That might be, just maybe, a theological question that science is not equipped to address? What did you learn about God’s sovereignty in your extensive science education? But that was forty years ago and science is different now.
Richard, I’d hope you’d recognise that this kind of thing is a very tired strawman that many of us have heard time and time again. And hearing it time and time again gets very boring.
Providence and soverignty doesn’t deny human agency, because God is at work in our free choices and working out his will through our free decisions (cf. my early analogy about the bins). You may not agree with that particular theological conceptualisation, but that does not necessarily mean it is wrong. Incredulity, as I’m sure you would agree, has never been a test of orthodoxy.
Chew on God’s omnitemporality a while. There is what should be an awesome (and delightful, but sometimes hard) mystery in how God works in his providence, orchestrating the myriads of timings and placings for events to fall out the way they do for his children. Maggie was just lucky, right?
You do not, however, recognize the difference between the scientific meaning and a theological one. Theologically, the word is meaningless with respect to God who is sovereign over all things. He is sovereign over storms on Galilee (including raindrops and clouds, air molecules and wind) AND ‘random’ molecular mutations in DNA.
If God exists, scientifically the space around him must also exist…and that is the universe! I do not think that you are using the term transcendence appropriately…the bible talks at great length about Gods throne, heaven. Even science suggests that there may be parallel universes…time and space outside that of our own. I belive that this is likely true and that it is the domain of God and heaven.
you raise an important objection and this is one of the fundamental issues with the theology of TEism…it begins to struggle with explaning the nature of God…does he actually interact with us or are we essentially on our own. Genesis 2 states
> 7Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.d
the above scripture clearly describes a God actively invovled in the bringing to life of Adam and Eve…he came down close and breathed the breath of life into Adams nostrils…then Adam became a living being!
IT does not adequately explain who is causing the evil around us. Some TEists even go so far as to say God is the cause of evil…he started it. That is an unbiblical position. One cannot claim that giving humanity free will is also giving us evil. Adam and Eve were not given evil, it corrupted them via trickery (the bible is very specific about this). I think the story of Adam and Eve demonstrates that God was actually rather open about “choice”…he made it quite clear from the beginning that they had the option to choose wisely…he warned them about the fallen Lucifer lurking in their world (“of any tree you shall eat but not of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”)
The space around him?! That’s a novel idea. You are imputing some kind of physicality to him.
Your vaunted great theological understanding is missing something basic: you leave out an important concept that the Bible does not need to talk at great lengths about (it is articulated in one short verse by Jesus himself):
“God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” John 4:24
Technically this is just all of Christiainity that struggles with this - the only thing that would distinguish “TEists” from all the rest is the fact that they also happen to embrace science as a great way to help understand how creation itself works and how it developed. As far as “What is the nature of God …”, welcome to the ages-old intellectual theologies of Christianity writ large. None of these curiosities had to wait until evolution was on the scene to suddenly be awakened. And when they began to be engaged with enlightenment thinking (for better and worse) - that also predated evolution by centuries as well.
This kind of talk does very little to further the conversation. It is also not going to win you many sympathetic ears. Disagreeing with a person’s beliefs is not the same as disrespecting the person, after all.
And there just so happens to be a BBC 4 program on the subject (what are the chances!) Tails you win
One Biblical side note. When Jesus recounted the story of the Good Samaritan both the Levire and the Priest “happened” to be passing. There was no guidance from God just a collision of two events that was not planned (As near chance as the Bible gets)
I should not need to go any further. Just to say that either
The Bible is wrong and chance exists
or
You have misinterpreted what the bible means.
As you do not respect my theology I will not offer an alternative at this time.
Richard
Footnote
You clearly have not followed the discussions I have had with @Dale . His opinion of me is very clear. However, I believe Christ when He states that we risk swimming with a millstone if we put a stumbling block in any believer’s way. That should clarify my previous post.
You talked a lot about God’s sovereignty in what I quoted above, but then you claim that he is not sovereign over everything, including raindrops and clouds. Was Jesus not sovereign over the raindrops and clouds (not to mention the air molecules involved in the wind) during the storm on the Sea of Galilee? Does chance apply to God?