If cosmic evolution operates within God, within love, then evolution is inherently, inexorably, ineffably directed to God, to love: everything is spiritual.
No intervention bar in and around incarnation and instantiating the cosmic church and ineffably by the Spirit is necessary. Any more would be inconsistent, arbitrary, unfair.
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Then why is there only one such rational species out of millions of species on Earth?
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Although only humans are âfullyâ rational, all plants and animals have the ability to sense light, water, and food with the4 ability to pursue these. Thus all life in rational to a degree with some more than others.
Animals are le4d by evolution to adapt to their environment. This is good, but it means that they are limited to their environmental niche. Humans were able to use their minds to escape this trap and alter their environments to meet their needs. The part of Africa where they were born went through a series of environmental changes to force our ancestors to use their minds to adapt to new challenges.
Most vertebrates live on land and need an internal skeleton and active muscles. Squid and starfish do not.
If sharks have not changed over thousands of years because it is perfectly adapted to its environment, why should other species change because of mutations. Environment rules.
The Big Bang occurred when matter and anti-matter came together and created the universe. This created matter, energy, space, and time, all which are necessary for a rati0onal universe, but I doubt if we can say that these interactions are predictable, certainly net for humans. A rational universe dome from a rational Creator, Who is able to create something from nothing.
In Change and Necessity Jacques Monod pointed out that nature is not subjective, but objective, Objects do not think. They do not create natural laws. If nature is objective and cannot think, then it cannot be the source of its rationality.
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Then how were fish able to adapt to new niches and move onto land, resulting in modern tetrapods?
Really? There are 33,000+ species of fish. There are also vertebrates who donât have an internal skeleton, such as a lampreys and sea squirts. Squid and octopusses have active muscles, but no internal skeleton. Starfish have an external skeleton, but I canât quite remember what they use for locomotion. Insects have an external skeleton and active muscles, and they live on land. There are all of these varied and crazy solutions, so why do you think evolution is pushing towards just one solution?
Sharks have changed. This is why we can tell the difference between shark species today, as well as other members of the same group which include rays and skates. You are the one claiming that evolution is pushing towards one goal, so why havenât sharks evolved the same features as other species in the same environment, such as those found in cephalopods and bony fish?
That last sentence just seems to be thrown in for no apparent reason.
Why canât objects think?
I never said âjust one solution.â The actual point I was making is this. If evolution were to repeat itself, the likelihood of different adaptations from what happened in the past is smaller that the same adaptations used in the past, contrary to what Gould believed. I certainly am not doubting the creativity of nature or God Who created nature, but there is continuity in nature and God also.
I tend to agree with Gould. When I think about this question the first place I go is the common trunk of the tree of life. The earliest life were the tiniest of buds and branches that pushed out from that trunk, and they probably werenât that different from each other at first. They all started the race of evolution next to each other, and yet they ended up in such different places millions of years later.
I would suspect that we would see the very same thing if we went back to the common trunk that unites all animals. The extremely different and crazy lifeforms seen in the Cambrian are amazing, many of which died out. But what would have happened if they didnât go extinct? Where would trilobite evolution be today if they hadnât died out?
There is also this alarm bell that goes off in my head when I think I am being biased. Assuming that what happened is the only way it could have happened is a really, really easy bias to fall into. We also tend to lack appreciation for the Butterfly effect. The perfect example of this is movies that deal with time travel. How many of them have parallel time lines that have the same exact people, but with different jobs or spouses? If you think about it, thatâs completely crazy. What are the chances that the same gametes would meet up at the same exact microsecond in each time line? Just about zero. In a different time line you would have different people. You might as well expect your siblings to all be exact clones of yourself (excluding twins, of course).
Yeah - popular sci-fi has to take lots of liberty with all that in order to accommodate story lines with parallel universes and evil twin versions of the same character so that the same popular actor can be used. Iâve often thought that too - how silly it all is from a scientific point-of-view. But it is the sci-fi way of getting at the real story - itâs still a story about humanity. Even while alien cultures become the plot vehicle, its still our own humanity thatâs being explored. And what else could it be? It is what makes so much sci-fi so engaging even while being scientifically flaky.
The problem is that they did die out and it was not an accident, any more than the extinction of the dinosaurs. They lived in a huge shallow sea that covered much of the earth and died out when the land rose and their habitat disappeared so more and different species could emerge. Life has changed radically as the earth has changed radically. The Butterfly effect does not really apply to evolution. .
It totally and spectacularly would - to the random mutation part of it, anyway, not to mention which of the millions of sperm are the first to successfully reach an egg. There could still be various morphological convergences of course, with the way natural selection, fitness, and ecological pressures work.
Here is a beautiful song [âYou Make Beautiful Thingsâ by Gungor for Ginghamsburg Church] celebrating Godâs creating something new of us - the videography with it fits well with this theme of God working through unpredictable (to us) chaos to shape us. Enjoy.
Just a small perturbation out in the Kuiper belt may have made that asteroid miss, and would have resulted in a very different Earth. The Butterfly in full effect.
If they had gained a mutation which allowed them to shift to a different environment then history would be very different.
It most certainly does. Evolution is a highly contingent process, so it is very sensitive to the Butterfly effect.
The weather is effected by the Butterfly effect. Climate is very different from the weather.
Weather changes rapidly and to extremes, while climate does not, However humans are creating climate change by adding more carbon dioxide to the air, changing the balance that God created.
God does not need tricks to guide evolution to make this world our world.
If God doesnât need tricks to create a CO2 balance, when did He create that balance without intervening (which is grammatic but meaningless) which has been dynamic since the Hadean?
The point is that the earth has had an atmosphere for a long time as you pointed out. and of course God created the earth and its atmosphere. And of course this atmosphere with all its gases has not been constant, but dynamic as you say.
In the book A New History of Life. Peter Ward and Joe Kirschvink trace the history of life based on changing environments, just as I do. They look especially at the changes in the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere, which has changed periodically.
The point is that evolution is a scientific process which is very complex, and yet it has order. The environment has moved in a specific manner in creating many species and causing many to go extinct.
Evidence indicates that God created everything including time and space from nothing. When we say we really do not understand God that is mainly what we mean, because that is beyond our ken, beyond what we know and experience. But we can see how evolution has worked itself out to create human being and the flora and fauna of today. That is the work of a rational God creating an environment for rational people.
This is Godâs handiwork as the Bible says. It is YHWHâs design, YHWHâs plan, YHWHâs execution of that design. It is not YHWH Godâs Self as panentheists claim. God guides evolution and controls the universe in this manner. God controls it through Natural law and through Moral Law, and through the Holy Spirit.
God does not need any special tricks or direct intervention to carry out Godâs Will. Our arms are too short to box with God.
So does He have to intervene at any point? Or not? Whatâs moral law and how does it feature in evolution? What isnât Godâs self? When did He start to create from nothing?
God does not have to do anything. Thus far God has not apparently intervened directly in evolution, although probably many if not most people think that God probably directly bestowed the gift of life.
History is related, but not the same. In a way God intervened when God spoke to Abraham and Moses, and chose David to be king of Israel, and the Father sent the Son to be the Messiah.
Also most Christians believe that Jesus is coming again to defeat the Lawless One.
Moral Law helps provide the social order that humanity needs to survive and thrive.
Godâs Creation is not Godâs Self.
God created the universe ex nihilo in the Beginning.
What about all the previous and concurrent universes?
What about them?
Did He begin them too? In the Beginning? Prior to the eternity of them?
What makes you think thin that there are previous and/or concurrent universes?
And if there are, what does it have to do with us?
We have enough problems in this uni9verse. Please do not try to invent more based on groundless speculation.
Donât worry, I wouldnât dream of it. What makes me think it is thinking.
There is more to life than thinking. There needs to be action too.
Karl Popper taught us that real theories need to be falsifiable.
âLet your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.â -Colossians 4:6
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