@ GJDS. True. Are you familiar with Giberson’s view on evil? Or, Denis Lamoureux?
No I am not familiar with these gentlemen’s views.
I see. Giberson was once associated with BioLogos. Anyway, in considering human evolution via Darwin’s mechanism, he argues, “after many generations selfishness was so fully programmed in our genomes that it was a significant part of what we now call human nature.” Lamoureux has a similar view, based on gradual polygenism.
Oh, to Giberson, “selfishness” = “sin”…forgot to add that.
Really? I would add to your sentence “. . . or not!”.
I see no reason to fiddle with your so-called “pre-Leibniz” doctrine of providence. The notion of providence has not changed. Barr’s article confirms this: God uses natural law to accomplish various ends (like those who accept God’s use of rain to help accomplish a flood) - - and yet he may still need to suspend natural law (at least as we know it) from time to time (just like ID folks who think certain impossible evolutionary developments were made possible by God).
Accepting both kinds of God’s providence is not the problem here.
The issue of Theodicy was not created by the story of Eden. Nor was it RESOLVED by the story of Eden. As soon as one conceives of an all powerful God that is also Loving, the Theodicy problem instantly appears. The solution to Theodicy is not something BioLogos specializes in … and it is something each of us must resolve in our minds and hearts as we commune with the Divine.
George
The vast majority mutations are neutral. A very small proportion harm fitness.
[quote=“Shanecolburn525, post:18, topic:4353”]
A third aspect is that the classic Darwinian view of selection winnowing out bad mutations and keeping the good ones simply doesn’t match reality.[/quote]
Why does your portrayal of “the classic Darwinian view” include mutation but not recombination?
You might want to check your math. I presume that you are limiting yourself to the germ line and ignoring somatic mutation?
[quote] If most are neutral or deleterious, then the net effect will be genetic entropy, not advance.
[/quote]You seem to have forgotten that human beings are diploid and reproduce sexually. Most of the small proportion of deleterious mutations are recessive.
Shane, under Barr’s view, one would be foolish to set up an analogy like an either accidental or malicious golfer and apply them to the governor of the Universe. One would have to exclude every alternative scenario, like the golfer knowing the old woman was just about to shoot a caddie, or his observation of the life-threatening abcess just where his golf-ball landed, or all the reasons one wouldn’t understand if God explained them.
“Puppetmaster” God is very much a modern concept, arising I suspect from western liberal democracy’s excesses, and especially so when applied to the inanimate creation. One hears it says that God must allow mutations to harm or he would have to coerce nature … back in the days of Augustine or Aquinas, God’s sovereignty was something to glory in, not a stain on his character.
Shane
Giberson’s argument seems to me completely specious, firstly by implying that evolution (even Darwinian evolution) can even in theory be “selfish” (which is incoherent as soon as one considers what a rare thing “the self” is in nature), then by deducing that if it were, it would have a necessary tendency to produce selfishness (which is illogical) and lastly by equating, as you say, sin with selfishness (which is untheological).
But it seems to sell books.
I cannot address their views - however the notion that human nature is the result of Darwin’s mechanisms is a materialistic view. I thought this had been debunked; in any event it is not my view.
Your analysis is on target, Shane, thank you for expressing is so clearly.
Robert Russell, the Christian theologian who is (IMO) the most insightful of his generation on issues related to science, has likewise emphasized that TE/EC actually adds to the difficulty of doing theodicy. Nevertheless, he thinks evolution is true and so proceeds on that basis. I applaud him.
This isn’t the place to try to present his position in a few lines on a screen. That really can’t be done without doing him injustices; his work has to be read in full, which means in print, but I did briefly quote him here: http://biologos.org/blogs/ted-davis-reading-the-book-of-nature/science-and-the-bible-theistic-evolution-part-4. Russell’s ideas about divine action (generally) were succinctly summarized in a series that starts here: http://biologos.org/blogs/archive/the-god-who-acts-part-1. However the person who was doing this for us wasn’t able to continue (owing to getting an excellent new full-time job), so the series promised (at the end of this one) on Russell’s ideas about theodicy never materialized.
Suffice it to say that Russell’s approach to theodicy stresses the fact (for the Christian believer) that what we find in this world is not the end of the story. His language in the quote I just referenced reflects this. John Polkinghorne puts a similar emphasis on eschatology in his theodicy, and to some extent Russell was probably influenced by Polkinghorne here, despite the significant fact that Russell is not an open theist while Polkinghorne embraces that view.
My own view is as follows. Any universe subject to the second law of thermodynamics (which the creationist leader Henry Morris liked to call the “law of death and decay,” or words to that effect) will inevitably contain suffering, unless it doesn’t include sentient organisms. Furthermore, if “deep time” is true From the "Dawn" of Time: A New Story - BioLogos as all of us at BL believe, then morally innocent creatures suffered and died long before the first human sin. In other words, Christians who reject EC/TE but who accept OEC (who represent a large majority of those who accept ID) have to confront the same problem: why didn’t God make heaven now?
Accepting evolution worsens this, b/c then God can be charged with using a creative process that is itself full of suffering and death, but IMO this is not ultimately a problem of a different order: the second law was already there, no less for EC/TE people than any other OEC or ID people. In other words, Asa Gray was right when he said in 1880 that that “the idea of the evolution of one species from another” did not “add any new perplexity to theism.”
Would you agree with this analysis, Shane?
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Ah, and here some Benkirk again. I say, “Most mutations are either neutral, or they harm fitness.” You say, “The vast majority mutations are neutral. A very small proportion harm fitness.” Yep. You’re just restating my view. My point was to say that an much smaller fraction are helpful. that is, no matter how you slice it, deleterious > adaptive…the neutral mutations are irrelevant to the conversation.
[quote=“Shanecolburn525, post:31, topic:4353”]
I say, “Most mutations are either neutral, or they harm fitness.” You say, “The vast majority mutations are neutral. A very small proportion harm fitness.” Yep. You’re just restating my view.
[/quote]No. You’re lumping them together.
[quote=“Shanecolburn525, post:31, topic:4353”]
My point was to say that an much smaller fraction are helpful.[/quote]
And my point was that you were ignoring diploidy and sexual reproduction. Do you believe that humans are haploid?
[quote] that is, no matter how you slice it, deleterious > adaptive…
[/quote]No, I was pointing out that how human beings slice it is very important. Sexual reproduction and diploidy are major buffers reducing the effect of deleterious mutations and increasing polymorphism.
Jon… are you still arguing theodicy?
Theodicy issues cannot change God’s role in the universe.
No, I’m arguing against theodicy.
Are you?
Do you accept that God’s function as Cosmic Script Writer includes sending a meteorite to wipe out the Dinosaurs? . . . by whatever means necessary?
(Either a purely natural collision of some other planets eons ago? Or by a supernatural nudge in the direction of Earth’s path?)
?
Jon, I simply disagree. Consider Barr’s view on “random” car license plates. They appear random (uncorrelated) to us, but he supposes that the objective planner (God) sees them as completely nonrandom. Instead, to God, those phenomena are known such that they could not be otherwise. As Dr. Davis posted, Barr claims, “Evolutionary history may have unfolded entirely in accordance with natural laws, natural randomness, and natural probabilities, as the great majority of biologists believe, or there may have been some extraordinary events along the way that contravened those laws and probabilities. In either case, evolution unfolded exactly as known and willed by God from all eternity.” So the golfer knows with precision what the golf ball’s going to do.
So Benkirk’s escape hatch from deleterious mutations is recombination? There are so many unfounded and undemonstrated assumptions in such an argument that I really cannot take it seriously. At the individual level, deleterious mutations are known to be deleterious…it’s so plain, it’s a truism.
If it’s a truism, why don’t you provide a few examples? Most deleterious mutations create null alleles that are lethal when homozygous, but have no deleterious effects in heterozygotes.
I’m not understanding why this is even still an issue.
Yes… they are deleterious. But not all changes are deleterious. What does this point have to do with anyone’s position?
No, I asked why you didn’t include recombination in your alleged “classic Darwinian view.”
Our escape hatch is sexual reproduction and diploidy. Do you see that neither of those things are recombination?