As usual, David, I find your reply very intelligent and I agree with many of
your statements and many of your arguments, but we have no meeting of the
minds. Part of the problem continues to be over terminology, and the other
part is probably a deep disagreement over theology. I doubt we can bridge
the gap in theology, but we can perhaps make some headway on the
terminology.
1. For example:
CW >> In particular, I would be interested in hearing whether you have
finally
>> understood why your usage of the word "guidance" is confusing, and is
>> likely
>> to be confusing to anyone who does not share your Calvinist theology, and
>> if
>> you have any suggestions for a better term for divine action in relation
>> to
>> the evolutionary process.
DC > One major reason why it's confusing is that both atheists and
> antievolutionists keep insisting that natural processes rule out God's
> role.
No, that's not the reason. The reason is the ambiguous way in which you are
using the word "guidance". If I guide a boat or a car, my guidance *makes a
real difference to the outcome*. If I don't turn left or right at the
river, my car ends up in the drink. If I fail to steer the ship away from
the shoals, the ship goes down. If I have to get to New York City from San
Diego and fail to direct the plane in a generally north-eastern direction, I
will not reach New York City. If God's guidance in evolution *makes a real
difference to the outcome*, then without God's guidance,
either macroevolution would not happen, or it would happen but reach
different ends, e.g., intelligent ants, or intelligent beavers, or nothing
more advanced than slugs, etc. On the other hand, if God's "guidance" makes
no real difference to the outcome, if evolution goes exactly where it goes
without God performing any special local action (beyond sustaining the
natural laws which bring about the local actions), then it is confusing
English and confusing theology to speak of God as "guiding" the outcome.
That's not what "guiding" normally means. "Guidance" suggests to
most people that Agent X is acting in a local manner as an efficient cause,
compelling, cajoling, elbowing, nudging, or otherwise tilting Process A
toward a particular goal B, when without such guidance Process A would end
up accomplishing goal C instead. If that's not what you mean, I strongly
urge you to
find another term, if you hope to be understood outside of the TE community.
2. I agree with this statement:
> E.g., E=mc^2 does not need to
> include an additional +/-God's action term. It describes how things
> behave under ordinary (non-miraculous) conditions, not to mention the
> fact that +/-God's action cannot be characterized mathematically and
> so does not give any useful physics predictions.
My point exactly. Despite the fact that you have used the notion of
"guiding", in fact God's guidance makes no difference as to the outcome. We
can calculate mass-energy equivalents "as if God did not exist" (to give a
rough translation of a phrase of George's), or we can calculate mass-energy
equivalents while fervently repeating "I believe God exists", and the
calculation will come out exactly the same. And the reason that *special*
actions of God are explanatorily redundant is that God created a universe
ruled by natural laws of a mathematical character. God has chosen to govern
the universe via general laws rather than via particular local actions.
Newton did not think of God as locally guiding each celestial body by some
separate mental or spiritual effort, but rather as guiding all celestial
bodies indirectly, by impressing upon them the same set of physical laws.
Similarly, Darwin did not think of God as performing a special local act of
creation for each species, but merely as generating the laws of nature and
perhaps the first few forms of life, after which the laws themselves, acting
on contingent events, would take care of all the rest, generating new
species and ultimately new families, orders, classes, and phyla. Thus, for
neither Newton nor Darwin is the language of "guidance" appropriate.
3. You wrote:
CW >> If you have the intellectual courage to say that there is no
invisible, intangible
>> person running beside your car, and that there are no angels pushing the
>> planets, then you should have the intellectual courage to say that no
>> intelligent agent was operating in the evolutionary process.
>
DC > Is this a quote from ID or Dawkins? Trick question-they're both
> saying the same thing-that God isn't real unless He is evident from
> science. They just disagree on which answer they're trying to prove.
It is not a question whether or not God is real. The question is whether he
does anything beyond sustaining the laws of nature. If two young people say
to their parents, "We're going to elope and there is nothing you can do to
stop us!", and then the parents say: "Well, if you feel that way, we will
give our blessing to your elopement", the parents' practical contribution to
what happens, is nil; they have been reduced to the role of cheerleader.
The question is whether God is anything other than a cheerleader in relation
to naturalistic processes. Sure, he created those processes. But the
parents in my analogy begat and gave birth to those children. Both God and
the parents can with some truth claim to be the "ultimate cause" of what
happens. But the fact is, the kids don't need the parents to get married,
and in the TE conception of nature -- at least, as you are stating it now --
nature doesn't need God to produce man out of slime. It needs the natural
laws which God created, but it doesn't need God to perform any *local* or
*specific* action to get from slime to man. It doesn't need God's *help*,
as the word "help" is normally understood. It doesn't need God's aid,
guidance, intervention, etc. (Here, by the way, I think that the version of
TE that you and Terry Gray are giving differs subtly but importantly from
that given by Ted Davis and George Murphy. Whether this springs from a
theological difference -- neither Ted nor George being Calvinistic after
your pattern -- I cannot say.)
4. You wrote:
> Likewise, as a non-antievolutionary theist, I
> can completely consistently affirm that God is actively involved in
> the course of evolution and that there is no need to invoke miraculous
> intervention.
I have no objection to Christian models of evolution that do not involve
miraculous intervention. I have already said that Michael Denton's
front-loaded naturalistic model may well be compatible with Christian
theology. But then I see no point in saying that God is "actively
involved", unless by "actively involved" one means "sustaining Newton's
laws, the right thumb rule, electrostatic laws, etc.". Sure, God is
"involved" in that sense, but "actively" is confusing, because it suggests a
local participation.
Again, if two weightlifters lift a thousand pounds between them, and a
little kid comes up and touches the weight with his pinky for a photo-op, as
if he is "helping", no one would say that the kid is "actively involved" in
lifting the weight. The weightlifters are doing it by themselves. Even if
the kid hired the weightlifters for his birthday party, he is not "actively
involved" in lifting the weight.
Nor is the legislator "actively involved" when a policeman makes an arrest
under a law the legislator passed. Sure, one might say that the legislator
is "implicitly present" whenever an policeman makes an arrest, or that the
legislator "empowers" the policeman to make the arrest, but by this we do
not mean that the legislator performs any *additional* action beyond the
initial legislative action, and we do not mean that the policeman could not
make the arrest unless the legislator were standing there next to him on the
curb (as if that would add some sort of "local permission to arrest" to the
"general permission to arrest" provided for in the legislation).
5. Imagine two people thrown overboard in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Neither can swim. If God impartially maintains the laws of nature, both
will drown. On the other hand, if God temporarily suspends -- all across
nature -- the laws that cause people to drown when their lungs are filled
with water, then *both* people will be saved. But suppose that God wishes
only *one* of them to be saved. He could, I suppose, suspend the natural
laws for the section of water where the one person is flailing, and maintain
them fifty feet away where the other person is sinking and screaming for
help. But I do not think that special favouritism regarding *particular*
events is what you have in mind when you speak of God's "active"
involvement. So the problem you have set for yourself is: how can God (1)
maintain the natural laws for *both* persons, (2) avoid all miraculous
intervention, and (3) "actively" save one person, while letting the other
drown?
You might suggest that a porpoise, capable of carrying one person on its
back, swims up and bears one of the people to the nearest island, ten miles
away. You could say that the porpoise's appearance and actions are
perfectly "natural". I grant it. Such a thing could happen. But how would
that be an example of God's "active" intervention? Either that porpoise was
specially diverted by God to save the drowning person (maybe God created the
illusion of a tasty fish to lure the porpoise to the right location), in
which case God's activity is interventionist and miraculous, which you say
you want to avoid; or the porpoise was headed that way anyway, in which case
God was not "actively" involved.
Regarding the second possibility, you might try to "rescue" it by saying
that God was actively involved because, even though the porpoise was headed
that way anyway, God had secretly planned that porpoise's itinerary for that
day from the beginning of time, knowing that Mr. X would be drowning and
would need a "natural" rescue. But if you adopt that solution, then you
have new problems. If God wanted to manage the porpoise's itinerary without
miraculous intervention, then he had to have arranged in advance, in a
non-miraculous way, for the porpoise to encounter (or fail to
encounter) exactly the fish, temperatures, nets, parasites, attractive
female porpoises, etc. that he encountered (or failed to encounter) on that
particular day. And each of those things has practically an infinite number
of causal antecedents going back to the Big Bang. So, in order to get that
porpoise to the exact point in the ocean that it needs to be, within the
two-minute time-frame before the flailing person finally sinks under the
freezing waves, God must co-ordinate a front-loaded operation beyond all
human imagining and beyond the calculating ability of all the computers we
have built or
ever will build.
I don't deny that an omnipotent or omniscient God could do this. But this
means God must strip all his creatures of *genuine* voluntary activity,
since genuine voluntary activity would mean that a porpoise might depart
from the planned route for this or that particular yummy fish, and a human
sailor, left truly free, might choose to lower a net which would entrap the
porpoise, dooming the drowning man. The porpoise, the sailor, and other
volitional beings involved must be driven by passions so irresistible as to
be the equivalent of the natural laws that govern inanimate objects. So if
you want to rescue that drowning man without any miracles, God has to "play"
his creation like a puppet show. Are you
willing to accept this consequence? Does Calvinism require accepting this
consequence?
There is also a more pragmatic matter. Just as it would be foolishly
uneconomical to spend twenty years building a multimillion-dollar, 147-step
Rube Goldberg contraption to open one's front door, when it would be easier
in terms of time, money and effort just to get up and answer the door when
anyone knocks, so, if God wanted to save one drowning man in 2009, why would
he re-coordinate virtually every action and force in the universe from the
Big Bang forward to divert a porpoise from its path "naturalistically", when
he could just "wait" until the man falls in the ocean, then miraculously
"teleport" a porpoise from somewhere else in the ocean, or just create a
porpoise on the spot, *ex nihilo*, and be done with it?
All of these difficulties follow from definitional vagueness about God's
"activity" and God's "guidance" in the evolutionary process, and in nature
generally. I therefore suggest the following vocabulary for TEs, which
should help them in making their position clearer to ID people, atheist
Darwinists, YECs, and the general public:
1. Use "guidance" only when you mean "intervention", i.e., only when you
mean that nature would have caused X to happen if God had not redirected it
to cause Y. (You can imagine that the guidance is invisible, underneath the
quantum radar, indetectable by science, etc. if you wish. That isn't the
issue here. The issue is whether God ever does anything *special* --
detectable or not -- that *makes a difference to the outcome*. On this
point Robert Russell is good.)
2. Do not use the word "co-operation" for God's action in relation to
nature, unless you mean "guidance", i.e., intervention. God cannot
meaningfully be said to "co-operate" with nature (in the normal English
sense of that word, as opposed to whatever sense the Scholastic Latin
*cooperatio* may have had), unless his action actually makes a local
difference to what happens in particular cases. And if his action actually
makes a local difference, then it has the same effect as "guidance". (If
God deflects a meteoroid from destroying the earth, it makes no difference
whether we conceptualize that as God "guiding" the meteoroid or
"co-operating with" the meteoroid.)
3. If you mean only that God "presides over" what happens, or "gives his
blessing" on what happens, or "sustains the natural laws" (but does nothing
local in addition), then say "concurrence", rather than "co-operation".
"Concurrence" does not imply that God's action makes a local difference in
the way that "co-operation" does.
4. Don't use "concurrence" anyway, because it comes from Scholastic
theology and is a puzzling technical term for most people, and because it is
vacuous, at least as far as discussing the causes of evolution are
concerned. If God's *only* action in evolution is "concurrence", then
evolution is a purely naturalistic phenomenon, and speaking of "concurrence"
just glosses that over with piety, while confusing some readers who might
think that it means that God is doing something extra. The public wants to
know whether TEs believe that God does anything *local*, *special*, or
*extra* in creating the bacterial flagellum, not whether or not TEs believe
that God "presides" over the process.
5. Don't say that God is "actively involved" in evolution, unless you mean
that he does something *local*, *special*, or *extra* in evolution beyond
sustaining the laws of nature governing DNA, proteins, embryonic
development, etc. Many people will understand "actively involved" to imply
the operation of more than natural causes, and that's not the impression you
are trying to convey.
6. Specify what you mean by "nature" and "natural causes". State whether
you believe that God has endowed "nature" with powers of its own and
therefore with a mode of self-governance. State also whether you believe
that only efficient causes operate in nature. Give examples of "natural"
events and "natural" causes.
7. Don't flirt with occasionalism unless you mean it. Sometimes, in order
to avoid sounding impious (as if implying that nature could exist without
God), TEs use phrasing that implies the non-existence of any substantive
"nature" or "natural causes", and almost seem to suggest that they hold a
view similar to that of medieval Muslim occasionalism, in which God
constructs the world moment-by-moment and the continuity of nature is
ultimately illusory. But if you really believe in "nature" as Western
philosophy and theology have understood it, you can't be an occasionalist.
And if you don't believe in "nature" as Western philosophy and theology have
understood it, you can't be a scientist.
I hope these suggestions help. I am not naive enough to think that all TEs
will adopt them tomorrow, but reflecting upon them may still be of some
value. The fact of the matter is that the general public has no problem
understanding the vocabulary of Dawkins and Coyne. It knows exactly what
they mean when they say "natural", "intervention", "miracle", "chance",
etc., and it knows exactly how they conceptualize the evolutionary process
in relation to the presence or absence of divine action. It does not
understand at all how TEs conceptualize the evolutionary process in relation
to divine action. And part of the problem lies in the inconsistency and
ambiguity of TE vocabulary.
Cameron.
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Campbell" <pleuronaia@gmail.com>
To: "ASA" <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 1:44 PM
Subject: Re: [asa] TE/EC Response - ideology according to Terry
>> In particular, I would be interested in hearing whether you have finally
>> understood why your usage of the word "guidance" is confusing, and is
>> likely
>> to be confusing to anyone who does not share your Calvinist theology, and
>> if
>> you have any suggestions for a better term for divine action in relation
>> to
>> the evolutionary process.
>
> One major reason why it's confusing is that both atheists and
> antievolutionists keep insisting that natural processes rule out God's
> role. As a result of such ingrained god of the gaps assumptions,
> people waste enormous amounts of energy on promoting or denying
> scientific explanations and fail to realize that the real problem is
> the fundamental theological position that they both share.
>
> If there were valid evidence against Christianity, I would not endorse
> Dawkins-type claims about evolution implying atheism. It's still
> rotten philosophy and logic, even if atheism were true. On the other
> hand, ID routinely proclaims that Dawkins is right in claiming that
> evolution entails atheism and appears to generally believe it based on
> the determined effort to attack evolution regardless of the quality of
> the argument.
>
> The problem with attacking "Darwinism" is that Darwinism is regularly
> used to at least include the science, if not exclusively refer to the
> science. Unless you clearly specify that your objections are to the
> metaphysical claim that evolution entails atheism, people will
> generally assume that you are attacking the science as part, if not
> most, of your target. Even if you do define your term, probably a lot
> of people will still assume that. Darwinism simply isn't a very
> useful word because it's used to mean too many different things.
>
>> But you and David Campbell and others appear to me to be hiding your
>> heads
>> in the sand about the fact that if variation plus natural selection can
>> accomplish all that Darwin said they can, then God-as-designer is
>> *theoretically redundant*.
>
> Well, one problem is that the scientific evidence indicates that
> variation plus natural and other types of selection can accomplish
> even more than Darwin said they can. ID keeps saying that this means
> that Dawkins is right.
>
> More fundamentally, the problem is with the question of what sort of
> theory is in view with "theoretical redundancy". God as designer is
> generally redundant to the formulation of scientific theories, though
> it is quite relevant to the question of why scientific theories exist
> and work in the first place (why things behave in an orderly manner,
> why we can figure things out, etc.) E.g., E=mc^2 does not need to
> include an additional +/-God's action term. It describes how things
> behave under ordinary (non-miraculous) conditions, not to mention the
> fact that +/-God's action cannot be characterized mathematically and
> so does not give any useful physics predictions. However, if I am
> talking about how to regard things theologically, then noting the
> importance of +/- God's action is quite relevant. Also, there is no
> point in trying to watch as many mass-energy conversion events as
> possible to try to detect the +/- God's action term, because God does
> not go around tweaking every billionth (or whatever) mass-energy
> conversion event. All evidence indicates that God does most of the
> ordinary running of the universe via ordinary, "natural" means. Even
> conversion is normally mediated by hearing or reading the Gospel,
> despite the prominent role of the Spirit in the process. To know
> where to look for miracles, we need some theological basis for knowing
> that God is likely to be doing something special in a particular place
> and time. There's nothing special about making a new kingdom or
> phylum or class or order or family or genus or species. They're just
> categories that, in hindsight, prove to be distinctive groups of
> organisms. The only reason to particularly expect miracles there is
> rejection of evolution. Of course, this doesn't prove that there must
> not be any miracles in the course of evolution. It's simply the
> combination of two principles:
> 1. Evidence for or against the adequacy of natural laws to describe a
> physical process is evidence about how God did it, not about whether
> God was involved.
> 2. God does a lot by natural laws, so not expecting miracles all over
> the place (while recognizing that they can occur) is reasonable.
>
> In reality, ID advocates often accept 2. While I don't know for
> certain, not having seem much comment on such things, I expect that ID
> advocates are generally skeptical about claims such as seeing Mary in
> a window, UFOs violating the laws of physics, etc. Furthermore, every
> moment everyone assumes that physical things around us will generally
> keep behaving by natural laws. (As Martin Garder has pointed out,
> this is not in fact an assumption that can be justified by science
> alone. All scientific data are compatible with the claim that the
> laws of nature will abruptly change tomorrow.)
>
>> Darwin's view was that if one has a fully acceptable scientific
>> explanation for evolution, i.e., an explanation which shows that
>> variation plus natural selection can successfully mimic *all* the
>> characteristics that could be produced by intelligent design, it would be
>> foolish to maintain that somehow intelligent design was still a factor.<
>
> I don't think Darwin went this far, though Dawkins certainly does.
> For the later part of his life, Darwin did think that intelligent
> design was unnecessary in such cases.
>
>> It is gratuitous and scientifically counter-productive to continue to
>> believe in the operation of a cause (intelligent design) that has been
>> shown to be (a) theoretically unnecessary and (b) against the data (see
>> Darwin's discussion of biogeography, for example). So anyone who accepts
>> Darwin's argument will junk intelligent design, as Darwin did. Anyone
>> who accepts his argument will believe and assert that no design was
>> actually involved in the production of species.<
>
> The definition of intelligent design here is problematic.
> Antievolutionary ID arguments are characteristically against the data.
> No intervention is necessary in the physical course of evolution, but
> this says nothing about an ultimate belief of God being to some degree
> behind it all, whether a rather deistic version (as Darwin himself
> tended towards) or a more theistic version (as in TE). Theoretical
> necessity-see above.
>
>> no more metaphysical than saying that angels are not involved in pushing
>> the planets in their
>> orbits<
>
> That is a metaphysical assertion. Claiming that it is not
> scientifically necessary to invoke them is no more metaphysical than
> any ordinary scientific statement, however. (Doing science entails
> metaphysical assumptions).
>
>> If you have the intellectual courage to say that there is no invisible,
>> intangible
>> person running beside your car, and that there are no angels pushing the
>> planets, then you should have the intellectual courage to say that no
>> intelligent agent was operating in the evolutionary process.
>
> Is this a quote from ID or Dawkins? Trick question-they're both
> saying the same thing-that God isn't real unless He is evident from
> science. They just disagree on which answer they're trying to prove.
>
> "No intelligent agent was operating" is not a scientific conclusion.
> "No intelligent agent acted in violation of natural laws" is a
> somewhat scientific conclusion; the problem with that is the
> impossibility of proving that absolutely no exceptions whatsoever
> exist anywhere. "There is no known evidence of intelligent agents
> working in violation of natural laws in the course of evolution" is a
> scientific statement.
>
>> I hear you saying that "in science" it is absolutely and utterly
>> true that no intelligent agent was operating in the evolutionary process,
>> but "in metaphysics" it is absolutely false, because God was operating
>> intelligently behind all things. I refuse to accept this bifurcation of
>> reality.
>
> I refuse to accept your bifurcation of God's action into "doesn't
> really count because He did it by natural laws" and "real operation
> because it was miraculous". I am not saying that "in science" it is
> absolutely and utterly true that no intelligent agent is operating;
> that is what ID of both the detecting supernatural action and the
> Dawkinsian dectecting absence of supernatural action varieties claim.
> In science, there is no evidence pointing towards intelligent
> intervention via miraculous processes in the course of evolution.
> This is in part because science is generally incompetent at dealing
> with supernatural processes, but also examining the evidence of
> paleontology and biology suggests that evolution works quite well as a
> model without the need of invoking something else. This cannot tell
> us that no intelligent agent was operating in the process because
> intelligent agents could work in any number of ways. It does tell us
> that invoking an intelligent agent is not necessary for the purposes
> of a scientific model.
>
> If you pray for safe travel, does God answer it positively if you get
> there OK or only if He miraculously intervenes to prevent an accident?
>
>> There are not two universes, one scientific, one metaphysical. There is
>> only one.<
>
> Yes, but science addresses only a certain part of it.
>
>> Either the evolutionary process was intelligently guided, or it wasn't.
>> The question whether scientific methods can *detect* the intelligent
>> guidance is a separate one.<
>
> Yes, but that's not what you said above. That's what TE insists,
> whereas ID generally insists that the two are the same.
>
>> The central question is whether you believe, regarding *what actually
>> happened*, that intelligence was *required* to achieve the outcome that
>> we see.<
>
> I believe that intelligence is required to achieve the outcome that we
> see in every single event. Others of a more Arminian view might hold
> that some things happen on their own, while still seeing intelligence
> as an ultimate necessity. However, it is often not necessary to
> invoke it in the course of developing physical models of the event.
>
>> If you believe that it was *required*, then you believe that Darwin was
>> wrong.<
>
> Darwin's theology was wrong. His science was generally on the right
> track (genetics, excessive gradualism, etc. having been corrected
> since then.).
>
>> If you do not believe that God's intelligence was *required*, then your
>> belief that God was "somehow" or "mysteriously" involved (even though
>> Darwin's account is complete and correct) is a private, gratuitous
>> assertion which has no public standing, and is of no interest to anyone
>> except fellow Christians of the same theological orientation.<
>
> No. You're back to insisting that the intelligent action must be
> scientifically detectable. Such a belief would have no less standing
> than any other belief. In particular, it is a valid counter to the
> claims of Dawkins et al. that science disproves God. Furthermore,
> such a belief can have important impacts on many other aspects of
> public life (e.g., ethics). The one thing that such a belief does not
> do, as well as belief that God is required but not by acting in
> scientifically detectable ways, is that it does not support the
> ID-promoted god of the gaps approach.
>
>> And here I think the final difference between us is theological. As I've
>> said before, I have no use for, and never will accept, any religion which
>> makes itself "immune from reality", which is never vulnerable to
>> falsification by any means. A bulletproof religion of private faith which
>> can be harmonized with any state of affairs in the natural or moral world
>> is one that I am constitutionally unable to adhere to. I cannot and will
>> not live in a world in which faith and reason are entirely sundered. It
>> appears that your form of Calvinism is bulletproof in this sense, since
>> God can be said to be meaningfully involved whether the data of nature
>> point to chance, necessity or design.<
>
> You're assuming that the only possible way for God to be involved is
> by scientifically detectable miracles in the evolutionary process.
> Credible falsification of the Bible would constitute falsification of
> my faith, but the quality of attacks on it are generally about par
> with attacks on the age of the earth. The Bible asserts that God is
> meaningfully involved whether an event reflects mathematically random
> and/or humanly unpredictable causes, the actions of natural laws, or
> miracles. Therefore, it is necessary to look elsewhere for tests.
>
>> I would be interested in hearing if this Calvinism would be similarly
>> bulletproof if the bones of Jesus were discovered, and what you would say
>> if
>> the consensus of the world's greatest archaeologists were that those
>> bones
>> had indisputably been found. What would you do with the findings of
>> science
>> in that case? Accept that Christianity had been falsified?
>
> If conclusive evidence of Jesus not rising from the dead were found,
> then Christianity should be rejected (not that one mightn't find some
> useful moral precepts, etc., but that's not Christianity). Paul said
> the same.
>
>> the archaeologists were going beyond science and into "metaphysics" when
>> they say that this proved that Jesus did not rise from the dead?
>
> The intent of the hypothetical scenario is envisioning that there was
> actually good proof of that. However, I would note with regard to
> understanding the difference between scientific and metaphysical
> claims that there are plenty of cases in which archaeologists have
> gone beyond the evidence and made "scientific" claims relating to the
> correctness of the Bible that actually reflect their metaphysical
> assumptions. For example, making a big deal about finding a 1st
> century grave in Palestine with the bones of a Jesus son of Joseph.
> That's about as common as finding a similarly marked modern grave in
> Latin America. Or claiming that the remnants of an altar at Mt.
> Gerazim are the remains of Joshua's altar, without good chronological
> control. Given the account in Joshua, any later Israelite
> building/rebuilding at the site would probably copy elements from it.
>
>> And would you say therefore that "as a scientist" you completely and
>> unreservedly
>> accepted that Jesus never rose from the dead, but "as a Christian" you
>> believed that he certainly did, and that the two beliefs were not in any
>> way
>> contradictory?
>
> No. But if I were a non-Christian theist of some sort, I could say
> that I believed that God was involved in some fashion that did not
> involve raising Jesus. Likewise, as a non-antievolutionary theist, I
> can completely consistently affirm that God is actively involved in
> the course of evolution and that there is no need to invoke miraculous
> intervention. ("No need to invoke" does not equal "absolute disproof
> of").
>
>
> --
> Dr. David Campbell
> 425 Scientific Collections
> University of Alabama
> "I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams"
>
>
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Received on Fri Jul 17 21:19:52 2009
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