forget it. It is obviously beyond your comprehension.
Richard
PS This is not meant as an insult. We just look at things differently if you can’t see it from what I wrote you probably never will
Yes - we are on the same page here.
God’s control has nothing, as in nothing, in common with our limited version.
I find this assertion regarding control groundless, twice. First “control” is too rigidly defined to serve; when God makes a universe in which evolution is possible, and in which God can “diddle the details” such as walking on water, resurrecting the dead, healing the blind and lame, and feeding thousands, then control is never out of reach. And second, where did David lose control of the stone he flung at Goliath’s head? Once it left his sling it was “out of control” - although aimed. Evolution is the same. Example: this is exceedingly rare but on tape: a pitcher throwing a strike that never reaches home plate because a dove flies into the exact wrong spot on the field, and the TV camera catches a huge puffball of feathers. The pitcher lost control THAT TIME once the ball left his fingertips.
Net net, “control” is an example of a word being stretched way out of its regular context. It is not the kind of Ab So Lute that allows it to reference God’s sphere of action.
I hear darkness here. There was a fish that lived in shallow mud at the edges of some body of water. Its fins (due to adaptation) wound up with bones that are a direct analog of the all of the standard air-breathing chordate (having a spine) species. A few such have suppressed rear limbs (cetaceans) or all limbs (snakes).
The true fact is that our skeleton is the analog of that fish’s skeleton. That fish managed to do without gills and colonized land. Our skeleton and its are the same because evolution kept the parts that worked
or in other words, there was no deliberate anything - evolution is like the manager of a factory making widgets, and this manager has a RULE NUMBER ONE on his office door: “If it works, ship it.”
Mutations are the source of endless tiny changes that WORK and natural selection is the act of SHIPPING IT.
Conclusion does not follow from the provided facts. Evolution is elegant and successful. Tell me that God providing a universe in which elegant and successful mechanisms somehow leaves it devoid of love. The “antithesis” of how “we” view God? This is the editorial “we” because only one individual in this discussion thinks this way. In short, this is an axiom, not a deduced principle. An axiom that has no support fails in its sole purpose.
This is the miracle where God unites soul / mind / spirit with the mechanics of a human body. Of course we don’t know what generates any particular thought. IN FACT neurological studies have shown that the instant we realize that we have chosen a path lags the actual neural circuits firing that LED TO THAT THOUGHT had already taken place deep in the inner brain.
There is a point where the physical explanation is not enough. Science cannot identify motivation or philosophical elements of development. There is no obvious data to record or manipulate.
Evolution does not work that way. I hear the same un-thought from Irreducible Complexity people. Without going into specifics this moment (ask me to explain the Team Walk story that real evolution entails) but there are not “parts” in the first place. Yes there are skin cells that generate hair, fur, or feather, or scale. But in each case a host of other genes has had to morph in company (team walk) for the result to make sense. No major change leaps into place. Ever.
Or in other words to understand your remarks we need to adopt your view of “the principles of the system” - when in fact we also understood the principles of the system, with the one difference is that this system works in a way that gives greater glory to God.
People here know the mechanics of evolution, but are unable to look beyond that. Which is why they throw up medicine or cosmology or gravity. As if all science works the same! Evolution has a specific dynamic that is incomparable to the forces that govern gravity, or the identifying of disease.
No, evolution isn’t even science - it is fact. Facts work for a common reason - - they work. They obey the laws of the universe. Science observes what work and tries to explain it. Science sees the fact of evolution and its explanation is a theory. Science deals with theory. Full stop.
Another assertion. All of these assertions rest on a belief. Useful assertions rest on fact.
No one can “define” god, worms to the hindmost.
Allow me to interject - Richard, your beliefs govern your ability to accommodate fact. Where that is the case, “beyond comprehension” is a little bit off the rails. Facts merit comprehension because they are easy to share and define. Beliefs are unique to the believer hence outside regular comprehension.
Thanks for that (I am using my phone so can’t access the qoting system)
You have shown insight some of which had escaped me.
Richard
If there was no propensity to sin, we would literally be robots. Any form of life, from humans downwards, instinctively wants to look after itself first, which can result in harm to others, which is sin if done deliberately and knowingly.
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Thanks for that, Richard. I wait for a longer reply.
Joel
Soft deism is the position that the universe runs as an independent mechanism like a machine God built, and He only bothers with it now and then – and that’s exactly what was portrayed.
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Soft pantheism is the position that everything that happens in the universe is just an action of God, as if nothing exists apart from God. So God effectively didn’t create anything. Sounds like it is all just an extension of God. And that’s exactly what was portrayed in your comment.
Your question prompts a host of similar philosophical questions that inspire the human imagination. If man loves freedom, why do we create laws that restrict our freedom? If there is no ‘God’, why did we create one? If the Lord’s Prayer says, “lead us not into temptation…”, why did God put a beautiful tree in the MIDDLE of the Garden of Eden that was not to be eaten from?
Your understanding of ‘God’ may require some further development. I like to equate God with Mathematics. Both of them represent a necessary fabric of the creation. Mathematics describe the empirical fabric while God describes the moral fabric of the creation. Neither of them would be known without humans and the alphanumeric symbols that we create to represent them. We did not create Mathematics, we discovered it just as we discover God. And people have different aptitudes for God just as they do for Mathematics. The value of God is in showing humble respect for the creation (loving God) loving others as we love ourselves and applying forgiveness in situations where we feel wronged.
I think you are saying that because we cannot see God’s hand we cannot claim it is not there, but
TOE is doing just that. It is claiming God is not involved. It is claiming that the system is working without any outside influence. And to answer that
“God created the system” is just another “get out of Jail free” card. It avoids the criticism instead of confronting it.
And my claim is that God would not use a system from which He is excluded. Therefore He is not using the system that excludes Him. He is using a system that we have not fully identified. And that system is not TOE.
Does that make sense now?
If there is God’s control in evolution TOE does not (can not ) identify it, and therefore is not a description of the actual methodology.
You are basically claiming that the argument is invalid due to the definitions involved. Basically the definition of control, And like the arguments over free will you claim that perfect control is impossible. Fair enough, but TOE has no room of any control from God. The control as such is survival.
And that means common ancestry? Why?
There are only a limited number of ways of constructing limbs with bones. They are going to match whether created separately or both from scratch.
Is all very well. But a chocolate bar looks like a chocolate bar whether it was made by Cadbury, Lyndt, or Rowntree.
We have a basic lack of understanding here. Between us, rather than the facts.
You can look at the elegance of creation and so can I and both conclude it is from God.
You can decide that this can be accomplished using the methodology of evolution, so the end validates the means. But I claim that the description of the means is wrong. So, I am not talking about the results. I am talking about the method of getting there. And I am claiming that the methodology of TOE cannot produce the elegance you see. Because it is the result of fluke, and chaos. Fluke and chaos rarely produces elegance and order. They are incompatible opposites.
I think you are claiming that we cannot attribute Love to this function, which is basically the argument I have been having elsewhere. Is Love so esoteric that it cannot be seen in the way a process works?
Just because science cannot identify it, does that mean it is not identifiable? That makes our certainty of the existence of God problematic.
Evolution has many elements that interact. Natural selection can only work when comparing two versions of creation. And its’ principle is that both start with an equal chance until the pressures of the situation are put in place. But if God creates the new version deliberately then they are not equal. God has made the new creature to survive and nothing of survival of the fittest will change that. Survival has literally been nullified. We have changed the dynamics of evolution. We have changed TOE.
I would rather not divert into ID or Complexity.
I have been arguing this for a long time but it seems you are the first to agree.
I am not sure that I can express it any other way. It is the product of the compound argument I started with. It is not without basis, but the basis is certainly not science. Does that make it invalid? Facts do not dictate the validity of all arguments, do they?
But we have a view of Him nevertheless. I wonder where your view differs from mine?
It is not meant as an insult. It is meant as a get-out. Our arguments and our comprehension are governed by our views and understandings. When we confront a differing view there will be places where misunderstandings or lack of comprehension are due to the viewpoints not the intelligence or lack of that the phrase might imply…
Inasmuch as you have been able to express them in ways that I can understand and answer.
Thanks again
Richard
What you say it not beyond comprehension. Comprehension is a process of making connection to our own system by which we give meaning to the things we say and do. But there is little assurance that my comprehension is the same as yours.
So, what is beyond my comprehension are the connections to your system by which you give meaning to the things you say and do, for two simple reasons. First those connections not on display and second even if they were on display, it doesn’t mean I can make the same connections as you have because the system by which we give meaning to things is not the same.
The question is whether you can see past your system to try and understand another. For instance, you appear to have a fixation about design and control that I find hard to comprehend You talk about people being robots if God controlled the design? Why?
The person who designed the Lottery machine does not control results does he? The Machine is designed to be random, or as near as is possible. Design and control are not similies or synonymous.
When I talk about humans being designed, I am talking about structure not actions.
Richard
The question is whether you can see past your system to try and understand another. For example, I explained many times how design is the ONLY difference between living things and machines.
It certainly isn’t the organic chemistry by which they work, for we have already begun designing things with biological machinery ourselves. It will only become more and more obvious that the only reason it took so long for human beings to arise on the earth is because we are not a product of design at all. I explained all this before.
But here you act like I never explained such a thing. Why?
No, but he didn’t create the people who turn the lottery basket. Talking like the lottery machine is what produces the result is a bit of a joke. I mean… seriously???
We are talking about a basket with a handle turned by a person, right? Or did you have something else in mind?
Yes they are. But when they interact with something which alive then you give over some of the control. You see, I know how random generators used in software work, and they are 100% predictable UNLESS you use an interaction with something living (or quantum mechanical) to control the result.
Certainly, in the case of God, we are talking about creating everything from scratch… from nothing. So He is responsible for every aspect of what He creates and how it works. …unless He devises a way relinquish control… which is not easy to do.
This is why I think free will in the phenomenon of life is the whole point of the physical universe. Thus I think the angels are a product of design. So I think this idea they rebelled in heaven is all fantastical nonsense. The fall was possible because an angel interacted with living people.
Yeah, you think God is preoccupied with vain trivialities. I do not. That is why I don’t think God needed to design anything. The role of shepherd and teacher is sufficient for the things which I think are important to God.
And I see merit in the argument of many that if we are only what God made us to be then the responsibility for what we do lies with God and not with us. But too many theologians play this game of wanting their cake and eating it too. They want God to be in control and yet for human beings to still be responsible. I am not buying the double talk.
We are responsible because God chose to value love and freedom over power and control. And so as the Bible clearly shows, God does not always get what He wants – at least not in all the details. In the big picture, God wants a relationship, which means we write the story of our lives together with Him. So God can delegate, use automation, create life and free will, teach, trust, make sacrifices, and take risks.
As long as you make that assertion there can be no mutual understanding.
The conversation grinds to a halt, there and then, sorry
Richard
I very much can do this… to a great degree. I can do so in the case of many atheists and other religions and cultures. I have read the attempts of many science fiction authors to imagine the different ways of thinking of alien species – and even done this myself in my own science fiction novels.
But of course, I am well aware that like everyone, I have limitations in this regard. I am no profiler or criminal detective trying to put myself in the minds of criminals. I have never made much effort to understand them. Seems like this can be a very dangerous thing to do. So yeah… I am sure there are many ways of thinking which I do not and will not make very much of an attempt to see past my system of meaning to put myself in their head. There are limits to which one can (and I would even say should) twist ones mind into another shape in order to understand the thinking of other people.
Sure… if you refuse to look at the reasons and explanation why they are the same in the case of God.
So this is an axiom of your faith then. …interesting 
This is one of the reasons why I am an opponent of all the proofs for the existence of God. They replace a faith in God with a faith in axioms/premises which are only too likely to be wrong… I think they mostly ARE wrong and this replacement is practically idolatry …or at the very least distorting theology based on the hubris of pretending to know and understand more than we really do.
In any case, I can add this (separation between design and control) to the list of premises on which your thinking is based… like that one about there being no need for consistency between means and results.
No, you have to read that into my comment.
Which is exactly what the scriptures tell us.
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You keep repeating this falsehood as though repetition will make it true. TOE makes no claims about God at all, as I have pointed out that more than one atheist biology professor has made clear, explaining that science has no tool for detecting divine activity.
Again you confuse methodology with philosophy. No methodology used by fallen humans can detect God, whether in biology or geology or cosmology or meteorology or any other science. As my Christian biology professor in college reminded us, God is a God Who hides Himself.
Which shows, once again, that you do not understand TOE. Many Christians who do understand it see the astounding elegance, and as I have pointed out there have been atheists and agnostics who have seen that elegance and concluded there must be a Designer. As some others in that informal university club who were computer science majors said, evolution as described by TOE is like someone writing a few dozen lines of code to produce a program that results in a system that just keeps producing more and more variety.
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Only in a very, very, incredibly broad definition of “control”.
Both you and Richard keep confusing system design with unit design. Unit design requires direct control of the process while system design does not. One is like the concrete rivers in Los Angeles while the other is similar to a river on a broad plain with a shallow slope.
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No you don’t have to read that into what Richard said. God can be intimately involved in the events of our lives without being a control freak micromanaging everything.
It says no such thing. It says God created things. If nothing exists apart from God then God didn’t create anything. God just is… ergo pantheism.
The whole point of Genesis 1 is that the sun, moon, and stars are not god – God created the sun, moon and stars. The ocean, the earth, and the sky are not gods, God created these things. The plants, animals and people are not gods – God created them all. All have an existence apart from God because God created them – they are not parts of God.
And the difference between theism and Deism, is according to theism God didn’t just created them all but continues to interact with them as a participant in events. And of course He directs events according to His will and what He desires like any parent keeping the nest in order to keep his children well and learning as they should (Hebrews 1:3).
But it is wrong to take such passages to mean that the world is nothing but a dream or figment of God’s imagination and thus just a part of God with no existence of its own. Not only is this pantheism but it reduces God’s omnipotence to the trivial omnipotence of a dreamer same as any child.
Thing is a part of God == thing has no existence apart from God
Thing has existence apart from God == thing is not a part of God.
It you want to way a thing would not exist without God then you say God is the creator of that thing – NOT that does not exist apart from God.
Richard does this by equating God’s design with the design of human beings. But this “unit design” does not apply to God. God creates the whole system. And thus the use of design in the case of God equals control even when it does not always equal control in the case of human designers.
The difficulty here is understanding HOW God could ever create anything He does not control. It is possible but it is not trivial. And an important intermediate step is the concept of automation as we see in the mathematical space-time laws of nature.
It’s too bad so few can allow for and trust in God’s providence, being able to know the Cause and the effect, the Who and the what, just not the wonder-full how.