To begin with, Richard, I very much like your entire response to Eddie, since it deals with the essence of what BioLogos was supposed to address. I am taking the liberty of accepting the invitation you gave to Eddie in the quote above. This thread has produced somewhat of a “plethora of riches” tho. Brought up as a traditional Catholic, I found here was little to be had in the way of mental stimulation in the Sunday sermons or Bible classes–solid, devotionally, but an intellectual wilderness. Now I will be busy for weeks digesting the contents of this one thread. Because I ‘have no axe to grind’–‘no dog in the hunt’–my comments should have little impact. But nonetheless here they are, as framed in the context of what Teilhard described as a Universe consisting of Cosmosphere giving rise to->Biosphere- giving rise to->Noosphere. I accept as axiomatic that the Cosmosphere was created ex nihilo together with the physico-chemial laws which guides its development (rather than evolution) to this day. The appearance of the Biosphere amidst the non-living chemicals existing at the time (abiogenesis) cannot be explained by today’s science, and thus currently is an example of “the God of the Gaps”. By what is commonly referred to as ‘neo-Darwinian evolution’ the first living cell evolved into all the complex variety of life forms we now see on this planet. After nearly 4 billion years this evolutionary process, fueled by (seemingly) random mutations and natural selection, produced a relatively small number of a primate species we now call Homo sapiens. This was NOT the beginning of the Noosphere nor the beginning of humankind. Then, just about 40,000 yrs ago (an eye blink in Universal history), something remarkable occurred. In the words of Jared Diamond, and adopted by Richard Dawkins, Homo sapiens took a “Great Leap Forward”, an absolutely impossible event for neo-Darwinian evolution to explain. This was the beginning of the Noosphere, the sphere of Ideas. The future course taken by Humankind was henceforth dependent as much on evolution in the Noosphere as on evolution in the Biosphere. In fact evolution in the Biosphere, as evidenced by changes in the human genome, might well be dominated by advances in the Noosphere (e.g. “Redesigning Life; Clinical CRISPR”, John Parrington)
Now in reference to some of the comments you made to @Eddie on 12/24:
1) Back on topic, can you explain how God being powerful enough to create a nature that has the capacity to evolve man to be, “wimpy”? As I stated before, Dawkins certainly doesn’t hold that view. (2) You may mean that we claim that He is aloof in nature, but I think that is a distinction that is not usually explained and, more importantly, it isn’t true.(3) “Aloof” has an emotive element to it and it just doesn’t make sense to apply it to the unfolding of nature,
In my Worldview (Al Leo’s), God WAS aloof when the Universe consisted solely of the Cosmosphere, and this aloofness continued to a large degree until the beginning of the Noosphere. For example, after the Big Bang, matter collected into huge galaxies and gravity formed spectacular stars of impressive magnitude and power. But the physical laws God had imposed at the start doomed the larger stars to explode and scatter their newly formed heavy elements into surrounding space–where they collected in newer stars and planets like our earth.
At the beginning of the Biosphere, life forms were simple, and exactly how each form preserved, altered and transmitted the information that was producing novelty and complexity—this was of no direct concern of God, for He had given the evolutionary process considerable freedom, guided only by the dictum to produce variety. When that variety had taken the forms that could be seen as predator and prey competing in the_natural selection_ process, and possessing the sensory perception to know fear and anticipate pain–only then could the emotion-filled question of God’s care versus aloofness arise. From our human (anthropocentric) viewpoint, it is comforting to think that God would not long tolerate such suffering in some of His creatures and that his eventual intent would be to have the lion lie down with the lamb and eat grass instead of flesh. Even Isaiah must have known that was wishful thinking. But it is not unreasonable to believe that God may have been pleased to see that evolutionary freedom had produced, not only fear and suffering, but compassion and self-sacrifice (as evidenced e.g. by motherly love) and that any creature that exhibited these behaviors (replacing raw instinct) would become more like Himself. Could the Biosphere be approaching a level where at least one of its inhabitants was worthy of God’s Care and not His Aloofness? And what about the impact of the Cosmosphere (where aloofness reigned) had upon the Biosphere, where aloofness was about to be replaced by care?
We now know that actions in the Cosmosphere, such as plate-techtonics and meteorite strikes, were essential in creating the variety of ecological niches that evolution needed to produce the natural selection that ‘guided’ life from single cells to Homo sapiens. But such actions also produced mass extinctions of the species well on their way in that journey. Was God aloof to the meteor strike at Chicxulub that caused the extinction of dinosaurs; i.e.,did He just let physical laws take their course and shrug off the resulting chaos as so much unavoidable ancillary damage? What if another asteroid has the earth in its sights, now the Noosphere has been established? He might not need to show His Care by intervening in our behalf, IF we have properly utilized the Noosphere and His gift of intellect. Unlike T.Rex, we might detect and deflect such a bolide. That might serve as our Final Exam as a species.
(4) [Richard again] Further, in my opinion, God is no more aloof in letting his intelligent creation evolve than he is in letting society evolve. So, according to your view, if God does a couple of miraculous acts over billions of years, or, “guides” mutations he is not aloof in nature, yet allows millions of innocents to be slaughtered in society without intervening and is not considered, “aloof”. “Aloofness” simply doesn’t apply to the question, other than using the term as a mild ad-hominem attack.
As you point out, Richard, this is a conundrum that we as Christians have not truly figured out: God gifted us with intellect and free will which enabled us to form societies that effectively dominated the planet earth. As much as is possible, we were made in His image. And yet the societies we formed we not pleasing in His sight. So He sent Jesus into our world who had human DNA and yet was the perfect image of His Father, and who would lead us back to Him…from alpha to omega. At least this is how I see Christ’s mission: we can continue to behave instinctually as neo-Darwinian evolution formed Homo sapiens; or we can follow His example, rise above that nature and become New Creations in the Noosphere.
(5) {Here is where you and I disagree a bit, Richard] By the way, I believe man to be a special creation as well, just that we evolved with no tinkering. In my view man is no less, “special” then if he were, “instantaneously” created being that, as a Christian, I hold that God intentioned man through evolution.
I believe the Great Leap Forward to be factual, and thus the relatively sudden appearance of humankind may get a biological explanation by some as yet unknown epigenetic mechanism. So currently we cannot say there was absolutely “no tinkering”–no God of the Gaps. But in any case, humankind IS as special as if created instantaneously.
So, for what its worth, chalk this up as the Gospel of the Kook, Al Leo
Al
