Re: [asa] TE/EC Response - ideology according to Terry

Cameron,

Re #1 - I really think that my view is the consistent working out of
those theological viewpoints. It appears that you haven't thought
through their implications very carefully. ;-)

I do think that the idea of secondary cause is very simple. Fully
implicit in it is the idea of primary cause. Thus both primary and
secondary causes are present in every event. It seems to me that you
forget (or are very fuzzy on) the primary cause. Secondary causes, as
I am using the term (and the way I understand others have used it),
are those things that aren't the primary cause. This would be things
that can be explained via the action of creatures. Because such
causation is merely secondary there is a primary cause present at the
same time. This is the action of God. Contingency, necessity, and free
agency are all aspects of secondary causation, i.e. creaturely action.
Behind each and enabling each is the primary cause--God and his role
as Creator and in his providence (which includes sustenence,
governance, and Fatherly provision). Primary causation precludes the
sort of autonomy and independence in nature that you describe.

Indeed, I am critical of the deistic leaning (as you put it) views of
Collins, Van Till, Miller, Darwin, and yourself (if you are granting
their view). In The Fourth Day, Van Till stressed four aspects of what
it means to creator: originator, sustainer, governor, and provider. In
every case he distinguished between ultimate origination and
creaturely origination, between ultimate sustenance and creaturely
sustenance, between ultimate governance and creaturely governance,
between ultimate provision and creaturely provision. I think this was
properly getting at the distinction between primary and secondary
causation. In my conversations with him the late 80's and 90's he
seemed to grow less and less comfortable with the notion of divine
governance, even as I stressed it and found in it connections with
Reformed orthodoxy. His movement, I think, was related to questions of
theodicy. Distancing God from "nature red in tooth and claw" and other
problems of evil seem important to all of these folks, including
Darwin. Reformed theology has already dealt with that problem and
embraced it head on.

Finally, perhaps "wiggle room" is something you can understand. I do
not believe that our science and that our "laws" are prescriptive--
they are descriptive and they are approximations. I don't think that
the creature (us) will ever come to a full knowledge of the creation
and God's working in it. Thus, as "right" as we think we have it, I
think there is still a black box of the Creator's knowledge of and
operation in the world that is unexplainable and incomprehensible.
Notice I don't posit God's action in some quantum fluctuation or in
some chaotic indeterminacy. This is to reduce God's involvement to the
creaturely and to make it explainable and comprehensible. It confuses
secondary causes with primary causes. In terms of your example, he
does "something special" in every lightening bolt. As a result every
lighten bolt is the consequence of his "wiggle room" activity. He
willed it and it happened because he willed it. Having said that in no
way means that science can't "explain" in terms of secondary causes a
lot that happens. It can. God has worked and works in ways that is
regular enough for us to do science.

I'm actually quite indifferent to the claims of ID. Of course, in my
view everything is designed. Whether or not God did something
extraordinary (miraculous) in the course of evolutionary history is
possible, but I don't see any reason to expect it. My problem with ID
is that they suggest that certain things cannot be explained in terms
of secondary causes. I simply disagree, as a scientist, with their
conclusions. This is not a matter of principle--it's a matter of
evidence and argument. We've gone over this before. While there are
many unanswered questions, there are many many cases where the broad
outlines of a solution are present and these are sufficient to not
throw out the theory but stay on track and try to fill in the gaps.
You and the ID guys disagree and that's fine, but it turns out that
most practicing life scientists are convinced. My bigger beef is the
apparent agreement with Dawkins and company that if we explain
something in terms of secondary causes that God is not involved. Now
over and over again, the ID guys, including yourself, deny that they
actually say that, but when push comes to shove it seems that in order
to distinguish the theistic view from the atheistic view we have to
point to something that is unexplainable in terms of secondary causes.
The way you put it is that "God has to make a differences" somewhere.

TG

On Jul 18, 2009, at 9:01 PM, Cameron Wybrow wrote:

>
>
> Terry:
>
> Thank you for this careful response.
>
> 1. Regarding the specifically theological remarks you make, I would
> say that many of them would be acceptable not only to Calvinists but
> to a wide range of Christians. I grant that the Christian God is
> omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, in all things, behind all
> things, etc. I grant that ultimately it is God who powers gravity
> and electrostatic phenomena and so on. I grant the complete
> dependency of the universe on God. If we were merely speaking about
> theology in a very general mode, and not about the more precise
> relationship between God and nature or the workings of secondary
> causes, I would probably have very little disagreement with what you
> say.
>
> 2. But there is still the question how to conceive "nature" within
> this framework, and it is here that I find what you and David are
> saying ambiguous and unsatisfactory. You refer to "secondary
> causes", but some of the statements you make imply that you don't
> mean by "secondary causes" what I mean by it (and what, in my view,
> most philosophers and theologians in the history of the West have
> meant by it). I understand nature to have a dependent existence, as
> you say; but I also understand it to have a *real* existence. As
> George Murphy said, that is an implication of the doctrine of
> creation. The world is real. (And in speaking about this, I always
> like to commend to people the famous and influential articles of
> Michael Foster on Christian Creation doctrine and the rise of modern
> natural science, available in a book which I edited.) And while
> nature is not "autonomous" in an absolute sense (as if it could
> exist without God), that does not mean that it does not have its own
> powers and self-regulating, self-regenerating abilities.
>
> Here you seem to disagree with many TEs. Ken Miller, for example,
> has spoken of God's respect for nature's creative role (analogous to
> the behaviour of a parent who stands back and allows a mature child
> to "do it himself"); Van Til (even back when we was a more orthodox
> believer, I'm told) spoke of a "fully gifted creation", i.e., a
> creation which was "deputized", as it were, to do things for itself;
> George Murphy has suggested that "the capacities of creatures" may
> be quite extensive, perhaps extensive enough to account entirely for
> macroevolution without miraculous intervention or tweaking; and many
> other TEs, I believe, have spoken of nature as if it has properties,
> powers, etc. that belong to it, so that God does not need to
> "tinker" with it for natural phenomena, including macroevolution, to
> occur.
>
> The ultimate source of nature's powers is of course God, and perhaps
> we should think of God as always providing the "ground vibration"
> that hums beneath all natural activity, and thus to think of natural
> activity as in one sense really a mode of divine activity; yet for
> all that, the world is a reality distinct from God in important
> ways. That has been the general sense of the Christian tradition,
> at least those parts of the tradition I know a bit about --
> Augustine, Aquinas, and some parts of Anglican and Catholic and
> Protestant thinking. I cannot speak for the Reformed tradition. I
> would be surprised, however, based on my reading of Calvin himself
> (which is not extensive but more than just a few pages), if Calvin
> did not grant that the world had an existence in some way distinct
> from God's, and natural powers of its own (however much those
> depended on God for their operation). I would be interested in
> getting some references from you or anyone here to extensive
> passages from Calvin regarding "the nature of nature", secondary
> causation, the distinction between the world and God, etc., so that
> I could read more of his thinking on the matter.
>
> What puzzles me is that you and most other TEs seem to take umbrage
> when anyone suggests that anything other than "secondary causes"
> might be necessary to explain the evolution of integrated complex
> systems, and many TEs mock both YEC and ID for any such suggestion,
> yet, when I *try* to speak the language of secondary causes in order
> to meet TEs on their own battleground, a certain subset of TEs
> (yourself and David and probably some others here and elsewhere),
> suddenly starts becoming very vague about whether "nature" (as
> opposed to God) really causes anything. How can one answer the
> question whether secondary causes are sufficient to explain
> macroevolution if one does not have at first a clear conception of
> what is meant by secondary causes?
>
> I understand what Hobbes means by secondary causes. I understand
> what Darwin means by secondary causes. I understand (I think) what
> Descartes means by secondary causes. I understand (I think) what
> Aquinas means by secondary causes. But I don't really know what you
> and David mean by secondary causes. You seem to use what I would
> call the traditional or normal sense of the term when your goal is
> to attack ID for "God of the gaps" or "miracle-mongering", but then
> to switch tactics and use the term in an unrecognizable sense when
> dealing with some of my remarks. Your notion of nature -- how it
> works, to what degree it is autonomous, whether the causal nexus is
> normally unbreakable (excepting miracles such as the Red Sea or the
> Resurrection), etc. -- seems to be very elusive indeed. And I find
> to hard to agree or disagree with a position that I cannot pin down.
>
> I spoke earlier about philosophy. A philosopher would spend much
> more time clarifying terms such as "nature", "cause", "efficient
> cause", "secondary vs. primary causation", "necessity", etc.,
> *before* discussing the fine details of God's role in planetary
> motion or macroevolution. I am trying to induce you and David to
> offer this preliminary, definitional sort of preamble, to explain to
> me how you think nature works, *before* you then stitch that
> together with divine action. But you seem unwilling or unable to
> offer such a preamble. I do not know whether this is all tied up
> with your particular Calvinist theology, or whether you just think
> that the notion of nature and causality you are using is so obvious
> that I should be able to get it without elaboration.
>
> 3. I suspect that I am working within a conception of nature that
> you would find too "Deistic". And perhaps I am. However, I do not
> see how traditional Christianity (again, I cannot speak for
> Calvinism) can avoid at least a "semi-Deistic" account of nature.
> If God created nature to be a reality, and if he gave it "natural
> laws" discernible by the human intellect (which you and all other
> TEs proudly proclaim to be the great inheritance that Christianity
> bequeathed to modern science), then in some sense it is right to
> speak of the autonomy of nature. In some sense it is right to say
> that secondary causes are a sufficient explanation for what happens,
> i.e., can offer (in principle, anyway) what Donald MacKay in a
> mid-50s essay called an "exhaustive" explanation for what happens.
> I believe it is historically clear that the *motive* of Darwin and
> of his evolutionary predecessors and contemporaries was to show that
> secondary causes were entirely sufficient or exhaustive in this
> sense. That is, I believe that Darwin and his supporters held a
> more or less "Deistic" view of nature, and I further agree with
> George Hunter that Darwin did not invent this notion of nature out
> of whole cloth, but inherited it from a number of philosophers,
> theologians and clergymen of the previous 150-200 years, who
> preached and taught that God (outside of a few miracles, largely
> confined to Biblical times) worked entirely through "secondary
> causes". I further believe that all of the caustic (or at least
> condescending) remarks about "God of the gaps" which have issued
> from the pens of Eugenie Scott, Ken Miller, Francis Collins, etc.,
> go straight back to this God-only-operates-through-secondary-causes
> tradition in philosophy and Christian theology. (Though Miller
> blows hot and cold on this notion, accepting it or rejecting it as
> serves his polemical purposes, or as his mind wanders through the
> field of theology for which he has little natural aptitude.)
>
> Another way of putting it is this: the main lines of argument that
> *most* TEs (and for that matter most atheist Darwinists) have used
> against ID and YEC people are based, consciously or unconsciously,
> upon a Deistic or quasi-Deistic idea of nature as a closed realm of
> secondary causation (excepting the Biblical miracles and, for non-
> cessationists, a few other miracles). But the criticism of my
> analysis that you and David Campbell are offering seems to involve a
> denial of this Deistic or quasi-Deistic idea of nature. So what I
> am asking for is for you to be clear. If you disagree with Scott
> and Miller and Collins when they speak of secondary causation and
> naturalistic causation and God of the gaps and miracle-mongering and
> so on, if you think they are making *the wrong kind of argument*
> against ID (I'm more concerned about the ID than the YEC side of
> things), then I wish you would, in addition to criticizing *my*
> conception of nature, criticize *theirs* as well. On the other
> hand, if you and David essentially agree with Darwin and Dawkins and
> Scott and Miller and Collins and Ayala in conceiving of nature as a
> closed realm of secondary causation, then you should have no
> objection whatever to my comments when I speak of guidance or non-
> guidance in terms of "what would have happened naturally if God had
> not intervened" and so on.
>
> 4. I wish to comment on only one specific passage in your note,
> which illustrates the general difficulty I am having. You wrote:
>
>> His involvement makes a difference at all levels: sustaining the
>> being of the creature, sustaining laws and properties, and locally
>> contributing to the outcome.
>
> "Sustaining the being of the creature" -- I check;
>
> "Sustaining laws and properties" -- I check;
>
> "and locally contributing to the outcome" -- HOW?
>
> The third point is the nub of the whole matter, and pertains to the
> causes of evolutionary change. My point is that if God "sustains
> the being" of a cloud, and of all the electric charges in it, and of
> the electric charge of the ground, and if God "sustains the laws and
> properties" of charge, etc., the lightning bolt will jump to the
> ground *of its own accord*. God does not have to do anything
> "local" to make this happen. (By which I do not mean that he is not
> present during the event, or that he does not will this particular
> lightning strike, but only that, though present, he does not have to
> do anything *special* or *extra* beyond what he does in the case of
> *every other lightning bolt*.)
>
> Do you agree or disagree?
>
> If you disagree, why?
>
> And if you agree, then would you agree that God does not contribute
> "locally" to the evolutionary process, i.e., he does not do anything
> different -- does not perform any special or extra creative action
> -- in the evolution of man than he did in the evolution of spiders?
> That is, he did not have to do special action X in order to get
> spiders, but special action Y in order to get man. All he had to do
> was *to steadily will the continuance of the laws of inheritance,
> natural selection, etc.* which were quite capable of taking care of
> all the local details themselves. Would you agree with this? Or do
> you see God as "sticking in" some extra little creative action,
> peculiar to each case? Perhaps hidden under quantum indeterminacy?
> An extra action without which the spiders couldn't have appeared,
> and man couldn't have appeared?
>
> Another way of putting this is: do you really believe that events
> in the world (outside of events which obviously have revelatory
> purpose, e.g., the Resurrection, walking on the sea, manna in the
> wilderness, etc.) generally are brought about exclusively through
> laws of nature which God ordained at Creation and steadily
> maintains? Or are you holding out for some "wiggle room" for God,
> so that even in what we would call ordinary or natural activities,
> things do not occur strictly in terms of natural laws? Obviously we
> cannot argue about Darwinian mechanisms until you are absolutely
> clear about this.
>
> 5. Regarding Denton: Yes, quite obviously he accepts the anthropic
> principle! That is not at all incompatible with front-loading. In
> fact, "front-loading" is the *means* by which, according to him, the
> evolutionary goal of man is reached. You seem to have missed the
> part where he speaks of his view that the massive "unused" portions
> of DNA house the "evolutionary program" which unfolds over time. If
> that is not "front-loading", I don't know what is. Further, it is
> not just the DNA which is "front-loaded", because the DNA and the
> protein folds and all else necessary for evolution are generated
> from the mathematical structure of physical/chemical reality. So the
> "front-loading" was ultimately done at the time of the Big Bang.
>
> On another point, it is true that he does not insist that *exactly*
> homo sapiens had to be the end of the evolutionary process, but he
> *does* say that something *very much like* homo sapiens had to be
> the end. There are many very strong reasons for this, among them
> that even the most highly intelligent octopuses or ants would not be
> able to utilize fire, and the ability to utilize fire is essential
> for the development of technology, without which an intelligent
> species cannot acquire the scientific understanding of the workings
> of nature or of its own origins. Denton discusses the importance of
> fire, and the necessary connection of its employment to a certain
> primate body shape, at some length.
>
> And whether you like the term "necessity" or not, he insists that
> the *general direction* of evolution was tightly constrained. Pick
> another word if you like, but he is clearly talking about something
> quasi-deterministic, the opposite of chance (and he opposes "chance"
> explicitly and repeatedly). He understands the evolutionary process
> to be much less indeterminate than the process envisioned by Gould,
> or even by Darwin. The alleged chance, spontaneity, contingency and
> freedom of the evolutionary process are understood by him as largely
> illusory. Contingent events there are, but the overall plan is too
> well enforced to be thwarted or even seriously diverted from its
> course by them. Denton's naturalistic creation story is unified by
> law in a much tighter way than Darwin or even the most fanatical of
> "molecules to man" advocates (Sagan, etc.) ever envisioned. In
> fact, Denton's "law" runs from the top to the bottom of nature,
> penetrating every aspect of the world and imposing upon it a quasi-
> Platonic mathematical form. His scheme ruthlessly and
> unapologetically subordinates stochasticism to a deeper necessity.
> Denton understands the application of "law" to biology in a far
> deeper way than Darwin ever did.
>
> As for your final sentence, it is not Denton's responsibility,
> within the task he sets himself, to comment on the Biblical record
> or harmonize his views with those of special revelation. I don't
> say that they *can't* be so harmonized; nor do I say with any
> assurance that they *can* be; I have an open mind on the question.
> I provisionally conjecture that they could be harmonized with a
> sufficiently flexible reading of the Bible. And a flexible reading
> of the Bible, if I may speak with a degree of understatement, does
> not seem to be a problem for many TEs. But I am holding off on any
> discussion of harmonization until I see Denton's third book, which
> is supposedly due to come out this year. I am eager to find out
> whether he comes full circle, to revisit the possibility of
> Christian belief in the light of his teleological and anthropogenic
> understanding of nature.
>
> Nonetheless, I cannot resist the comment that Denton's almost
> complete determinism should seem much more theologically appealing
> to a Calvinist (as I understand Calvinism) than Darwin's "laissez-
> faire", chancy conception of evolution. Calvin called Lucretius a
> "dog", and I can imagine him doing the same (and am almost certain
> that he *would* do the same) for Darwin; but I think he would be
> rather impressed by the thoroughgoing sense of divinely-planned
> inevitability that runs throughout Denton's account, and would see
> Denton as a ripe prospect for evangelization.
>
> Cameron.
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Terry M. Gray" <grayt@lamar.colostate.edu
> >
> To: "ASA" <asa@calvin.edu>
> Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2009 6:32 PM
> Subject: Re: [asa] TE/EC Response - ideology according to Terry
>
>
>> Cameron,
>>
>> With David's response (and then your counter response) and the
>> renewed discussion of front-loading, the discussion has come back
>> around again. I have been mulling over a response now for over a
>> week. I am confident that you won't be satisfied because my notion
>> is deeply rooted in my theology. I do think, contra Gregory, that
>> it reflects a very deep integration of faith and science. I am
>> also confident that if you grasp my view here and accept it that
>> you will agree with assessment about biological evolution.
>>
>> Also, I find your distinctions unhelpful. Concurrence is the
>> needed word that is distinct from cooperation and guidance but you
>> don't like that word. Also, as you define things, indeed, I mean
>> guidance and cooperation. There is no creaturely ability that is
>> able to function without God's involvement. His involvement makes a
>> difference at all levels: sustaining the being of the creature,
>> sustaining laws and properties, and locally contributing to the
>> outcome. God's role, because of his faithfulness, is such that the
>> outcome is describable by the approximations that we call
>> scientific law.
>>
>> It is good to see that David and I are giving you the same answers
>> for the most part. We have arrived at our perspective
>> "independently", i.e. our views are not derivative from each other
>> in any way. However, we do faithfully, I think, represent the
>> Calvinistic and Reformed perspective embodied in the Westminster
>> Confession of Faith and Catechism which speak quite plainly of
>> these matters.
>>
>> George is correct in asserting that the sovereignty of God is the
>> major undergirding idea here. I'm not sure his discussion of
>> mediate vs. immediate action is particularly relevant. I even
>> think that he overstates the case in characterization of Hodge and
>> I'm not sure we claim Zwingli especially when it comes to ideas
>> concerning the sacraments. Hodge's comments reflect the idea that
>> special grace (conversion, sanctification, etc.) always involves
>> the direct action of the Holy Spirit. This does not mean that
>> there are not means: scripture, preaching, sacrament, etc. but
>> that if regeneration occurs, it's because the Holy Spirit has
>> acted in an immediate way.
>>
>> Okay. All of this is prefatory to my real answer.
>>
>> The fundamental starting point is with the doctrine of God
>> (theology proper). Several attributes of God are particularly
>> relevant for this discussion. God is omnipresent. God is immense.
>> God is omnipotent. God is simple. God is self-existent (aseity). I
>> don't know how many of these need explaining, but the basic idea
>> is that God is everywhere and his full being is everywhere and he
>> is not limited by space. It's not as if part of God is here and
>> part of God is there. Even "after" God created the world he is
>> everywhere. That means the full being and power of God is present
>> "in, with, and under" every creaturely entity, every quark,
>> electron, molecule, cell, organism, mountain, planet, galaxy, etc.
>>
>> Now we must be quick to say that this does not mean that everything
>> is God. The Creature is not God. We are not pantheists. Not even
>> panentheists. The Creature exists separately from God. But not
>> independently from God. Only God is self-existent. But the creature
>> is dependent. Radically dependent. If God would stop his work in
>> maintaining the creature, the creature would cease to exist. (Talk
>> about "making a difference.") Nontheless, everywhere the creature
>> and all the parts of the creature is (most creatures are not
>> simple but are made of parts), God is there in all of his fullness.
>>
>> Of course, this is all incomprehensible. That's why the
>> theologians call these the incommunicable attributes of God. We
>> don't share them. We can barely grasp their meaning. Even talking
>> about them should make us nervous. But since God appears to us and
>> tells us that he is these things, then we proceed. And we base our
>> thinking about the creation on this revelation.
>>
>> One thing that it does mean is that all our language about artisan
>> and artifact, artist and creative work, guiding a boat like the a
>> pilot guides the boat, concurring the way a politician concurs,
>> etc. falls woefully short. The carpenter and saw analogy brought up
>> before captures some of what is meant by concurrence or
>> cooperation, but with God, the saw owes its on-going existence to
>> the carpenter, is fully filled up by the being of the carpenter,
>> every quark, atom, molecule that makes up the saw is filled with
>> and empowered by the carpenter. There is NOTHING in our experience
>> as "creators" and "governors" that is like this. The artifact and
>> creative work exist apart from the artisan and artist. The artisan
>> and artist are dependent on the objective properties of the tools
>> of their craft.
>>
>> I trust you can see where I am going with this. You spoke about
>> "angels pushing planets". While I'm not so sure that that's the
>> most felicitous expression, I'm not as dismissive of the notion as
>> you suggested "others" in our group are. God in his omnipotent,
>> omnipresence enables his creation at all levels (sub-atomic,
>> atomic, molecular, macrosopic, systems). The creature would not
>> work apart from this enabling power, the creature would not have
>> its properties or its interactions with with other creatures apart
>> from this enabling power, and in the process he guides and governs
>> what the creature does so that the outcome of the creature's
>> action is exactly what God wants. His guidance and governance is
>> such, in his sovereign will, that each creature acts according to
>> the properties God gives it: necessary, contingent, or free.
>>
>> So molecular motions and chemical reactions are empowered by God
>> (who is "in, with, and under" the atoms and molecules involved).
>> That fact that we can predict their outcome as a result of
>> scientific discovery does not mean that they are unguided,
>> ungoverned, unenabled, independent, or autonomous. It also does
>> not mean that God isn't doing anything that makes a difference.
>>
>> The extension to evolutionary processes is obvious.
>>
>> So Dawkins (and Cameron for that matter) may say that God isn't
>> doing anything, but if what I say above here is true, then they
>> couldn't be more wrong. The task of the scientists is "think God's
>> thoughts after him", i.e. to find out in terms of secondary causes
>> how God created and governs the world. The scientist makes no
>> claims about how God interacts with the world. Asa Gray's
>> criticized Hodge's "What Is Darwinism?" (and Darwin himself) for
>> not knowing better. As I've stated before I'm not even sure how
>> you would tell the difference between an "irregular" God-governed
>> action that leads to some evolutionary innovation and one that is
>> part of the "regular" God- governed action.
>>
>> And again, because God's guidance, cooperation, and concurrence is
>> present in all that happens, the fact that something is describable
>> by secondary causes in no way means that God is not involved. What
>> this means is that the science of the theist and the science of the
>> atheist may look very similar as long as they only talk about
>> secondary causes. This also means that we can be indifferent as
>> Christians to the science. Let the chips fall where they may. It
>> doesn't matter. God is still the ultimate originator, sustainer,
>> and governor.
>>
>> I also want to make it clear that I'm not making any claims on the
>> details of God's interactions in these processes. Because of the
>> incomprehensibility of God's omnipresence and immensity, I am fully
>> willing to accept that all this may not be accessible to the human
>> mind. That we say "God governs all his creatures and all their
>> actions" is sufficient.
>>
>> On a side note: I have been looking again at Denton's book. I'm
>> finding that "front-loaded" is not exactly the term I would use to
>> describe his ideas. It seems more in tune with notions of the
>> anthropic principle. He sees himself as being in line with Paul
>> Davies and Stuart Kauffman. Thus, the world is created with laws,
>> constants, components, etc. that produce carbon, liquid water,
>> things necessary for life, that principles of self-organization
>> result in the emergence of life and it's steady evolution. I think
>> it would be a mistake to put his view in the category of
>> "necessity". None of this is really that incompatible with the
>> Darwinian story as long as the contingencies of Darwinism are
>> understood to be constrained by the geometry, physics, chemistry,
>> etc., i.e. not everything is possible, but only those things that
>> fall within the parameters of the way things are (or the way
>> things were created). Thus, Denton doesn't seem to insist that it
>> be "us" that resulted but something like "us" (mammalian, bipedal,
>> large-brained, etc.). Front-loading in Denton's sense doesn't
>> really get us anywhere in my opinion. Certainly, guidance would be
>> needed in Denton's program to get to the specifics of the divine
>> plan as recorded in scripture or the unique creation that we have
>> today.
>>
>> TG
>>
>>
>> On Jul 9, 2009, at 5:09 PM, Cameron Wybrow wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Terry:
>>>
>>> I never said that #4 was not possible. But as I said to others
>>> who proposed it, it's really a subset of #3, since it accepts
>>> guidance, even if the guidance is indetectable.
>>>
>>> I find your final paragraph incomprehensible. Not the English
>>> prose, which is fine, but the notion expressed in it. It seems
>>> very close to what David Campbell is saying.
>>>
>>> If God's "guidance" in chemical reactions means only that God
>>> "powers" the basic laws of charge, etc., and then the particles,
>>> under the guidance of these laws, merely act "naturally", and
>>> attract or repel each other, etc., then I have no problem with
>>> your view, but I think that "guidance" is a misleading term for
>>> it, too far from the everyday use of the word and hence liable to
>>> confuse people.
>>>
>>> If God's "guidance" means what would normally be meant by
>>> "guidance" in everyday life, i.e., God literally guides or steers
>>> *a particular electron* to join up with *a particular atom* to
>>> form *a particular compound*, i.e., God is in effect *constructing
>>> that particular compound at that particular point in time and
>>> space*, then I think such "guidance" is entirely redundant, since
>>> the natural laws God has established can accomplish every detail
>>> of the action without any "guidance". As I said to George, "co-
>>> operation" of that sort seems as ludicrous as to say that even
>>> though I am pushing the gas pedal on my car and it is going 60
>>> mph, someone must *also* run alongside my car at 60 mph and push
>>> the car along, or the car will stop moving. Either the internal
>>> combustion engine is enough to exhaustively explain the motion of
>>> the car, or it isn't. Either the laws of charge and so on are
>>> enough to exhaustively explain the capture of hydrogen electron
>>> by a chlorine atom, or they aren't. If the laws are sufficient,
>>> then God doesn't "guide" anything; he merely powers the laws. If
>>> the laws are insufficient, then God would indeed be needed to
>>> "guide" each particular chemical reaction, everywhere in the
>>> universe. But others here have ridiculed that conception as
>>> "angels pushing the planets". And when ID suggests anything like
>>> that, it is scornfully called "God of the Gaps".
>>>
>>> Terry, the terminology of "guidance" that you and David Campbell
>>> are using is *just not clear*. I am trying to get you to see that
>>> is it not clear. And I am trying to get you to see that this lack
>>> of clarity harms TE generally, and limits its "drawing power" in
>>> the wider world. Whatever may be the faults and defects of ID
>>> theory, its writers are more in tune with common language than TE
>>> writers are, and, as Aristotle and Wittgenstein in different ways
>>> make clear, it is necessary to respect the virtues of common
>>> language -- when it is used coherently, that is -- in order to
>>> think out even the difficult and abstract problems in
>>> philosophy. The same applies to theology. Metaphors and
>>> analogies are necessary in theological discourse, but when they
>>> must be used, the "anchor word" of the metaphor or analogy
>>> ("guidance", ''chance", "force", "will", etc.) must be employed
>>> in the way that it is employed in everyday speech; otherwise the
>>> metaphors and analogies will confuse more than they help. The
>>> way that you and David Campbell are using "guidance" confuses
>>> more than it helps. I suggest that you find another word for the
>>> concept you are trying to express.
>>>
>>> Cameron.
>
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________________
Terry M. Gray, Ph.D.
Computer Support Scientist
Chemistry Department
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523
(o) 970-491-7003 (f) 970-491-1801

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Received on Sun Jul 19 01:13:25 2009