Re: [asa] Neo-Darwinism and God's action

I have not found a reference to a church father who did not hold that the
Creator is outside of space and time, now space-time. The notion that
human freedom demands that God be in time so as not to know the future is
recent. Were that the case, we have to ask what took God so long to
create the world. What Augustine took as a nonsense question, what God
was doing before he created the world, has to be answered. The usual
answer is that God and matter are equally temporally eternal. The
alternate that I have encountered is that God became necessarily
interconnected with space-time when he created. I don't find this cogent.
It involves deity entering the world twice, rather than just in the
incarnation. As I see it, the recent approaches all confuse knowing with
causing. God is capable of creating a universe with free creatures and
still fully know the end from the beginning.
Dave (ASA)

On Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:34:56 -0700 Jim Armstrong <jarmstro@qwest.net>
writes:
Re:

"Humans exercise free will in spacetime. However, God is outside
spacetime."

I often hear this assertion. But this is a very specific and
consequential presumption/declaration which seems basically
philosophical. It cannot be verified, and is disputed. It provides a
convenient plausibility explanation, as you have used it. But there is no
certainty that we can extrapolate from a space/time existence of ours any
such thing about the one who brought that space/time entity into
existence. Indeed, it is not our experience that something may be brought
into existence which is so totally unlike the one who creates it. It's
imaginative, and even tempting, but is it right? What meaningfulness
would there be in creating a space/time entity if there were nothing
in/of the Creator to identify or interact with that entity in that
characteristic? Moreover, it does not jibe with the Hebrew notion of
creation, which does not proceed from "nothing".

Is there some strong justification for this presumption other than its
explanatory convenience? Just wondering.

JimA [Friend of ASA]

Alexanian, Moorad wrote:

Humans exercise free will in spacetime. However, God is outside
spacetime. God's view of the whole of spacetime is like that in a
Minkowski diagram (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minkowski_diagram )
where the whole of existence is laid down in front of God. The whole of
reality is like a Now for God since He is not embedded in spacetime.

Moorad

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of Christine Smith
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 2:08 PM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] Neo-Darwinism and God's action

Hi all,

I must say, I'm enjoying this thread thoroughly. Ted's
and John's answers in particular I found to be quite
insightful and eloquent :)

Terry--a question to you...you write here that: "From
God's point of view nothing is random, it's all
decreed and ordained. (And that goes also for the free
choices of free agents!)" We're coming from different
theological backgrounds/frameworks here, so maybe you
can help me understand--I just don't follow how this
can be a logical conclusion--if God decrees that
something will be a certain way--say, a (sinful)
choice I make, then how can I be truly "free" in any
sense of the word, and how can God not be the author
of evil? Doesn't it make more sense, logically and
theologically, to understand that though God is
all-knowing and all-powerful, He is also
self-limiting, and that He has chosen to limit His
powers by intentionally creating a universe that
contains elements of randomness and free will which He
interacts with, rather than "predicts" or "decrees" as
it were?

Thanks everyone for good food for thought!
In Christ,
Christine (ASA member)

--- "Terry M. Gray" <grayt@lamar.colostate.edu> wrote:

  
Randy,

I think you have understood him correctly.

Personally, I think the only way out of this
"problem" is to have God
involved in some way in every single thing (even the
most minute and
the most fleeting) that happens. The Reformed
theologians (and others)
have called this concurrence and it is a
sub-category of the doctrine
of Providence.

Westminster Confession of Faith:

III, 1
God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and
holy counsel of his
own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever
comes to pass:
yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin,
nor is violence
offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the
liberty or
contingency of second causes taken away, but rather
established.

IV, 2
Although, in relation to the foreknowledge and
decree of God, the
first Cause, all things come to pass immutably, and
infallibly; yet,
by the same providence, he ordereth them to fall
out, according to the
nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely,
or contingently.

Random events are in the category of contingency.
Thus, according to
this historic Presbyterian and Reformed way of
understanding
scripture, even chance events are ordained by God.

Logan Gage is mistaken to think that there is no
difference between
physical and metaphysical randomness. God "orders"
some of his
"decree" to "fall out" by chance events. Such events
look entirely
like chance events to us the human observer, even
though they are
completely ordered by God. Even Calvin talks about
the ill-fortune
(bad luck) of the fellow killed in the forest when a
branch fell on
him while passing by. But, no doubt, for Calvin it
was part of God's
plan and decree. I suppose it's semantics of sorts.
I'm happy to call
things that look like random events in terms of
statistical analysis,
random, even though I know that from God's
perspective and purpose
they are not at all random. From God's point of view
nothing is
random, it's all decreed and ordained. (And that
goes also for the
free choices of free agents!)

Some discussion of all this applied to process
theology, open theism,
and intelligent design can be found in my paper
"Give Me Some of That
Old-Time Theology: A Reflection on Charles Hodge's
Discussion of
Concursus in Light of Recent Discussions of Divine
Action in Nature"
found on-line at
http://www.asa3.org/gray/GrayASA2003OnHodge.html

TG

On Feb 14, 2008, at 8:16 PM, Randy Isaac wrote:

    
Jack Haas just drew my attention to Logan Gage's
      
response to my
    
letter in the Jan 2008 issue of CT. I would
      
greatly appreciate your
    
views on the last two paragraphs of his article.
      
We have touched on
    
randomness several times in this forum and I
      
believe it continues to
    
be one of the fundamental questions. Logan seems
      
to believe that if
    
there is divine guidance there will necessarily be
      
evidence of non-
    
randomness. Or have I misunderstood him?

Randy

      
________________
Terry M. Gray, Ph.D.
Computer Support Scientist
Chemistry Department
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523
(o) 970-491-7003 (f) 970-491-1801

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Received on Fri Feb 15 17:30:45 2008