Dealing with such a situation would be very simple, @Eddie.
First, @Mervin_Bitikofer could calm the Squad members down by explaining to them that he was not making a scientific claim, but a philosophical one. Then, if they keep insisting… Merv could confuse them with a counter-question. He could ask them whether they believe God specifically designed the husband-wife relationship. Then the Squad members will become involved in an internal dispute, allowing Merv to escape safely.
From a Christian viewpoint, I don’t think there is much of a struggle over deciding that God must have designed every good or neutral thing we see. The challenges arise when we start thinking about the negative things.
But all these decisions are based on our religious analysis … not scientific ones.
I just can’t even imagine an OMNISICIENT god “letting things slide” about how many fingers humans have.
He either knows what’s going to happen and cares about it … or He really doesn’t know everything.
No… then yes, yes, yes.
We ARE discussing my views… as well as everyone else’s views. We certainly know there are plenty of far-fetched ideas on this forum - - and some of them, no doubt, are my own views.
As you can well imagine, BioLogos doesn’t have to cater to the craziest of the views. And I would propose that an omnisicient God who is involved in the creation of life is not likely to be ambivalent about the exact nature of his creation - - since He knows that every little thing creates a cumulative effect - - and a cumulative reality - - millions of years later.
@Eddie, wouldn’t you just LOVE to quantify how many people think God doesn’t really care how many fingers humans ended with?
Those who propose to know God’s motivations on these things, --if they can’t show Scriptural support, would be supposing things that they have no warrant to suppose. Those who claim that God does care about each minute detail of creation do (IMO) enjoy greater Scriptural support than those who, for fanciful reasons of their own, feel a need to exonerate God (no matter how persistently unsuccessful their repeated attempts at this are) from the “embarrassment” of having created things and situations we deem to be on some continuum from sub-optimal to downright calamitous.
In short: God Cares. And He wants us to care too and to conform the priorities of our cares to His (i.e. Christ’s). So while we should care about the little issues like “tithing our dill and cumin” (i.e. --attending our petty legalisms), we dare not neglect the greater matters of justice and mercy in our war torn world of orphans, widows, and refugees, much less marginalize these great concerns in favor of our petty issues. Lord help us to have mercy on others, that we too may get the mercy we also will desperately need when we stand to account.
Exactly. I don’t have a problem with anything Merv has said above. I consider myself a BioLogos supporter. 
In what I quoted and in when he said God designed (designs) everything, living and material. I can use the d-word when I talk about God and creation, I do all the time. The Squad has never shown up at my door, but I am rather hard to get to. Siri wouldn’t be able to find my house.
Roger: wrote: However to say that Natural Selection “promotes(?) adaptation by selecting(?) combinations that ‘make sense’ i.e. that are useful(?) to the organisms.” Is this any kind of explanation of a scientific process?
Jon responded: Yes. Because that’s how it works. :
The book also says as you quoted is > unconscious and impersonal. The scientific question is, How does a process which is unconscious and impersonal perform actions which are done only by agents who are personal and conscious?
In Western dualism we have the Natural and the Supernatural. The Natural is physical, impersonal, and not able to think. The Supernatural is spiritual, personal, and is able to think. There is nothing in between, even though humans are physical, personal, spiritual, and are able to think.
It would seem that humans are both natural and supernatural, but we do not consider humans to be supernatural. Living things other than humans also have varying degrees of ability to think in the sense that they have ability to react to their environments, which non-living things do not.
Science makes the distinction between the physical sciences and the life sciences, however there seems to be tug of war between those who want to impose the rules of the physical sciences on the life sciences. Evolutionary theory is caught up in this tug of war. Genetics, or Variation, can be treated as a natural or physical science. Ecology, or Natural Selection can not.
Thus usually evolution is treated as Variation, while Natural Selection is treated if at all as a Black Box. The problem then is that evolutionary theory is unbalanced, concentrating on the random while saying little about the determinate giving a false impression. Those who know or should know that evolution is determinate, like Dawkins and Dennett claim that it is not.
Jon: you have not provided any quotations showing that they use the “millions of monkeys” argument to defend evolution.
When I was young, a long time ago, discussions of evolution usually ended with the “monkey argument.” Since I and others were not sophisticated concerning statistics, that left the argument in favor of random chance. Now since this was informal and possibly local, I was not sure how wide spread this argument was. Nonetheless I critiqued it in my boo, Darwin’s Myth, because these early arguments have important weight, particularly if they have not been debunked.
On the other hand, it seems to me that the monkey argument is being used to justify multiverse theory, the idea being that if somehow enough combinations are tried, eventually a “right” one will be found, trial and error without thinking.
Well I can see the problem right there; you’re begging the question. The fact is that those actions are not only done by agents who are personal and conscious. Simple.
I don’t see humans as supernatural at all. We’re entirely natural.
The “monkey argument” has always been used to criticize evolution. It has been used as an argument against evolution, not to defend it. Can you provide any quotations at all which use the argument from random monkey typing as an example that evolution is true?
Are you saying that Natural Selection is done by an agent? By definition, an agent is personal and conscious!
Again the problem is that science does not understand Natural Selection. In the textbook that I use to gauge scientific knowledge of Evolution, Strickberger’s Evolution,4th Ed. 2008, o0nly 14 pages out of a totasl of 673 pagae4s of te4xt are devoted to Natural Selection, most of these are in the beginning of the text where the origins of the theory are discussed.
On p. 60 in the final summery of Natural Selection, this summary is offered among others based on the words of Monod, in Chance and Necessity. “Mutation provides the random noise from which selection draws out the nonrandom music.” That is a nice analogy, but it is not a scientific description of how Natural Selection works, nor is the quote that you gave…
Science gives abundant evidence of how random Variation works, which is fine. There is no evidence of how Natural Selection works, which is not fine. Science is based on evidence, not speculation , which is the reason why Darwinian Natural Selection is not scientific.
If the monkey argument is true, then there is no doubt that evolution is true. Why would creationists use the monkey argument, unless the only way to prove that Creationism is right is to prove that evolution is wrong. In the topsy-turvy world of this debate, maybe that is the way things work…
Multiverse folk can have the monkey argument if that is the best they can do.
.
What does that sentence even mean? There is “no evidence” of how “Natural Selection” works?
Natural selection is about survival of genetic codes. Mathematic analysis of strange gene pools, like ants, bees and termites DEMONSTRATE why the sisters of a Queen work to make sure the Queen’s progeny survives and thrives.
I suggest that you become familiar with the math if you want to see the evidence for why natural selection works.
Roger: There is no evidence of how Natural Selection works, which is not fine.
George: if you want to see the evidence for why natural selection works.
@gbrooks9, you need to know the difference between “why” and “how.”
Math can “map” or create a picture of the way Natural Selection moves, just as a camera can make a movie of a bird flying. The map “proves” that Natural Selection exists, just as the movie proves the bird flies, but neither gives a scientific analysis of how Natural Selection works or how a bird is able to fly.
The question is not if something happens, but how it happens. That is what science is about. Natural Selection is not about the survival of genetic codes or species, but the relative survival of species. When we understand how the dinosaurs went extinct, we see how the mammals flourished?
No. I am pointing out that by saying certain actions can only be done by agents who are personal and conscious, you are begging the question. You are saying there are thigns which can’t be done by natural selection, because those things can only be done by agents who are personal and conscious. That is simply begging the question.
No, the problem is that you do not understand natural selection.
So what? That’s thirteen and a half pages more than is necessary. You can summarize natural selection in a paragraph.
I guess you completley left out the part of the fourteen pages which actually gives a scientific description of how natural selection works. The quotation I gave wasn’t attempting to explain how natural selection works, it was explaining that natural selection isn’t random.
That is false.There is overwhelming evidence of how natural selection works, and it has been documented extensively.
No. As I have explained, the monkey argument was invented specifically to argue against evolution. You have it completely backwards. That’s why you can’t find any examples of scientists using it to support evolution.
Because the purpose of the monkey argument is to try and support the claim that evolution is not possible. So let’s recap.
Boggling!
When people say “nature is random” - - they don’t mean it is not lawful. They mean that it is not-purposeful… unless they are talking about Quantum Mechanics … then you have to see what else they write to see what they mean.
When people say “nature is NOT random” - - they don’t mean it is purposeful. They mean that it is LAWFUL… unless they are talking about Quantum Mechanics… then you have to see what else they write to see what they mean.
There are TWO kinds of natural randomness:
the appearance of unpredictable events, like when dice are thrown and so-called random numbers are generated.
the belief in the intrinsically unpredictable events of quantum mechanics.
But these two categories do not rule out DIVINE knowledge of outcomes, which can make something NATURALY RANDOM (genuinely so, or perceived to be so) to STILL be DESIGNED, INTENTIONAL AND PURPOSEFUL.
Likes to eat his Metaphysical Cake and have it TOO by saying that BioLogos teaches Darwinism (random changes in populations) when it teaches God’s DESIGN of the evolution of Life.
But as we can see - - buried in the very assertion - - BioLogos is not teaching RANDOM CHANGES IN POPULATIONS … if it teaches that God DESIGNED the outcomes of evolutionary science.
But let’s cut Deliberate a little slack. We know that there ARE those who maintain two things simultaneously:
A) God intentionally uses Evolutionary processes to produce humans and/or other organisms - -
B) BUT … God doesn’t put any mindfulness in it … and just waits until he gets what he wants.
Sentences like this, we might imagine, have been the very causes for Religious Wars for centuries… people believe or assert INFURIATING things… and the rest of humanity pays the price.
I personally can’t imagine why someone would want God to rely on evolution … but refuses to configure natural law to make it happen.
I suppose thoughts like this emerge in order to explain why God doesn’t just make things happen instantly … instead of taking millions of years to do it In the end, it’s all metaphysics… and we won’t know for sure until
we arrive at that Undiscovered Country…
Good quick summary of 2 options. Are you also going to cover the open and relational view that says God is “in” time and random events are truly random also to God?
Wow… @ThomasJayOord… such a dilemma! Here you are making a specific request of me regarding a topic that leaves me grievously feeling like a “buzz kill” and “party pooper”. 
I consider the view that “God is ‘in’ time … [where] random events are truly random also to God” to be one of the BIZARRE sub-groups of supporters for BioLogos. If this is one of your personal favorites, I can only humbly ask for patient forgiveness.
In the Triune nature of God most frequently associated with the divine
I consider point (1) to be the least expendable aspect of the Divine. [I consider (2) Omnipotence to be the aspect easiest to set aside.]
In my view, making random events surprising even to God essentially turns the Father into the Demiurge of the Christian Gnostics. I think a very good case can be made for Jesus being limited in what he knows…since he actually seems to display ignorance on a couple of key points. But I have yet to craft a way to claim this same kind of ignorance to the entire Godhead.
Perhaps you could direct me to an article that best presents the scenario?
Thanks for the reply, George. I intended to post a reply to the original post from Josh Reeves, but I inadvertently posted in reply to your thread. Sorry.
I just wrote a book that addresses this very subject. It’s called The Uncontrolling Love of God: An Open and Relational Account of Providence (IVP Academic).
Given your response to me, I doubt I can convince you of my proposal’s plausibility. But it has much in common with proposals from John Polkinghorne, Keith Ward, Philip Clayton, John Haught, and many other leading scholars in the science and theology dialogue. And as a former Biologos advisory board member, I think it is a viable option for my Biologos friends.
In love,
Tom
“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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