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

From Chuck Austerberry, forwarded at his request:

Logan Gage's criticisms seem to ignore quantum divine action, what
Robert John Russell calls non-interventionist objective divine action
and Nancey Murphy calls noninterventionist special divine action.
Here's a quotation from Murphy's chapter entitled "Science, Divine
Action, and the Intelligent Design Movement: A Defense of Theistic
Evolution" in _Intelligent Design: William Dembski & Michael Ruse in
Dialogue_ (Robert B. Stewart, editor. Fortress Press, 2007):

"Tradition holds that God's action includes sustenance, cooperation, and
governance ... God is immanent in all of the entities and processes at
the quantum level, sustaining them in existence. God's cooperation
consists in God's participation in all deterministic processes, and in
not interfering with the basic natures of the creatures God has made ...
God's governance consists in determining the otherwise indeterminate
processes--actualizing one of the potentials of the system in question."

So what is random from the human perspective looks different from God's
perspective. If Gage wants to call Russell and Murphy non-Darwinists, I
guess that's his choice. Sure, Darwin had no concept of quantum divine
action. To him, it probably was a choice between mutually exclusive
alternatives, either divine governance or impersonal nature (the latter
being chance and necessity, i.e. random mutation and natural selection).
But today, we have more options.

Cheers!

Charles (Chuck) F. Austerberry, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Biology
Hixson-Lied Room 438
Creighton University
2500 California Plaza
Omaha, NE 68178
 
Phone: 402-280-2154
Fax: 402-280-5595

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Received on Sat, 16 Feb 2008 08:43:58 -0500