Actually, it sounds like the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. Have a nice day.
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Hey @Jonathan_Burke I think you are missing @Jon_Garvey’s meaning.
You might be equating “intervention” with “involvement”. But these are different concepts. Even if we believe God has allowed the physical world to operate with some measure of autonomy, we believe that God is still involved entirely in it because (1) He created it and (2) He can and does work out His purposes through all thing, and (3) He sees and is omniscient of all things. All these notions of “involved” are compatible with natural laws, and are distinct from miracles and intervention.
When @Jon_Garvey says God is actively involved in nature, that does not at all require intervention. Perhaps in some cases (most cases?) it means that God created it and sees it now too. Though I doubt anyone here denies intervention in all cases (see the Resurrection). So it is not really sensible to extrapolate “active involvement” to “tweaking the laws of physics”.
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To Jon and Jon:
Metaphysically speaking, I’m drawn to the first statement - - it has a pantheistic quality I am drawn to.
Logically, I understand the need for the latter statement !
I think it goes without saying that if you define every natural event as an extension of God’s divine impulse and presence, you have not eliminated the need for the term “Miracle” - - what you have done is made it necessary to devise a terminology that still distinguishes between two kinds of events:
EXAMPLE:
AIR, which by its nature floats above water, does so because of its nature.
VERSUS
A human, which by its nature ordinarily sinks into water (either fully or partially), sometimes does not sink in water (despite the Human’s nature) because of God’s special action.
There is still a difference here … and while you want to make it all part of God’s actions… it is still something that can be distinguished linguistically - - though I’m hesitant to suggest what terminology best suits your preferences.
Having identified the two realms of what some call Miracle vs. Nature … we can apply it to the case of the flagellum:
If the ID folks are correct, In a Universe absent of Aliens, then ETERNITY would still not be enough time for a flagellum to emerge, even with God’s ongoing support and engagement in sustaining natural laws.
However, under the very same circumstances, if a flagellum were suddenly found attached to a microscopic creature, it would be because God changed his engagement with the natures of the microscopic life and the flagellum! And this would be a miraculous event… or whatever special term we have agreed to when distinguishing between an event that is consistent with its intrinsic nature vs. an event that occurs despite something’s intrinsic nature.
I think you are getting pretty vexed-up with semantics here. If God has PROGRAMMED the appearance… that is God’s miracle.
Without God, there would be no programming.
You are attempting to make me wrong while stating the very same proposition using a different arrangement of words. I am not amused.
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I didn’t say they were and you know that. But with Dembski as an editor, I am naturally suspicious. But I hear even he has had a change of heart recently.
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Hi Eddie,
I may be missing something but I thought that the issue with the flagellum was settled. Richard Dawkins in his The God Delusion elegantly demolished the notion of the specific flagellum that is usually mentioned as being irreducibly complex, and showed how natural evolutionary mechanisms could have produced the structure.
I also saw in another post that you mentioned that Dawkins hadn’t produced to your satisfaction an adequate explanation for the evolution of the complex eye. However, others have - there is even a Wikipedia article on it now.
That’s why I don’t agree with the scientific skepticism of yourself and Jon Garvey on the view of nature that people like myself and Denis Lamoureux espouse, it comes across to me as god of the gaps.
One a side-note, I did read you recent article on the Potiphar site and Jon Garvey’s comment - detailed critique forthcoming.
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George
Your two examples are good in themselves, but lead you to misleading conclusions because you apply them to the wrong things.
Air floats because of its God-given natiure, indeed. Peter walks on water because of a miracle (having a broadly salvific purpose).
But a third category would be that Peter happened to meet Jesus in the first place by the Jordan when Jesus was baptized - an ordinary event, in terms of science - but a supernatural event in terms of Peter’s destiny and Jesus’s ministry.
Now, you could explain that various ways - the laws of the universe were set up for that encounter at the big bang. Or it was bound to happen given geological time. Or Jesus didn’t particularly require Peter but picked the most likely candidates from whoever happened to be around John the Baptist on the day.
But I don’t think I’m outside the bounds of mainstream Christianity to call the meeting “providential”. Peter would certainly not have met Jesus but for the activity of God, but that does not mean it was out of the ordinary in kind, only in purpose. For each person who came across John or Jesus and found salvation was equally blessed by God’s providence for them - it was appropriate for them to thank God for the day they stumbled into a market where Jesus was preaching, etc.
Now, apply THAT to the flagellum. It’s not that the science can’t be made to work, but that theologically creation of a flagellum or anything else is an intentional act. As Christians we ought to be assuming Christ’s role as maker of all things, whilst seeking to understand how that interfaces with the processes of natural laws.
To pick up on Richard Wright’s post, no doubt plausible explanations can be found for the possibility of the flagellum - though of course, a plausible possibility is not an observation, and science is about actualities, not possibilities. But even if such a scenario happened, there were millions of others that did not.
The sole important theological question is whether God said, “Let there be flagellae” - and if he did, then there would have been no flagellae in a billion years… but there would have been no bacterium to stick it on to anyway.
Assume that evolutionary route exists, and all I’m asking is whether the particular pathway was found by a truly blind search - that is, accepting that “randomness” is a true cause of creation alongside God - or whether the search was governed by God’s providence, teleologically.
The two are indistinguishable formally: I happen to be amongst those Christians who see no point in having two creators - God and randomness - when one will do quite nicely, and give one grounds for praise and thanksgiving for everything in creation.
Then you hear wrong, according to him.
But your reply brings us back to my original point to which you replied by referring us to scientists for the nature of nature. You, it seems are “naturally” suspicious of the editorship of Dembski. Does that mean your attitude is dictated by the laws of physics apart from God, or some other concept of nature?
Which scientist should I ask?
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I don’t think you’re really interested in mainstream science.
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I think it is interesting that you think I am not reading their writings … because you find that I don’t agree with what they are saying.
What my reading is doing is lowering my opinion of Behe as a worthy champion of ID.
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@Eddie, we’ve been through this before…
If someone used the same citations as the Wikipedia article… would that ALSO be grounds for them having to re-write the article?
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Yes, he’s had exposure to science and has practiced medicine. Nevertheless, he’s into the ID movement.
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Hi Eddie,
I only recently noticed that there was comeback of the flagellum discussion (or maybe it never went away, I’m not as active here as others) and didn’t know that the argument had shifted from it being irreducibly complex to being, “incapable of being produced by natural mechanisms”. Well, here’s a little science lesson, brought to you by the venerable Richard Dawkins (this is a site on evolution, lets not forget). This is from memory, but Dawkins in The God Delusion explained that the motor driving the rotation of the flagellum in question was made mostly of a molecule that also brought molecules into the bacterium by attaching itself to a molecule outside the cell, rotating within the cell membrane then releasing the molecule into the bacterium. He postulated that a genetic mutation could have caused that molecule to rotate within the plane of the wall, and should something attach itself that that molecule, then a little propeller is produced. That would give an obvious advantage in mobility to the bacterium and therefore the mutation will be selected for, and with a few evolutionary adaptations we have a full-flung rotating flagellum. That to me sounds like a quite reasonable explanation and makes the flagellum, “capable of being produced by natural mechanisms”.
I didn’t say that I read about eye evolution there (I didn’t), only that Wikipedia has article on it. I won’t go into the details of the broad thoery, but suffice to say, it is a very reasonable explanation. There are also articles on it on PBS.org and NCBI.
I wouldn’t say that I’m taking Dawson’s opinion, (and I don’t agree much with Miller anyway), only that he gives an explanation that I find credible. I can’t not like it because he’s an anti-theist.
So, unless some reasonable and specific scientific objections are presented, natural explanations for eye and flagellum evolution are alive and kicking. 
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