Being somewhat literal minded and therefore not going with the joke, no. He is so powerful He doesn’t get intentional with what He grounds autonomous apart from when He partakes of it.
Maybe I have not been reading What thoroughly?
You said that God interferes in the lives of humans, which is not true God does not come into our lives without our permission, which is what interfere means. God does not save us if we do not allow God to do so which is Putin’s problem.
In a sense God intervened in the life of Saul of Tarsis because God knew that Saul did not know that Jesus was the Messiah.
As one who believes in the Jesus Christ the Logos, the Word of God, I take the meaning of words seriously since God does. Maybe you think that I will understand what you are saying because I know how God works because I am a Christian. I know that God’s activity in my life is not interference, but my choice.
You belie yourself.
You are making my point about not reading thoroughly, my words and even your own words, because now you are saying interfere, where earlier you said intervene. A loving Father will absolutely intervene to protect his child. Even giving good gifts is ‘intervening’.
*I said no such thing.
Maybe you should reread, thoroughly, Rich Stearns account. God’s ‘interference’ in his life was not something he chose. (Maybe his is an instance where ‘interfere’ might be appropriate, but in a shallow and selfish sense when the big picture considered.)
Sometimes he gives us hard things to strengthen us. (I think I have read that somewhere. ; - )
Dear Klax,
I’m quite certain that I have nothing rational or even valuable to add, but I do want to thank you for your reply and time and efforts in writing it.
And one has to do all the work oneself. The following is therefore futile. It cannot be transferred to you. One has to dig, plough one’s own furrow. This is only mine. It can never be yours.
I agree that this can never be mine, and if it were, I don’t know how I would bear it. Certainly not rationally.
I will thank God I have borne other sorrows that crushed me but not entirely.
First filling (jam=jelly)
It’s a bitter fruit that made this jam/jelly/marmalade/preserves/Konfitüre.
Certainly, stuffing God into spaces we can’t figure out how to fill with knowledge of nature is absurd. He is not caulking, or jam. I’m not sure that it makes things infinitely worse, but it certainly answers no questions helpfully about nature or our part of it to squish God into that gap like a failed baker, attempting to give shape to a sunken cake.
The only, the one hope is Jesus. Nothing else in reality can be posited as requiring God. But God stepping in to nature.
Let’s hold onto hope in Jesus right now, Klax. This is something quite different from us filling gaps with God. Perhaps Jesus, who tells us he is God, is filling gaps and cracks and holes in us with something much more precious than jelly. That bread and wine are a wonderous filling, working from our insides out.
Despite that, despite everything, despite the absence of prophecy by modern rational criteria, I want Him to be for real.
I am surely not a very rational person.
My dear husband is an economist, trained to assume people are rational. The last 6 or 7 years in the U.S. have undeniably demonstrated to him that people are NOT as rational as they believe if at all. Our mid-scale minds can deceive us of their powers.
Collins and Lewis WERE definitely looking for meaning. You and I yearn for it, too, even if it’s not rational to do so.
When I listen to Credence, and the harmonies my brain has been culturally trained to enjoy, I am not concerned with rationality, although I praise God for the meaning he has allowed me to assign to and the pleasure he allows me to experience at hearing a number of frequencies blended at a certain time and in a certain way. And yet, in itself, the music is purposeless. It’s irrational. It’s ok.
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About the only point in Language of God by Collins that I disagreed with was indeed the point that God is not needed once the evolution process is begun.
Ironically, physicists now theorize that the universe consisted of multiple possibilities and it was the human observation of the current one that resulted in our reality. Why then can’t God be the observer?
Even CS Lewis suggested in his book Miracles that if quantum physics is true then that gives a door for the supernatural or subnatural into the natural order.
Our God is a sovereign God which means he is active overseer of all processes per his will. Some things are set in motion and then happen naturally such as diversification of species types. But others may not be, such as a man with a moral code. Even WHEN we do discover proof of how new unique species DNA sequencing is created in a scientific way, the hand of God will ALWAYS be a possible explanation through the potential of God’s observation of quantum events that can impact (tweet) DNA sequences for reasons we might not understand.
In summary, if you believe in a sovereign God, you must believe He always has His hand in the process, and because of quantum physics it will appear that God’s actions are impossible to us to see as they can be explained away scientifically.
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My dear Kendel.
I value everything you say as for many others here, each from their own hard won foxhole. We’re calling out to each other, trying to find out the situation. Some are too wounded and can only rave.
As for rationality (logos), some of the greatest exponents of it in morality, like Kant and Bentham, lack the other two legs of the rhetorical stool. Ethos and pathos. Is it right, fair and how does it feel. Which is why my favourite philosopher is Hume, “reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”. That puts rationality in its place.
We’ve all had to bear unbearable loss, life, eventually, sooner and later, is loss. Rationality can be a surprising companion in that. We, the lucky survivors, have learned through suffering. Although sleep, rather than learning, would not have been unwelcome. (In all the weakness and finding things out about myself I’d rather not, I have experienced unbelievable physical pain : ) I knew I couldn’t stay sane in it. But I did. : ) That was something… worth discovering.)
It’s a bitter fruit that made this jam/jelly/marmalade/preserves/Konfitüre.
Certainly, stuffing God into spaces we can’t figure out how to fill with knowledge of nature is absurd. He is not caulking, or jam. I’m not sure that it makes things infinitely worse, but it certainly answers no questions helpfully about nature or our part of it to squish God into that gap like a failed baker, attempting to give shape to a sunken cake.
Excellent. Thank you.
Let’s hold onto hope in Jesus right now, Klax. This is something quite different from us filling gaps with God. Perhaps Jesus, who tells us he is God, is filling gaps and cracks and holes in us with something much more precious than jelly. That bread and wine are a wonderous filling, working from our insides out.
Nice. Really.
I am surely not a very rational person.
Thank God!
My dear husband is an economist, trained to assume people are rational. The last 6 or 7 years in the U.S. have undeniably demonstrated to him that people are NOT as rational as they believe if at all. Our mid-scale minds can deceive us of their powers.
But that is the finding of… rationality! I love the paradox. It’s in Hume I feel.
Collins and Lewis WERE definitely looking for meaning. You and I yearn for it, too, even if it’s not rational to do so.
In existential terms, it’s perfectly rational. Beyond Seneca, Hume, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Frankl, Husserl, rationality, for me there is Rogers. You’re worth it. We’re worth it. All are worth it. Let’s find a way. Even if there is no transcendence. Even if Jesus were not God incarnate, He would still be the moral lever to move the world.
When I listen to Credence, and the harmonies my brain has been culturally trained to enjoy, I am not concerned with rationality, although I praise God for the meaning he has allowed me to assign to and the pleasure he allows me to experience at hearing a number of frequencies blended at a certain time and in a certain way. And yet, in itself, the music is purposeless. It’s irrational. It’s ok.
When we were neritic fish we bathed in music. Is beauty rational? I was playing on Creedance as in Clearwater Revival I’m afraid! I realized you must mean Christian music. I’ve searched but cannot find it. Do you have a link?
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I would guess she meant CCR same as you … and me.
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Can you quote this statement from the book. I don’t think he said that and I suspect you misunderstood his meaning.
He did make the point that the theory of evolution works just fine. It doesn’t require any magical help to explain the evidence. That is something most here in the forum agree with. But that doesn’t mean that God did’t intervene and guide the process. This is the difference between evolutionary creationism and intelligent design. Christians who are scientists can support the former but not the latter.
I remember a few years back when the 4th of July extravaganza at the Capitol had John Fogerty singing Fortunate Son, and wondered if whoever booked him really knew what the lyrics were about.
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Have to admit I rarely did. Couldn’t easily hear them and didn’t look them up unless it was a Bob Dylan tunez
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Thank you, Klax. You’ve given me much to think about…and read. Or more likely, read about. I’m sorry to have only brushed up against real philosophy the way one accidentally bumps an electric fence. So, as usual, you are miles ahead of me.
As far as music goes, please do not confuse CCR with CCM. I certainly don’t. The mostly “happy clappy” music from CCM of my youth of the very late Cold War drove me away quickly. I preferred the local Detroit jazz and classical stations and the snippets of New Wave I could get on our commercial stations. I still cherish my copy of Time and Tide by the Split Enz and have yet to find its equal. Later, when I had the opportunity to expand, I learned I adored Blues and more jazz and and an enormous mixed bag of notes. Sacred music is wonderful, too, but CCM (as I know it) is not sacred. Except Michael Card’s music. I’ll keep the Michael card albums, too.
And none of this has to do with genetics, does it. So, so far from the original post.
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I was paraphrasing and don’t have the book with me as I’m now traveling…. But I do accept your explanation and thank you for the clarification.
Neal.
Iron to iron.
God is not needed to start evolution, to start life, to create universes, to fine tune physics, let alone tweak evolution. He is not even needed to ground being, to observe it in to existence. Order needs no meaning. And yes, I love Greg Bear’s Blood Music of course. It’s just excellent sci-fi. Fantasy. In our desperate search for meaning beyond utter meaninglessness. There is no if about QM. And it isn’t a portal for God to do magic. To deny His existence.
If God grounds being, He so smart He doesn’t need to intervene at all. It is logical - but not probable, not necessary - that being needs intentionally grounding. If it does, it doesn’t need anything else. It does the rest. If He intervenes it is by incarnation and by the Spirit.
We declare God Sovereign, in ‘relationship’ with us, as we need metaphors, rituals, an idealized self, despite the fact that even if He deistically, transcendentally and immanently grounds being and theistically incarnates and yearns with us, He is not a magic king.
If we stay only within our pious metaphors, we’re not fully engaging with Him. Or each other.
God is the archetypal Father and Person[s]. We are the metaphors.
Klax,
I’m not suggesting that God is a multi-act play changing the script all the time. He has one plan from the beginning and this plan included bring Jesus and a whole bunch of other stuff into the play.
You say God is not needed. Really? When I was struggling to find an answer to the big questions, it was based on my struggle to answer them without a God in the picture. With God in the answer, it all makes sense.
I respect your opinion, I just don’t agree with it.
Neal
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Neal
There is no beginning. Only locally. Everywhere. From forever. That’s not an opinion. Except in the way that Supreme Court Justices opine. And higher than that actually.
If Jesus was God incarnate, that was a deliberate, chosen, intentional, purposeful act of divine intervention. A stone thrown in our insignificant pond. The only stone. It’s had ripples. If He weren’t, it all makes perfectly natural sense. Neither is that.
And aye, God is not needed except by the meaning shaped hole in Western influenced minds. As you demonstrate. Me too. Or that.
YMWNV.
Martin
Life is hard, because it ain’t easy. No special thing.
Life also can be hard because God expects more from God’s people. Thar is my choice.
“If Jesus was God incarnate, that was a deliberate, chosen, intentional, purposeful act of divine intervention.” quote from @Klax
Jesus Christ is the Word/Logos. He is not an intervention, but a communication from God that we can accept or try to ignore.
Are you sure about that.