Of course, unlike the word cause, create figures in the words creator and creation, and those are loaded. Design, purpose and intention will seem to be implied for create but not necessarily for cause.
On the other hand, for some a cause implies a prior cause and ultimately a first cause. Makes you wonder whether God is everywhere or just imbedded in our lenses.
It is a perfectly common and correct usage of ‘create’ to say things like “The wildfire created chaos in three counties.” or “The resurgence of the ebola virus created panic throughout Liberia.” The semantic range of the word includes non-human forces as agents and allows disorder/destruction as an object.
I agree that create has that range. That is why I was suggesting to T_aquaticus that ‘create’ is not a perfect substitute for ‘cause’.
I agree with this. As I stated previously, we can create a mess of blankets on the bed or wherever. We create a mess/chaos or organization/order intentionally or unintentionally.
We caused some one else to create a disorderly mess or an organized order because we slipped and strained our backs on the blankets laying on the floor or because they were so anal that the bed can not go unmade for more than 5 minutes —as if better homes and gardens may show at any time to take photos of the bedroom–.
Humans create/imagine a conceptual scenario in our minds of a God, outside of Universe/God that is holding the newly created Universe/God in its conceptual hands.
Only humans have this metaphysical-1, mind/intellect/conceptual ability to create/imagine this scenario.
@cosmic4 you’ve used a number of terms that are not familiar to me. As a result I’m not sure quite what you are saying. Can you define the ones that you’ve either coined yourself or found elsewhere? I just googled “metaphysical-1” and found this website: https://www.metaphysicalrealm1.com
Mark, I’m not familiar with the website you presented nor am I affliliated with it in any way.
That humans have access to metaphysical-1, mind/intellect/concepts is common occurrence for humans above a certain age ie metaphysical-1 = mind/intellect/concepts and all humans have, or will have, or lose their access to metaphysical-1, mind/intellect/concepts. sometime in their lives.
I can direct you to dictionary definition of metaphysical if that will help you to understand metaphsyical-1 has to do with nature of the mind.
I put the #1 after the word metaphysica-1 , because often times in dictionary, we will find two or more definitions associated with a word and you will see those various definitions enumerated in sequence, 1, 2, 3 4 etc.
Based on my past experiences with older book dictionaries, the words spirit and soul has more enumerated definitions than most other words. This is due to their definitions being vague{ lack clarity } from the get-go ergo they are used loosely by humans to reference this or that, or other.
By putting a number next to my word I’m making it known that I’m using a specific definition associated with that enumeration ergo there are other definitions that use other enumerations.
By having enumerations we can better clarify specifics of our concepts be distinct from other concepts that use same word. I also sometimess use italics with metaphysical-1, and again, that is make it distinct from other concepts that use the word metaphysical.
The word field is another that has various definitions and again dictionary uses numbers to make distinct the different definitions associated with that word.
I think I mentioned earlier that humans are always creating new words or combinations of words that are sometimes formally adopted into some dictionaries, or informally adopted by culture and maybe found urban dictionary.
These new words are created to help make a concept distinct from another concept, that may or may not be similar. That is what words do.
Humans created dictionaries for reason. To make add clarity to our communications.
Metaphysical-1 = mind/intellect/concept ergo my comment presented it in just that way.
“If a word means everything, it means nothing” (Os Guiness)
From the recent discussion, it appears that “Evolutionary Creation” could legitimately mean “Evolution creates a complete mess.”
I’m sure that’s not what the term was intended to imply, but we’re short on suggestions.
How is poor Mark supposed to know which dictionary you are using? I’m sure he has used a dictionary before. (btw, metaphysical is an adjective; look it up.)
Because Ive spelled it out in three previous posts.
I will present it again. Please read my lips/text as stated.
Metaphysical-1, mind/intellect/concepts ie metaphysical-1 = mind/intellect/concepts.
I think I also stated or offered to direct then them to a dictionary definition if they needed me to do so.
Actually I think I even posted the dictionary definition, if I recall correctly.
PLease read my lips/text as follows metaphysical-1, mind/intellect/concepts have to do with the “nature of the mind”.
The conceptual associations with word mind are intellect and metaphysical.
Please read my lips/text, metaphysical-1 = mind/intellect/concepts.
Metaphysical-2 has a differrent definition.
Metaphyscial-3 has differrent definition.
Metaphysical-4 has a differrent defiinition.
Meta = beyond in greek language.
Physical may have many differrent defintions. If you need me to give you a more specific definition of the word ‘physical’ as found in my given 'metaphysical-1, I can assist you there also.
This is not rocket science and the defintions I present are very much associated with many dictiionary definitions.
Meta{ beyond } physical{ ? }. Physical has to do with physics.
Oh, I’m reading plenty from your posts; make no mistake about it.
Just this. (I’ll probably get kicked off now.)
The word ‘creation’ is different than ‘create’ though and has a different semantic range. I don’t know that anyone would refer to the results of a forest fire as a “creation” even though the havoc was created by fire. You can’t just apply everything you know about a verb to a noun derivative and expect it to hold, that isn’t how language works.
I create using paint and brush , among other things
Has much changed really? What would you ordinarily consider a “coherent account” in theology? Looking at Christianity there is a creation story which people have believed to more or less of an extent over the years. But I will contend that much of it has always been difficult to square with actual experience, and much has had to be accepted (or rejected, or interpreted) without the type of understanding that comes with what we would ordinarily consider to be a coherent account of an event. In EC there’s more of a pure theism at work. One starts with the idea that God exists and created reality. One sees that evolution is a demonstrated fact. The conclusion is that God created life through evolution. How it happened hasn’t been touched on in traditional theology and isn’t readily apparent. Yet–and I see @Richard_Wright1 for one has made a similar point above–the natural conclusion is it must have happened this way. As can be seen here on this site that doesn’t mean it has to be simply taken for granted–the whole can be analyzed and interpreted much as scripture often is to extract additional meaning from it.
Not so - you’re mistaking the accounts that are directly available in the Bible with theology. Or (which may be the same thing) getting your view of Christianity from Fundamentalism.
In Patristic times there were various accounts of natural theology - the Cappadocian Fathers are remarkable in that regard. Mainly they interacted with the secular science of their times to relate it to biblical concepts of creation.
In mediaeval times the scholastics, and particularly Aquinas, produced a complete body of philsophical theology which underpinned the whole intellectual effort of that time, including science. It was successful enough to be preferred by Heisenberg over later models for his description of quantum paradox.
The work of Descartes, Bacon and their chums was a deliberate attempt at a new theology of nature aimed at pursuing natural philosophy practically, and it is essentially their model that still informs science to this day. I’ve noted before that “law” is derived from the law of Moses, inert matter arose from the desire that God should be the only final cause in nature (and so efficient causes were the only ones left to study) and so on.
The idea that Christians down the ages simply soaked up Genesis 1 as a description of nature and struggled with the real world is not even wrong. As is the idea that they have ever been content to say, “Well the world is what it is, and God must be there behind it somehow, even if he’s not apparently necessary.”
Good food for thought here, Jon. In the sentence above, I’m guessing from context that you meant to say “never” instead of “ever”, right?
[well – okay, on more careful reading I think I see the flow of your thought now with the word “ever” in its continued context from the prior sentence.]
So maybe the difference (if there is one) would be that in recent centuries, some seem to want to draw God into that chain of efficient causes we study (not content to simply think of him as the final cause at the back of it all). Whereas to the ancients it was taken as a given that to study nature was to study God’s work. But this latter view captures how many ECs would describe their own outlook today, does it not? Is your critique reserved for the remainder of ECs who go out of their way [and stray, despite themselves, into metaphysical territory] to push notions of “unguidedness”?
Hmm, I didn’t mean to imply that. I said that there must have always been doubt about Genesis’s conformity with our experience of nature. The natural world is the apparent part of reality, and the available knowledge would have had to be interpreted in accordance with theism much as it is today. I also said that available information is subject to our interpretation, and I don’t think that’s ever been different. Finally, I said that many people are clearly not content to simply take things for granted, and I don’t think that’s ever been different either. My how question however is more specific to our times. We now know that evolution occurred (for one thing!) People have only had our depth of knowledge for a short time, and it does change things. How God created through evolution–which is the subject of the thread, no?–is the subject of my quoted statement. That being said, I’m interested in learning more about the earlier efforts at reaching a natural theology and what they entailed.
It was always more complicated than that, Merv, in that the first “modern” scientists, convinced of the value of studying secondary causes in their own right, also had a strong doctrine of special providence and a belief in miracles.
I’m not well versed enough to know exactly how they accommodated these elements, but (1) since they were partly reacting to Catholic superstition by a strong version of cessationism, miracles were largely, and conveniently off the table as far as discernment went; (2) They discussed special providences along the lines that since these were relatively uncommon, they did not interfere significantly with the scientific programme, any more than experimental errors do (3) I’m not sure how carefully they developed criteria for special providence, and have the impression they used rule of thumb - which I suppose maps to modern probability: “extraordinary” means “outside the error bars.”.
In a couple of ways it didn’t matter, (a) because they were at the very beginning of a research program, and the exceptions might be sorted out later (Bacon hoped that patterns would even be found in providential events that would be amenable to study) and (b) - and this is a serious new departure in our worldview - they did not expect to address questions of origins by science, and still less to do so in terms of God’s powers of creation, which to them were clearly supernatural and not to be confused with the workings of nature.
It’s clearly the simple extreme to say that God isn’t involved, period. But in a way it’s more important for the rest of us to be developing a robust theology of nature that encompasses those things mentioned above, together with things like quantum uncertainty, the evident teleology in living things (which Descartes simply defined away), and of course the human mind.
Sounds like a good book project for someone, unless it’s been done already. If so, I’m unaware of it, and have picked up things piecemeal - the Cappadocian Fathers by reading them, Aquinas and the scholastics from Ed Feser and others, and the “mechanical philosophers” and their followers from a bunch of stuff, including some excellent pieces by Ted Davis here over the years.
Part of the reason I’m talking about it is because theology of nature seems to be low on people’s agendas nowadays - very surprising since it was such a project that gave us the basis of modern science.
That would make a good chapter in the book 
It could tie in with what I was saying. Nature and science don’t hold as much mystery for us these days as they once did. When you’re smack in the middle of something big, the beginning moment doesn’t always hold itself out to you as something important–and it may not necessarily be so in context, as much as a historical point of interest. I look forward to reading more about theology of nature perhaps here or elsewhere (I did catch your recent blog post.) If I may be frank, it’s not my normal inclination to see the work of gods in nature, so it could be edifying for me
“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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