if you see the logos or logic resembled in God as material naturalism and insist on the supernatural to be not logic you should perhaps look for a group called biomagic and not biologos. If you have a problem with Jesus applying logic instead of magic at the wedding of Canaan you seem to hope for a God that is the big brother of Santa that makes your wishes come true instead of hoping for a God that is rational and logic having created a reality you would than him for whatever the weather.
If you want to postulate that God created rules of logic to bind reality and those rues are not good enough that he would follow his own rules you believe in a God that is impotent - e.g. unable to follow his own will. We have plenty of humans on this planet who think their rules are for others to follow and even those who believe in the Golden Rule would do better than your God image. The whole point of understanding God and Jesus is about letting go of your materialism and the requirement for miracles particular the one of turning water into wine shows how much people are not only bound to materialistic thinking in the way of “physical” materialism but also into a materialistic worldview that puts more value on things refined by human hands into wine than on the pure water that gives rise to life. Equally to believe in a materialistic resurrection - apart from the problems of who gets which molecule considering how they are shared between humans due to the cyclic use of the stardust- would only stop you from having Jesus living inside you. If the logic reality of God is not good enough for you and is in need of change you should consider who this God is you think of.
If God intervenes with reality it is by the laws he bound it to as the law it has to obey is the strongest form of intervention you can have. If you have to adjust it on a case by case basis you have chaos.
The quibble in this phrase is “we see in most TE writing[s] are largely still classical ND.”
Ahhh… but not completely ND!!!
Remember what the coining of the term Neo-Darwinism was supposed to address:
“… George Romanes coined the term neo-Darwinism in 1895 to refer to the version of evolution advocated by Alfred Russel Wallace and August Weismann with its heavy dependence on natural selection. Weismann and Wallace rejected the Lamarckian idea of inheritance of acquired characteristics that even Darwin took for granted….”
If even Darwin was partly Lamarckian, then introducing the term Neo-Darwinism was intended to REMOVE Lamarckian interpretatations from the evolutionary scenario.
The part of BioLogos’s presentation that is NOT Neo-Darwinism (anti-Lamarckian) - - is all about God-Guided evolution (either in ongoing God-centered manipulations … or at the moment of creation where natural lawfulness is God’s tool).
George
@marvin
I don’t think we have enough in common in our concepts of God, Jesus, and reality to have a meaningful conversation.
I don’t think the reality of Jesus is confined to the sum total of his molecules.
I don’t think “logic” is some kind of synonym for natural law. It is a branch of mathematics. It describes “the set of all possible worlds where if p then q, etc.” it doesn’t necessarily describe the natural world.
And speaking of logic:
If God created logic and
If logic is not good enough for God
Then God is impotent
Does not obtain by any of the rules of logic I am aware of.
God, by definition, is outside of natural law, not bound by them, since natural laws are part of creation, and God is outside of his creation.
George
I agree with your point, but I might clarify the terms a bit. Yes, the origin of neo Darwinism was indeed as you say in that quote. After the re discovery of Mendelian genetics., the founders of what was called the Modern Synthesis incorporated genetics into Darwinism to explain the sources of inherited variation. Darwin took Lamarck for granted because there were no other theories of inheritance that seemed viable. After Mendel, Lamarckism died away (for the most part; an interesting exception being the Soviet Union, but that’s another tale). So the Modern Synthesis was combined with neo Darwinism. I generally refer to the this entire paradigm as the NDMS. And that is what Eddie is referring to by ND.
So both of you are correct, TEs (and evolutionary biologists) are in the midst of discussions about replacing the NDMS, but I think its safe to say that the trend is clear. The NDMS will be adjusted much like Newtonian phyics was supplemented rather than replaced by quantum theory and relativity.
I agree with this characterization completely.
And some writers like Giberson go to great lengths to avoid discussing possible scenarios for God’s guidance of evolution.
George
SEE NEW THREAD ON TERMINOLOGY!
Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.
Eddie,
Isn’t 2015 biology, genetics, lightyears ahead in understanding than even 1985? SO who should even care what scientists in the 1937-1947 thought?
Thank you for your contributions.
I agree that scientists should not be expected to be expert theologians, but this raises some questions:
Why aren’t there more trained theologians on the BioLogos staff?
When I have tried to raise basically scientifically questions on these pages, specifically the relationship between evolution and ecology, why have I not received straight answers?
You indicate that you have written about new evolutionary thinking. Please tell me how to find it. That is exactly what we need to break out of the stale debate over ID.
Roger
I have a couple of papers submitted, one accepted, but they are not out yet. I will let you know when they are available.
I am well aware of your long struggle to get people to respond to your comments on ecology, because I remember them from my early days as a Biologos commenter, before I had to depart the scene. I think you should feel quite a bit of vindication, because one of the leading (but still a bit controversial) contenders for the top place in the new Extended Synthesis is niche construction, which is all about ecological and environmental mechanisms. When I first saw the papers on that I thought “Wow, Roger Sawtelle was right all along”.
Huh? Who should care about the history of science? You’re kidding, right?
No I am not kidding. The history of science is not science, it is history. Science belongs in science class and the history of science belongs in a history class.
Because science moves so fast, a geology class in 2015 will be totally different than in 1985. A genetics class will be even more different. A cutting edge quantum physics course would be greatly advanced over 1985. So would any medical class.
Patrick
I wasnt aware we were speaking about education. Your comment was “Who should care…” Well students should care if they intend to be educated scientists, but they probably wont. OTOH, all scientists I know of any stature would be very mortified if they werent fully cognizant of the history of their field. So the answer to your question is all biologists should care about the history of biology, and as I said, the great majority do.
Of course you should know the history of your field. If you are in a profession long enough you have actually helped make that history. What I am trying to say is that when we are debating how to harmonize science with faith, we need to always be using today’s science not yesterday’s science. That means that Darwin, Newton, Einstein views on things are pretty much old news and not relevant to today’s discussions.
you \re correct that logic is not a material part of reality. but where does the logos, e.g. the coherent order or thought making up the universe belong if not to God. If you rely on a God that is not supposed to be logic you will get a random reality, thus a breakdown of cause and effect.
That you read my comment
as
indeed hints at a difficulty in obtaining a meaningful discussion but I can only try.
To me the kingdom of God is the epiphany of logic and Jesus only makes sense in the light of logic. In fact to consider God to be outside his creation would deny his omnipresence. He reaches beyond his creation but is well bang in the midst of it. If you have children you have become one flesh, so do you describe yourself outside your childrens affairs or are you part of it?
So perhaps let us try in steps to identify were we differ in our understanding of an omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient God which might clarify your and my position for a more meaningful discourse.
Is Good omniscient because he sees everything or because he knows everything or because he feel everything as all is part of him?
Is God omnipotent because everything has to follow his will or can he defy his own logic e.g.makea square circle or deny himself?
Now logic fulfills both criteria, so if God impersonates the logic he is would be omniscient as every action logically follows its reason, so in the ultimate reason all conesquences have to follow logically from that reason. Thus the cause contains everything that possibly can be, for reasons of constraint of what is logically possible, e.g.omnipotent and everything that can happen is predictable from the primary cause thus known in it, e.g. omniscient.
Logic is clearly supernatural as it is not a material thing, thus metaphysical, a term I prefer to supernatural which is sometimes confused with things contrary to nature. the metaphysical is perfectly natural, just not physical/material any more.
If you do want to make Christianity understandable to materialists you have to first convince them that the basis of science relies on the metaphysical truth of reasonability and that if they do not believe that everything has a reason they better don’t do science as it would be hypocrisy. And you better don’t claim that Jesus was a magician, e.g. someone who pretends things to be real to surprise or please us, but a logician, someone who makes us accept reality and understand it better.
actually if you do not tell them how things came to be it sounds to me like indoctrination. It is the same like people claiming Christians ought to deny the God described in the OT and ignore him altogether.
If you do not know were you coming from how could you know where you are going.
Looks like we are gone far away from discussing God’s interventions
Your statement makes no sense - “the basis of science relies on the metaphysical truth of reasonability” What is the metaphysical truth of reasonability?
Okay. Terms like “the Kingdom of God” and “omnipresent” and “Logos” have associated concepts that have been developed over a history of Christian thought. I study linguistics so I will not argue about the fact that a term can have totally different associations from one person to another. But, if you want people to understand you, it’s kind of important to figure out where your concepts overlap and where they don’t. And if you are going to use words that have well-defined concepts attached to them within the historical Christian tradition (“Kingdom of God,” “Logos,” “ominpresence”) and mathematics/rhetoric (“logic”) but use them with entirely different and idiosyncratic senses, it makes it difficult. The idea of omnipresence means God is not confined by spatial limitations. It is not mutually exclusive with the idea of being separate from creation which are included in the ideas of eternity (existing without a beginning or end) and self-sufficiency (existing without contingency on anything else). To say God is not confined by creation is not the same as saying he is not present in the created world. Yes, I am intimately involved in my children’s lives, but my children are not me, nor are they an extension of me.
Omniscience is God’s knowledge of all things, actual and possible. I don’t think everything is a part of God. I think God is the source of all existence. So as the source he is sovereign over it. I won’t pretend to be able to explain how that works, because I don’t know.
God is omnipotent because ultimately, it is his will that prevails. I think God remains true to his identity.
You lost me on the last paragraph and I don’t know what you are talking about. I don’t see how you can just redefine “logic” and “metaphysics” and “supernatural” and then draw conclusions from there.
God has his own reality. His own Kingdom. I don’t think God’s reality is at all constrained or congruent with our physical/natural reality. At the places where God’s Kingdom breaks into our world (I think of it as parallel dimensions), God’s reality can subsume our reality. The blind can see, the deaf can hear, the dead are raised to life. This is not a logical problem to me, because I don’t believe that our natural reality and the rules that it normally operates is the only true reality. But logic, science, empirical observations, human experience and deduction won’t get you to truth about God’s reality, which is only revealed and explained in divine revelation. It is that other reality that Jesus was sent to make real to us.
But Christianity already is something. I’m not interested in destroying it’s integrity and pretending it teaches something it doesn’t to make it “understandable” to people who unequivocally reject its basic truth claims. A scientist can be perfectly capable of “doing science” and being logical without any reference to absolute truth or divine purpose.
Patrick
As in the matter PoS your approach avoids the reality of what science is and does.
It is history of science that tells us, for example, how current science has neglected important discoveries because of historical accidents - like the eclipse of German Science after Hitler and Soviet Science after the Cold War. When that’s forgotten science becomes even more parochial. Einstein’s work, for example, had to be fought to be heard in the West by Arthur Eddington because he was German and there had just been a war. Nowadays, the inability of US scientists to read research in foreign languages puts a particular slant on their science… which is invisible to them if history and sociology of science are “beneath them”.
Lack of historical perspective also commonly leads to mythic reconstructions of science’s past, as complex and muddled as any history. And that leads to the dangerous lie that science is a matter of invariable progress towrads truth and that, therefore, science NOW is the truest it’s ever been and is bound to arrive at Final Truth any day. It’s palpably false - but you’ll never find out if you stick to the belief that history and philosophy aren’t worthy of notice.