We can predict general directions of evolution if we know the environment. For example, creatures living in water will evolve towards a different form than those living on dry land. If we can make that kind of predictions, it is probable that God could direct evolution simply by creating proper environments and if needed, catastrophes like nudging a space stone to collide with Earth.
I assume that God has been more active in guiding the evolution than we know. This is a matter of faith because it may be impossible to find such evidence. God could make very tiny interventions that would have huge consequences in the long term. Anyhow, what matters to us is not the history, it is what we are now and that we can talk to the Creator simply by praying. What could have happened in alternative scenarios may be interesting to think but remains on a very speculative level.
Guidance can happen at various levels. If I flip a coin to make a decision, no amount of study of the coin will discern the purpose that I have for flipping it. As Genesis 1 assures us, forces of nature are merely aspects of God’s creation, with no innate wills and goals of their own. Thus, study of evolution or gravity or other scientifically accessible processes does not show guidance. Ecclesiastes’ point that a purely under the sun approach yields no meaning applies here. But the Bible also assures us that God is in control of and guides the events that happen through natural laws. This is also the problem with ID and YEC approaches (whether used by advocates of ID and YEC or by advocates of atheism) - they are looking for God within science rather than transcending it.
No. That just makes the most sense to me. I just don’t think humans are accidents. The atheist view of Evolution that says humans weren’t supposed to be the end result yet here we are anyway?
The math is not mathing therefore I think God set up the conditions for evolution to happen.
I think God’s purpose was to create self-conscious creatures capable of love (i.e. a true relationship). Beyond that, I don’t necessarily think that he intended (or had to) create bipedal apes to fulfill that function. I do not think that is what the “image of God” refers to in Genesis. So, I am content with God allowing evolution to run its course without further “direct” intervention into what evolves and, as an open theist, I am even content that God did not know beforehand, with certainty, exactly what form of life would eventually emerge. But, as others have noted in this thread it seems pretty certain that a complex social and intelligent, self-conscious creature would eventually emerge as a result of the process. But, I don’t tell a lot of people at church about my Jesus-as-dolphin hypothesis (what if dolphins had evolved as the first self-aware life form and not apes?)… it might furrow some brows.
The wave function is simply the probability distribution of the likelihood of quantum mechanical outcomes. Although a particular result is indeterminate, the probabilities are precisely defined, and the observation of a given outcome “collapses” the wave function to what was actually seen. This fundamental property of QM is experimentally validated, but leads to a great deal of rather speculative implications. One element of this is the question of what the boundary between the QM scale world and the macroscopic world is, including observers such as us, and therefor the role of indeterminacy in the larger cosmos, and how that integrates with perception and consciousness. My point, which is nothing more than blue sky musing, is that randomness from our perspective might not be incompatible with purpose from God’s.
That includes me. God created for a relationship. And while for many people (myself included) a relationship with animals isn’t so much compared to a relationship with children (or people in general who can communicate), many others are quite fulfilled by a relationship with animals. So, I think it bizarre so presume that God would not interact with animals – and that interaction however small and subtle constitutes an involvement in evolution. And I think God intervenes in a corrective way similar to the flood, like an asteroid to end the dinosaurs.
But I would agree that God doesn’t exert control especially over trivialities which are really nothing but vanity on our part. The capacity to think, communicate, and love are definitely things I think God was aiming for. In these things we are made in the image of God and not a matter of shape, and pretty faces (as we think them to be), let alone things of race and color.
The divine watchmaker is an invention of Deism. The God of the Bible is a shepherd. We exist because of a cooperative relationship writing history (including evolution) together. It is the only thing consistent with the fact both scientifically and theologically as well. For this excuse of “diving mystery” that many push as reasons for all our biological flaws just will not cut it anymore. We have such flaws because we played a role by our choices in our own creation. A big part of life is our own responsibility not only for what we do but for what we are, and it is essential we accept that responsibility. Using religion and God to dodge that responsibility is an abuse of religion and God. That is the essence of the fall of man – the original sin of Adam and Eve. It is the one thing which will break a parent-child relationship – to make the parent’s presence in our lives do more harm than good. It is also the essence of the oldest challenge to the existence of God from Epicurus in 300 BC, for if we are willing to put all the responsibility on God then it is better that He doesn’t exist at all.
I agree with the first part but draw a line at the second. Proper parenting requires intervention at times but it is a mistake to ordain – to control. It is your children’s life and their choices matter.
Me neither. But I also don’t think humans are just characters in a story written by some author or machines made by a divine watchmaker. There is a middle ground here found in the Bible which has God in the role of shepherd, and we who are alive making our own choices. That we have choices in what we become does not make us accidents.
These atheists you have been talking to sound like deterministic materialists. But that philosophy is not a part of the scientific theory of evolution. It is not just the involvement of God which makes this less mechanical but the fact we are talking about LIVING organisms. What they do is quite intentional and not accidental at all.
Nice to see a whole book about it, though it seems to argue more from physics of function that from carbon chemistry. It would be interesting to compare the two arguments to see if perhaps – as I suspect – they complement each other.
= - = + = - = † = - = + = - =
How do we know they didn’t?
The difference is that we are tool users and thus problem-solvers on a grand scale that dolphins can’t achieve.
Just BTW, I wrote a rather long story where dolphins turn out to be the world’s saviors due to their exercise of mental powers – which they developed since they weren’t tool users. It had a mildly depressing undertheme that tool users will eventually destroy themselves.
Nice contrast! Though I think that a lot of people, probably most, have both views, so that God is seen as a somewhat benignly neglectful shepherd, mostly just letting things run but poking in every now and then.
A rabbi I knew would dispute this – he asserted that obviously God is responsible for everything since He made it, and an existence where God wasn’t responsible for all would be a terrifying one.
I do agree that, at a certain point, the resurrection will involve something more along the lines of metamorphosis than evolution. If it is a phase change though, I don’t see why technology could not play a role. God used human technology in spreading the gospel via Roman roads, why not also use human technology in raising the dead? The resurrection of humanity does still have a progressive or evolutionary component if you consider bodily resurrection to be an ultimate consequence of theosis or sanctification. I think Jesus is both transhuman and truly human since there are different senses of what it means to be human. If you think of humanity as representing our current fallen state than Jesus is transhuman because he has transcended that. If you think of humanity as representing God in the world than Jesus is more human than all other humans who have ever lived.
Does this dump any theological truths behind Genesis 1 out the window? iMHO, a story can only stretch and accommodate so much before we should no longer see at as speaking inspired truths.