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.
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Two questions for you Chris:
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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?
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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?
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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.
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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?
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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. . . .