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

Cameron,

You mistaken me for a pious person. However, I do think that the
picture that I paint here is consistent with what scripture teaches,
that God is active in every event even the rising of the sun every
day. If trying to follow scripture where leads makes me overly pious,
I guess I'll wear the label.

I don't know why you brought in the idea of God striking down the
wicked man. As far as I'm concerned all that I say could be said of
any and every lightening strike whether or not it has any apparent
role in any other chain of events.

I was reluctant to say what I said about ID because I figured you'd
zero in on it as you did. Nonetheless, you yourself are an example--
you keep insisting on some activity from God that makes a difference.
This is where we are at an impasse. God's activity always makes a
difference--it's part of his governing activity.

Also, I fully understand what you and Denton and Behe and Dembski and
Darwin and Dawkins mean about *really* unguided processes. I just
don't think that such things exist. Period. I assume by *really* that
what we mean is "ultimate", i.e. with respect to God's activity, i.e.
primary causes. Such an idea may well be at the heart of Darwin's
personal views. But Darwin's personal views could well be quite
heterodox and even wrong. If that is what he means, then he's stepping
outside the boundaries of science and confusing primary and secondary
causes. Asa Gray pointed this out almost at the beginning of the
discussion about whether or not Darwinian ideas are consistent with
orthodox Christianity, and he pointed out Hodge's mistake in not
recognizing this confusion on Darwin's part. Most theistic
evolutionists since have followed this distinction.

Now in their better moments Dembski and Behe will concede that a TE
view as I articulate it is possible and is fully consistent with
Christian orthodoxy. I have it on video from the ASA symposium at
Messiah a few years ago. I've been tempted to make the clip and
distribute when we get into these spats. Theologically, we're not that
far apart. It would be nice if we could focus our attention on the
theological question. We are in full agreement in our antagonism
toward Dawkins and the new atheists. I continue to ask--why do we need
to drag the scientific claims into the debate? The scientific claims,
while interesting at some level, are largely irrelevant to the debate
we all have with the atheists. Why give them the extra ammunition of
answering the scientific objections, which they are largely successful
in doing in my opinion, and then claiming victory in the theological/
philosophical debate?

I don't really understand why my view is some "third mode of divine
action". It is the divine action that concurs with every creaturely
action. The divine action is the primary cause; the creaturely action
is the secondary cause. The chain of secondary causes can explain
things at a given level. Indeed, the "chain" of secondary causes is
established by the primary cause. But the chain of secondary causes
(the scientific explanation when it comes to physics, chemistry,
biology, etc.) tells us nothing about God's role. You seem to want to
remove primary causation from "normal" events (other than sustenance
and continued provision of endowed properties and laws). Indeed, the
mysterious "extra" (sic) action cannot be incorporated into our
scientific equations--to do so would be to confuse primary and
secondary causation.

Perhaps some of your frustration comes from my unwillingness to
provide a precise explanation of how all this works. David Wallace's
question about my paper (thanks, David, for having a look at it)
perhaps gets at this. Hodge's discussion of concurrence (drawing
mostly on the Reformed scholastic theologian Francis Turretin) is
interesting in that he distances himself from the the details, because
in his view, it creates as many problems as it solves. In distancing
himself from the doctrine of concurrence as articulated by the
scholastics he steps back and merely affirms what the catechism
affirms about the doctrine of providence--that God governs all his
creatures and all their actions. Hodge is saying that the scholastic
doctrine says more than it should say. In other words, we don't know
how all this works. Perhaps the knowledge of the "how" is limited to
the Godhead. We can be assured, however, according to Hodge, that
whatever happens is under God's full control and that nothing happens
apart from his will.

I am quite content with that level of explanation. I'm probably a bit
more sympathetic with some of the scholastics' theology than maybe
Hodge is, so to answer David's question, I'm somewhere between #2 and
#3.

The "extra", the "wiggle room" that I'm willing to entertain is also a
component of the radical individuality (a la Dooyeweerd) that I see as
part of God's relationship with creation. Randy and I had a brief
exchange about this a while back. Scripture declares that God calls
all the stars each by name (Psalm 147:4). I don't think it's too far-
fetched to say he knows each quark, each electron, each atom, each
molecule by name. I would suggest that that individuality is largely
inaccessible to our science and that it may well be rooted in the very
nature of creaturehood itself.

TG

On Jul 19, 2009, at 4:00 AM, Cameron Wybrow wrote:

>
>
> Terry:
>
> We've reached a definitional impasse, so I'll make just two points,
> then retire (barring a sudden meeting of the minds) from the
> discussion.
>
> 1. On ID and secondary causes. I realize that ID proponents
> express a range of views, and that your criticism may apply to some
> of them. My view is that ID at its best does not hold the view
> which you impute to it.
>
> ID does not insist that if a natural phenomenon is completely
> explicable in terms of secondary causes, God bears no responsibility
> for it. Nor does ID believe that if a complete secondary-cause
> account of evolution were available, Dawkins would automatically be
> right and God would not exist. Michael Denton's view, for example,
> is what I am calling an ID view (though you may prefer to call it an
> "id" view without the capitals). He apparently believes that
> secondary causes can (in principle) exhaustively explain
> *everything* in nature, from the Big Bang on, but that does not stop
> him from believing in a God of sorts -- a designing Mind behind the
> universe who is entirely responsible (and thus is the "primary
> cause" in a meaningful sense) for what happens in it.
>
> Both Michael Behe and William Dembski have said that an exhaustively
> naturalistic account of origins is not *necessarily* anti-design or
> atheistic. It depends on the sort of naturalistic account offered.
> The Darwinian account says that integrated complex structures can be
> formed without any intelligent input, that unguided processes are
> sufficient. Denton, Behe and Dembski say that no, they are not
> sufficient. (And to save time going over tiresome old ground,
> always remember that I, Denton, Behe and Dembski mean *really*
> unguided processes, not just unguided from the point of view of
> "methodological naturalism". I know that I will not persuade you
> that such unguided processes are at the very heart of Darwinian
> theory, but for Denton, Behe and Dembski, they are, and all their
> reasoning proceeds from that, so if you really want to understand
> where ID people are coming from, you must try to put yourself in the
> frame of mind of someone who believes that.)
>
> Put another way, it is not that Darwinian evolution relies entirely
> on *secondary* causes that makes it objectionable to ID. It is that
> Darwinian evolution relies entirely on *unintelligent* causes. If
> the objection of ID were to the employment of "secondary causes
> only", no ID proponent could accept Denton -- but many do. ID
> proponents, or at least some ID proponents, can grant the
> possibility that irreducibly complex systems could be created by an
> evolutionary process which relied entirely on secondary causation
> (no miracles, no quantum tinkering, etc.), *if the process were
> cleverly worked out in advance and front-loaded* (cf. my example of
> an intelligently designed factory in which unintelligent robots
> produce irreducibly complex watches). But that of course was not
> how Darwin (or Mayr or Dobzhansky or Gaylord Simpson or Sagan or
> Bertrand Russell or Gould) envisioned evolution.
>
> 2. Regarding lightning bolts, if your point is that there are two
> equally valid explanations of the lightning bolt, a secondary-cause
> explanation in terms of electrostatics, and a primary-cause
> explanation in terms of God's will, and that these explanations are
> meant to be "two sides of the same coin", then I understand you and
> have no problem with combining the two explanations. Donald MacKay
> said that scientific explanations were "exhaustive", in the sense of
> complete, not needing any "God of the gaps" to fill them in, but not
> "exclusive" of non-scientific explanations; so it could be that the
> lightning bolt struck where and when it did *both* because God
> wanted to kill a sinner *and* because of the laws of electrostatics.
> This makes the lightning bolt a tool or instrument of God's will.
> It is the "instrumental cause", God's will being the "final cause".
> I have never had any problem with this dual way of looking at a
> single action.
>
> However, I am not at all confident that this way of putting together
> divine and natural causation (which reminds me a bit of Gould's
> NOMA, though I doubt Dr. MacKay had Gould's motives) is what you
> mean. For, if that is what you mean, there is no reason you should
> keep on giving me difficulty by insisting that God is still acting
> in a local or special manner, given that you know (or at least
> should know) what I am driving at by using the words. Yes, of course
> God is achieving a "local" effect with the lightning bolt, in the
> sense that it strikes in a particular "location" which God has
> chosen, and yes, of course that local effect may serve some
> "special" purpose of God (killing a particular wicked man), but the
> "localness" and the "special effect" are practically achieved not
> through the direct action of God, but through the collocation of
> secondary causes. Rather than say that God is "acting locally", I
> would say that nature is "acting locally" at the behest of God.
>
> I think you have not given enough attention to the third word I
> offered in my groping for a term -- the word "extra". If God as the
> primary cause and electrostatics as the secondary cause are "two
> sides of the same coin" or "two simultaneous aspects of God's
> working", then God-as-primary-cause is not doing anything *extra*,
> i.e., does not *add anything to* the efficient causes producing the
> lightning bolt. Rather, God-as-primary-cause is enabling,
> empowering, sustaining nature-as-secondary-cause, which has all that
> it needs within it (assuming God's continuing support of nature's
> powers) to produce the lightning bolt and to make it strike exactly
> where and when it does.
>
> Thus, I could accept an explanation like this:
>
> "The primary cause of the lightning bolt is God's will to kill the
> wicked man, and the secondary cause of the lightning bolt is the
> laws of electrostatics. The laws of electrostatics were designed by
> God and their continued operation is empowered by God. The primary
> and secondary causes operate simultaneously and with reference to
> exactly the same event."
>
> But what I have been hearing you and David saying all along is
> something more like this:
>
> "The primary cause of the lightning bolt is God's will to kill the
> wicked man, and the secondary cause of the lightning bolt is the
> laws of electrostatics. The laws of electrostatics were designed by
> God and their continued operation is empowered by God. The primary
> and secondary causes operate simultaneously and with reference to
> exactly the same event. **But in addition, God acts directly in a
> third, extra, special, mysterious way, which is not merely as the
> sustainer of the laws of nature (which laws are the secondary causes
> of the lightning bolt) and not merely as the guiding will behind the
> action (i.e., as the primary cause of the lightning bolt), but by
> doing something locally (above and beyond what the sum total of the
> laws of nature could ever do) in order to produce *this specific
> lightning bolt*, and if he did not do this mysterious extra thing,
> there would be no lightning bolt. Further, this mysterious extra
> action cannot be incorporated into any scientific equation, and the
> result it produces in nature is indistinguishable from what the
> science of electrostatics would predict if its practitioners had
> never heard of this type of divine action.**"
>
> It is this mysterious "third mode of divine action" -- neither
> clearly primary nor clearly secondary; and with local effect, yet
> having nothing to do with the chains of efficient causes which
> generate all local effects -- that I cannot understand. It seems
> theologically and scientifically redundant. The event is already
> exhaustively explained from a physical point of view, and God's
> responsibility for the outcome is already sufficiently acknowledged
> by referring to him as the primary cause.
>
> What is the point of inflating God's action in this way -- ascribing
> an intellectually meaningless extra mode of action to him -- except
> to generate an impression that the writer, preacher, teacher, parent
> or theologian is a person of exceptionally zealous piety?
>
> Cameron.
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Terry M.Gray" <grayt@lamar.colostate.edu
> >
> To: "ASA" <asa@calvin.edu>
> Sent: Sunday, July 19, 2009 1:12 AM
> Subject: 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.
>>>
>>>
>>> To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
>>> "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
>>
>> ________________
>> 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
>>
>>
>>
>> To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
>> "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
>
>
> To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
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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

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
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Received on Sun Jul 19 18:10:49 2009