KM> Scripture is very
> clear in stating that _all_ events are under God's providential control
> and occur in response to His will. That is, even when we can determine a
> complete series of physical cause-and-effect processes, God still upholds
> those processes. If this were not the case there would be no reason for
> most prayer. Why would I pray for a drought to end if I did not believe
> that God was in providential control of the weather? Yet, we can describe
> the series of cause-and-effect meteorological events responsible for
> changing whether. Because we can describe a process, does not make God
> unnecessary. Scripture declares that God brings the rain and drought,
> feeds the birds, plants the trees, shelters the animals, etc. God declares
> that I was created in my mother's womb, yet we can observe and describe
> conception and birth as a series of uninterrupted cause-and-effect
> biological processes.
>
> Similarly, random or chance events are explicitly described in scripture
> as under God's control. That understanding of God's providence is what
> underlies the casting of lots for example. The death of Ahab is described
> as a result of the random act of shooting an arrow into the air, yet it
> occurred in direct response to God's will. According to scripture
> nothing occurs autonomously.
>
> Theistic evolution is simply a specific application of this scriptural
> understanding of reality. Evolution is our cause-and-effect description of
> the Earth's biological history. But God's providential control underlies
> the whole process (including its random aspects) in a way invisible to our
> observation. God is as much the creator life and its diversity as He is
> my creator. He knit me together in my mother's womb!
Amen!
Juli Kuhl also asked:
JK> I guess I'm revealing that I don't believe in evolution of species,
> although there's certainly a lot of evidence of change in the natural
> world. Are all you specialists trying to say that change *is*
> evolution? If so, why didn't you say so in the first place? Why use a
> "loaded" term like evolution and creatively (pardon the pun) develop new
> terms with evolution in it? Seems like a bit of unnecessary red-flag
> waving, or something like that.
>
> I seem to be asking the centuries-old plea: would you define your
> terms 'cause this is what I mean by "xxx".
That's an excellent question. Why use the terms "theistic evolution" or
"evolutionary creationism"? Why use the emotionally loaded term
"evolution" at all?
"Evolution" has a technical meaning outside of the biological origins
debate. For example, astrophysicists use the term "stellar evolution" to
describe the entire (empirically understood) process starting from the
gravitational coalescing of a protostar, through the fusing of hydrogen
and heavier elements in the star's core, to the final nova and collapse.
(Sort of a "generic history of a star.") "Stellar evolution" is not
generally considered a "loaded term."
Within the biological origins debate, "evolution" is used in many ways. I
like to distinguish three uses: "Microevolution" (the empirical study of
how populations of plants or animals change as a result of mutations and
environmental pressures), "Macroevolution" (a theory of common descent
through modification --- for practical purposes, it is an extrapolation of
microevolution over all of biological history), and philosophical
"Evolutionism" (philosophical arguments that macroevolution IMPLIES that
there is no Creator and no purpose to human existence).
"Evolution" is a loaded term partly because some pundits leap too quickly
from microevolution to macroevolution, but MOSTLY because some pundits
make the appalling _non_sequitur_ of leaping from macroevolution to
evolutionism. The answer, I think, is not to drop the term "evolution"
--- which still has useful technical meanings --- but to expose that
philosophical _non_sequitur_ for what it is.
"Theistic evolution" and "evolutionary creationism" are an attempt to
understand the theory of (macro)evolution in its PROPER context: within
Christian theism, as a possible mechanism of God's creative activity.
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"... Another casualty of applied metaphysics." | Loren Haarsma
--Hobbes (_Calvin_and_Hobbes_) | lhaarsma@opal.tufts.edu