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It's fine for God (and us) to push around molecules

I have no problem with God's pushing around molecules. I have no problem with finite persons' pushing around molecules.

I have little patience with the odd tendency among some Christian writers and thinkers to try to find space for mind-body interaction and even for miracles in, of all things, quantum theory. Or else, sometimes, we hear elaborate theories wherein God set things up by means of the Biggest Bank Shot Ever at the Big Bang so that He would never have to do anything ever after that involved actually reaching a hand down and touching matter. To be fair, these latter scenarios are usually applied only to God's making stuff, not to (say) Jesus' turning water into wine or raising Lazarus. But I can't see the principled difference. If it's so especially cool and important for God to set the initial conditions up at the Big Bang for, say, the origin of life, why wouldn't it be equally good for the miracle at Cana to be the result of a Big Bang bank shot, rather than an actual intervention? If the latter as a true intervention is not a problem theologically or aesthetically (or whatever it is that people worry about), why should the former be?

Why should it be a problem that God should intervene and bump something?

And really, let's just admit plain old mind-body interaction for humans, too, rather than trying to squeeze it in between quarks via quantum theory. Remember--that there can exist nothing but a closed physical system, or something that looks just like a closed physical system, is not a law of science but a metaphysical prejudice. Really.

Comments (34)

Remember--that there can exist nothing but a closed physical system, or something that looks just like a closed physical system, is not a law of science but a metaphysical prejudice. Really.

::Standing ovation and thunderous applause::

"To be fair, these latter scenarios are usually applied only to God's making stuff, not to (say) Jesus' turning water into wine or raising Lazarus. But I can't see the principled difference."

One possible distinction: the first falls into "general revelation," insofar as God's creation is in theory accessible to all men. The New Testament miracles are part of God's special revelation to the believers of NT times up through believers of the present day. These events can be known as miracles perhaps only by grace.

(I here use the "general/particular revelation" categories loosely, compared with the terms' use in Catholic theology. Catholic theology also has the category of "private revelation," in which it includes apparitions and, perhaps, personal discernment of God's will. Perhaps ID falls into this "private" category?)

ID claims that God designed flagella X, I think, have the danger of pointing to a miracle where there is no context for its interpretation. While prophets accompany miracles in all the Biblical episodes, ID theorists rightly shun the mantle of prophet, and claim to be only documenters, not miracle-workers themselves. Have they then any authority to connect putatively miraculous biological design X to God?

In philosophical arguments for the existence of God, the subjects with which many such arguments begin, like particular motion or particular contingency, end up turning to reasonable generalities. However, the ID arguments I see generally throw a bunch of discrete facts at people, splitting even the miraculous parts of Organism X from the "naturalistically created" parts. Their arguments lack any sense that God is involved in the totality of the organism itself, let alone all of creation.

It seems to me they are not looking for God, Creator of heaven and earth, but Demiurge, Manipulator of organism X.

So what? Follow the evidence. Follow the evidence. If God designed something, if that's what the evidence shows, then my point in the post is that there is no reason to insist that he must have done so by means of long, long chains of indirect causation involving no intervention or interference at some later point in history. I don't think anything you've said constitutes a reason, Kevin. The Bible already tells us that God is the creator. What I have really very little time for is the idea that creation cannot be, must not be, interventionist, that somehow it is unfit for God to create by any means other than indirect ones involving as little involvement of his own as possible, as though there is something more "deep" about theistic evolution or Gigantic Big Bang Set-ups than about direct creation. Bag it. *If anything*, one would be more likely to infer direct creation from the biblical language.

And by the way, the reason a theorist like, say, Behe focuses on a discrete system is because he's trying to give an _argument_, and he believes, understandably enough, that the strongest argument can be given if he gets into nitty gritty details and specifics. And remember that his critics are often saying that ID writers _must_ say exactly where design has occurred and where it hasn't. Then you come along and say that's a bad thing to do. So it's a no-win situation.

I tend to think direct design is probably far more widespread than such narrow systems and that bolder claims can be made. But I doubt you'd like those much, either, Kevin. I"m afraid that people who don't like God's "manipulating" things are usually not well-satisfied by any such claim, whether applied to a narrowly defined system or to an organism as a whole. But if you like, I"ll say outright that I think God very probably bumped some molecules and made whole organisms. Does that mean I'm not looking for a demiurge anymore?

I should point out that the Big Bang pre-set-up I keep talking about is expressly described by Mike Behe himself in his latest book The Edge of Evolution as a response to critics who don't like intervention. He puts it forward as a possibility to point out to them that design needn't mean intervention. I suppose he's right that such a set up is possible as a means of design, though do we really know enough about initial condition set-up at the Big Bang to know what sort of possibilities there were? He doesn't say whether he believes it himself or not. But I think he should tell said critics to get over their hang-up about intervention. He's too nice a guy. That's (I think) why he goes into that possibility at such length. I doubt the target audience of critics will appreciate it, so as with most such olive branches, it's pointless.

Why should it be a problem that God should intervene and bump something?

One possible problem, because the cosmological argument depends upon a reliable chain of causation back to an original, uncaused source. If the chain is able to be broken or suspended, it is not a reliable guide. In fieri, the structure of the universe limits the actions of the creator. In esse, the universe is sustained in being only by the creator. The problem with in esse is that although the source has a type of omnipotence, it has no ability to interact selectively with its effect.

Remember--that there can exist nothing but a closed physical system, or something that looks just like a closed physical system, is not a law of science but a metaphysical prejudice. Really.

Metaphysical prejudice is the norm. People forget that logic is entirely dependent on the data that it is operating on, and often mistake their own prejudices for being a sort of data that they can just plug into logic to reach semi-intelligent conclusions.

"If the chain is able to be broken or suspended, it is not a reliable guide."

That is actually not true, and I think your line of argument is faulty, Step2. A cosmological argument does not say how long or short all chains of causation are. It does not require that every chain of causation behind every physical event be unbroken and purely physical for such-and-such gazillion years back to the beginning of the universe en toto. Rather, it says that _even if_ you have a chain of physical causes that is unbroken back to the beginning of the universe, you still have the additional task of explaining the beginning of the chain itself. Those are entirely different. Evidence of "short chains" of physical causes that were begun at some more recent time in a non-physical manner are, as it were, gravy--yet additional evidence of non-physical causation.

"What I have really very little time for is the idea that creation cannot be, must not be, interventionist, that somehow it is unfit for God to create by any means other than indirect ones involving as little involvement of his own as possible, as though there is something more "deep" about theistic evolution or Gigantic Big Bang Set-ups than about direct creation."

Let's grant that God by an act of loving will maintains the existence of contingent creatures, and that were he to withdraw that ontological support for them, they would cease to exist. Isn't that a far more interventionist and involved and, yes, fitting theology, than that to which intelligent design limits itself? So-called theistic evolutionists can believe this theology, and precisely because of that grand theology, they can say the god that ID posits is not good enough.

Could you clarify whether you are claiming that interventionist design is miraculous in approximately the same way the event at Cana was miraculous? Perhaps I take your analogy too strongly, but how would you determine a miracle had taken place at Cana if you only had the new wine to examine and compare with other wines? Or, granting that a miracle did take place, how would you determine if a given urn of wine had come from that miracle at Cana? Aren't miraculous interventions too sui generis to be relevant to scientific argument?

"And remember that his critics are often saying that ID writers _must_ say exactly where design has occurred and where it hasn't. Then you come along and say that's a bad thing to do. So it's a no-win situation."

Well, perhaps that's a reason ID theory should be avoided. If ID writers are in a hole disdained by both quality theologians and scientists(of which I am neither), they should stop digging.

Kevin, are you actually saying that anyone who believes in creation by interventionist means cannot believe in general Divine Providence? Do you actually believe that there is a logical contradiction between *anything but theistic evolution* and the proposition that God sustains everything by his power?

I mean, that's just nuts. Many Christians throughout history have believed that God did, long, long ago, create things by, you know, _doing_ something. Reaching into the world and making stuff. Lots of them lived before Darwinism was even invented. And then also they believed that there was general Providence, God's working by general laws, God's having "set some things up" which then run according to their natures by his permission and under his oversight. Some things happened one way, some the other. But anyone who thought that was just logically inconsistent? Anyone who thought that way needed to figure out how to become theistic evolutionist, and _then_ he could believe in general providence?

Y'know, I should be grateful to you, Kevin, for writing, because you so exactly exemplify the exceedingly odd anti-intervenionist mindset that I had in mind in writing the post. I had a feeling that perhaps someone would say, "Who says this? Who thinks this way? What are you talking about?" and then I'd have to go dig out some quotations. But here it is, right up front, the same old thing I used to hear years ago when I was reading about these debates more, the old Howard van Till line (he's now a pantheist or atheist or something, by the way), how much higher, deeper, and greater theistic evolution is than any sort of _intervention_, how somehow if you believe that God intervenes to make things, you are dissing Providence and God's general sustaining of the universe, or you don't believe in Divine Providence, or you're "unincarnational." I never, ever could see it. It makes no logical sense whatsoever.

If the best evidence supports theistic evolution by means solely of Darwinian mechanisms, fine. But let's not, for heaven's sake, make up a theology to go with it that then locks us out of accepting evidence of a more fine-grained Divine involvement in the process other than just kicking things off.

How would I determine that a miracle had taken place at Cana? I'm not sure I see your point in asking. There, it would of course have to do with ruling out various forms of trickery, like switching jars and such. So I'm not sure why you are bringing this up. Surely you must know that one doesn't determine things in the same way in every circumstance. If you claim to turn water into wine and pull some sort of hocus pocus, my investigation will be focused on you and what you did. If, however, I find a VW Beetle orbiting Alpha Centauri, I won't need to focus on the social context of the cultural situation when it got there. I'll be able to draw some inferences from the nature of the artifact. The fact that both things involve the interaction of an intelligent being with the world doesn't make the method of investigation the same.

Kevin, are you actually saying that anyone who believes in creation by interventionist means cannot believe in general Divine Providence?

Why are you asking this since he obviously didn't say it? He simply thinks that an ongoing sustenance is a better explanation for order in the natural world than intervention by fits and starts. It seems a rational objection.

I mean, that's just nuts.

And why is it necessary to even imply this of a good man?

He simply thinks that an ongoing sustenance is a better explanation for order in the natural world than intervention by fits and starts.

I have wondered why God would intervene to make that particular organism or that particular piece of that particular organism while leaving the rest of it to Divine Providence. But, unlike Kevin I think, I don't take this curiosity to be a defeater for believing in intervention in the least. Especially since, as Lydia has pointed out, there's nothing inconsistent about holding to both intervention and Divine Providence.

Kevin if ID theory works (and I don't know that it does) then that doesn't mean that we now we have a totally new way to look at God's interaction with the world. ID doesn't trump God's sustenance of creation. It might give us some interesting questions as to why both intervention and Divine Providence but it doesn't force us to reject sustenance or dramatically reinterpret the way we think about it (as far as I can tell anyway).

"Y'know, I should be grateful to you, Kevin, for writing, because you so exactly exemplify the exceedingly odd anti-intervenionist mindset that I had in mind in writing the post. I had a feeling that perhaps someone would say, "Who says this? Who thinks this way? What are you talking about?"

I remember listening to a talk Plantinga gave on Divine Action in the World where he argued against Christians who were anti-interventionist. I remember him quoting something in the area of that belief in a God who sets up an orderly natural world and belief in a God who intervenes in that order is dangerously close to contradiction. His comment (or one of them) was something like contradictions come in on/off form not in degrees like dangerously close.

Maybe there is an Anselmite both/and argument hidden in here somewhere: that a God of both Providence and Intervention is greater than a God of Providence alone, and therefore God must be interventionist. (I'm not sure I buy it mind you, it is just a whimsical thought that came to mind).

Or maybe there is something wrong with looking at 'miraculous' intervention and Providence as categorically different kinds of things. I've always been rather suspicious of the natural/supernatural distinction, at least when understood as categories hermetically sealed off from each other. It is probably CS Lewis' fault that I harbor this suspician, I suppose.

My problem with Darwinism has always been that it is just terrifically awful science supported by a hopelessly naive 19th-century metaphysic, not that it poses any particularly alarming problems for theology. But I admit that I also see no theological reason for prejudice against interventionism.

Let's grant that God by an act of loving will maintains the existence of contingent creatures, and that were he to withdraw that ontological support for them, they would cease to exist. Isn't that a far more interventionist and involved and, yes, fitting theology, than that to which intelligent design limits itself? So-called theistic evolutionists can believe this theology, and precisely because of that grand theology, they can say the god that ID posits is not good enough.

Right there, Bill. Right there. And I've heard it many-a time before, too. "God the engineer is so much lesser a God than God the sustainer." "I don't believe in the kind of God who makes a flagellum. I believe in the kind of God who upholds everything." As if these are in conflict. This conflict is implied over and over and over again by theistic evolutionists. It's one of the weirdest things I've ever seen, and I do not understand it.

When we are forced by scientific evidence to take a somewhat less natural interpretation of Scripture to be accurate, let's not make a theology to go with that that is a trapdoor, that says, "Oh, I see, so God _would never_ do it the way that one might normally take Scripture to be saying." Then you're stuck, and if the evidence seems to go back the other way, you can't get back. Why aren't Christians _pleased_ to have evidence that God "formed man out of the dust of the ground" or "drew Leviathan up out of the deep" in some sort of more direct way such as one would normally infer from such language? That he sometimes actually spoke and it was done, rather than sitting back and watching natural selection work all by itself over eons? When they thought they were forced to such an exceedingly metaphorical interpretation by evidence, they did it. Okay. But now that it looks like maybe he did something more, they don't like it. What's happened in the meanwhile?

Example: I am reluctantly forced to believe that the earth itself is very old and that creation took place progressively over long periods of time. Hence, something like a day-age theory apparently must be right in Genesis, though that isn't the most immediate interpretation one would usually give to the language. Well, okay, but if something new comes up next year, I haven't locked myself in by saying in impressive tones, "_I_ now believe in a God who _wouldn't_ create all living things in a week. _My God_ is a greater God than any God who would do it so fast." I just believe that apparently God _didn't_ do it all in a week. And that only empirically, not theologically. There's a very large difference.

Zippy, on natural/supernatural, I think a lot can be cleared up by distinguishing several different senses of 'supernatural.' It's interesting how much ambiguity there is in the term. It can be defined plausibly enough so that _our_ actions can be thought of as "supernatural," or it can be defined so that only God's own personal actions are supernatural and even (e.g.) the actions of angels are natural. Or it can be defined so that God's and angels' actions (and even perhaps those of very weird aliens, if they were to exist) are supernatural but ours are natural. I suppose that the last of these is the most stipulative and arbitrary, though it is a common enough one and has its uses. I'll try to say more about this later. Remember that it was Lewis who defined himself as having a Christianity with a "real supernaturalism" and said this was the biggest divide in present Christianity--between those who did and didn't have a real supernaturalism. So he didn't mind using the term 'supernatural' at times as an important one.

You're getting something from Kevin's excerpt that I'm not. He's not denying God's providence or His capacity to intervene at any time He wishes. He just doesn't want to suppose the presence of the miraculous where it is not necessary. That "act of loving will [which] maintains the existence of contingent creatures" is interventionist. But ID asks us to suppose a God who created natural processes so defective that He must jump in now and then in a spectacular way to take up the slack when nature drops the rope. In the case of man, who is not a merely natural creature, this is understood. I can assure you that Kevin is as pleased as you are that God "formed man out of the dust of the ground", made it rain for 40 days and nights, and parted the Red Sea. And it was wrong of you to imply that he's nuts for believing that ID is an unlikely explanation for certain features of the natural world (like a bacterial flagellum, for pete's sake), though you obviously don't want to admit it.

"My problem with Darwinism has always been that it is just terrifically awful science supported by a hopelessly naive 19th-century metaphysic..."

Really? Does this apply to W. D. Hamilton and his successors? And to the whole crowd over at Gene Expression?

Doesn't a lot of modern "Darwinism" just consist in spinning out the logical consequences of what we now know about genetics?

Bill, I think you partly don't get my point. Kevin implies that if one thinks God directly designed certain parts of nature, one has a God who is "limited" as compared wiht a God who sustains all things. But I believe in both. Why not? Kevin implied a conflict between these where no conflict exists. Please believe me when I say that this is a common trope among theistic evolutionists. Perhaps you have just not encountered it before.

And I really think the "defective nature" thing is an extremely poor argument. I'm sorry to have to say that Bill. But it just makes not the slightest impression on me. A nature that does not develop all the organisms we see on its own by natural processes is "defective"? I mean, if you think it through, this seems to imply that we could deduce something like Darwinism directly from theology, from our armchairs! "God wouldn't make a defective nature. A nature that doesn't evolve all species without divine intervention is defective. Therefore, God must have made a nature at, say, the time of the Big Bang that evolves all specis without divine intervention." The defectiveness premise just seems to me flatly wrong. Believe me, I've heard it before. One form it takes goes like this: "God is generous. Therefore, he would have made a nature capable of evolving everything without his further involvement." Say what??

Suppose no radically different species (radically different from our present ones in the sense that, say, a lion is radically different from a jellyfish) evolve between now and the end of time. Things just go on as they presently are, with no radical new evolution of species. Does that mean we have a "defective natural process" surrounding us right now?

I cannot for the life of me sympathize in the slightest with this a priori theistic evolutionism. If you are a theistic evolutionist on empirical grounds, a posteriori, that's one thing, though I do evaluate the evidence differently than that. But if you're going to say that no evidence can convince you because you have decided a priori that God would be a lesser God or would be making a "broken" creation if Darwinism were false, then...well...I guess there's nothing to talk about. But it's a pretty weird premise.

Lydia,

Maybe you've stated your view explicitly elsewhere; but do you subscribe to theistic evolution of some sort or another as (as far as I can tell) most IDers do?

Really?

Really.

Does this apply to W. D. Hamilton and his successors? And to the whole crowd over at Gene Expression?

The short and bluntly honest answer is "yes". I haven't explored every claim made by everyone everywhere, of course. I've studied biophysics, molecular biology, and bioinformatics at the graduate level. Every time I've looked at an explicitly 'evolutionary' claim it has turned out to be a bunch of tommyrot. Before my graduate courses I had assumed that at least the connection between homology and descent was well established, but I've found nothing but metaphysical presumption to support even that.

That said, I'm still a 'descent with modification' guy like Michael Behe - but that is mostly just my own metaphysical prejudice, as I freely admit.

Nobody knows how to 'evolve' even the simplest of proteins. Random polypeptide chains don't fold at all, let alone fold into something with a stable native state at physiological conditions, let alone fold into something nontoxic, let alone fold into something that performs a useful function, let alone fold into something that couples in quaternary structure to make something useful to survival work, let alone has random mutation and selection been shown to play any role in creating such a beast.

It is all complete tommyrot, as far as I can tell, though I've become bored with the subject and haven't taken a class in the domain for nearly two years now.

Doesn't a lot of modern "Darwinism" just consist in spinning out the logical consequences of what we now know about genetics?

No. Darwinism is entirely superfluous in the details of every genetic question I've personally explored in any depth.

If anyone cares, I wrote a blog post some time ago on a related subject back when I was studying this stuff in grad school.

Mike d, I tend to think that the phrase "theistic evolution" in those contexts (as applied to Mike Behe, for example) is too flexible a term to be very useful. For example, as you can see, many self-styled theistic evolutionists are contemptuous of Behe, considering (apparently) a bacterial flagellum beneath God's dignity to bother messing with. (Actually, amazing feats of nano-technology hardly seem to me something to sneer at but rather to declare God's glory and wisdom.) So sometimes the phrase means "theistic Darwinist down to the ground," and even someone as relatively accomodating as Behe would not count.

It's a matter of degree, too. Suppose someone thinks that God designed everything at the level of (I'm making this up) phylum in a non-Darwinian fashion, leaving everything downward (class, order, family, genus, species) to evolve by something much like Darwinian natural selection. I guess that's a _kind_ of theistic evolutionist, though it still won't satisfy either the Darwinian naturalists like Dawkins or, presumably, the real theological theistic evolutionist die-hards.

I've never stated where exactly I fall in all of this, and that's partly because I don't believe that I know enough to take a hard and fast position. From what I can tell, it appears that the earth is very old and that various forms of life appeared at widely spaced intervals. It does not seem to me, as a layman, implausible at all that, say, all the present species of bear should have developed from a single Ur-Bear, as it were. But that would still involve an enormous amount of divine special creation. I do think that Behe is perhaps (perhaps, he's the expert) over-cautious. (Also, Behe is not quite clear about what-all is involved in the descent with modification he envisages. If amazing and improbable beneficial mutations have been front-loaded by God, as he speculates, this just isn't what most people _mean_ by "descent with modification.") Darwin's whole "give me a simple jellyfish with five senses and..." thing seems to me implausible, for two reasons. First, as Paul Nelson loves to point out, a jellyfish is *not* simple. Not at all. Second, there must be an enormous number of changes that have to cross a non-adaptive phase space (I hope I'm using that term correctly) between a jellyfish and, say, a hominid. The problem of the development of sexual reproduction seems to me insuperable for Darwinian mechanisms. And just to really stiffen my spine, I've been told by one moderately well-known ID fellow (whose name I think I won't give just here, though I'll send it to you in e-mail if you want me to) that although my Ur-bear openness is a theoretical openness he shares, it looks like it may not have happened either and like there might have had to be further special creation at yet a more fine-grained level. I figure that ought to stiffen my spine *at least* to resist the jellyfish-to-all-the-other-fauna types of purely natural transitions.

Of course, Darwinism does not even purport to solve the problem of the origin of life. It's a puzzler for naturalistic scenarios that brings them to a full and complete stop. I haven't found out yet absolutely for sure if a priori theistic evolutionists think God is allowed to make the first cell, or if a nature that couldn't make a cell on its own from the primordial stew is "defective."

This leaves me as what I believe is called a progressive creationist, though I'm not sure of the terminology. Pending further evidence, my present guess is that God made stuff from time to time over long periods of time prior to the creation of man, and he also made man. This process was all over a very long time ago, there was a real Fall of man, and human history got off and running. Since then natural selection certainly does happen all over the place and makes lots and lots of relatively micro-evolutionary changes, but no, the phenomenon of antibiotic resistance or even the apparent natural evolution of the sickle cell mutation that grants resistance to malaria does not lend significant support to the grander claims.

That's my best shot at this time. It's messy, but so is the evidence. Messy evidence results in messy theories. In some odd ways, straight YEC-ism is "neater." But neat theoriest don't always fit the evidence.

That's a very interesting post, Zippy. I like the analogy to alternative interps. in quantum theory.

Herewith, a little more on the term 'supernatural'. I think there are two highly principled but uncommon definitions one could give and one ad hoc but highly common definition. All three have a point to them.

Supernatural 1: Means simply something like "causation by a non-physical personal agent." In this sense a belief in supernatural events means that one is not a physicalist, and human actions are themselves supernatural, meaning that they involve genuine mind-matter interaction. This is a highly unusual way of using the term, but it does serve the useful purpose of pointing out that a naturalist will consider anyone but a fellow naturalist to believe in "spooky entities and events."

Supernatural 2: Means something roughly like "causal interaction with the physical world by a being who is unconstrained by physical or psycho-physical laws--omnipotent." In this sense, only God's own actions are truly supernatural, and even the actions of angels are natural, since angels are not omnipotent and are presumably constrained by some sort of limitations on their ability to affect matter. We know, of course, that we are so constrained. I, as a healthy human being, can lift my hand by my will's acting on my muscles (roughly speaking), but I have no such access to the chair across the room. "Humans cannot do telekinesis" is something like a descriptive "psycho-physical law," which might of course not apply to angels or aliens. But they presumably have their own. God doesn't have such limits.

Supernatural 3: Means what most people mean by it in everyday usage, something like "an event in the physical world caused by a being who is _way_ unlike ourselves." This is fairly messy and unprincipled, because it would have to include the actions of alien beings that you could meet in a sci-fi novel in the realm of the supernatural, even if you could study them scientifically and develop a very good understanding of their stable, natural, capacities as you can do with humans.

The passage from C.S. Lewis I'm familiar with on the natural/supernatural distinction is that very interesting bit at the beginning of _Perelandra_ where the Lewis character meets an eldil. He realizes that the moment you start taking angels to be real, it's very hard to say what you mean by asking whether they are natural or supernatural. I take his point here to be something like my point regarding psycho-physical laws. The eldila in the space novels are natural beings *in the sense that* they have naturally created capacities and limitations which we just don't happen to know about. In this sense they are like aliens. They are not omnipotent. They carry out God's will according to their stable, natural capacities to interact with matter just as we do. They just happen to be much more powerful than we are. So it might make sense to call their actions natural rather than supernatural. On the other hand, they are so far different from us and, for that matter, are spiritually unfallen and right-willed, and in that sense in so much better "touch" with God than we are, that it seems to make sense to call them supernatural beings, as of course the ordinary man would do if told that they are angels. They are natural according to Supernatural 2 but supernatural according to Supernatural 3 (and of course Supernatural 1).

I hardly know much about this, but from what I have heard the Darwinian explanation is basically "given enough time, anything is possible." It is like answering the question "how did Ichiro Suzuki get 262 hits in a season" with "given enough time, somebody had to do it."

Also, how does the definition of ID from the Discovery Institute coincide with Christian theology? It says, "The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." Certain features? Is not God the creator of all that is seen and unseen?

Lastly, hasn't the Catholic Church fully accepted the theory of evolution? None of these are rhetorical questions by the way. Thanks. I always enjoy reading your discussions.

Also, how does the definition of ID from the Discovery Institute coincide with Christian theology? It says, "The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." Certain features? Is not God the creator of all that is seen and unseen?

So, if one says cautiously that certain features are best explained in such-and-such a way, does this mean that one is asserting that other features came about in a way utterly unconnected to God?

You see, Kurt, this is the kind of reasoning it's important to avoid. It's, well, careless. These folks make a minimal statement to the effect that we can tell that certain features were made intelligently rather than by a process like natural selection, but that doesn't imply that the other features _were_ made without God. But it may be that, looking at the matter purely scientifically, the divine involvement in some aspects of the physical world could more plausibly have been that of a kicker-offer and in other features that of an engineer or designer. Here's a sort of silly example: Suppose you see some wind sculpture of some rocks out in the desert. It may be very beautiful, but you may be a geologist and even be able to give a fairly good account of the ways that wind makes the rocks look like that over time. Does that mean God isn't the maker of all things in heaven and earth? Well, of course it doesn't mean that. He made the universe to begin with. Depending on the amount of intervention you allow him after that (I allow him a lot) you may believe that he made earth in a fairly specific way and that he set it up so that wind currents would sweep around. He didn't cause this particular wind current to make sculptures, but the wind operates under his permission. He could stop it at any moment. And so forth. However, there's nothing about the rock sculpture that provides direct evidence of Divine involvement. I mean, the cosmological argument (for example) says nothing about this particular wind sculpture. The question is one of detectibility from the particular object in question. But saying, "God's activity in making things is especially detectible in this particular object" does not imply, "Everything other than this object came into being ex nihilo without God." Hardly.

The Catholics can tell you if they think they are obligated to believe in Darwinism because of their Catholicism. I gather that this is not considered to have been an authoritative teaching. You wouldn't find Zippy Catholic (who says you'd have to pry his rosary from his cold hands :-)) calling it tommyrot if he thought the Catholic Church required him to believe it. I'd trust his judgment on what counts as authoritative Catholic teaching, that's for sure.

...from what I have heard the Darwinian explanation is basically "given enough time, anything is possible."

To the extent that the term 'evolution' refers to a univocal theory at all, the nuts and bolts of it is that starting with a preexisting precambrian prokaryotic cell/genome (Darwinism doesn't pretend to have a clue about where the first cell came from), all the new proteins/tissues/structures/body plans we see today are the product of a feedback cycle in which random errors in the genome (of various kinds) result in new proteins, tissues, organs (e.g. eyes) and ultimately species which have survival value, and that because they have survival value they are preserved, that is, passed on to offspring. The problem with the theory is that nobody even knows if it is possible at all (there are many reasons to think that it isn't), let alone what probabilities govern such a hypothetical process, let alone whether any of it actually took place. That by itself is fine for a wild hypothesis without evidence that is treated as a wild hypothesis without evidence; but of course the darwinian explanation is not treated as a wild hypothesis without evidence.

Also, how does the definition of ID from the Discovery Institute coincide with Christian theology?

That I don't really know. I'm not an ID supporter; I'm definitely a darwinian evolution skeptic though. But that (again) is not on theological grounds: I just think it is a hubristic load of crap.

Lastly, hasn't the Catholic Church fully accepted the theory of evolution?

It would be better to say that the CC has no theological objection to the theory of evolution, properly construed.

Well, I think it's a logical matter whether the statement Kurt quotes is incompatible with Christian theology. I mean, let's pretend nobody has ever used the term "ID" or ever heard of the Discovery Institute. Consider the normal meanings of words and the statement, "[C]ertain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." Then consider the question, "Is this statement incompatible with Christian theology?" In particular, consider the question whether this statement in any way, shape, or form implies that God is _not_ the maker of all things, visible and invisible. In particular further, consider the question of whether this statement implies something _more_ detrimental to Christian theology than the statement that all animal species developed by natural selection.

I think the answers to all of these questions are just shiningly obvious. In fact, I find it utterly baffling that people would think that saying that we can tell that certain features of the biological world were engineered is incompatible with Christian theology, but the proposition that all species developed by a natural process is somehow _more Christian_. I mean, think about that. I suppose I can understand some die-hard YEC-er objecting to the quoted statement because he thinks it doesn't go far enough in saying that, by golly, God made every species directly in six literal days or something. But for it to be criticized from the theistic evolutionist side is just so strange. So it's better theologically for God's action to be hidden behind natural selection for _every_ feature of biology than for the necessity for God's designing action to be evident in _some_ features while others could be his indirect work through natural processes? I just cannot understand why anyone would think that.

(Kurt, please don't think that all of these remarks are directed at you. I'm just rolling your question in with some of the discussion that's been going on above. Of course, I hope I've convinced you on the specific question.)

Oh, I don't think the statement Kurt posted is 'incompatible with Christian theology'. I took him to be asking how the DI's position coincides with Christian theology (which I didn't take to be a yes/no question). I can't give an opinion on that, because I am not familiar enough with the DI to have one. I know I've seen statements by the DI that I've disagreed with; but that isn't saying much, because I've even disagreed with myself on occasion.

Ah, I took Kurt to be asking specifically about the statement he quoted from the DI.

I'm thoroughly convinced there is better way to go about discussing this.

Zippy: I thank you for your link, but it was not the least bit helpful.

Do you deny even "micro-evolution?"

Do you deny even "micro-evolution?"

No, though that is probably not the best term or framing for the various phenomena people usually refer to by the term.

I don't deny macro-evolution, for that matter. It might even be true that the primary physical cause of the precambrian prokaryotic ecosystem turning into the modern one is various kinds of random genetic errors (point mutations, frameshifts, etc) combined with natural selection.

There just isn't any interesting physical evidence for that hypothesis, and there never has been. Mutation + selection doesn't produce new, previously nonexistent cell types, organs, tissues, or species in any known experiments.

Of course, I hope I've convinced you on the specific question.)

Thanks, Lydia. When I first read the statement from the Discovery Institute it did initially seem like an odd statement to me. If you believe God exist, then He is surely the creator and "designer" of all things. The statement would then seem unnecessary. I sense that those that support theistic evolution interpret that statement to mean that a designer takes preexisting matter and organizes it in such way to create life. This designer is then nothing more than a technologically advanced alien. Although I do not have any reason at this point to believe this interpretation cannot fit into ID theory, you have illustrated that it is hardly the only one and probably not even the best one. The supposed incompatibility then is not a matter of logic, but of reading something into the statement that was never there to begin with. Of course I do not think that theistic evolution should be accepted a priori since I hardly think I am in the position of telling God what He must do.

Thanks, Kurt. I especially thank you for confirming what I've been contending here (sometimes against the implication that I am being uncharitable), namely that _I_ am not reading something into the theistic evolutionists' objection. That is, you see what I see in that objection--the assumption that someone who sees God as a designer does not see him as having made all things as well (or, in the case of a statement above, does not believe in general Providence).

In keeping with my robust statements about bumping molecules in the main post :-), I do think it entirely plausible that God took matter and organized it in such a way as to create life (and other things too). But I also think God made the matter, perhaps at a much earlier time. I just think that his activity in _designing_ is detected in a special way as intelligent activity that is not the same way we detect his activity in making all of matter at the very beginning. For example, something like a cosmological argument might be used to argue that Someone must have made matter at the outset. But a design argument regarding the blood clotting cascade and the intracellular transport system is a different type of argument--more empirical, less abstract, and in many ways more direct. God is "behind" the formation of snowflakes (which happens by a well-known crystal-forming natural process), the pattern made by raindrops on the window, sand sculptures, the arrangement of rocks after a landslide, and so forth in a different _way_ in which he appears to be "behind" the computer programming present in DNA. But this distinction is just a matter of trying to see things aright and certainly does not involve denying that he made all of matter and is providentially concerned with the world overall.

I hope that is clarifying.

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