RE: [asa] Does nature leads you to believe or to reject God?

The question, "Does nature lead you to believe or to reject God?" does not really make much sense. The actual question is, does belief in God helps you make more sense of the whole of reality or not?
Moorad
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From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of David Campbell [pleuronaia@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, November 30, 2009 12:43 PM
To: Oscar Gonzalez
Cc: AmericanScientificAffiliation
Subject: Re: [asa] Does nature leads you to believe or to reject God?

"Does nature lead you to believe or to reject God?"

My answer is "no".
If you believe that God is good and sovereign, you will see reinforcement of that in the aspects of nature that you like and will trust in that premise with regard to the aspects of nature that don't seem to point that way (i.e., believing that God knows what He is doing even when we don't). If you do not believe that, you will see reinforcement of your position in regard to the aspects of nature that you don't like. Looking at nature alone won't get you anywhere, as Ecclesiastes points out.

"Nature red in tooth and claw" gets a lot of exaggeration. It is an integral part of evolution as we see it from the late Precambrian on (with the caveat that red blood and actual claws are probably a bit later than that), but it is far from the whole picture. Part of the problem is the fact that nature red in tooth and claw generally makes TV nature programs or even books a lot more appealing to the general public than the plain old everyday business of surviving. Cf. the classic description of military life as prolonged boredom with occasional brief episodes of terror. Thus, one's impression of the redness of nature is rather different if gathered from popular accounts than if it is gained from observation. True, many carnivores operate in the dark or otherwise somewhat inconspicuously; the biomass of predators (and thus roughly their abundance) is at most about 10% of their prey; and large predators have had their populations reduced or eliminated by human presence i!
 n a lot of areas, so just watching in the woods is likely to have observations of predation underrepresented. Nevertheless, I haven't seen all that much predation in action, especially predation on vertebrates.

Also, getting excited apologetically about nature red in tooth and claw presupposes that animal death has a component of moral wrong to it.

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