Would it be fair to say that although we may accept evolution as the means of God creating life on earth we are less certain about God’s place in how it happened, because the precise modes of the evolution process are still not firmly agreed?
I have also noted in discussions and reading on the subject that there are also differences in how much we may infer God was involved in these processes with more of less direct action of direction towards a willed goal.
I think your entire outlook is flawed. It’s not God or evolution anymore than its God or cloud microphysics when considering which causes rain. God is the ground off all being and upholds the existence of all contingent things and beings every instant–including the underlying laws of physics. Creation is not an event in the past in this sense, Creation happens every instant because God chooses it too.
Where did God act in evolution? I mean there is no part of evolution or any natural process that is devoid of God. I think Newton did the world a disservice in one regard. He was devout and religious from what I know but he introduced this model of the universe that leads to God and gaps. This is just the wrong model.
As Christians we need to be able to say God forms us in the womb but not deny reproductive biology. We need to be able to say God sends the rain but also not deny the Bergeron process and other cloud microphysics that lead to rain in mid-latitude storms. Why can it not be the same with evolution? Every action, every law of nature, and every determined thing that happens only happens because God wills it to be. This certainly raises some challenging questions but inserting God into gaps is just ultimately accepting atheism to me. For me miracles are the gaps God can be said to fill in. But existence itself and all natural processes are also an act of God. Science is how God chooses to uphold the world. There is no need to pit it against faith.
Vinnie I take your point that God is involved with it all and I am not trying to fit God in the gaps. But I still think these are valid questions to ask.
So this seems to be what I responded to:
My answer is God was completely involved in every aspect of it and eventually we may even be able to accurately model it entirely “naturally.” Every natural explanation is an explanation of how God is operating and upholding existence at every instant.
Now I don’t think we know exactly how life started in full detail. But there is no need to “fill God in here.” God is involved in the process either way because God grounds and upholds all contingent beings and events at all times and writes their underlying physics.
It seems many are looking for some miraculous occurrence that methodological naturalism can’t explain. Maybe it will turn out God had to jump in and work supernatural miracles in spots for life or maybe just like the water cycle, the carbon cycle, the development of a baby in the womb, photosynthesis helping grass grow, etc., we will be able to model all the steps of abiogenesis naturally. I have no intellectual stake in either position but the trend of history tells me putting God into scientific knowledge gaps is just a bad idea. There is no natural process where God is not found. I think many theists have a model of God that is basically akin to conceding to atheism to me.
Now some here do think God made a free and open creation that could forge its own path. I think that is at odds with my philosophical conception of God and understanding of God from scripture.
I believe there is a solid both/and for God’s involvement. God can act contrary to nature and God can act via natural methods. When God answers prayer providentially in a way that brings about an instantaneous response by way of other peoples individually chosen actions, then the mystery deepens even further.
And if biological relativity has the legs to carry itself, I’m guessing the lines are only going to get more fuzzy.
I would say that your assessment is accurate within Christian circles. Scientists seem to think that they have it all worked out with minimal, if any outside help and the Chrsitian element of science seems to think that God’s active inclusion is minimal.
I, for one, do not see God as wany sort of spectator,. The problem with introducing free willl or independant thoought is that, no matter how clever the desiign there are too many variables just to let it run amok. The fact that we can, and do, disrtupt God’s perfect timing, co,ntrary to Eccl 3, is enough to indiicate that God must still be active rather than a passive onlooker.
My experience of God isnot of a distant dispassionate deity and Scripture would seem to suggest that God is not only active but still sovereign of His creation.
Richard
And this dispassionate deity in my mind is the one behind the God of the gaps arguments. This is the one typical creationists need to start life. That deity is not intertwined with a nature that is ground in His being, but sitting around waiting for the system He devised to need some tinkering. This may not be the most charitable way of phrasing it but when people say how did this mountain form, God or nature, they have let philosophical
naturalism get a foot in the door already. The debate is lost because science will probably fill this gap as it has filled countless others and changed how we see Scripture in parts 
Once you put an issue as natural process vs God, once science explains something, God is no longer needed and should be discarded. The whole perspective is flawed and doomed to failure. Sub evolution for water cycle. Just because we know why it rains doesn’t mean God is not behind the underlying physics and the process is not running just as he intends it as all contingent things only exist at any instant as they are because He wills them to be.
No. That would suggest that a deeper scientific or technical understanding of evolution will somehow reveal the role of God. But I don’t see that happening any more than you can expect a scientific/technical examination of your prayer life to reveal the role of God.
We only have a scientific/objective means of answering questions because of the space-time mathematical laws of nature which don’t care anything for what we want or believe – laws which are necessary for the development of life. Since God is subject to these laws of nature then you cannot expect a scientific/objective means of discovering God.
The laws of nature are not a causally closed system. Therefore science cannot exclude the possibility of God intervening in events. But the role the Bible gives to Him is not one of design or control, but one of correction. He puts a stop to things when it is not going in a productive direction.
Thus I would dismiss the vanity which imagines superficial appearances to be divinely appointed just as much as I would dismiss the vanity of those who imagine they speak or act in God’s place as His representative.
At most God approves or disapproves. And the Bible says God looked at product of His efforts in the natural world and said, “it is good,” just as you looked at mankind in its beginnings and said, “it is very good.” He saw very good things in us – great potential for a parent-child relationship with Him.
I am questioning how a “willed goal” is even possible?
For example, if we gave all the monkeys in the world some paint, and they lived for a very long time, how many of them do you think would ever write even a single sentence of coherant words? My understanding is that there arent too many (if any) mathematicians who accept that is likely or possible.
so wheres the “willed goal” there given that the basic assumption for atheism is primordial soup?
In any case, I think most Christians agree that God brings order to randomness. This suggests direct input in a manner far more intimate than God at a distance. Given Genesis says he breathed the breath of life into Adam’s nostrils…I’m happy with the conclusion God gets actively involved…even to the point where the Angel of the Lord acts (often killing those who disobey)
This is a significant theological dilemma evolution faces, making the solution one of God at a distance not actively involved is highly problematic. Conversely, to say God is directly involved also presents problems because that then aligns with the literal reading of the Genesis creation account which is untenable in TEism.
So given the above, I’m yet to actually read a defendable Christian response to this problem…here’s the opportunity i suppose.
The problem is a black & white mentality. All or nothing? Why can’t there be a middle ground where science and Genesis can meet?
The fact that science cannot “see” God does not eliminate the probablitlity that He is there. However the idea to dismiss science altogether would seem to be a bit like a Hegehog curling up in a road and not expecting to get run over because he cannot see them coming.Sceince exists. Like it or lump it.
Richard
That isn’t a problem for Evolutionary Creationism (EC):
Two things
I don’t think we can have a “sit back and do nothing God” that just lets things happen. A biblical view of God is that God does 'intervene" and is always active.
God may act in and through natural processes and allow all the causes of nature to interact in a free way. I have a particular interest in the works of Franciscan Duns Scotus. Among the things that he argues is that doing one thing and having a general law (eg natural freedom given to nature) and circumstances does not prevent God doing new things as long as the new things do not contradict His Essential nature and self ordained purpose.
I like the way that John Lennox answered a similar question after a talk he gave: “Yes”. He paused and added that nature is just God running the universe.
And sustaining, since “in Him all things hold together”.
At the risk of assigning human attributes to God, I’ll compare the sustaining of the universe to our autonomic functions, and interventions to our conscious decisions.
I think I’ve been listening to and reading John Walton too much; I mentally rendered “it is good” as, “That works!” 
They wouldn’t write any, especially if it was chimps; they’d paint each other, and the trees, and the zookeeper, and quickly grow tired of the stuff.
Anyway . . .
It’s like how if you make a chain of segments free to rotate at their junctions, with a pencil at the end, and make them each just the right length then start them in just the right position, when you start rotating the first segment the pencil can draw a picture of Isaac Newton. The difference is that God allows freedom in some of the process.
Ever hear the joke about the biologists who one day informed God that they could create life from nothing? God accepted the challenge, so one of the biologists bent down to scoop up some dirt, whereupon God said, “Hey, make your own dirt!”
If God made the primordial soup, of course life can come from it!
(And the atheists can go make their own soup.)
No it doesn’t! God is perfectly capable of overseeing and carrying out every mutation ever; this would “align with the literal reading of the Genesis creation account” only if you think God isn’t capable of such overseeing and carrying out.
I disagree with this abuse of that passage. God is not an inept carpenter who cannot make chairs, tables, and universe which stand on their own. I think this passage ONLY means He holds it to His intentions and to do that ONLY requires His corrective interventions.
Are you saying your god cannot make something which exists on its own? That makes your god pathetic. And if you say he won’t that makes him controlling and evil. I frankly think this abuse of the passage rises from an attempt of the religious to exaggerate their own importance – holding the universe together vicariously. It is simply not rational or moral… a lot like the Harkonnens in the old Dune movie installing heart plugs in people – “ha ha you only exist at my sufferance.” Besides I cannot see a rational distinctions between this and a panentheistic dreamer god.
It has nothing to do with what He can do, it has to do with what the text says.
Interesting bit: a medieval theologian interpreted this as saying God “maintains constant the principles by which all Creation functions”. Apparently συνίστημι / συνιστάνω has a philosophical meaning I’m not familiar with? or the Latin translation of that verb does? (Though that would raise the question of whether Paul knew of that usage.)
[note to self: get NT translation notes from storage!!!]
Hebrews 1 and Colossians 1 are not about God’s relationship to the universe but Jesus’ relationship to the Father. The point is that they are the same and making so much of this one offhand word is abusive – one word which can mean lots of different things. I don’t think the meaning you are giving it is a rational one.
There really is very little difference between this and what the creationists do with Genesis 1. Pushing a theology they like on the flimsiest interpretation of the text.
The word pheron means to bear or carry as it does in John 19:39 – like carrying an infant in ones arms for protection and support so the infant can thrive and grow strong. And the way God does that in Bible is corrective not controlling – requiring us to stand on our own, living our own life, and making our own choices.
No, it’s about Who Jesus is as the “firstborn”; verses 16 & 17 expound the meaning of that term.
So? That’s not even in the text. The text has συνίστημι, which is generally translated “hold together” or “consist”.
These are opposites: one forces the text into a modern worldview, the other takes the text in its historical context. “Holds together” isn’t “flimsy”, it’s the consistent understanding since at least the third century.
Neither of which has anything to do with συνίστημι.
Yes pheron is the word used in Hebrews 1:3. In Collosians 1:17 it is synesteken, which is only used exactly in that form in that passage. But like all words in human languages it has many meanings and we can see some of these in the related forms.
synestesate in 2 Cor 7: 11 meaning demonstrate or prove
synestosa in 2 Peter 3:5 meaning formed
synestotas in Luke 9:32 meaning standing
synestanein in 2 Cor 3:1 meaning commend
etc…
You look it up in a Greek dictionary and you only find the root συνίστημι and the meanings given are: to commend, recommend; to demonstrate, bring out, prove to be; (intr.) to stand with; to hold together; to be formed.
And considering the context, it is the last of these “to be formed” which fits the context best.
Again the point remains. The text is NOT about God’s relationship with the universe but about Jesus relationship with God (The Father) confirming that everything about what we believe applying to one also applies to the other and thus taking this one word out of context to build into a whole theological stance is unreasonable. And I think that stance doesn’t make any sense logically, or theologically (too pantheistic), so I reject this misuse of that text.
So your position is that centuries of people who actually spoke the Greek of the time and scholars since then were wrong? “Were formed” is what your choice would be translated as, and it does not fit the context at all since that is a point that was already made.
No, it isn’t – the text is about Who Jesus is. Verses 15b-17 are about Christ as the Firstborn, 18 applies that to the church.
It isn’t pantheistic in any way at all!
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
This is a place for gracious dialogue about science and faith. Please read our FAQ/Guidelines before posting.