You are whistling in the wind.
Paul is cleverly quoting a Greek poet: A Pagan Poet in Our Eucharistic Prayers
How did Noah know he lived on a globe? The OT describes the world as a flat disc. Noah would only know the world as he knew it was flooded, unless you want to go with a supernatural geography lesson.
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LOL LOL
So… it is not meaningful to say that God cannot stand on His own? …without anything holding Him up? This semantic dodge will not work for me. It basically attempts to limit God to being unable to make anything very much like Himself. All which is required is to distinguish this from contingency which is very easy since creating something which is not contingent on anything is not even logically coherent. But this is quite meaningfully distinct from creating something which does not require something to actively keep it existing.
Interestingly, this raises in my mind Aristotle’s four causes: material, formal, efficient, and final. I would say all of these apply to anything contingent. But none of these are the same as active dependence. Obviously creation implies God is the efficient and final cause of the universe. And I even have no problem with the idea of a passive dependence such as saying the material cause of the universe is some kind of emanation of God. No, my problem has to do with the formal cause only, claiming that God cannot create anything which cannot maintain its own existence by the nature God has given it. That looks to me like an unreasonable limitation upon God and to say this is what God has done looks indistinguishable from pan(en)theism to me.
This is also distinct from God’s participation in events to keep creation fulfilling the purpose for He created it (which is what I think Hebrews 3 is referring to). I think this issue is equivalent to the question of whether natural law is a creation of God or just a pattern of God’s governance of the universe. It is the latter to which I am opposed as basically a restatement of the above objection. Natural law is the form of the universe and is an authentic creation – that by which the universe exists as a distinct and separate existence from God Himself and thus exists in a relationship with God, where events are a product of BOTH its own nature (natural law) and God choosing to interact with His creation as a participant in events. That dichotomy is what makes it a relationship rather than pantheism.
Perhaps this is a little simplistic. It is all very well when dealing with inanimate objects or systems without independent thought, but as soon as you include independent thought you introduce variables that no one, even God can predict.
This is where the automation of evolution fails. If, God had a specific plan of humanity, then the independent actions of fauna as a whole could not be guaranteed.
Now, if, as you do, think that the precise shape and form of humanity is not relevant then the effect will be diminished, maybe to nothing, but if, as many Christians think, the form of humanity has significance (and scripture would encourage this thought) then there is more likelihood of God having to “tweak”, or even “tinker” to get the result He wanted.
As this becomes a purely philosophical or theological standpoint science cannot possible know or decree either way.
Richard
The earliest broadly recognized synchronization between the Biblical narrative and extra-Biblical history is the involvement of the Assyrian king Sennacherib, the pharaoh Taharqa, and Hezekiah around 690 BC. Noah’s flood, by AiG’s chronology, would have been 1,700 years prior, although that timeline conflicts with eyewitness Egyptian history.
Attempting to validate early Biblical history based on events centuries later, is like asserting British legends of King Arthur must be true because nobody disputes that Churchill was a historical figure.
It is not automation because it is not mechanical/deterministic. It is the self-organization. What is the difference? The cause is not external. It is a choice of the thing itself.
I think it is more complicated than this. I think history is something we (living organisms) and God write together – relationship not design. Certainly I think intelligence, language, and a capacity for understanding abstractions like love and goodness, is what God was concerned with, and that most specifics of appearance are more a matter of human vanity. But this does not mean that no specifics of human form are relevant – some uniquely human characteristics are very much relevant. Our largely “hairless” appearance and bipedal locomotion is directly connected with evolutionary developments which gave us considerable dominance over other living organisms (persistence hunting). The shape of the human hand is crucial in this regard also giving us the ability to create tools and reshape our environment. Even the shape of our skulls has a great deal to do with our mastery of spoken language which freed up our hands from their role in communication.
But human vanity real and has considerable connection with things like racism which I think is not from God in any way at all.
There are guidelines on these boards that participants cannot promote a non-Theistic view of religion. Where is “there” when you write “exactly the aim there…”?