Spiritual evolution through theological selection

Faith & Science Conversation
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You are the one who said that evolution is not designed. So now it is designed? Is God really directly responsible for Nature? So God sickened people, and Jesus healed them?

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The magic word is autonomous. IF God grounds being, THEN being does the rest. God cannot design nature. When did He do that? IF He grounds it, THEN it runs free in Him. If He isn’t the ground, then it just runs free. The laws of physics, phusis, nature are prevenient of God instantiating them. From eternity. God sickens no one. God heals all. In the transcendent, as tasted through Jesus.

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It is interesting that the Craftsman is isolated and forbidden from interacting with his craftsmanship.

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Just read Paul Davies’s latest book: “What’s Eating the Universe? And Other Cosmic Questions.”
His conclusion: While admiring the spectacular of the universe, it has no meaning at all - it just is, while scoffing at scientists who invoke a religious meaning.

The clash will always exist…for some.

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What clash? He’ll have to give his '95 Templeton Prize back!

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???   

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I do not believe that we are tools created for an end but are created as an end in ourselves. The phenomenon of life serves no purpose for tools. Anything that living things can do, machines can do better. Thus there is only one meaningful reason to create living things – because you seek a relationship with beings other than yourself. Beings who have a life of their own decide the purpose of their existence for themselves. They can choose to have a relationship with whoever they want. But that is what makes a relationship most authentic and real.

Dubious hypothesis. Just because it works that way in your thinking with your presuppositions doesn’t mean it will work that way in the thinking of other people, for they are working with a different set of presuppositions.

I don’t think so. I certainly have no need to boil Christianity down in such a way. Science is a useful human activity. But it is not life. It is not even possible. They are fundamentally different. Science derives from objective observation. Life requires subjective participation. Religion is about life and objectivity has very little to do with it. Insisting on objectivity alone can only make religion worthless in comparison with science.

Life is a process of self organization – the creation of ourselves in relation and response to an environment. We find a purpose in life that works for us fitting us into some niche in that environment. The most we can say is that this is not something we do a vacuum and therefore it does not preclude the existence of farmer, shepherd, and teachers who choose to participate in our lives and our self creation. This is the proper role of God in our lives – a shepherd and teacher, NOT a watchmaker or designer of dead machines.

Design has no part of evolution or life. It is fundamentally opposed. We are fast learning how to use the machinery of biological organisms to make our own tools for medicine and industry. This is NOT the creation of life. Biological machinery is not life, and what we design with it are machines no less than those we make with silicon and metal.

Life is overcoming physical and spiritual challenges. Evolution is a manifestation of life.

Defining evil relative to Christian faith (or any religion) is a dangerous thing to do. It is in danger of fulfilling Steven Weinberg’s words: “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.” Thus it is better for evil to have a more universal definition in the whole of life.

The objections above aside, I agree with this as a purely religious claim. I believe the relationship God is seeking is an eternal one. The purpose of the physical universe is a womb of life for the creation of living spirits.

But this claim is unsupportable in any context. Evolution is a physical process and extending it beyond the physical is unwarranted. If there is any drive to spirituality, it is not in evolution, but the involvement of God in our lives. It is a mistake to make evolution into a theory of everything. It doesn’t even work in science and is more seriously flawed extended outside of science.

Ok… well evolution in essence is just a learning process. But it is a specific learning process applied to genetic variation and thus extending it outside of this leads to numerous fallacies and bad assumptions. This works somewhat in the development of theories of abiogenesis with the term “pre-biotic evolution.” We also use the term metaphorically speaking of many other learning and developmental processes. But the key feature of biological evolution is missing – natural selection based on the stark realities of survival. In other areas, human choice plays a more dominant role – where things “survive” simply because we want them to. And that is no longer science, let alone evolution.

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Question, question, question. What?

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Sounds like bad cop/good cop to me. :wink:

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Strange situation here: Bill Gates, who is not religious, is spending a small fortune to wipe out malaria. But Michael Behe of the Discovery Institute believes that the Intelligent Designer (aka God) created the deadly microbe that causes malaria!

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I’m mostly a fan of biodiversity but there are some I wouldn’t miss and others I’d be happy to do in personally if I could.

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  • BTW @marta, Don’t know if you gave today any thought, but yesterday was “All Saint’s Day”, also known as “All Hallows Day” [otherwise known as the day after “All Hallows Eve” or Halloween].
  • For “the Social Justice” folk, today is: “All Souls Day”, or more commonly–in Los Angeles–the second day of “DĂ­a de los Muertos.” (My wife’s sister must be “in her glory.” She’s an “altarista”, i.e. an authority and specialist on the “Mexican Day of the Dead”.]

Grand Park’s Downtown Dia de los Muertos 2022

Sound like a holiday that you could get into, @MarkD?

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Certainly does look like fun. Not worth dying for though … or are the living allowed to attend?

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Same here.

On the other hand… In many ways evolution is the ultimate “designer” in some sense and half-baked interference could be dangerous. And yet change is the one constant in life so we cannot expect things to remain the same. But it doesn’t mean we won’t make some pretty serious mistakes when we make changes like this.

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The purpose of life from the Jewish and Christian perspective is stated in Gen. 1:26-28 –
“Let us create humanity (Hebrew adam) in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule…” Let us create is a statement of purpose, of telos. The intent was for humanity to rule the earth as God’s “good” representatives. For that to happen, humanity had to achieve a certain level of brain, language, and moral development to reach the “maturity” to make good moral choices of their own free will. So, yes, I agree there’s no logical contradiction between Christian faith and evolution.

Welcome. Hope you come back to comment. Good discussion starter.

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LOL! it’s a day for the living … to remember the Dead, in particular: deceased loved ones.

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In the liturgical calendar in the West , All Saints Day was Nov 1 and All Souls Day was Nov 2

Many mainline churches have services on those days, with special liturgies, hymns, and prayers. A requiem mass is often said or sung on All Souls Day.

@GJDS Do the Eastern Orthodox have anything like All Saints Day or All Souls Day?

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EOC observe all Saints Day usually the Sunday before Pentecost.

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Thanks for the info!

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my pleasure