American Majority Accepts Evolution as God-Guided! Is BioLogos part of this?

@Jay313,

I guess we must find each other to be quite odd.

You say you are a 100%er … and yet you are pronouncing limitations on how God effects his mutations. How exactly does your 100 percent work … if you think there are methods of mutation off limits to God?

@Christy,

It’s deliciously funny.

But when the ribbing turns into statements of complete dismissal… then it becomes a bias that is pretty hard to defend… and I mean the bias of many here at BioLogos.

P.S. For example, @Jay313 makes a big flourishing gesture about stating that God is 100% engaged in evolution which, presumably, means that all mutations are designed and effected by God.

Perhaps he meant it in some other way.

I’m inclined to suspect this, since he then states in yet another posting, adamantly, that God would never effect a mutation by means of Cosmic rays in ovary or sperm related tissue.

Since there is every reason to think that Cosmic rays are quite capable of effecting a mutation … what are we to conclude about Jay’s 100% position on God being fully engaged in Evolutionary processes?

In an article about BioLogos acknowledging corrections to the BioLogos interpretation of Keller’s work, we read this fine sentence stating BioLogos’s position:

Please note my personal emphasis of the word “first” as part of the phrase “… to create a first pair.”

BioLogos, and I, both reject the idea that Adam and Eve had to be the “first two humans”. (I can go further and state that Adam and Eve may have been miraculously created as a “special pair” of humans in the midst of evolved humanity.)

And I’m certainly in agreement with the last part of the quote:

“…we instead argue that God used the natural mechanisms of evolution to create the first group of Homo sapiens.”

So… did God just “sorta arrange” for this Evolution?
Did God just make a few changes here and there… and crossed His fingers hoping the next steps don’t take too long?

Or did God arrange for every mutation necessary to arrive at Humanity from the Great Apes branch of the animal kingdom?

Comments welcome, criticisms expected! :smiley:

1 Like

I have reason to believe God created life and the universe precisely because He is not a control freak who has to be in absolute control of everything all the time.

I really don’t care frankly. What you believe is your business. I only know that the controlling god of some religions does not interest me and I will continue to believe in a God who chose love and freedom over power and control. But I do think the power control God with a sin=disobedience theology is an invention of people who have reshaped Christianity into a tool of power and manipulation, for such a god remade in their own image is what best serves that purpose.

1 Like

It seems there would be some middle ground between God “crossing his fingers” and watching it all play out, and God arranging for every mutation.

4 Likes

Here’s what I said in April 2018:

I see this whole topic as very similar to how I see “God’s will” for my life. I think God works through and with our choices and chance events to bring us to a general destiny that could be accomplished an infinite number of ways. I don’t think it was God’s one and only plan for my life that I marry the person I did, or that my children be born the exact genetic makeup that they are. If I had decided to try to get pregnant a year sooner, or later, I would have ended up with a different family. God could have easily worked with different children or a different husband to sanctify me and build his kingdom.

I don’t think God micromanages the details of our destinies (or at least not most of them) and I don’t think he micromanages the details of nature either. But I do think there is intentionality and design in the big picture of it all, and that God is actively orchestrating things on a large scale to achieve his general plan and destiny for the world. I think this will and design could be accomplished by an infinite number of paths though.

5 Likes

@Jay313,

So why would Cosmic Rays be excluded from the scope of this well-worded paragraph?

@Christy

As a Unitarian Universalist, I feel no conflict in agreeing with you about these things.

But I also hold to the Chess Master Scenario, where God accomplishes things he very much wants without violating our freedom.

And making all mutations precisely doesn’t seem to be a violation of anyone’s freedom at all.

Ummm … because I said so? haha.

But, if you want me to treat it seriously, my answer would be along these lines: Anything is possible, but you’re treating God like a sniper armed with a rifle, firing individual bullets at individual targets, when I envision him more like the Commander in Chief, having an entire arsenal at his disposal.

Andy Walsh in his book “Faith across the multiverse” has an interesting chapter 3 on Gods sovereignty and our free will. Through Henon maps (above my pay grade to really understand) he shows how we can have (constrained) free will and God gets what he wants.

2 Likes

I also enjoyed Walsh’s book, and last night at Bible study we discussed how in Paul’s missionary journeys, chaos and changes in plans took place off and on, but in the end the mission was accomplished, though perhaps not as Paul would have planned or expected.

2 Likes

@Jay313,

If I have failed to be clear enough before, let me try again to make my position clear:

I do not think Cosmic Rays are God’s only way to make mutations. I would agree that he is a Commander in Chief, with an entire arsenal.

Even the very first time I referred to Cosmic Rays, I selected them - - not because I thought they were the only tool in God’s kit - - because I thought it would be the easiest to grasp.

So, with this clarification in mind, are you able to say this about your arsenal example?:

“. . . and one way that God can effect a mutation could include a cosmic ray hitting a molecule of DNA in a germ cell of the given life form.”

@Peter_wolfe

So this must be where I got my idea for how to raise my son! Thanks for pitching this into the discussion!

I would explain to my fellow moms and dads that I hoped to give my son a trajectory rather than a required plan… a trajectory in which he could move and turn as he pleased… but if he didn’t come up with any better ideas, he would still land on some helpful place on the board of life.

I had no idea how prophetic this would be… my son is, shall we say, a little light on motivation. But the trajectory I had put him on (in anticipation of some of this) was a 4+ year stint in the Air Force.

Henon Maps are a bit cerebral… but I at least understand what he is getting at. In the bottom half of this article, Henon maps are discussed:

https://internetmonk.com/archive/faith-across-the-multiverse-parables-from-modern-science-part-1-the-language-of-mathematics-chapter-3-sovereignty-in-a-time-of-spanners-by-andy-walsh

To get you off my back, I gladly affirm that a cosmic ray to the genitals is one tool in God’s infinitely large shed. Are we done now?

3 Likes

@Jay313

Well… goodness… of course we are.

1 Like

Now, what about the photon torpedoes…

Seriously, it is a real quandary when you try to quantify just how God “sustains” creation and guides it to achieve his will. I suspect that his response to Job is pretty much how he addresses that subject, so don’t think I will press it. I think God’s response to Job is in the background along with some of the other baggage when I consider ID with a jaundiced eye, as I consider it unknowable, though will agree with you that God may well use a cosmic ray here and there.

1 Like

I guess there could be a few cosmic ray babies here and there. Though perhaps you should know that a direct hit by cosmic rays would do a very large amount of damage. They typically hit the upper atmosphere and create a shower of neutrons, each of which can do plenty of damage by themselves.

Some of the most primitive organisms, like bacteria, will preserve damage from UV radiation in order to introduce variation into their genome. I guess you might want to thank the sun god for those. But this is too random for the more complex organisms and that is why they have mechanisms of their own for introducing variation into their genome in a more limited and controlled way.

1 Like

@mitchellmckain

You do understand that I do understand the physics of high energy particles and elegromagnetic radiation enough to know that some “hits” could create a mutation … and other “hits” could easily destroy the whole gene.

Wow… so much weirdness… Christians can endlessly bandy about ideas like the Sun stopping in the middle of the sky, or Samson having magic hair… or an Ark loading itself with all the terrestrial animals of Earth …

… but as soon as someone talks about something that actually HAPPENS … like cosmic radiation degrading animal DNA… people start flipping out with all sorts of caveats.

Got it. Lots to worry about. Gotta be prudent…

No. I don’t. Why don’t you share some of this understanding you have of cosmic rays, then perhaps we will know what information you have about this.