"Does Evolutionary Creation allow for detectable divine intervention?"

Please don’t call me “Sir.” Makes me feel like I’m back in the classroom. haha

Behe is trying to wrap EC with the deism flag, just like the Theistic Evolution screed before him. That is neither a fair nor an appropriate characterization. As a position, EC speaks to biological evolution/common descent; it says nothing about the Big Bang or the Origin of Life. All EC’s would agree on common descent. On the rest, we are really talking about conceptions of God and his modes of acting in/governing the world. On that score, the range of opinions among us is as wide as it is in Protestantism as a whole, from Arminian to Calvinist.

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Appreciate your and everyone’s thoughts here… it sounds like the consensus is that Behe is erecting a clear straw man with EC in his definition, and I concur this is erroneous.

That said, I certainly don’t see it as equating with deism. While there is a spectrum as you mention, there do certainly exist those who claim their position as Christians, who acknowledge Gods involvement in miracles as the resurrection, and that God is presently guiding all things in his unseen providence, including the formation of the first life, and did so by setting up the initial conditions, and the laws of nature, so that they would proceed to create life, and mankind, those natural processes being sufficient to accomplish these feats without any further direct intervention from him.

If Christians can claim that position, and deny deism, then I cannot concur that Behe is wrapping the position as deism. At worst, he is trying to paint the entire community with the description of one wing of it. I understand it as accurate to say that some Christian EC advocates could embrace the position Behe describes, and would not be deist. So that charge simply isn’t accurate.

That said, it does seem clear Behe is painting with far too broad a brush. Though I think I understand his logic, I concur that it is appropriate to let one’s opponents define their own position.

For what it is worth, I think this is Behe’s logic: he outlines only two positions, EC, and what he terms “creationist.” By his definitions, creationist refers to anyone who allows or believes God intervened at any point since the Big Bang to help life along, and thus, by his definition, the only alternative are those who believe natural processes to be entirely sufficient such that God’s direct intervention was never needed.

So he makes a philosophical distinction:

Creationist: those who believe God has, at least once, directly intervened in the development of life, and

EC: those who believe God has not.

While I think this is in fact a useful philosophical distinction, I think it disingenuous to use terms that are already “spoken for”, and thus, whether intentionally or inadvertently, he erects a straw man in his definition of EC (and “creationist” for that matter!)

Not to mention, his definition of “creationist” thus includes both Ken Ham and those who are devout Darwinists, who yet believe that God had to directly intervene to create the first life. While I understand the need for this distinction philosophically, I think it unhelpful in the extreme to use those particular terms, as it labels many people here at Biologos as “creationists.”

Not particularly helpful.

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Wow, a lot has happened here since I clocked out yesterday! Your question to me was how my 1) witnessing miracles is different my 2) detecting supernatural violations of laws. The quote you ascribe to me is all my words… but the ellipsis leaves out some pretty important stuff!

My option #2, which I claimed to be not allowed by Evolutionary Creation, was entirely predicated on the metaphysical claims that nature is mechanistic, that the laws of nature are prescriptive, and that we have exhaustive knowledge of these laws. I was pretty careful to name all of these, though admittedly they each got only a sentence or two of justification (I was already over the world count). And it was that whole package that I claimed to sit uncomfortably with Christian theism.

In skimming through some of the rest of the discussion here, it seems to me it is these metaphysical views that are the root of the disagreement between ID proponents and Evolutionary Creationists.

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I wonder what percentage of ECs actually fit in this “front-loading” category. Certainly that is some Christians’ position, but I think it gets attributed to more people than would actually claim it. Or maybe people just get so distracted arguing over what “direct intervention” really means, they never answer the question.

I don’t know any.

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And there’s the rub…

Hello Jay,

Well, here’s one! And I"m not the only one here, but we’re in the minority for sure.

And still remains my question. A few thoughts…

I generally understand what you said in the whole of point 2… but I still fail to see how that does not equally rule out a miracle from point 1. For instance, under section 2, critiquing the “natural law violation” aspect, you wrote:

*instead of admitting a gap in our knowledge about how things work, we confidently claim that the gap is due to an intervention.”

But how would that critique not equally apply to a miracle? Why should we not rather just admit a gap in our knowledge, rather than confidently claim Jesus’ resurrection is due to a miracle?

Moreover, if nature is not is some degree “mechanistic” as you critiqued in point 2 (though I prefer terms like “predictable, regular, or consistent.”), how could we ever recognize a miracle?

C. S. Lewis once pointed out that if the ancients didn’t recognize basic laws of nature, or the regularity of nature, they would never have been able to notice a miracle:

“Obviously, no event would be recorded as a wonder unless the recorders knew the natural order and saw that this was an exception. If people didn’t yet know that the Sun rose in the East they wouldn’t be even interested in its once rising in the West. They would not record it as a miraculunt -nor indeed record it at all. The very idea of `miracle’ presupposes knowledge of the Laws of Nature; you can’t have the idea of an exception until you have the idea of a rule.”

In short, I’m still very interested to hear how you define a “miracle”, and specifically how a miracle is not something akin to a “violation of natural law”, such that EC advocates should endorse the first but reject the second as instances of “detectable divine intervention.”

I love Lewis; but I’m not sure that was his drift. Both OT and New Testament talks about many “signs and wonders,” and refers to them as miracles, too–Elijah and Elisha healing boys, Moses and the burning bush, etc.

Thanks for this interesting discussion.

Why am I not surprised that you would prove me wrong? Haha. In debate mode, I do have an “out,” though. We haven’t actually met!

There is a possibility that Behe may agree with you. He devoted a whole chapter of his previous book to “God’s trick shot” on the pool table of the universe.

In @jstump’s defense, the Henry Center’s topic was “divine intervention,” not “miracles” per se. I am the one who brought up miracles in this post:

Well, I appreciate your defense or our esteemed brother, but unless I’m confused, he brought up “miracles” in his article on his own well before you noted it in your post. I was referring to his original article (http://henrycenter.tiu.edu/2019/03/defining-the-relationship-between-evolution-and-divine-intervention/), where he specifically delineates 3 possible interpretations of “detectable divine intervention.” (DDI)

His first category of DDI is “miracles,” which he posits must be acknowledged as detectable by Christian EC advocates:

His second category of DDI is “supernatural violations of laws,” which he concludes “should not be allowed by EC.”

Hence I am struggling to conceive of any particular bona fide miracle that could not be described as a “supernatural violation of natural laws,” or a bona fide supernatural violation of natural laws that could not just as accurately be described with the word “miracle.” :man_shrugging:

Ah, yes. Memory fails me again. Perhaps, at this point, we also should give @jstump a minute to digest the questions. Let’s wait for his published response and go from there.

“Does Evolutionary Creation allow for detectable divine intervention?”

First consider what is meant by the word “detectable.” In the Bible, God speaks to people and does things like parting the Red Sea, so in that sense divine intervention is detectable. But I am inclined to take the word as referring to scientific method of demonstrating facts. And that is a very different thing which generally implies our control over all the variables and God simply isn’t a variable that could ever be under our control, so that sense divine intervention could never be detectable. But do we not have ways of detecting things like cosmic radiation without actually being able to control when and where that strikes. But then what are we supposed to detect? Is it the simple fact that things which happen are not always the most probable. But since this is already a fact of science, then doesn’t “detectable” imply that we can somehow know which unlikely events are a divine intervention and which are not? I don’t see how unless we think that God breaks the laws of nature which He Himself created and it makes no sense to me that He would do such a thing.

Second consider some more precise related questions…

Does Evolutionary Creation imply detectable divine intervention?
No. There is no reason why Evolutionary Creation requires God to break the laws of nature.

Does Evolutionary Creation exclude the possibility of detectable divine intervention?
No. Evolutionary Creationism does suggest that God largely confines Himself to the laws of nature but it does not preclude Him from breaking them. Evolutionary Creationism does not require God to abide by the laws of nature He created – that is more a matter of simple logic and integrity.

@jstump, (and @Daniel_Fisher)

Could you explain your use of this phrase “DDI” (detectable divine intervention)? The Resurrection of Jesus, the Birth of Jesus without any mortal father … are these legitimate DDI’s?

Do you hold to the position that there are ANY legitimate DDI’s ??

@mitchellmckain,

In his videoed interview from a few years ago, his only “divine intervention” is before the first moment of Creation … where God lines up all his Billiards Balls for the perfect shot!

He explicitly says there is nothing to see… other than natural processes arranged by intelligence.

A video of an interview with God?

You make a distinction between guided and unguided missiles, as if unguided missiles are not guided, which is not true. Take a bullet which is certainly an unguided missile, but is surely aimed or directed to the target by the person firing the rifle, which of course does not mean it will hit its intended target. Yes, the shooter can and should use blind and unintentional natural factors such as wind and gravity to direct the bullet, so they are factors, but the shooter intentionally aims the rifle at the target he or she has chosen.

There is another problem with the assumption that nature is not intentional. In the past humans assumed that we could think and the rest of the universe would not. We placed ourselves above nature in that respect.

Darwin and evolution have changed this. Now we see that humans were created by nature and are a part of nature, which means that if nature cannot think, then we as apart of nature cannot think. This has led us to notice that animals have a nervous system, just as humans have a nervous system. Our nervous system is more complex and sophisticated than that of a worm, but the elements are there.

Thus in some sense all animals can think, they can use their sensory organs to understand their surroundings and their brain to react to this in order to find food or escape danger. Plants also are able to adapt to their environment to seek light, water, and needed nutrients. Therefore we can say that while flora and fauna cannot thin as humans do, they are programed to understand their surroundings and perform activities which lead to nourishment, reproduction, and safety.

Of course the concept of programing comes from computers which is a new technology unknown when I was born. I should be no surprise that our views of what is rational have changed during that time. It seems to me that God has programed the physical world to act in such a manner. This is the physical universe which acts according to physical rational laws.

Out of the physical universe following these laws come the biological universe, which has its own laws to complement physical laws. Out of the biological universe comes humanity, which again has its own laws to supplement the rules of science. .

“Divine intervention is a purported miracle caused by a deity’s active involvement in the human world”

Divine intervention is into creation space time on earth, from heaven

Not creation ex nihilo but manipulation of creation space time on earth, from heaven

I will hope to, and will await his next reply with an open mind, but I must confess it looks to me at the moment simply like special pleading. He acknowledges what theology and common sense dictate about miracles, that being, that the results of God’s intervention are surely empirically detectable.

But, it seems, if he acknowledges this without caveat, this would clearly also apply to any intervention God did in the past regarding biology. But, presumably by definition and his embrace of methodological naturalism, he is committed to a posture that says these things are undetectable.

Hence, it leads, as I observe, to this odd case where miracles are detectable, but “violations of natural laws” are not, but since these things are obviously nearly synonymous (I still can’t conceive of a distinction between them), it simply looks like special pleading. I.e…

God’s intervention is detectable. Except when it is not. It is detectable when we call it a “miracle.” But if we call it “violation of natural law,” then it is not detectable. And if and when God intervenes in biology, we have to refer to that as “violation of law” so we can maintain our position that it is empirically undetectable.

I hope I have misunderstoood Dr. Stump here, but this seems at the moment like what is going on. And if so, it suggests to me yet another seeming logical fallacy inherent in methodological naturalism.

Why? If you think of evolution as a drunken walk in search of a local maximum and God reaches down and gives that walk a little nudge to take the right turn instead of the left which will result in the outcome that God desires that is an intervention and a miracle but would it be detectable 100 million years later? I don’t think so.

We are told, BTW, in Scripture that God does this. Proverbs 16:33