Re: Evolutionary creationism

On 2025-03-20 11:25 a.m., Martin Harran wrote:

On Wed, 19 Mar 2025 17:14:14 -0500, DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com>
wrote:
 

On 2025-03-19 6:39 a.m., Martin Harran wrote:

On Tue, 18 Mar 2025 22:30:41 -0500, DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com>
wrote:
>

On 2025-03-18 12:16 p.m., Martin Harran wrote:

On Tue, 18 Mar 2025 09:26:24 -0500, DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com>
wrote:
>

On 2025-03-18 3:13 a.m., Martin Harran wrote:

On Mon, 17 Mar 2025 16:31:30 -0500, DB Cates <cates_db@hotmail.com>
wrote:
>

On 2025-03-17 8:31 a.m., Martin Harran wrote:

On Sun, 16 Mar 2025 08:42:49 -0500, RonO <rokimoto557@gmail.com>
wrote:
>

[giant snip]

>
Thank you for that. I had to stop snipping replies to Ron because if
you snip anything at all, he claims you were running from his
arguments and reposts the same stuff so you end up with a post 2 or 3
times longer than it needs to be :(
>

>
QUOTE:
We believe that God acts purposefully in creation, just as he does in
our lives, and that he continues to actively uphold and sustain creation.
END QUOTE:

>
And again, nothing there about God tweaking life the way Behe claims.
      [another giant snip]

>
Out of curiosity, what do you think the phrase "he continues to actively
uphold and sustain creation." mean? I mean, in particular "continues"
and "actively".

>
I see this as a background thing, not a direct process. I have 5
grown-up children, all with children of their own. I continue to
actively uphold and sustain them in whatever way they need but I do
not *interfere* in their lives. If, for example, they make decisions
that I don't agree with, I *might* offer an opinion if I think it will
be welcome but the decision is entirely theirs and I fully accept and
support whatever they do decide. The help and support I (and my wife)
give them is on request, not pushed on them, though they know it is
available when needed, and is given unconditionally.
>
That's why I think the analogy of God as father is a particularly apt
one.
     >

I'm having difficulty reconciling that view with a purported omniscient
entity.
>

>
I'm struggling to grasp what difficulty you have, can you elaborate?
>

IMHO, asked for tweaking is still tweaking and an omniscient tweaker is
likely doing miracles.

>
Maybe it's a language thing but I can't understand how you see giving
help on request as tweaking.
>
My daughter messages me and says one of their kids has a dental
appointment and it's awkward for she or her husband to get off work
that day, can I take their kid to the appointment; is that tweaking or
interfering?
>
My son comes to me because he has some work to do on his house; he can
get a grant for it but he has to complete the work first, can I help
him out with a temporary loan, I do that, he gets the grant and repays
me; have I interfered in or tweaked his life?
>
My daughter comes to me and says she has been offered a new job but is
not sure whether or not to take it and would like my advice, which I
give, making clear that it has to be her decision; is that is that
tweaking or interfering?
>
An important point relating to this is that all miracles or examples
of divine interference that I know of are related to *individuals* not
an entire species. I've asked Ron to give a specific example of a
miracle that he regards as tweaking but I won't hold my breath waiting
for it.

>
Could you expand on how these hypotheticals analogize to an omniscient
being as the 'father figure'. I don't see it.

 

Similar apologies. I've started a reply in my head many times but they always led to long, convoluted arguments with digressions and other sidebars that indicated that it would go on for pages. So I quit.  So instead I will just make a few quick comments with little exposition.

 Apologies for a somewhat elongated response to this but there isn't a
simple answer. For that reason, I'm generally hesitant of getting too
deeply into this kind of stuff in a Usenet post along with my general
experience that the people who least understand religious belief and
theology are those most likely to dismiss any attempt to rationalise
it - not applying that to you specifically, just my general
experience. That also of course applies to evolution, those who
question it most are often those who understand it least.

I admit I have little understanding of formal religious belief and Theology but I do not dismiss attempts to rationalize such beliefs out of hand. Rather I have found all such attempts that I have come across to be utterly unconvincing.
  Religious

belief is in its own way, as complex and wide-ranging as evolution and
trying to explain it to someone who has never studied it is a bit like
trying to explain the roles of natural selection and genetic drift to
someone who doesn't have a basic understanding of genetics.

The lack of any concrete evidence means I cannot take the comparison to the theory of evolution seriously.

 Anyway, with that proviso in place, I will try to cover some of the
key aspects of what you are asking about.
 First of all, the basic mistake made by both IDers and RonO, is that
they focus in on the *biological* evolution of the human body but the
relationship with God is a *spiritual* one, not a biological one. The
human body is important in Christian belief but only of secondary
importance as a container for the Soul - that's why the body is often
referred to as a "temple". How it developed biologically is
interesting in its own right, just as the construction of a church or
cathedral may be of architectural or cultural interest. Arguing about
the development of DNA and cells and so on, however, is a bit like
trying to argue that the value of Mass in a church or cathedral ios
dependent on how much stone or marble was used in the construction.
'Tweaking'  of the human body (or that of any lifeform) has nothing to
do with the relationship between our Soul and God and I see no need
for God to take part in it.

So you are a dualist. I found dualism suspect as a youngster and as I grew older it just became completely untenable to my worldview. So any arguments using it is a non-starter.

 The second thing that has to be borne in mind is that Christian belief
is based on the principle that full understanding of God is beyond
human understanding; we can get glimpses of him but never fully
understand him as he is wrapped in mystery and the deeper we study it,
the deeper that mystery can become.  Frank Sheed summed tis up in his
book 'Theology and Sanity':
 "Thus a Mystery is not to be thought of as simply darkness: it is a
tiny circle of light surrounded by darkness. It is for us so to use
our own powers and God's grace that the circle of light will grow. It
means using the mind upon what reality may be made to tell us about
God, and upon what God, through His Church, has told us about Himself;
it means praying for more knowledge, and using the knowledge one gains
to enrich one's prayer. Thus the circle of light grows; but it is
always ringed round with darkness: for however our capacity may
increase, it remains finite, and God remains infinite. Indeed the more
the light grows, the more we realize what His Infinity means, what
Immensity is. The theologian sees far more problems about the Blessed
Trinity than the ordinary Catholic. But this is an ordinary
accompaniment of knowledge. The man who knows nothing about a subject
has no difficulties either, sees no problems, can ask no questions."

So God is a 'mystery beyond understanding' but some people occasionally do get to understand bits and pieces? Just how does one determine that they are correct about these bits and pieced?

 Science is like this too; every time a question is answered, it opens
up new questions. Take abiogenesis, another example of a word for
something we don't really understand. Around a hundred years or so
ago, we knew virtually nothing about the origin of life; we now know a
heck of a lot about it. We have figured out the ins and outs of the
Big Bang and that it happened just under 14 billion years ago. We have
figured out that the earth came along about 9 billion years later and
bacteria, the first recognisable life forms, bacteria, came along
about a billion years after that. We are still, however, trying to
figure out how that bacteria came into being. At some points,
scientists just have to say "We don't know" and that admission does
not undermine or denigrate science; it certainly does not mean, as
some IDers seem to think, that because we don't know *all* the
answers, we don't know any of them so everything else can be thrown
out! The same principle applies to religious belief and understanding
- there are limits to our understanding and we should never be afraid
to say "don't know". Again I see this as a shortcoming in ID and
Creationism - whether it is science or religious belief, they regard
"don't know" as some sort admission of failure.

I think your analogy fails. In science the the bits that move from unknown to probably known is due to objective evidence. How does that work in the religious sphere?

 Another aspect of that mystery is that as humans, we are constrained
by human language in trying to describe something that is beyond
human. That's why I think we should not get overly hung up on a word
like "omniscient" or its partners "omnipresent" and "omnipotent". They
are simply shorthand for the mystery where neither time nor place
exist for God, everything is happening at once and all the time. It's
a bit like scientists using "singularity" for just prior to the Big
Bang; nobody can say exactly what the word means but everyone has a
general idea of what it is trying to describe. The same also applies
to the word "create"; it refers to everything having its source in God
but we don't understand exactly how that happened. As Pope Francis
declared, however, God was not "a magician, with a magic wand."

The "magician, with a magic wand." is fictitious. A real magician is a trickster (greatly admired for their skills). The fictitious "magician, with a magic wand" is preforming miracles, just like God.

 Again, the same principle applies to "miracle"; RonO and others try to
make it out as a denial of science but it is a word used to describe
something that science cannot explain so by definition, it cannot be a
contradiction.  I've asked Ron to identify even one miracle that
contradicts any specific science and needless to say, he hasn't been
able to do so.

IMHO a true miracle is something that cannot *in principle* be explained by science not just something that currently cannot be explained by science.

 In regard to miracles, it's worth pointing out that there are two
broad categories of miracles - those that as a Christian I must
believe and those that are optional for belief. The first category is
primarily the things covered in the Gospel relating to Jesus,
particularly the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection - both these are
specified in the Nicene Creed and denial of them is a denial of basic
tenets of Christianity. [1]
 The second 'optional' category is miracles that have happened to
individuals outside the Gospels, things like miracles at Lourdes or
used as part of the canonisation process [2]. In declaring these
miracles, the Catholic Church does not definitively declare them to be
supernatural; what they declare is that they are things that have been
fully investigated by appropriate experts (typically medical as well
as religious and often involving non-Catholics and all possible
natural causes have been ruled out [3] so Catholics are free as
individuals to treat these as supernatural but that belief is not
obligatory.
 To sum up, God by definition is beyond natural forces or human
language, so we are always going to be limited in trying to understand
let alone explain him. That is where Faith ultimately comes into it
and that, to me, is very much a personal experience. As someone once
said, falling in love with God is like falling in love with another
person, you can't really explain it but it just becomes part of your
life.
 

okay, I am also a determinist with an allowance for continuous random (quantum level) variations. So an instantaneous determination but increasing probabilistic predictions as time to prediction increases. Free will is right out. Consider what I must think of what you are saying above.

  ==================================
 [1] AIUI, the Methodist Church subscribes to the Nicen Creed so I
can't help wondering how RonO fits that into his membership of that
church.
 [2] FWIW, I am personally very sceptical about these miracles and I'm
completely against them being used for this purpose but then again, I
have no time for the very idea of canonisation.
 [3] Maybe worth noting that over the last 160 odd years, more than
7,000 cases of healing have been reported at Lourdes but only 70 cases
have been recognised as miraculous by the Church.
 

--
--
Don Cates ("he's a cunning rascal" PN)