I’m not a materialist naturalist. I’m just saying that Jesus used logic.
There is a limit to how much that logic mattered. Jesus said in Mark 11:23
"“Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them.”
Does logic really “control” in this situation - - where a miraculous deed is described … but never actually done.
George
This is just a story Jesus told to illustrate the power of faith. The apostles understood this. “Don’t try this at home!”
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[quote=“Eddie, post:273, topic:3316”]
I was asked by Mazrocon to comment specifically on neo-Darwinism. Also, neo-Darwinism appears to be the view of evolution endorsed by BioLogos.[/quote]
BL offers articles about specific mechanisms. You don’t engage on any of them.
[quote]Hence my focus.
[/quote]Your use of “neo-Darwinism” is anything but focused. Try to discuss actual mechanistic hypotheses and actual evidence.
But you’re not recognizing that you have a relatively small group of people here, so that your obsession with categorizations, “sides,” and “debates” is polarizing and creates obstacles to understanding.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.
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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.