David wrote:

"Undirected evolution offers no a priori guarantee that our species would even show up on earth. Any number of natural processes might have prevented man from appearing. Evolution, left alone, might have thwarted God's plan. God, being sovereign would have intervened to ensure his plan was realized."

So now your God lacks patience, curiosity, and creativity, it seems. Why do you need to worry, apparently on God's behalf, that evolution might not have produced humans? Couldn't God just try again, dare I say, infinite numbers of times until the creation developed in a way that God found interesting? What an utterly hubristic view of God's need to produce a particular result (that just happens to be us)! Theologically, the relevent issue is that however God created God's creation, God is gracious to embrace God's people even while we are fundamentally the same stuff that makes up a rock. What utter hogwash that how or by what mechanism God creates God is limited from being a gracious creator and sustainer. You prattle on with your vacuous referrences to deism all the while keeping your concept of God locked up in a self-inflating little box. Yes, I think IDism is theologically detestable. Whether ID claims the argument from ignorance about the alleged insufficiency of undirected evolution to produce biological diversity is science (it has been thoroughly debunked as such) is irrelevant to the point that one can indeed be a theist, indeed a Christian, and accept the scientific conclusion about one's material origins. God's gracious ability to redeem God's creation is not a priori determined by how ever God has apparently chosen to allow God's creation to come into existence.

But, gee, thanks for the attention to my argument.

Cheers,

Shaggy
Shaggy Maniac | 09.12.05 - 3:17 pm | #

Hi David:

So you didn't really address my illustration about the material, mechanistic, and probabilistic nature of reproduction in relation to the faith understanding of one's self as a unique child of God. Do you not concede already that God seems quite capable of working in, with, and under God's material creation without needing to push it one way or another, or, do you in fact take it as a matter of faith that God blessed one particular sperm to make it to your mother's egg? If the latter is the case, how do you explain the directive actions of God to someone who inherits, say, Huntington's disease or to the parent of a child with Tay Sach's disease?

For the record, my theological view is that God plays no directive part in material events and processes but, is rather, graciously present in, with, and under our material experiences. It is by the extension of God's grace to God's creation that God is, as you remind us, soveriegn. It has nothing to do with some covertly theocratic divine plan of history. Nothing in particular about our material origins or nature need limit the extent and efficacy of God's grace and soveriegnty, because, after all, it is God's action, not ours, to extend and offer God's grace. All this bluster about needing to be a so-called "special creation" as a species, in my view, derives from a temptation to view our relationship with the Creator as, somehow, about us rather than about God. It rather smacks of the notion of some kind of "divine spark within", a heresy that has long ago been dismissed in Christian theology. We are the creation; we are not the Creator. What more effective illustration is there of this than the recognition of our material origins as discovered by science. Truth cannot contradict truth, after all.

Cheers,

Shaggy
Shaggy Maniac | 09.13.05 - 10:26 am | #

My previous response was based on your question, which you posed as "why do you insist your god is…" That is, you didn't ask me about any god, but my god, which is God as he revealed himself to us in creation and in scripture. You are free to invent god with whatever attributes you think god should have, but I am constrained by scripture, which tells me, among other things, that I was chosen before the universe was even created (Eph. 1:4). Having chosen me before even time existed, I may be many things, but I am not the result of purely material, mechanistic, and processes. I was preordained. Your god may not have a "covertly theocratic divine plan of history" as you put it, but mine does (although it is not covert) and so I answered accordingly. Your god may not treat man as the pinnacle of his creation, but my god does, at least in what was revealed to me by scripture (e.g. Matt. 6:26).

So you may reconcile your god to naturalistic evolution, but my god cannot be—and neither can Ken Miller's if, as he claims, he is a Catholic in something more than name.

We do know that god works through secondary means, a good example being that he doesn't push the planets around, rather gravity does that. However, the planets are subject to his sovereign will. Likewise, theistic evolution allows that god used genetic adaptation as his secondary means to accomplish his plan, which includes not just man in general but specifically me, you, and everyone else. Again, this is my God we are talking about.

As for childhood disease, genetic or otherwise, why bad things happen to good people is about the most ancient of theological questions. It has been answered satisfactorily from a Christian perspective many times. It can almost be answered by pointing out that the real question is, given that we are born in rebellion, why don't bad things happen to all of us all of the time.

I am amused by your comment:

"So now your God lacks patience, curiosity, and creativity, it seems. Why do you need to worry, apparently on God's behalf, that evolution might not have produced humans? Couldn't God just try again, dare I say, infinite numbers of times until the creation developed in a way that God found interesting?”

Well, not a non-intervening god. For the universe is not only expanding, it does so at an accelerated rate. It ain't gonna bounce back. God would have to be extremely interventionist—recreating the universe over and over—if he were just going to wait until undirected evolution got it right.
David Heddle | 09.13.05 - 11:16 am | #

Hi David:

Obviously, you are comfortable living in the Calvinist box in which you choose to limit your faith. If it works for you, great. I have to say though that the following kind of statement is quite disturbing..."Your god may not have a "covertly theocratic divine plan of history" as you put it, but mine does (although it is not covert)".

When put in effect politically, this kind of dominionist nonsense is just plain dangerous. Did we not learn any lessons from the narrative of the failed theocracies of Isreal and Judah. God was even gracious enough to let God's people try that experiment to learn for themselves and yet here we are talking theocratic nonsense as if that had anything to do with the sovereignty of God. Just what do you suppose Jesus meant when he said "my kindom is not of this world"? God can graciously effect the salvation of the world in, with and under the context of the Roman Empire and yet you find it necessary to project God into your glorious self-inflating vision of somekind of earthly kingdom?

You brand of Christianity, IMHO, completely misses the point of the Gospel. You can have it if you like it; see you at the voting booth.

Cheers,

Shaggy
Shaggy Maniac | 09.13.05 - 12:52 pm | #

Gee Shaggy, if you took time to read my positions rather than assuming them you would discover that (a) I am not a dominionist and have never advocated a theocracy, and (b) as a rabid nondispensationalist the last thing I envision is that there will ever be an earthly kingdom. It would be hard for anyone to mischaracterize my positions more than you did.

A theocratic plan for history is not the same thing as a theocracy.
David Heddle | 09.13.05 - 1:12 pm | #

Fair enough, Mr. Heddle; I allow that I may stand corrected on what might have been premature assumptions. How, precisely, shall I interpret "theocratic plan for history" and not need to get all twitchy?
Shaggy Maniac | 09.13.05 - 1:33 pm | #

Nothing more or less that what the Westminster Confession states:


God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established. (WC III.I)
David Heddle | 09.13.05 - 1:38 pm | #

Oh, I also meant ask again what precisely you believe about how the particular sperm that found its way to your mother's egg managed its route. Did it have a divine triptich or is it possible that God, being infinite, could have predestined you without needing to play gamete coach? Was it a probabilistic event or wasn't it?
Shaggy Maniac | 09.13.05 - 1:40 pm | #

Regarding your clarifying quotation from the WC, maybe I can check out my understanding with you? Have I got it right that the reign of, say, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia was divinly ordained? Maybe you need to help me know what "ordained" means, precisely.
Shaggy Maniac | 09.13.05 - 1:54 pm | #

The bible generally speaks of God's will in three ways. (1) There is what he decrees (let there be...) (2) what he desires (obey my law) and what he permits. Without question God could have prevented the Khmer Rouge. So at the very least he permitted it. Obviously that does not mean he endorsed it.

As for your other question, I don't think "I" am the result of a probabilistic event. That should be painfully clear by now.
David Heddle | 09.13.05 - 2:05 pm | #

Hi David:

Sorry to press you, but it is not at all painfully clear to me what you believe about human reproduction. Let's leave out the "I" so you don't have to avoid disempowering God's election. Does human sexual reproduction entail the same kind of probabilistic events that piles of genetic data tell us operate in other sexual species or are you claiming on the basis of your faith that such probabilistic events do not operate in human sexual reproduction? I don't mean to be cheeky, but is it that the probabilistic events are suspended just in the case of the elect or are they suspended for all humans?

The reason for me to press you on this should be, to borrow your phrase, painfully obvious. Unless you are going to make absurd claims about humans being a special case biologically (which can easily be shown false by the data), you must have already come to some terms with the material nature of your bodily existence, and yet, there is your faith, alive and well. Similarly, it is not at all necessary to contort oneself into a denial of the data supporting human evolutionary origins, chance events and all, in order to experience fully the gracious gift of faith and the assurance of salvation that it entails. In other words, all this evolution denial for the alleged sake of faith is a collossal waste of effort and might rightly be understood as an abdication of the gift of scientific knowledge.

Cheers,

Shaggy
Shaggy Maniac | 09.13.05 - 3:21 pm | #

Go back to the WC statement which I believe is (trivially) supported biblically. God ordains whatsoever comes to pass. So not only am I not the result of a probabilistic process—neither is my dog, nor was Judas Iscariot. Having said that it is true that the physical laws God has imposed upon creation are representable, in some cases, by stochastic models.

Furthermore, unless you believe amplified quantum uncertainty rules, then even from a scientific standpoint much of what passes for probabilistic is actually deterministic. Chaotic, perhaps, and so effectively non deterministic, but only effectively.
David Heddle | 09.13.05 - 3:35 pm | #

Ah, I get it now, David Heddle's God is hanging out in Heisenberg's uncertainty gap. How convenient and theologically abhorrent, I must say. Really, invoking a quantum argument to obfuscate what is sufficiently explainable with a probabilistic model is not very becoming of a scientist either. What evidence to do you have that quantum events are at all biologically relevant?

You are dust David (as am I), and to dust you shall return. But that's o.k., God is gracious enough to like us anyway.

Cheers,

Shaggy
Shaggy Maniac | 09.13.05 - 3:48 pm | #

Yes, let's end the discussion, even though you missed the boat (visa vis quantum uncertainty) by a mile.
David Heddle | 09.13.05 - 3:57 pm | #

David:

How right you are that I leapt the wrong direction in responding to your reference to quantum events. I see now that what you are saying is that, indeed, there is no indeterminance in the universe. Creation is, rather, a giant clock that is presumably winding down to its inevitable conclusion in glory. Have I got it right, now? Forgive, if you will, my itchy-twitchy typing.

It does strike me, though, that in you avoidance of admitting to the probabilistic nature of sexual reproduction (which isn't exactly controversial), that you are engaging in a bit of denial for the sake of your faith-based assumptions about how creation must work. Isn't the utility of science its power to help us see how the creation is, rather than how we assume it ought to be? Why would one's faith (a dynamic gift from God) need to be threatened by mundane material observations? It seems to me that it is, rather, an opportunity for faith to expand and grow when one looks at material reality squarely (in the mirror, so to speak) and admits what one sees. If faith comes from God, how can it be threatened by simply observing the nature of creation?

Cheers,

Shaggy
Shaggy Maniac | 09.14.05 - 11:33 am | #

David,
I don't see how theistic evolution is intelligent design. It seems to me that intelligent design (at least the concept that Behe advanced in his book, Darwin's Black Box) is based on the notion that irreducibly complex systems can't evolve. How is that compatible with God directing evolution?
John | 09.14.05 - 11:35 pm | #

John,

ID means that life was intelligently designed--Behe does not have a lock on the term. Nevertheless, I am guessing that Behe would concede that IRC systems could have arisen via genetic adaptations, as long as a designer was serving as the genetic engineer.
David Heddle | 09.15.05 - 6:49 am | #

David,

Are you really advocating a belief that the physical bodies of human beings are something beyond material? That is the conclusion I am compelled to draw by your continued denial of the very basic observation that human sexual reproduction is a thoroughly material process. Even if you believe in a "soul" (whatever such a thing really is), surely you don't believe that it is somehow imparted as a result of the processes of meiosis, syngamy, and genetic inheritance? From a theological perspective, it is looking more like you support some idea of "the divine within" as a fundamental part of human existence. Are you happy with that heretical (from the perspective of Christianity) view? Such views might be consistent with your perceived need to deny the sufficiency of material evolutionary processes to account for the diversity of life (including human life), but they are markedly apart from conventional Christianity. I submit that a fully material view of human life (and the rest of creation) is more concordant with the Christian view of our need for the gracious agency of God for redemption than the latent pantheism that your denial of the material seems to imply.

Cheers,

Shaggy
Shaggy Maniac | 09.15.05 - 11:32 am | #

David,
I suspect that Behe probably would not agree that IC systems could arise by genetic adaptations, since that would obviate the need for an intelligent designer. He first made an argument that evolution can't explain the process by which these systems arise, then he gave an alternative explanation for how they do. If the evolutionary process lacks utility, how would God direct it without acting in some fashion beyond the limitations of evolution? If He does that, it's not evolution anymore.
Theistic evolution seems like a good way to combine science and the Bible. However, if man evolved under God's direction, then who is Jesus referring to when he speaks of Adam? A symbol?
John | 09.15.05 - 9:46 pm | #

John,

I think Behe might change his mind if God was doing the genetic engineering instead of mutations and natural selection.

Jesus is referring to Adam, the first man, a real historical figure.
David Heddle | Homepage | 09.15.05 - 10:15 pm | #

David,
Since you hold to a literal interpretation of the Bible in regards to Adam, does that literal interpretation extend to cosomological ID as well?
John | 09.15.05 - 10:32 pm | #

As I've pointed out before, and John is now pointing out, ID rejects evolution, so to say that theistic evolutionists are IDers is patently absurd.

David, was Adam constructed from dirt? Was Eve constructed from Adam's rib? Or, were they both born the same way that you are?
GCT | 09.16.05 - 6:30 am | #

Following up on GCT's question and back to my point, along with explaining the manner in which Adam and Eve came into existence, please explain precisely what you believe about how you came into existence. Was the latter or was it not a fully material process for which we have sufficient material explanation?

Still trying to deduce if there's a bit 'o god in you, or if you are fully human.

Cheers,

Shaggy
Shaggy Maniac | 09.17.05 - 3:17 pm | #