The question was Is evolution a non-determinate process? If it responds to ecological changes, it is not. Are we agreed on this?
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It is my personal view that ecology and DNA are quite “determinate” - - by which I mean lawful by nature. And when God intervenes in the process, it is STILL a “determinate” process.
Is this the answer you were hoping for?
I do not make the assumption that you are young earth. I do make the observation that the Bible does not contradict Active Guidance. I also make the observation that you are creating a straw man argument by asserting that I am not making “room in their Darwin for theology”. Active Guidance makes room in the TOE for the active guidance of God. I have shown how this fits with Genesis 1 and 2 multiple times. I am not “sacrificing God at the altar of Darwin”. I am sacrificing orthodoxy at the altar of evidence and scripture. Sola Scriptura. This is absolutely “the other way around”. And I assure you, that nothing in my faith has been compromised.
You have not addressed how you are contradicting God’s plan by trying to create an irrefutable argument for the existence of God.
When Jesus sent his disciples out, he told them that if a town rejected them, they were to leave that town and shake the dust of the town off of their feet as they went. Jesus did not tell them to keep arguing with the town until the town relented out of the staggering weight of a preponderance of evidence. There is no magic formula for the conversion of the unwilling. ID is not a magic formula for the conversion of the unwilling. If someone refuses to see the evidence of God in the night sky, then they will refuse to see the evidence for God in your arguments for frontloaded genetic thingamabobs.
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Good point. Though I think the evidence for God is revealed more in the lives of his children than in the night sky. Physics and biology can come up with their explanations for the natural world, but selfless love and Christ-like sacrifice aren’t ‘natural’ and point to God.
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Hi Joe,
Hope your Thursday is going well. I’m not sure I understand your question, but I’ll give it my best shot. If my answer isn’t apropos, please forgive me and perhaps phrase your question differently.
I affirm that no force at work in the universe operates outside God’s providential care. So yes, God’s providential role is at work in the four fundamental forces of nature. The fine-tuning of the physics parameters even suggests (though it does not logically prove) God’s providential role.
I might not be the right person to describe in detail exactly how that providential role works out, though. Such an undertaking is massive. Here’s a description of how Roman Catholic scholars have approached the question:
Does Thomas Aquinas’ way of understanding natural and divine causation have any relevance to today’s debates on divine action and contemporary science? This debate is framed under the project known as the ‘Divine Action Project’, which was carried out under the sponsorship of the Vatican Observatory and the Centre for Theology and the Natural Sciences in Berkeley, and which is well known for the six published volumes entitled ‘Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action’. The topics of this twenty-year project, which consisted primarily of five conferences,included quantum cosmology and the laws of nature, chaos and complexity, evolutionary and molecular biology, neuroscience and the person, and quantum mechanics. Its main goal was to tackle the problem of special divine action within the framework of contemporary scientific theories, defined as the notion that God performs actions hic et nunc in nature to guide the universe and human lives towards the goals He establishes, such as promoting life or the like. Thus, many proposals were offered from theories of quantum divine action, to divine action through chaotic and complex systems, and theories of top-down causation and notions of emergence as routes to new models of divine action.
This level of effort does not seem surprising for a mystery so marvelous as the “causal joint” between heavenly purpose and natural forces.
Probabilistic modeling plays an important role in the fields of genomic studies and population genetics, which in turn are important components of the modern evolutionary synthesis. The statistical analysis that undergirds dating techniques also plays a role in understanding how life unfolded.
Does that help?
@gbrooks
The answer that I was hoping for is from Joe who is not responding today.
For God to intervene in the world, God would have to be completely separate fro it which God is not.
We do not say that God intervenes when God speaks to us through prayer even though God is changing the direction of our lives.
It’s been 3 days since @deliberateresult
told everyone here they don’t really understand God, or evolution, or both?
Don’t jinx it!
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I’m still curious to see his response to my small quiz…
Ah well, I guess he may not be very enthusiastic about winning a meet-and-greet with Richard Dawkins.
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So much fuss over the term “intervene”. If someone says God does EVERYTHING … there are those whosay no. If someone says God does NOTHING … there are those who say NO. If someone says God does SOMETHING things, the other two groups say “No, everything … or No, NOTHING.”
The word “intervene” is a word choice made in an effort to try to specify a particular aspect of God… to thread the needle … in a discussion.
Bottom line: God is doing SOMETHING …and most of it we can only pretend to understand.
I think that you guys are confusing omniscience and omnipresence with pantheism. God knows every sparrow that falls, but that does not mean that God is every sparrow that falls. We are not God. God is outside of us. Then the indwelling of the Holy Spirit happens. . . .
Imagine standing next to a swimming pool. If I look toward the swimming pool and can see every part of the swimming pool, then I have omniscience as relates to the swimming pool. If I get into the pool to push a beach ball floating on the pool, then I am inside the pool, but I am not one with the pool. If I have really long arms and can reach every part of the pool, then I am omnipotent (sort of) in relation to the pool. I am not the pool, even if I can be everywhere in the pool at once. Pantheism implies that I am a swimming pool.
This (I think) is the relationship between God and the universe. The universe is the pool. God is in the universe. God is not one with the universe. God sees every part of the universe. God can be outside of the universe, or everywhere in the universe at once, but the universe is not God.
Now, imagine that on the other side of the patio, out of sight, there is a barbecue grill. . . .
You can ask the exact same question about rain. Why does a purely natural, purposeless process like rain need God? Why believe in “Theistic Rain”? Rain has no need of a creator. Can you not see this?
guess he might have taken a bio break as not everyone goes here every day.
he fails by his assumption that:
"statement that a purely natural process can produce an intended result is a logical fallacy."
Is it possible that if in the sum of elements with purpose, e.g. the universe there could be elements without purpose?
What is “A purely natural process” to you @deliberateresult? Is replication itself a natural process? replication is a “natural process” Do you mean material and because material can’t think it cannot have intentions or do you mean natural being random, thus not goal oriented? Now if the process itself is random but the survivors would only be the ones that support creation, e.g that provide a benefit to the overall system the outcome of the apparent random process still fulfills it’s purpose to progress the system. In fact the randomness of mutation would be the only fair system to achieve such goal based on genetics and adaptation. If one however sees physical death as an unfair option one has a problem
guess he might have taken a bio break as not everyone goes here every day.
he fails by his assumption that:
"statement that a purely natural process can produce an intended result is a logical fallacy."
Is it possible that if in the sum of elements with purpose, e.g. the universe there could be elements without purpose?
What is “A purely natural process” to you @deliberateresult? Is replication itself a natural process? replication is a “natural process” Do you mean material and because material can’t think it cannot have intentions or do you mean natural being random, thus not goal oriented? Now if the process itself is random but the survivors would only be the ones that support creation, e.g that provide a benefit to the overall system the outcome of the apparent random process still fulfills it’s purpose to progress the system. In fact the randomness of mutation would be the only fair system to achieve such goal based on genetics and adaptation.
If you see the process of cellular replication, do you think the process is not intentional, e.g. that the replication of the cell is an accidental outcome of the chemistry involved?
Now we are getting somewhere! You and I have agreed that the process itself is devoid of purpose. But while you would say that this is a “narrow factoid,” I continue to hold that this is the entire point! Remember Mervin, I am not accusing you (or anyone here) of not believing in God. What I am saying is that people - in particular young people who are learning the TOE - see a purposeless process; one that in and of itself has no need of God. This does not square with the consistent Biblical notion that God directly and actively Created life.
Now in your analogy, you have pointed to a purpose and have noted the necessary role of intelligent agency in that purpose. Let us zoom out even farther: eventually we will see the physical result of your use of the screwdriver. Perhaps you were assembling a bicycle for your daughter, or a vanity for the master bathroom. This physical result will be distinguished from the physical results of natural processes that have not been harnessed for a purpose. It will be distinguished in that it will manifest clear design. It will be evident that this bicycle was an intended result.
On the other hand, if you had used your screwdriver for no particular purpose; if all you did was randomly shook up some dirt and called it a day, then the result would not evidence any design whatsoever.
Life is clearly distinguished from the inanimate world by qualitative differences. It is - or it should be - evident that life does indeed manifest design, and therefore a designer. The distinguishing manifestations of life constitute clear evidence of a designer. Just as natural processes alone could not possibly have produced that bicycle, it is equally clear that natural processes alone could not have produced even the simplest single cell organism. You did not break any physical laws in the assembly of the bicycle, but you clearly harnessed those laws to a purposeful end, and this is clear by the result produced.
As long as we affirm the notion that life only bears evidence of physical causation (without emphasizing the signature of intelligence), we are leaving the door wide open for believers to walk away. Just as there is no reason to think that your random perturbations of the dirt required intelligent agency, so it will remain an unavoidable conclusion that life did not require intelligent agency.
No one here is debating this point. Yes, life has a Designer. The debate is whether or not design is empirically testable and provable.
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And then there is the further issue of whether it being “provable” is really what we are arguing about.