Logic Times

Comments

Page Two

Darwinism vs.

Intelligent Design

4: Trekram

May 6, 2005 10:01pm EST

The Bible really plays no part in my questioning of evolution.  I'm actually still on the fence. I think evolution makes some sense since I can't come up with a plausible theory except that God poofed them into existence or the Pixies burps. You've made many valid arguments against these explanations and also my intellect tells me I should default to a TBD theory of evolution. What stands in my way of totally accepting evolution is as I mentioned before, speciation and irreducible complexity.  I need to understand both sides of these issues and have work to do. I also don't think intelligent design and evolution are mutually exclusive.

There is no doubt that creation is systematic, predictive, and governed by immutable laws that for the most part can be observed and understood by the scientific method.  The real question is how and what connection the unseen world both outside (spiritual) and within our universe play a part in all of this. The former we may never know and the later science will continue to uncover.

Here's my struggle. Miracles happen everyday around us, people being healed with no medical explanation, serendipitous experiences which can only be explained by a guiding force, and yes creation itself a constantly unfolding miracle. These miracles lead me to believe that there is nothing this Unseen Force (our Faith calls it the Holy Spirit) cannot do and these events would never be considered deceptions.  Each miracle (cripples healed, blind can see, lepers cleaned, dead risen to life, etc) Christ and the apostles performed were events in time where something "physical" changed from one moment to the next. Cancer mysteriously disappearing from a patient is an unexplained phenomenon. All would lead to the conclusion that there is something beyond the physical realm impacting our existence outside the immutable laws. He can and does.  Is it so far fetched to believe the Holy Spirit played a role in populating this earth with life forms? I don't think so.  

I do believe that God sustains the universe in some way unseen from our perspective so I struggle between His immutable laws and His role in sustaining it including interventions. These would appear to be at odds but if we know anything about God, it is that he loves a paradox.

{Aslan: The Bible has everything to do with your questioning evolution.  Without direct intervention (divine), there is no other choice but evolution (by some mechanism).  The only thing capable of obviating the need for evolution is God (or Pixies or aliens - I trust you don't go in for those).  Without God, evolution is certain.  

So, you sit there pondering the challenges to gradualism (which is what you cite) because you are pondering a non-evolutionary force causing speciation. It's one or the other.  Evolution or *poof*.  

As for miracles and other direct “unscientific” interventions, I believe we are talking about a disruption in the systematic order.  This does not argue for their being no order, just that God can and does choose to “violate” science for His purpose.  In this, however, I am going to defer completely to C.S. Lewis.  He has a marvelous little book called Miracles, and he says this about them (this is a little long, but fascinating):

"It is therefore inaccurate to define a miracle as something that breaks the laws of Nature. It doesn’t. if I knock out my pipe I alter the position of a great many atoms: in the long run, and to an infinitesimal degree, of all the atoms there are. Nature digests or assimilates this event with perfect ease and harmoni[z]es it in a twinkling with all other events. It is more bit of raw material for the laws to apply to, and they apply. I have simply thrown one event into the general cataract of events and it finds itself at home there and conforms to all events. If God annihilates or creates of deflects a unit of matter He has created a new situation at that point. Immediately all Nature domiciles this new situation, makes it at home in her realm, adapts all other events to it. It finds itself conforming to all the laws. If God creates a miraculous spermatozoon in the body of a virgin, it does not proceed to break [violate] any laws. The laws at once take it over. Nature is ready. Pregnancy follows, according to all normal laws, and nine months later a child is born…. Miraculous wine will intoxicate…. The divine art of miracle is not an art of suspending the pattern to which events conform but of feeding new events into that pattern. It does not violate the law’s provisio, "If A, then B": it says,"But this time instead of A, A2," and Nature, speaking through all her laws, replies, "Then B2" and naturali[z]es the immigrant, as she well knows how. She is an accomplished hostess.

 

A miracle is emphatically not an event without cause or without results. Its cause is the activity of God: its result follows according to Natural law. In a forward direction (i.e., during the time which follows its occurrence) it is interlocked with all Nature just like any other event. Its peculiarity is that it is not in that way interlocked backwards, interlocked with the previous history of Nature. And this is just what some people find intolerable. The reason they find it intolerable is that they start by taking Nature to be the whole of reality."

When I read something this amazingly brilliant, I am embarrassed at my crude efforts!}

5: LOGOS

May 6, 2005 10:21pm EST

I am having serious doubts about any kind of punctuated or evolutionary anything. Things are far too stable, complex, and fine-tuned to leave any species, even a bacteria, to the foibles of natural selection. It does not work with my brain at all.

6: Trekram

May 6, 2005 10:56pm EST

I'm actually with you on the "serious doubts" of evolution because I do struggle with what I consider good anti evolution arguments on speciation and irreducible complexity.  However, I'm also yet to be convinced that evolution is not a viable option.  It's hard for me to fathom that each species evolved from a separate one cell organism (feline cell, canine cell, etc) or that God just poofed in place a full size creature.

{Aslan: I think there is a semantic problem here.  No one is suggesting that God doesn't energize or intervene in some way to aid evolution, but that Man comprehends this activity as a system of laws with predictive power (i.e., science).

Robert Bellarmine thought that the Biblical passage where the sun stands still (and its subsequent motion) was clear refutation of Galileo's heliocentric model.  To view evolution as impossible because of Genesis is to fall into the same trap.

If it is simply the evidence against evolution, where does that leave you? Full blown insertion of species?  Or God boosting evolution with a subtle intervention?  The first violates everything we have come to know about this creation.  The second would manifest itself as systematic science, as has the other aspects of creation we have come to understand.}

7: Jayne McIntrye

May 9, 2005 1:01pm EST

Your statement Life and the Universe are incompatible makes me very uncomfortable.  I am one of those people who believe the Universe is alive and supports life.   This leads me to the thought that everything in the universe is connected, depends on one another in some way and is so complex and beautiful that it stuns the human mind.  The more that science explains, the more awed we become and that is where, for many of us, God is revealed.  For others it is just another mystery explained.

It makes me comfortable to believe that the theories of Creation and Evolution go hand in hand.   But we differ about God's intervention.  I think God allowed His creation to unfold untouched. When man evolved He gave him spiritual life (He created man in His image and likeness).  We are the only species on the planet with intelligent awareness and a spiritual core.

I believe the key to evolution lies in intelligence.  Will the world someday be populated with beings like Jesus?  He was enlightened...intelligently aware of the universe and spiritually in touch with the Creator.  That was the key to His miracles.  He was able to transform or control matter at will because He knew the mechanisms of the Universe.  (Quantum Physics?)  We have all heard the saying 'mind over matter'.  Jesus also knew the power of prayer and used it constantly.   Doctors and scientists conduct experiments with prayer today, and yet they have a hard time accepting the results.

I remember seeing a talk show one day.  All of the participants on the stage had a near death experience and were revived.  None could wear a watch any longer because the watch would not work.  The electronic equipment and the cameras in the studio went haywire when this group of people came onto the stage.  There was no explanation for it.  Except one.  Their personal field of energy vibrated at a higher frequency.  Death had changed them in a way they could not see in a mirror.  They all believed it, accepted it and reveled in it.  Jesus traveled bodily between Heaven and earth before He ascended.

As crazy as it may sound, if we become aware, if we develop understanding, if we uncover the mysteries will we bring forth a new species?  Does scientific knowledge equal spiritual knowledge?  Does awareness equal evolution?

{Aslan: Jayne, you have a far more utopian view of this universe than I do.  With Logic Times, I try to keep the apologetics generalized, but I am going to tread on specific theology for a moment.  Christian theology declares this is a fallen world, that sin and death, disease and suffering are characteristics of our fall from a better state.  I do not believe that the purpose of this world is to evolve to a higher level such that we will all one day possess the character of Jesus.  Not possible for me, anyway.  I am a sinner through and through – I have accepted that my fallen state and this fallen world are in need of redemption, and I do not think any degree of intellectual and spiritual evolution is in store for mankind as a whole.  This does not mean we should despair (in fact, joy is our lot because we are redeemed from this world and our sinful state) or that we should give up the struggle for what is right (our lot is to live the ethic of Jesus, as you describe).

I believe the spark of life – the essence of the Creator – does indeed have that special magic and electric energy you love.  But this world fights it, erodes it and breaks it down.  Entropy governs our life, is visible in aging, is realized in death.  Some may escape the grip of Entropy that drags all physical life back to disordered chaos, but Entropy wins out in the end.  It is elsewhere that Entropy and the SLT and the disordered universe do not hold sway.}