He’s done this infinitely many times before and doesn’t intervene apart from incarnating. He’s that awesome.
The problem as I see it is whether we see God as a divine watchmaker which comes from Deism or we see God as a shepherd which comes from the Bible. Yes God made the universe as a womb for the development of life, but the whole point is a relationship with living things not the design of machines. The designer of a machine may indeed just sit back and watch it go, but the shepherd is always guiding and protecting. This idea of “God-guided mutations” is trying to mix the two metaphors, to have God take up genetic design, which is again not the work of a shepherd. Life is a process of self-organization, where living organism grow, learn, and develop by their own choices. But they do not and cannot do so in vacuum. Life requires an environment which includes farmers, shepherds, teachers, parents, and it is the Christian experience that this includes God also.
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God humbly submits to the prevenient laws of nature in instantiating them from forever. He has no choice, as in Love. I very much doubt that He even has to om in the keys of c, G and h.
[To speculate is to go beyond what we rationally know. We rationally know that God does not intervene in physical - including psychological - reality. There isn’t any rational requirement to invoke Him.]
Matthew….Thank you for the Moritz article. There is some overlap for sure. He talks about God’s special creation (fast, supernatural events), and indirect creation (slow, God given natural processes). I see both these working. For example I see special creation in the Big Bang and God’s adoption and transformation of pre-humans into humans created in/as His image. God’s indirect creation has been at play since the Big Bang but it seems to me that special creation reoccurred only after He created humans. Thereafter both have operated as God wills it.
Yes I’m trying to sort that out. At this time I lean toward thanking God for creating Faraday’s Law (and all physical, chemical, biological laws and processes) and letting them play out. I think that genetic mutations are more in line with indirect rather than special creation. What are your thoughts on this?
So if you think God is creating genetic mutations… does that include the ones which cause congenital illnesses? Or are those things which God considers insignificant and thus ignores them?
Yes, as I mentioned above, to increase his joy.
We do have reason to believe he intervenes in providence in his children’s lives. You may have seen my references to Maggie’s sequence and to the evidence from George Müller’s life*, and there are accounts in both Old and New Testaments of God’s working in intervening providence, and there are any number of accounts in the last two millennia, including numerous instances in my life. There are rational (@Klax 
) and objective correlations between otherwise disjoint empirical events that infuse them with meaning, demonstrating one of God’s primary M.O.s in his interventions.
*
[quote=“Dale, post:16, topic:45521”]
Yes, as I mentioned above, to increase his joy.
[/quote]ion unfold
Yes…I like that. He (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) was filled with joy to see His creation unfold. And to increase His joy he “adopted” and transformed a group of pre-human into humans in/as His image to have a loving relationship. He continues to intervene in His ordained natural and supernatural ways.
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[quote=“tomstinard, post:17, topic:45521, full:true”]
His joy cannot increase except poetically. Why would He have to “adopt” a bunch of monkeys and transform them? How did He transform them? He’s always had loving relationships in Himself, when incarnate and in the transcendent. But now? In His absent presence? We have yearning. Where does He intervene in nature, life naturally? Or supernaturally.
Yes.
Where? How? When? Why? Can you show me? Not in a cold reading of significance in to a perfectly natural situation that no disinterested rational observer could possibly agree with of course.
The multiple objective correlations in the real lives of Maggie, George, Rich, Glenn, myself and innumerably many others (including in scripture) belie the false presuppositions of MPC’s rationality. They have nothing to do with cold reading.
That’s funny.
You completely failed the assignment.
Shalom.
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I see your point…He is God, full of joy, how could he increase His joy? Not sure…maybe Dale or someone else could wade in. I do believe he increases my joy frequently.
Assuming He could increase His joy, maybe he watched all His wonderful creatures caring for their offspring and thought he might a piece of that “parental action”.
How did He transform pre-humans into humans? I think special, supernatural creation, like when Jesus gave sight to the man born blind.
By increasing the size of his family, would be my only answer. The Hebrews verse specifically refers to Jesus’ joy, anyway:
Increasing his children’s joy would increase his joy, too, as is a human father’s.
He got it right first time, in the beginning. And there is no beginning of beginnings. Consciousness evolves; life autonomously transforms itself.
There is existential joy in reciprocated familial love and delight.
For the LORD delights in his people; he adorns the humble with salvation.
Psalm 149:4
Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Psalm 37:4
One thing, one of the primary things, we should be desiring is in the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Hallowed be thy name!” – I want you to be renowned. (If I owned a Lamborghini, I would be jealous for its brand. 
)
It’s also about obedience.
Loving God means keeping his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome.
1 John 5:3
And there might be existential reward involved, too. I love the present continuous tense of the YLT:
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Dale…Thanks…love of among all God’s children, close and extended and way extended family is I think one of God’s bottom lines. I frequently change the verses around in the Lord’s Prayer: thy kingdom come, thy will be done, hallowed be thy name.
I think that genetic mutations are more in line with indirect rather than special creation. I don’t think God created specific mutations for specific purposes. Rather those mutation occurred through a God given set of natural laws and processes. Again, who knows for sure but I don’t think God is bothered about our curiosity to know Him.