclude that a design and implementation
by God of something as interestingly complex and fecund as the universe
would necessarily require post-creation interventions to accomplish its
creative intent??

In our limited human sphere, the concept of design and implementation
usually measures success by whether the design as implemented performs
as intended (from the outset). I confess to not really knowing for sure
much about God. But maybe it's not too great a stretch to think that God
might demand the same of His creative design, at least that portion
which does not operate with ration and free will. Scripture does say
that the Creation was "good". I assume that might include "functionally
compliant with His design concept".?
?

If God is truly capable beyond our imagination, then we cannot just
assert that something that seems "unlikely" just because it seems
absurdly improbable in the dim light of our very constrained and myopic
ways of thinking and understanding. ?

I'm not suggesting that you must concede to this point of view, but I do
question the "improbability" premise as a foundation stone for
"Therefore, evolution happened supernaturally". That is the essence of
the disputed "God of the gaps" explanations, which are diminished by
every new discovery.?
?

I do not intend to say that God might not choose to subsequently
intervene or even sustain as you describe to guide the course of evolution.?
?

But, that does seem to me to be at odds with what is ultimately manifest
in man as free will. Why put in options in the first place if it is
necessary to constrain or override them? That essentially suggests that
biological nature requires some external guidance for it to proceed in
the "right" direction (to achieve the design purpose), but the vaster
non-biological part of creation works just fine as is. Further, under
this picture, the biological evolutionary processes seem to require
intervening "direction", while the consequent more more complex and
unpredictable volitional functioning of man, operating with free will,
does not. Something seems wrong with that picture. The basic
non-biological nature and human volition extrema do not require
"direction", while the sub-human biological part DOES require "direction".?
?

I'd also comment that the design and functional power of evolution and
natural selection is routinely pretty badly underestimated. This amazing
functional coupling of slight susceptibility to mutation with selective
attrition constantly pushes in the direction of increasing
sophistication. In elegant simplicity, it trims away (perhaps over time
in some cases) anything that is even at a modest disadvantage with
respect to a newly altered configuration. Moreover, that one basic
collaborative process pushes toward increased sophistication in every
form of biological entity, whatever its form or size or complexity,
wherever it is found, and regardless of what constitutes the specific
criteria of "success" or "benefit" or "fitness" in its particular
context - whatever improves its odd for surviving and thriving. Isn't it
amazing that there is such a fundamental and natural process built into
Creation whereby a vigilant, unrelenting, and dispassionate pruning of
each growing and changing "evolutionary bush" favors anything that
brings survival and/or reproductive advantage (increased
sophistication)? Talk about a powerful and all-encompassing design
element (or is it a creative principle?)! Discovering the elegance and
power of these processes take absolutely nothing away from the Designer
of them! It is quite the contrary.?
?

I recognize that this sensibility will not rest easy with folks whose
understanding of God includes a constant presence, support and
realization of all of Creation. It will be repulsively squirmy to others
who see God breaking into the evolutionary scenario to bring about "new"
creations, that increasingly are found to have more and more in common
with the "old".?
?

The bottom line for me is that I just don't see the point of putting an
evolutionary process into a dynamic Creation if in-course control
adjustments are required or desired. There are other reasons I will
touch on in what follows.?
?

But perhaps more fundamentally, I am also troubled by all this focus on
the physical processes of Creation, with understandings that God still,
for some reason, elects to be directly involved in the physical
functioning of Creation. Does Scripture really teach that such an
involvement with basic natural processes is a main point of God's
interest in us and how WE operate? It seems to me that it is more about
things that transcend the mere physical.?
?

In that light, it seems instead that God's interest in us is more likely
to be more directed at the most sophisticated aspect (level) of our
existence, the abilities to sense, think, abstract, communicate, dream
of what has never been and make it happen. And more to the point, if God
is interested in some sort of interaction with Creation, perhaps His
interest would focus on that aspect of Creation that creates and brings
into play new, UN-natural selection criteria to nuance the course of His
Creation!?
?

Even from our severely constrained points of view, we can see value in
the survival of certain individuals or groups that would otherwise be
susceptible to the unthinking forces of attrition manifest in the
unsentient functions of our world. We increasingly work hard to extend
the lives and heritages of prominent mathematicians, musicians and other
artists, teachers, healers, and those gifted in many other areas of
human endeavor. But the challenging charge of Christianity is to expand
those definitions of value more yet, responding in a new way to the
image of God imprinted and manifest in each one of us. That's not about
the basic physical functioning of the world.?
?

That seems to me to be supported as well in Biblical revelation when the
physical aspects of Creation were pronounced, "Good".?
?

Mankind in Creation essentially layers very distinctive new capacity and
new opportunity over the functioning of the natural world. This new
layer, spread over the rocks and seas and suns, and over the lower life
forms, and even over the basically instinctive functionings of the
higher life forms, is not only capable of new dimensions of creativity,
but even of nuancing of the functionings of all other natural entities
to create new trajectories. It is relational and imaginative and
creative. I have to ask why God's participation and interest in the
framework of the physical creation would be so compelling and necessary,
when there are the alternatives of more sophisticated and more
transcendant matters of imagination, and hope, and redemption (in its
many forms) and healing (in its many forms). These are new possibilities
embodied in a new layer of Creation, bringing a new capacity to
significantly alter and even mitigate the mindless operations of the
natural world by blunting its sharp corners and healing its
dispassionately imposed wounds. In the other direction, we also have a
forward-looking capacity to actually move (probably very slowly!) toward
a more Edenic future, with all the additional "new" that that will in
time bring.?
?

That is the essence of why I surmise that God is not likely to be
particularly interested in or needed to muddle about in creative
interactions with a basic physical world construct. Instead, that basic
sub-human world appears to me to be only a necessary foundary for new
evolutionary capacities that are more of a transcendant character,
perhaps in some very small way more like something of God than is the
physical world. That makes for a shaky predicate for "Therefore,
evolution happened supernaturally".?
?

Or so it seemeth to me. JimA?
?

?

Dehler, Bernie wrote:?
?

>Hi all-?

>?

> Does anyone know of a book that someone has written that basically?

>explains that God uses evolution as his design means? I mean, that God?

>is actively engaged in messing with DNA code as a programmer writing?

>computer code, not simply just starting it all off at the big bang, as?

>Howard Van Till would say. I'm thinking of a combination of Intelligent?

>Design (not ID as it is now) with Evolution. Basically, the conclusion?

>is drawn from:?

>?

>1. Evolution is too unlikely as to have happened naturally (ex.?

>anthropic principle & origin of life mysteries).?

>2. Genome evidence shows evolution happened (ex. pseudogenes).?

>3. Therefore, evolution happened supernaturally.?

>?

> I would call the position "Christian Evolution," and a follower a?

>"Christian Evolutionist." It is the Christian faith combined with?

>evolution... I hope that isn't syncretistic.?

>?

> Atheists may say that "evolution is an unguided process of creating?

>more complex life-forms from simpler," but the Christian Evolutionist?

>can say it is the "guided" process. Then a tough question would be "if?

>God is guiding it, then why is there so much disease and bad genes?"?

>Good one.?

>?

>?

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Received on Tue Dec 18 02:46:38 2007