ASA - August 2009: RE: [asa] (death of kids) Nothing_in_Biology

From: Dehler, Bernie <bernie.dehler@intel.com>
Date: Tue Aug 18 2009 - 15:46:45 EDT

Schwarzwald-
So, you are saying that when a child dies of birth defects, spontaneous abortions, etc., that it is all in accordance to God's specific plan for that individual, correct?

...Bernie

________________________________
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of Schwarzwald
Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 6:53 PM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] (death of kids) Nothing_in_Biology_Makes_Sense_Except_in_the_Light_of_Evolution

Bernie,

Yes and no. Yes, God has a plan for both of them. And yes, their deaths - whenever it may come - is part of the plan. But a 'plan for their lives' isn't how I would put it, because in this context it implies some kind of finality - "the plan for the child in the impoverished country was to die of starvation, and the plan for the child in the USA was to live, full stop." No, the plan for both children is a lot more than that - their resurrection is part of the plan. Their life after resurrection is part of the plan. Somehow even Christians seem to forget this.

David,

I don't think a TE position needs to utterly rule out "tinkering", just as they may not need to utterly rule it in (admittedly that gets trickier with miracles, for example.) I can sit around and think up a tremendous multitude of ways for God to have set up the universe - some entirely front-loaded, some requiring constant second by second tinkering, some in between, and some more than that. Maybe God set up a universe that requires tinkering to achieve a definite end, and front-loaded the tinkering. I personally am not beholden to any particular one of these views - it rather strikes me as coming up with a theory of just what comprises the code for a program which outputs "Hello World!" six times on the screen at 7:32pm. There's a million, perhaps an infinite number, of ways to achieve that, ranging from good old-fashioned full-on/complete front loading to one where all manner of random variables are in play to one where the "program" did nothing but let some guy paste whatever output he wanted onto your screen whenever he wished via the internet.

On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 11:53 AM, Dehler, Bernie <bernie.dehler@intel.com<mailto:bernie.dehler@intel.com>> wrote:
So if a child dies in an impoverished country because of diarrhea or starvation, yet a similar child lives in the USA because of better living standards, you are saying both happened because of God's plan for their lives? I'm just trying to understand your viewpoint.

...Bernie
________________________________________
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu<mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu> [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu<mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu>] On Behalf Of Schwarzwald
Sent: Friday, August 14, 2009 12:58 PM
To: asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
Subject: Re: [asa] Nothing_in_Biology_Makes_Sense_Except_in_the_Light_of_Evolution

Heya Bernie,

As I said, I disagree sharply that "if they live to be only 1 day old, they can do nothing for God". First, because even at 1 day old - even at 1 pick-your-measure old - they're already doing something. They exist. They are now taking part in quite a plan, themselves, by virtue of their existence. And the effects that existence can have on the lives of others, and what that can bring about (lessons, experiences, etc) are numerous. And I wouldn't put this as "doing something for God" - only because God, to my understanding, doesn't "need" anything done for Him.

Either way, the difference we seem to have is that you seem to see "purpose" as something that can only be thought of in terms of "growing up, then going out and doing things". Tremendously valuable, absolutely. But not exhaustive of value or purpose by a longshot. So from my perspective, what seems ridiculous is people viewing those who die early (even extremely early) or who are born with birth defects as having no purpose or value. I think the value is obvious. The purpose? As I said, quite a lot of reasons and possibilities can be offered, but I won't pretend I can read God's mind. A reason/purpose for a death/pain in situation X may differ drastically for a death/pain in situation Y, even though the deaths were very similar in generalities.

As for "ancient theology", my view and understanding of it doesn't match yours - and I don't think anything essential/tremendous has changed besides. Nor do I think doctors ministering to the sick are "revolting against God" any more than they were in that ancient world when hospitals were being opened as a religious duty. Man is expected to work and toil in a hard world, not sit around and passively endure every pain that comes to pass.
On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 3:14 PM, Dehler, Bernie <bernie.dehler@intel.com<mailto:bernie.dehler@intel.com>> wrote:
Schwarzwald said:
"What's the plan and purpose for someone who lives a full and relatively happy life, dying at age 80? "

If someone lives to 80, they can serve the Lord in missions, evangelism, etc. If they live to be only 1 day old, they can do nothing for God.

Schwarzwald said:
"As I said, the Christian message is that plan and purpose isn't exhausted by earthly life - I'd add, or individual experience - so it makes no sense to ask the question in that context."

As a Christian, I'd agree this earthly life isn't all there is. However, if the Christian message is, as the "40 Days of Purpose" book says (and one of my former Pastors, "Everything happens for a reason"), God makes everyone for a purpose; that seems ridiculous when one knows of all the premature deaths that happen worldwide. The only way to believe that (God has a special purpose/plan for everyone) is by having blinders on and living in a cocoon, I think. Unless you think God's purpose is that so many natural abortions and birth defects happen.

'Ancient theology' (my term) says that death and sickness is the result of Adam's sin. God cursed the Earth because of Adam's sin. Birth defects are a part of that curse (birth defects not God's good will). I don't think most modern Christians believe this anymore ('ancient theology'). And modern medicine is rebelling against this curse to nullify it. In the USA, early death can be avoided. If God intended babies to die early for a reason, He must not be too powerful to have modern humans circumvent that and save the babies.

Schwarzwald said:
"Or maybe you're asking me "What purpose could someone dying so early possibly fulfill"?"

Yes- that was the intent of the question.

...Bernie

To: asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
Subject: Re: [asa] Nothing_in_Biology_Makes_Sense_Except_in_the_Light_of_Evolution

What's the plan and purpose for someone who lives a full and relatively happy life, dying at age 80? As I said, the Christian message is that plan and purpose isn't exhausted by earthly life - I'd add, or individual experience - so it makes no sense to ask the question in that context.

The only other angle I can see you coming at with your question is one with the unspoken implication "Wouldn't it have been better if this baby was never conceived to begin with?" Again, if we're operating within the Christian view, that just seems strange to ask. Whether someone dies 1 month after conception or 1000 months, they have a future beyond death to look forward to. If they can expect salvation - and from my perspective, even if they can expect something less than salvation but not everlasting tortuous hell - it's clear to me that, no, it's vastly better that they were conceived.

Or maybe you're asking me "What purpose could someone dying so early possibly fulfill"? And there, I can see so many answers that can go on top of "For their own sake". But they would all be answers similar to what I'm sure you've run into already - lessons their (short) life teaches others, effects they have on others, what they indirectly bring about, what they demonstrate about the value (overestimating and underestimating) of earthly life and existence, etc.

Hopefully you see where I'm coming from here.
On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 11:41 AM, Dehler, Bernie <bernie.dehler@intel.com<mailto:bernie.dehler@intel.com>> wrote:
Schwarzwald said:
"And frankly, it's not as if we're somehow more special just because we live longer lives than said babies - nor is God "done" with us after we die, whether it's at 1 month or 100 years. The Christian message has been that God has a plan and place for everyone, and that this plan isn't predicated on living some long, healthy, happy life."

So what is the plan and purpose for a baby that died after childbirth? There are probably thousands of cases of this every day around the world. I'm asking from a "God's will" perspective; not a theodicy question.

...Bernie

To: asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
Subject: Re: [asa] Nothing_in_Biology_Makes_Sense_Except_in_the_Light_of_Evolution

God has created all of us "specifically to die". Death no more eludes us than it does any baby who dies inside or outside of the womb.

And frankly, it's not as if we're somehow more special just because we live longer lives than said babies - nor is God "done" with us after we die, whether it's at 1 month or 100 years. The Christian message has been that God has a plan and place for everyone, and that this plan isn't predicated on living some long, healthy, happy life. In fact, I'd think the experiences of Christ Himself would have made it clear that God's plan can include (and often does include) a tragic, premature death. Once someone accepts that even one particular tragic, early death can make total sense in the Christian perspective, it illustrates how any death - even of a child in the womb - can fit into a plan and purpose. Put another way, a dead child still has value. Dying young, even too young to have been born, does not make a person's existence somehow meaningless or pointless.

Personally, I don't "struggle" with the problem of pain or evil anymore, and haven't for a long time. On the Christian worldview it makes complete sense that there exists pain and death (even in abundance) in our universe (and I don't think "evolution" adds much to that particular issue anyway). Frankly, it's also justifiable in a jewish, muslim, or hindu worldview as well, and probably other theistic views. In fact, it's death and evil is vastly more problematic for atheists who seriously contend the world is so evil that no good God would be responsible for it or willingly expose anyone to it, or who for whatever reason still try to load words like "good" or "evil" with meaning at all.

(Though, in response to David Clounch, I have no problem seeing destiny and purpose in a world where evolution is true. I don't think TEs are particularly hobbled on the question just by nature of their accepting evolution. If anything they're hobbled because they simply, for whatever reason, tend to avoid thinking and speaking in those terms - but that's not a result of their believing in evolution, unless it's of evolution that was ultimately/entirely unplanned and unguided, which seems very rare.)
On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 1:51 PM, Dehler, Bernie <bernie.dehler@intel.com<mailto:bernie.dehler@intel.com>> wrote:
David C. said:
"A pre-loaded universe only makes sense if it explains what your personal unique meaning is to the creator, and also explains your destiny, where you are going. It makes no sense to say a creator pre-loaded the universe to produce Bernie, and then have nothing to predict where Bernie is going. "

Hi David-

I don't understand how anyone, and I mean anyone, can think God directly makes all people for His direct plans.

Consider all the spontaneous abortions (naturally occurring), still births, birth defects, etc. God created all those people specifically to die? I myself had a daughter that died a few moments after birth, due to birth defects. I don't think that was God's direct will (you will likely say His permissive will). And it is not just about my experience- it is multiplied my many times all over the world, even more in undeveloped nations (where even healthy babies and mom's die due to birth complications that could be avoided in the USA). So God made you and has plans for your life... what about all those others who died way too premature? This is not a TE or YEC question, but a question really posed for all Christians to consider... one I struggle with too.

So are you a special case in that God has a plan for you and your life, but not for those who die of birth defects? Or is that just a "I don't know and I'll have to ask God when I get to heaven" question...

David C. said:
"Atheism, the worldview you seem to be endorsing Bernie..."

I'm a Christian agnostic ... still sorting things out...

...Bernie
(PS: Please know that it may sound personal and I may be upset, but it is really a content question and I'm not emotional about it... you can't show that over email.)
________________________________________
From: David Clounch [mailto:david.clounch@gmail.com<mailto:david.clounch@gmail.com>]
Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2009 9:57 AM
To: Dehler, Bernie
Cc: asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>

Subject: Re: [asa] Nothing_in_Biology_Makes_Sense_Except_in_the_Light_of_Evolution

Bernie,

I have come to appreciate your posts. No matter how much I may disagree with them. I find your candor refreshing.

The view you just put forth is what millions of students have arrived at. Please note your conclusion - the idea that God made humans is to be rejected. Well, that is certainly not a theistic evolutionists viewpoint (as I have come to understand TE).
As far as I can tell you seem to have separated human origins from theism. It seems very clean cut.

On the door to my private study is a sign. It reads,

"If people, like rocks, are mere occurrences, then they can have no more meaning than rocks".

And you are correct that the thin veneer of humanism layered on top of the cold hard truth is just there so we can pretend we feel better.

But what if the atheist worldview is wrong? What if humans are more than rocks? What if they have a future destiny that is non-natural?

This is where the TE worldview has failed to fill in the blanks. A pre-loaded universe only makes sense if it explains what your personal unique meaning is to the creator, and also explains your destiny, where you are going. It makes no sense to say a creator pre-loaded the universe to produce Bernie, and then have nothing to predict where Bernie is going. Let me put it this way: rocks on the beach are not going to be spending time with their children one million years from now. But the resurrected Christians will be doing so. See the difference? What I am getting at is: a viable theory of origins contains a viable theory of destiny. Atheism, the worldview you seem to be endorsing Bernie, has no theory of destiny. Neither do deistic theories. This is why deistic Christianity isn't convincing. It isn't theologically complete enough to compete with traditional Christian approaches.

From my admittedly ignorant viewpoint, some TE theorists I have read on this list attempt to solve this gap by putting a ghost in the machine - by invoking souls and theistic action that isn't physical. I've been wary of this idea for quite some time. Seems to me (and I could be wrong) it makes them a modern version of "immortal deist" as opposed to "mortal deists" who would deny there is any destiny or any soul. Or it makes them a certain form of theist who believes God cannot affect the physical but only affects the soul. The right wingers (YECs/OECs/etc) reject all that. They say God can touch the physical any time He wants. He operates in the universe. He terraforms solar systems the way a painter mixes paints. The painting is both natural and non-natural. It would not exist without the painter mixing up the paint.

So Bernie, you seem to moving in the direction that there is no painter because the paint just gets mixed naturally. And indeed a great deal of it does. But doesn't this just make Bernie (and indeed all of us) one more accident in a maelstrom of accidents? I don't think science says that at all. I think its naturalism (and I don't mean Christian naturalism) which says that.

-Dave

PS - I didnt even get to the problem with conflating cosmological evolution with other forms of evolution. They have totally different meaning - but you have conflated them together as a principle. This is what the leftists on the state science standards committees want you and all our children to believe. In your case Bernie they seem to have convinced you.

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 10:13 AM, Dehler, Bernie <bernie.dehler@intel.com<mailto:bernie.dehler@intel.com>> wrote:
Actually- after accepting evolution- my whole worldview has changed. Accepting evolution makes me understand things in a better way (designing products, competition for resources, jobs, etc). We put a human layer on the top of it to soften it, but the layer is only a layer, and not the real underpinnings of the machine. All of science is important, but evolution maybe even more important as it helps us to understand how the world runs and operates (from cosmological evolution, chemical evolution, biological evolution, etc.). I'm still researching and understanding evolutionary impacts, and much of it has to do with unlearning some Christian doctrines (such as humans made 'de novo' (as Lemoureux would say) by God).

...Bernie

________________________________________
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu<mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu> [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu<mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu>] On Behalf Of Schwarzwald
Sent: Thursday, July 30, 2009 9:59 AM
To: asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
Subject: Re: [asa] Nothing_in_Biology_Makes_Sense_Except_in_the_Light_of_Evolution

There's a small point I'd add to Moorad's observation here.

As I've said before, I personally am very at home with evolution, and what's more, I always have been. But in the past few years, what I've started to find odd is the insistence that evolution is the single most important scientific claim in town. I cannot name a single other scientific topic that has so many educators collectively wringing their hands, wondering how they can get more students (or even adults out of school) to accept it. Why is there no comparable concern to promote the understanding of, say.. quantum mechanics, and how it differs from our common sense view of the world? (Indeed, if the authors of Quantum Enigma are right - and I'm not saying they are - the actual hope is that scientific laymen pay no attention to that topic.) What about geological processes, or chemistry, or any other number of topics? Why so much focus on one, and far and away only one, scientific issue? And why does that same focus suggest that understanding evolution is secondary to prof!

essed belief in it? And more than that, professed belief with as little room for speculations on guidance, purpose, intelligence and otherwise as possible?
On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 10:42 AM, Douglas Hayworth <becomingcreation@gmail.com<mailto:becomingcreation@gmail.com>> wrote:
FYI and FWIW, I commented briefly about this in one of my blog posts:

http://becomingcreation.org/2009/03/like-it-or-not/

Doug

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 7:44 AM, Alexanian, Moorad<alexanian@uncw.edu<mailto:alexanian@uncw.edu>> wrote:
> The central issue
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> The central issue of the essay is the need to teach biological evolution</wiki/Biological_evolution> in the context of debate about creation and evolution in public education</wiki/Creation_and_evolution_in_public_education> in the United States.[2] The fact that evolution occurs explains the interrelatedness of the various facts of biology, and so makes biology make sense.[3] The concept has become firmly established as a unifying idea in biology education.[4]
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> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_in_Biology_Makes_Sense_Except_in_the_Light_of_Evolution
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> It is interesting that it does not say "as a unifying idea in biological research."
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Received on Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:46:45 -0700

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RE: [asa] (death of kids) Nothing_in_Biology_Makes_Sense_Except_in_the_Light_of_Evolution