Re: [asa] evidence for design

> The Bible gives us no reason at all to think that God is concerned about efficiency in our sense of the term.
> Paul Tillich's sermon "Holy Waste" (starting from the text about the woman at Bethany wasting the jar of valuable ointment on Jesus) is a good corrective to that notion.

God seems to value diversity over efficiency. The Church is assorted
people with assorted gifts, temperaments, etc., not strict uniformity.
 Ed Clowney had a Eutychus column on this fairly early on (I
encountered it in the collection "Eutychus and his pin"), taking up on
a Chinese phrase that could mean "great togetherness' or "great
sameness". Evolution over billions of years is certainly a good way
to create quite a diversity of things, and my 4 year old knows it's a
good thing (especially things with big teeth, but stromatolites , sea
cucumbers, clams, etc. are also pretty cool in his opinion).

God also seems to generally favor the use of ordinary means, i.e.
doing things using natural laws. Under that constraint, there are
some things that seem to simply take a long time. For example, you
need a round or two of complete stellar life cycles, complete with
supernovas, to generate an appropriate supply of "heavy" elements (in
the astronomical sense-i.e., stuff besides H and He) for life, rocky
planets, etc. Accumulation of oxygen in the atmosphere is another
good example.

-- 
Dr. David Campbell
425 Scientific Collections
University of Alabama
"I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams"
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