Timaeus –
Thanks for your kind introductory remarks below. Instead of interspersing
my responses in your text this time I’m going to “front load” them. To your
opening scientific question I should first say that my scientific training &
work are in physics rather than biology so I want to avoid any appearance of
authority in what I say about biological aspects of evolution. It does seem
clear that natural selection as a major factor in evolution isn’t going to
go away, but as I’ve said, I’m not tied to a hard Darwinism. It may well be
that we’ll find that a larger covering theory of Darwinian evolution,
including some of the ideas you’ve suggested may well be correct. This
might also include a greater emphasis on discontinuity - after all, quantum
theory has shown us for 100+ years now that the old principle “nature does
not make jumps” is wrong. So my answer is “Yes” to your query whether such
ideas could “fit in with [my] notion of “kenosis”, or more generally with a
Christ-centered understanding of God’s creative activity?”
Further, “Is Christ-centered creationism in principle opposed to any kind of
directedness, transcendent or immanent?” Definitely not. In fact in some
ways it seems to fit more easily with the Barthian understanding of election
to which I’m sympathetic, in which the Incarnation the purpose of creation.
OTOH I’ve had good things to say in the past about Gould’s emphasis on the
contingency of evolution because it brings out another aspect of election,
the undeserving character of the ones elected – cf. Dt.7:7-8. So there are
gains and losses both ways. What is a problem is any idea that a Designer,
aka God, has to be included in a scientific theory in order to give an
adequate account of evolution.
On “the larger theological question” I understand your argument and agree
that there is a basic difference between us. And it really is basic, a
difference in starting points. One who reads the New Testament in light of
the Old may well get the impression that the NT writers misunderstood the
OT. But if one reads it the other way, the Old Testament in light of the
New, & in particular in light of the cross-resurrection event, then matters
will look rather different. & the latter is, I think pretty clearly what
the apostolic generation did. If one believes that God was uniquely present
in Christ (even without a developed theology like that of Nicea) then it
would be hard not to say that in some important senses Christ was not
involved in creation and was not “the end of the law” (Rom.10:4.)
There was a time when I would have been happy to be described as a Christian
Platonist, largely because of physicists like Heisenberg, Einstein, Dirac &
Jeans & the mathematical character of physical law. I still think some
platonic ideas are helpful but have come to see that they need to be
subordinated carefully to Christian ideas about creation and Incarnation.
Then to your numbered points –
1) Ian Barbour, in his Religion in an Age of Science and its revision
Religion and Science together, gives ten “Models of God’s Role in Nature.”
When I speak of cooperation I’m using what Barbour calls the “Neo-Thomistic”
model in which God can be pictured as working with creatures as instruments.
I grant that the term “cooperation” has its limits but in expressing the
idea of “operation” – which can be related both to theological & scientific
concepts of energy – it is preferable to another traditional term,
“concurrence,” which suggests that God simply goes along creaturely actions.
The picture of God working with creatures as instruments is of course an
analogy but I am wary of attempts to get closer to a precise description of
the way God interacts with creatures. I think what’s sometimes called “the
search for the causal joint” is misguided because it suggests that we can
understand the God-world interaction in somewhat the same way physicists try
to understand the interaction between charged particles and an EM field – we
know the world and God parts of the equations and just need to find the
interaction terms!
But this isn’t the whole story. We also need Barbour’s kenotic model to
speak about the limits on how God cooperates with creatures. (It’s a
mistake, IMO to speak of a kenotic model as a full picture of God’s role in
nature because kenosis tells us what God doesn’t
Do, not what God does.) Furthermore, we need an element of what Barbour
called in his 1st edition an “existential” model. This is not Bultmann’s
idea that God acts only in our personal lives but does recognize the key
role of faith. But faith is needed because (& this gets at one of your
criticism) we don’t recognize that God is acting in the world by scientific
observation but by faith. & by “faith” I don’t mean just acceptance of a
proposition but trust in the God revealed in Christ.
2) I should have thought it fairly obvious why I appeal to the concept of
kenosis instead of just working with a distinction of absolute & ordained
power. The former is rooted in christology & the latter is simply a
philosophical concept. If I were to use only the latter idea it might
“work” to explain why divine action is not discernable scientifically but
it would have no organic connection with my basic theological approach in
terms of a theology of the cross. Furthermore, the fact that Paul sets the
Christ hymn of Philippians in the context of an ethical exhortation to
Christians provides some hints about the basic purpose of kenosis.
It should be realized, however, that people mean a lot of things by kenosis.
Without getting too speculative about just what attributes, powers &c Christ
retained in his state of humiliation, I don’t agree with more extreme views
that amount to saying that in this state he was no longer God. And in
speaking of kenosis in creation, it doesn’t mean that God exercises no power
at all, or that God is absent from – or inactive in – certain situations.
Instead God limits what can be done in cooperation with creatures to what is
(choose your language) (a) in accord with their natures or (b) in accord
with the basic patterns of the world, themselves God’s creations, to which
our “laws of physics” approximate. (You may note the hints of Platonism in
the latter formulation.
3) I agree that the theological implications of quantum indeterminancy need
to be fleshed out more fully - adding that, in science as in theology,
philosophy must have a ministerial rather than a magisterial role. The role
of chaos theory and its interface with quantum mechanics also needs more
consideration.
But bear in mind two things. First, the issue here isn’t whether or not God
has freedom in an absolute sense but whether or not God can limit his action
to the capacities of creatures and still retain some flexibility. Second,
if the absorption of a photon by a particular molecule would cause a
mutation that could influence the course of evolution, and if God could
determine whether or not that photon were absorbed rather than scattered
elastically (non-zero probabilities for both being predicted by quantum
theory), then it’s hard to see why God wouldn’t have a choice of which way
that particular step of evolution could proceed.
In any case I don’t think a serious theology of divine action can ignore
either of those two theories because they seem to give a decent
representation of the way the world is.
4) I agree that the Fathers had their limitations. However, some of what I
said about Paul is applicable here – it’s a matter of starting point. Part
of the problem though is that both the NT writers & the Fathers didn’t fully
see what they were doing, understanding the OT in the light of the Christ
event, and insisted on presenting the connections as straightforward
predictions of the career of Jesus. I would add that while I have great
love & respect for the OT (one of my seminary profs called me “an Old
Testament groupie”), I don’t have a lot of patience with those who criticize
“the hellenization of Christianity” as if it had been a fundamental mistake
(& not just one of details). The gospel had to be hellenized to some extent
to be comprehensible to people in a hellenistic world.
5) 1st, I was speaking specifically of the creation of living things in
Gen.1. That’s the basic concern in connection with evolution. What might
be called the Joyce Kilmer school of thought sometimes argues that while
some things may come into being through natural processes, only God can
really create life. The fact that it’s living things whose creation is seen
as mediated in Gen.1 is thus significant. Of course some of the other
creative acts in that chapter are simply by fiat.
& while the statements of the creation of sea creatures & land animals are
somewhat different from that of plants, they aren’t as radically separate as
you suggest. In v.24 God commands the earth to bring forth living
creatures “and it was so” – i.e., it happened. Then we’re told that God
made these same creatures. The latter statement is not an isolated
description of creation by fiat alone but, in a parallelism characteristic
of Hebrew, a restatement of what was said before. I.e., God made the land
animals by commanding the earth to bring them forth. Vv.20-21 are
different, both because there’s no “and it was so” and because the verb of
“bringing forth” is different, but the basic pattern is similar. & the fact
that here God’s action is described with the verb br’ is interesting.
6) You ask, “How do you know that “what God has done” he did entirely
through his ordained power? How do you know that at points he didn’t
exercise his absolute power?” 1st recall that I’ve qualified (or tried to
remember to qualify) such statements with “in the vast majority of cases” or
something of the sort. I’ve never said dogmatically that God hasn’t done
things that are beyond the capacities of creatures even with divine
cooperation. In fact I suspect that Gődel’s theorem implies that the set
of phenomena that can’t be explained in terms of the laws of physics is not
empty.
And the reason I make such qualified statements is because science operating
within the limits of methodological naturalism has been able to explain an
amazing and ever-expanding array of phenomena, & to predict new ones, in
terms of natural processes “though God were not given.” OTOH you point to
the things that science hasn’t yet explained & of course I acknowledge that
there are such things. But it’s not really a matter of “half full/half
empty.” It’s something more like “95% full/5% empty” with regard to
observed phenomena. (But again remember that I come at that from the
perspective of a physicist.)
7) Finally, I apologize for the rather smart-ass character of my concluding
remark. Truth to tell, by the time I got to that point I was under some
time pressure and was just looking for a quick response. Since you spoke
about what you see many TEs doing, I returned the favor with reference to
IDers, & didn’t mean to include you in all of that.
We should certainly be hesitant to say more about God & God’s action that
what scripture & its clear implications entitle us to say. (Cf. Luther’s
“scripture or cogent reason” at Worms.) I try to observe that warning but
also bear in mind that some theological creativity is required in order to
deal with new circumstances, such as those
with which science often confronts us. My complaint about many ID
proponents in this regard is that they think – or, I would have to say
sometimes, pretend – that there are no theological issues involved in the
debate at all. It’s all a matter of science & philosophy. & that’s just
not the case, at least for anyone who believes that there is a God who is
involved with the world.
Shalom
George
http://home.neo.rr.com/scitheologyglm
.............................
I thank Rev. Murphy for his reply of Thurdsay morning. I found it very
enjoyable to read, because of its focus, coherence, level of understanding,
and scholarly handling. Even though I disagree with many points made in it,
it really is a model for how to carry on an intelligent debate.
I’d like to address the scientific question first. I do appreciate Mr.
Murphy’s point that Darwinism has “evolved” since the time of Darwin.
Obviously I am not going to hold any defender of Darwinism today to Darwin’s
gross errors about the mechanisms of inheritance. However, when we add in
all the additions and corrections made by “neo-Darwinism” since then, we
still have to ask what they amount to, in terms of the larger issue I’m
addressing. Even if to “random mutation” and “natural selection”, we add
things like “gene duplication” or “genetic drift”, or other so-called
mechanisms that have been bandied about, it seems to me that we are still
talking about (a) unguided processes; (b) natural selection (or the absence
thereof). In other words, I think that “orthodox” neo-Darwinists like Coyne
and Dawkins are still Darwinian in their fundamental mode of explanation for
how complex integrated structures arise. And even Gould, who criticized
Darwinian gradualism (rightly so, in my view), still laid a heavy emphasis
on the unguided nature of the process, by saying that if the evolutionary
tape were re-run, the result would be different each time. And again I
repeat that I don’t believe that in implying that evolution was unguided,
Darwin was laying on some metaphysically gratuitous addition to his
“science”. It is of the essence of the process described by Darwin that it
be unguided. He wanted an explanation that did not involve conscious
design. (So also Gaylord Simpson, Sagan, Dawkins, Coyne, etc.)
It’s pretty hard, metaphysically speaking, to get beyond the “nature, art or
chance” options posed by Aristotle. If things aren’t done by “art” [which
for Aristotle implied conscious design], then they must occur either by
“nature” (understood as an unconscious teleology, as in Aristotle, or as
unguided, law-driven necessity, as in most modern philosophers), or by
“chance”, or by some combination of the two. Darwin rejected conscious
design, and also Aristotle’s unconscious teleology, and that left him with
law-driven necessity, chance, or some combination thereof. In his system,
“natural selection” would correspond roughly to the element of “necessity”,
whereas the variations would correspond roughly to the element of “chance”.
(Though of course it’s not that tidy, because he offered no clear account of
what caused variation, and natural selection is tied to changing
environments which are themselves determined partly by chance.)
Now it seems to me that Darwin and all the orthodox neo-Darwinians, and
probably most evolutionary biologists up until about 20 years ago, have
attributed a pretty major role in evolutionary transformation to “chance”.
Natural selection, even if it is a non-chance factor (as Dawkins claims,
though David Berlinski has argued that it, too, boils down to chance), can
do nothing until chance produces the variations upon which selection can
work.
It seems, however, that recently some philosophers and biologists have been
putting increasing emphasis on “necessity”, in the sense of natural
properties possessed by the atoms and molecules and cells that make up
living things, which make their association not merely a matter of luck, but
an expected outcome. For example, Kaufmann’s self-organizing theory, Denton’s
pre-programmed anthropocentric universe, and possibly Sternberg’s interest
in Platonic forms, all could be thought of as approaches to evolution that
depart to some extent from the conventional Darwinian emphasis on “chance”.
So I think of necessitarian approaches of this kind as “non-Darwinian”
evolution (even though of they may allow an auxiliary role to chance, as,
e.g., Denton does). What makes them non-Darwinian is not the complete
absence of any Darwinian element, e.g., natural selection, or a small degree
of chance, but their complete reframing of the evolutionary story so that
necessity rather than chance is in the driver’s seat. My hunch, and it can
only be a hunch, is that this re-balancing, with less emphasis on chance, is
going to be increasingly found in evolutionary theory over the next 50 years
or so.
The previous paragraph is relevant to Mr. Murphy’s point about science in
this way. He says that God works through “whatever actual natural processes
take place”. Well, let’s say for the moment that God does in fact do this.
My point would then be that neo-Darwinism and 20th-century evolutionary
theory generally may well have had too narrow a conception of “whatever
natural processes take place”. It may be that increasingly biologists will
be thinking of nature as having a tendency toward complex order built into
it, rather than as something that can produce complex structures, even
though they are preposterously unlikely to occur by sheer chance, merely
because the earth is old enough for serial flukes to have had time to
happen, and to build on one another.
I am not competent to evaluate the proposals of Denton etc. in detail. They
are still, as far as I can see, at the speculative level, and nowhere near
the “detailed testable mechanism” level. But I see them as promising. In
terms of ancient philosophy, these proposals move evolutionary thought away
from what we can loosely call a Lucretian or Epicurean direction (typified
by Darwin and neo-Darwinism), and toward what we might call (against,
speaking loosely) Stoic or Platonic or Aristotelian approaches. And with a
handle like mine, you can understand why I would see this as an improvement.
So, if God does work through natural processes, rather than against them via
some sort of miraculous overcoming of nature, I would suggest, based on one
growing trend in evolutionary speculation, that it is most likely that the
way he works through the natural processes is more Dentonian or Sternbergian
than Darwinian.
If I were to connect this up with a particular type of theology, I would do
it in this way: if God is sovereign (as Christianity appears to teach), and
if he wants to create certain creatures through natural means rather than
through miracles, then an evolutionary process in which necessity is in the
driver’s seat, and chance plays at most a subsidiary role, would seem the
most sensible way for him to get what he wants. If God can set up nature in
advance, give it the right tendencies, he can direct it to produce exactly
what he wants, just as surely as he could by performing discrete miraculous
acts of creation. What this means is that the conventional understanding of
creation, in which creation is regarded as an exhibition of God’s power and
control over nature, and is guided toward definite ends, is more obviously
compatible with approaches like Denton’s than it is with Darwinian
formulations, in which nature behaves unpredictably and resists being guided
to any definite end.
So one question I would ask Mr. Murphy is this: if biology were to move in
the direction I’ve been discussing, and if, more and more, evolutionary
thinking started to embrace necessity, front-loading, self-organization,
built-in tendencies, etc., would that pose a difficulty for his theology?
Would a necessitarian process of evolution, or, if “necessitarian” is a bit
too strong, even a process of evolution in which life has a sort of “nisus”
towards complex organization, fit in with his notion of “kenosis”, or more
generally with a Christ-centered understanding of God’s creative activity?
Is Christ-centered creationism in principle opposed to any kind of
directedness, transcendent or immanent? If not, then it may be that our
theological differences don’t actually require us to disagree at all over
the “science” of evolution. On the other hand, if a Christ-centred
understanding of God’s creative activity is absolutely incompatible with the
sort of immanent [but fully naturalistic] directedness of a Denton-like
approach, then it seems to me that Mr. Murphy is either going to have to
re-think his theology, or put up a fight, on the scientific level, against
the trend in evolutionary thinking that I’ve identified.
Regarding the larger theological question, I think that Mr. Murphy has hit
the difference between us on the head. He understands creation doctrine in
terms of Christology, and I don’t. I understand that there are grounds for
his position, not just in the post-Biblical formulation of the doctrine of
the Trinity, but in the New Testament itself, e.g., in the prologue to the
Gospel of John, which could be seen as a kind of re-writing or corrective to
the creation account in Genesis. At one point in my life, I fancied myself
a “Christian Platonist” of certain extreme kind. I revered the Gospel of
John as the most “Greek” and “metaphysical” of the Gospels, and believed
that it presented the authentically Christian doctrine of creation, as
opposed to the second-rate, merely “Jewish” idea of creation found in
Genesis. But over time, despite the poetic beauty of that opening passage
of John, and despite the powerful and often beautiful religious imagery
throughout John which makes it one of the most religiously impressive books
in the New Testament, I’ve moved increasingly away from the Johannine
teaching. This is not to deny that the Johannine vision is authentically
Christian, in a historical sense. Obviously the Johannine teaching is a
central component of orthodox historical Christianity. But I’ve felt less
and less need to bind myself to orthodox historical Christian theology of
any kind; I’ve been caught up by the spell of Hebrew narrative and the
thought of the Hebrew Bible, and I’ve been persuaded by a number of things
(including, no doubt, some superb Jewish teachers) that Genesis should not
be read under the influence of Trinitarian Christology. And my remarks here
about John would apply, with appropriate changes, to the Pauline references
which Luther and Mr. Murphy have provided. I’m simply unimpressed with the
Pauline understanding of the Old Testament in general (I think Paul, like
Luther after him, completely misunderstands the nature and function of The
Law), and of Genesis in particular (I think that Paul grossly overemphasizes
Genesis 2-3 and grossly underemphasizes Genesis 1).
This doesn’t mean that I reject the notion of Incarnation, or the idea that
Incarnation can be understood as a “kenosis”, or a self-emptying. It means
that I cannot understand Creation and Incarnation as intimately connected
doctrines, as Mr. Murphy would have me do.
On some other points:
1. I don’t understand what it means for God to “co-operate” with the laws
of nature in the process of evolution. If I understand the distinction
between absolute and ordained power, in the use of his ordained power, God’s
operation is invisible. While he may be “acting” in a technical theological
sense, nature operates, from the human point of view, “as if God were not
given”. How can a human being, looking at, say, the orbit of the moon
around the earth, tell whether the cause is what Bertrand Russell would say
it was, i.e., purely natural causes, or whether it is what some medieval
theologian would say it was, i.e., natural causes, which are expressions of
God’s ordained power? And if there is no difference, then the world
“co-operation”, however correct it might be as a technical term of theology,
is misleading to modern ears. To modern ears, “co-operating” means that two
people or things work together in such a way as to effect some end, and each
person or thing performs part of the necessary action, so that the two
actions are complementary. Thus, a husband and wife may co-operate to make
a bed, and if the husband doesn’t pull up his half of the sheet when his
wife does on the other side, the job remains undone. But when you say that
God and nature “co-operate” to cause the orbit of the moon, you don’t mean
that God does half the work (say, providing the inertia of the moving body),
and nature does the other half (say, providing the gravity). You mean that
nature, on one level, provides all of it (inertia and gravity), and that
God, on another level, is responsible for all of it (sustaining the
properties or laws of inertia and gravity). You mean that God and nature
work in a sort of parallel manner, with every point of God’s action mapped
one-to-one with every point of nature’s action. The word “co-operation” is
therefore confusing. In fact, to modern ears, the use of this medieval
language of “co-operation” might even suggest what I think you don’t want
to suggest, i.e., that nature does most of the work, and God seals the deal
with some special action of his own, distinct from nature’s, without which
nature wouldn’t have succeeded. People might therefore conclude from such
language that, in evolution, God, unaided by nature, provides the mutations
(say, by spitting them out from his hidden position behind the cloud of
quantum uncertainty), and nature, unaided by God, provides the selection, or
something like that. So I don’t like the word “co-operation”, and I wish
some other could be found.
2. I understand “kenosis” to mean “self-emptying”. So God “empties”
himself of his Godhood, so that he can live on earth as a man, and suffer,
hunger, thirst, be humiliated, die, and so on. Now if creation occurs on
that model, then it would be an abdication of God’s power to compel nature
to do anything, a withdrawal of God which allows nature to be itself, and
show its capacities. But this does not seem to square with the notion of
ordained power. In ordained power God is acting – as God – through nature,
whereas in kenosis God has given up his Goddishness, so to speak. I cannot
see how God can create “kenotically”, because kenosis means giving up
(temporarily, to be sure) that quality – divine power – which enables God to
create in the first place.
Now I think you may have addressed this question in your reply, because at
one point you suggest that kenosis is not strictly necessary to your
argument. You suggest that it is sufficient for your case if God refrains
from miracles and simply keeps his “ordained power” running along behind
nature as usual. But if so, why bring in the notion of “kenosis” at all?
If the distinction between absolute and ordained power already covers what
you are driving at, why muddy the waters with an extra concept which was not
originally designed to deal with the issue of absolute versus ordained
power?
3. Regarding your remarks on quantum theory, I haven’t yet finished Robert
Russell’s essay in *PEC*, so I won’t say too much. My general comment, as
one who has read much philosophy, is that people who connect “quantum
indeterminacy” with “freedom” (whether that freedom is the freedom of the
human will, or the divine freedom to act in or on nature), are often very
loose and sloppy, and tend to think that if some subatomic process is
indeterminate, then someone, somewhere, is somehow free. But indeterminacy
does not automatically provide any explanation for free will, free choice,
etc. It is merely “freedom from” deterministic causation. Thus, if there
are genuinely undetermined events in nature (which even some physicists
contest), it hardly follows that they provide a basis for the divine
direction of evolution, as opposed to random disorder. The argument needs
to be spelled out with much more precision. Unfortunately, when it comes to
evolution, most of the people writing about the God/indeterminism link are
either scientists dabbling in theology, or theologians dabbling in science;
in both cases the firm hand of people who have spent years reading Plato,
Aristotle, Hobbes, Kant, Hume, etc. is often lacking, and the discussion
becomes vague and imprecise. It is not enough to say that because the
physicists tell us that a quantum event is undetermined, that gives God an
“opening” to operate in nature without performing any miracles. Concrete
scenarios should be put forward, and analyzed philosophically. For example,
is it being asserted that God, in a unique act expressing a divine volition,
causes an alpha particle to be admitted at precisely this moment, rather
than earlier or later, and thus causes a particular segment of DNA to be
struck by that alpha particle, producing a particular mutation? That claim
can be analyzed philosophically for its implications regarding theology and
design detectability. But just to say that God hangs around somehow in the
indeterminate quantum vagueness, and therefore that Darwinism and divine
direction can go together, is neither good science, nor good theology, nor
good philosophy; it’s mystery-mongering. It’s not a refutable claim in
either science or theology, because it’s not a clear claim at all.
4. I confess that I got on my high horse regarding the Church Fathers. I
didn’t mean they were worthless in every respect. I certainly enjoy some of
the metaphysical discussions of Augustine, for example, when he isn’t
pretending to comment on a text, but discusses God or Love or Time or
Eternity in a philosophical and sometimes beautifully poetic manner.
However, I do find that, by and large, the Fathers have trouble with the Old
Testament. They often seem to me to be proof-texting, performing eisegesis,
subordinating it in a crude way to the New Testament, and so on. (They are
not unique in this: medieval theologians were often worse, and Reformation
theologians often show the same defect. Calvin is a partial exception – his
commentary on Genesis shows a certain inkling of respect for the Old
Testament as it stands, and not merely as a preparation for the New
Testament.) And while the father you mentioned may have been able to read
Hebrew, he wasn’t typical of the Fathers, at least not of the major Greek or
Latin Fathers. Hardly any of them could read Hebrew. And none of them had
available to them the mass of knowledge we have today about the ancient near
eastern background of Hebraic thought.
5. Yes, you are right that in Genesis the arrival of the plants could be
interpreted in naturalistic or emergent terms, but if you look at all the
verbs of production carefully, the plants are the exception rather than the
rule. Right after they successfully emerge, God asks the earth to produce
animals in the same way (same Hebrew verb), but it doesn’t; he has to make
them. And the waters do not simply “swarm swarms” of sea creatures; God has
to create them. God “makes” the heavenly bodies and “creates” man. He
“divides” the waters above and below. The plants are the only example of an
emergent or “evolutionary” description in Genesis 1. I’m not of course
saying that I think Genesis is a photographic image of what actually
happened; rather, I’m saying that the Hebrew writers presumably chose their
language carefully. The text in Genesis 1, especially in Hebrew (the
Septuagint and Vulgate not so much), gives every impression of being
carefully crafted, almost down to the last word. Its account is not one of
a self-generating natural world, but of a shaped or crafted one.
6. Near the end you write:
“Your sarcasm might be appropriate if I had been talking about what God
could
do – God’s absolute power – but I am instead speaking of what God has done,
his ordained power. Thus your gibe misfires. But the answer to your
question is yes, of course. The fact that we can understand most of what
goes on in creation in scientific terms means that the phenomena in question
aren’t miraculous, at least in any careful way of speaking.”
This reply illegitimately presumes an answer to the point which is under
debate. How do you know that “what God has done” he did entirely through
his ordained power? How do you know that at points he didn’t exercise his
absolute power? Is this something you know through textual exegesis,
through theological reasoning, or through private revelation? All I know is
that the species are here. I have no idea how they got here. And as for
your last sentence: “The fact that we can understand most of what goes on
in creation in scientific terms means that the phenomena in question aren’t
miraculous”, I question the premise. Since when did we understand most of
what goes on in creation? Are you referring to theories about the birth of
stars and planets, etc.? But even if we fully understood all of those
things (which we don’t), we are nowhere near understanding either the origin
of life by naturalistic means or major evolutionary changes through
naturalistic means. We have no clear picture of how these things happened.
So how can you rule out miracles? I have no particular liking for miracles,
and I’d rather not appeal to them, but I cannot understand how you can rule
them out, until we can show in a test tube that a cell can form without
prompting by an intelligent agent, or until we can show that after 50,000
generations bacteria with no genes for flagella acquire them and grow
flagella by themselves, or until we can demonstrate a detailed pathway from
one multicellular creature to another.
7. Regarding your very last paragraph, I cannot speak for all ID
supporters, but I can speak for myself, and I don’t recognize myself in your
final comments on ID. I certainly believe in using the human intellect to
understand the world, and I certainly don’t leap to simplistic explanations
(I presume you mean miracles) just because I don’t understand a phenomenon.
As for your suggestion that we must exercise “responsible dominion” over the
world, I agree, and have a few ideas on that subject, but I cannot say too
much more without compromising my identity, and in any case, nothing in ID
is opposed to the notion of responsible dominion. Finally, the wording “the
IDers don’t realize that God has made a world that can be understood as
though God were not given”, presumes the conclusion which is under debate.
God may indeed have made a world that can be thus understood; but there is
no reason why any ID proponent, even front-loaders who are not inclined to
accept miracles, should grant this out of hand. It appears to be a dogmatic
theological assertion, which is exactly what I was complaining about in the
last paragraphs of my previous post.
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Received on Sun Nov 16 14:51:57 2008
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