Rejecting your premise as invalid is not the same thing as denying the logic of your argument. Repeatedly people have been rejecting your premise, not denying the logical coherence of your argument. You seem to be kind of deaf to this though.
We are asserting that the appearance of randomness does not entail the process has to be uncontrolled. It means the control is undetectable from our point of observation.
You have a pretty binary point of view.
Either:
or
Is that true?
Because there are far more options than Christian or atheistic fundamentalism.
That’s what I was taught. I was smarter than just to accept everything I was taught.
I figured out that the Theory of Evolution is incompatible with a literal interpretation of Genesis 1, and that a literal interpretation of Genesis 1 is not the only option. It’s not even the best option.
That the universe has no purpose is not a scientific statement. It is a metaphysical statement that cannot be supported scientifically.
You need to learn the difference between the two…
No, it’s impossible to believe that undirected evolution and the Bible are both true.
Hi Joe, you’re way of reasoning surprises me. Please consider the following questions that follow a similar line of reasoning for a different phenomenon, the human embryo.
A. Do you consider the growth of a human embryo to occur by means of natural processes?
If you answers is yes, see questions B and C.
If your answer is no, see questions D and E.
B. Then, do you believe that the growth of a human embryo is also without purpose?
If your answer to question B is yes, congratulations. You have won a meet-and-greet with Richard Dawkins 
.
D. Then, in what ways do you think the growth of an embryo differs from a natural process?
E. Do you think God must supernaturally intervene in the natural processes for the embryo to grow?
I ran across this blog/book review that expresses things much better than I:
In it he quotes an excerpt from the book reviewed, Evolution and Belief, where Asher quotes N.
T. Wright:
All this business about God intervening is not a language I use, because that implies God is outside the process and occasionally reaches in and stirs the pot and then goes away again. Whereas in Psalms … God is the one who “feeds the ravens when they call on him.” What, does he throw them tidbits from heaven? No, it’s a way of describing the fact that God is active in the world. (p. 227, quote from a 2008 lecture by Wright)
Joe, you are WASTING everyone’s time. A principle option available to BioLogos supporters is that Evolution is as much, if not more, a DIVINE process … in the guise of a natural process.
Until you understand this … I don’t see how anyone will be able to take you seriously…
I have tried to follow your reasoning, and the best I can come up with is this:
(a) the TOE has been framed and put forward as a scientific theory in a way that expressly asserts a pointless, purposeless process that depends only on random events and a natural selection process from such events.
(b) no one has formulated a scientific theory that counters (a), or provided an alternative theory that includes a purpose, direction, teleology, or deliberate outcomes.
© some theists have adopted (a) but insist they can add a layer on top of (a) to include God’s involvement.
You maintain that since the only valid theory is (a), than it is logically impossible to do ©.
have I understood you correctly?
Cheers
Further, someone may have intentionally planted that acorn…
Your argument is valid but not sound. It is valid because if the premises are true, then the conclusion is true. It is not sound because P2 is false. Your premise P2 is a false premise. Your premise P2 does not correspond with reality. Your premise P2 is a statement of faith in atheism. This is because the hand of God cannot be proven to be absent from any situation, much less evolution.
Proving that evolution can function without God does not prove that it does. Proving that my Mother’s Roomba vacuum cleaner can function without a cat stearing it with his little feet does not prove the absence of the cat. Proving that government can function without graft does not disprove the existence of graft. Don’t make me talk about sprinkles and ice cream, because I will totally do it.
Stop looking for an irresistible argument for the existence of God. I suspect that your dilemma is caused by a misunderstanding of the mechanism of saving grace. I have talked about this in previous posts. Read in Matthew what Jesus says that we must do to be saved. Matthew 22 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”
37 Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’[d] 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’[e] 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
In the first of these great commandments we find embedded the first four of the ten commandments. In the second commandment we find embedded the last 6 of the ten commandments. The first commandment is to seek God and the second is to not hurt other people.
Jesus also commands us in Mark 11 25 “And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses. 26 But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.”
So, that is what Jesus commands us to do to be saved. Love God, treat others as you want to be treated, forgive others. Jesus alone has earned the right to forgive sins by living a perfect life and dying on the cross. Think that you are worried that if there is no irresistible argument to bring folks to Christ, then people will go to hell unnecessarily. The bible teaches that it is those who choose to reject God and who refuse to forgive others, those are the people who forfeit salvation. God’s judgement is perfect, because his forgiveness is proportional to our forgiveness, and he does not force anyone to accept it.
[quote=“deliberateresult, post:83, topic:4944”]
Indeed, selection is choice contingency! However, that which we call natural selection is not…
[/quote]
_ And by the way, natural selection is being questioned more and more often as a causally adequate mechanism_.
Joe, you are absolutely correct. The Darwinian evolution found in the textbooks does not correspond to the evolution found on BioLogos. Thank you for pointing that out.
However, as a bright scientifically oriented person, don’t you find the statement that you wrote above troubling. I mean Natural Selection is one of the foundations of Darwin’s theory, but now you say we have misunderstood it for 200 years and it is not a causally adequate mechanism. How can a theory be right and wrong at the same time?
I certainly agree that Darwinian Natural Selection is not a “causally adequate mechanism,” and if we humans can understand this, then I am sure that You Know Who (YKW) knows this too, which is why YKW does not create using a causally inadequate mechanism, which is random and indeterminate.
That theory of evolution is what I call Ecological Evolution, and I describe it in detail in my book, Darwin’s Myth: Malthus, Ecology, and the Meaning of Life. Darwin’s Myth is Natural Selection based on Malthusian population theories, which people now are saying is wrong. Sadly we have been misled for over 200 years into thinking they were right and thus evolution is a purposeless and indeterminate process.
Also scientists have been misled by Jacques Monod into thinking that objects cannot have meaning and purpose. Objects are given meaning and purpose by human beings. The universe and evolution are given meaning and purpose by YKW, but since Monod as Marxist excludes YKW from his understanding of Reality, he fails to make this connection.
It is like, if YKW does not exist, there is no purpose and meaning for the universe. Since we have just proven that there is not purpose and meaning for the universe, then YKW must not exist.
Now let me show you how ecological evolution works. We all know that non-avian dinosaurs went extinct. However they did not go extinct as the result of genetic change. They went extinct because of ecological change, since they lost their ecological niche as the result of climate changes. Some, but not all, birds and mammals survived and flourished because they are able to change and adapt to these climate changes. This is a primate example of how ecology guides and determines evolution.
If you need more, it is in my book.
Two questions for you Chris:
Are you saying then that God’s providential role in the unfolding of life can be found in the four fundamental forces of nature themselves?
What mathematical models describe the unfolding of life?
Thanks
Nick…
why do you make the assumption that I am young earth?
The TOE does not allow for active guidance. But I find your phraseology both interesting and revealing: “The Bible does not contradict the TOE…” As if the TOE is the standard by which we measure the validity of the Bible! Wayne Rossiter said it best: “theistic evolutionists are persuaded to make room in their theology for Darwin, but not room in their Darwin for theology…the trend is to sacrifice God at the alter of Darwin, and never the other way around, all the while assuring us that nothing in our faith has been compromised”
If I say “the Bible doesn’t contradict heliocentrism,” am I making heliocentrism the standard by which I measure the validity of the Bible? Or if I say, “the Bible doesn’t contradict vegetarianism” am I making vegetarianism the standard by which I measure the validity of the Bible? Can a person not assert that two beliefs are not in conflict without making one belief the “standard” for the other belief’s validity?
So many of us have imbibed so deeply for so long from these waters of militant competition and triumphalism, that those pernicious fallacies have now worked their way into every recess and corner of our mental frameworks. Freedom from this fallacy can probably only be gained through an extended detox regimen. There are many good recommendations, but among them I think should be Hyers’ essay on Dinosaur Religion.
Most of us are probably never completely free from it. But inoculation is good too.
Yes, as ecological factors change, diversity within populations responds to the changes. I don’t really think anyone disputes that. AND on the other side of the coin, we have episodic mutations, that allow new individuals, now and then, to respond even better to ecological factors.
I return to the case of whales. It’s the perfect case, really. Ecological factors AND mutations, helped shape an uninterrupted channel of life from a terrestrial population of tetrapods to a marine population of deep-diving, plankton-eating, water-spouting mammals who feed their young mother’s milk UNDER WATER!
You can plan a complex chain of ecological factors for millions of years … and NEVER get whales… if the transmission of genes was a perfect process…
It is only through MUTATIONS that RESPONDING to ecological changes is a natural possibility.
The question was Is evolution a non-determinate process? If it responds to ecological changes, it is not. Are we agreed on this?
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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