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

Message
Independence is extended not just to humans and other spiritual beings but also to the rest of creation in that the rest of creation is not detectably influenced by some external authority but behaves according to its own rules. Consequences have included death and disaster and all kinds of things that people from time to time have called evil. But the creation is not evil; it's just independent, as God wanted it to be. An independent creation generated independent humans, and all are parts of an independent whole that needs to interact and merge with God.

Don

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Jon Tandy<mailto:tandyland@earthlink.net>
  To: 'asa'<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
  Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2008 4:25 PM
  Subject: RE: [asa] Neo-Darwinism and God's action

  Don Winterstein wrote:
  "Evil" occurs as a consequence of God's priorities: God could not achieve his goals for his creation unless he allowed it independence. All "evils" great and small stem from the independence of the creation: God allows it the freedom to do largely what it "wants."
  ... John Tandy's recent post exhibits similar thinking but supplies no motive..."

  I just comment that I fully agree with your assessment that evil (in terms of evil outcomes from sinful choices) is a consequence of God's granting free will to humans (and angels, apparently, in the case of Satan). This doesn't fully answer the question of the so-called "evil" of millions of years of animal death and random genetic mutation. "God granting nature the freedom to do what it wants" is a little difficult without attributing freewill and consequent accountability to nature itself, but with some qualification I think it could still apply. As I indicated earlier, I'm not concerned about the theodicy problem of animal death, and don't agree that it should even be considered "evil".

  Jon Tandy

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Received on Wed Feb 20 01:47:37 2008