In God I live, I move and have my being - you may recall the Greek Areapagus.
Reading J. Edwards may help in this regard with his concept of "continuous
creation or preservation". I have explained this in my S.S. class as: imagine
God stops to exist - then - all creation will also stop to exist with Him. But
God can not stop exisiting (another thing God can not do).
I have been given much thought to this problem and I will, some day, dedicate
plenty of time to it. I was, in the biginning, inclined to believe that all
was wrapped in the initial condition (the case of the fertilized egg that
becomes a baby - all codified in the beginning). So, from lovemaking feelings
to conciousness and self-reflexion, all creation, can be explained (function
and structure) with purely naturalistic science - perhaps even the soul and
the connection of body and soul, etc. Not because God is irrevelant or not in
the picture, but because all was sovereignly established in the initial
condition. Even answers to prayers as well as those "predestinated" to be
"called", inasmuch as the crucifiction was prophecied. No need for tunning or
twicking, all was perfectly arranged according to his will on the design
table, no contigency plans, no maintnance, no mistakes, no oops, all is going
as He planned. Including those things that "God does directly" were, in
principle, already done initially. But this is too much for my brain to
handle, which is exactly what it should happen, because, who can handle the
mind of God?
{Notice that I have not mention evolution. My idea is that we can explained
creation as is in purely naturalistic ways. Evolution is another problem, not
because it did happen, but because it did not but it seems that it did (the
reverse of Dawkins statement).}
This concept or idea becomes radical indeed when we realize the "apparent"
ramdoness in nature: genes, number of sperms, winds that carry seeds,
environmental variations, etc. "Apparent" by design not by chance (chance
meaning the mathematical concept, no the god-agent of evolucion). Were Jacob
and Esau willed by God?, and did not God love one and hated the other before
they were born?, and yet from the many sperms of one father they were
"selected". We forget how great God indeed is. Does He not have the power to
know all of the ramifications in the history of the Universe that came from a
command such as "let there be light"?
Finally, I will also like to tackle the problem of the spiritual reality. I
say it's a problem because is out of the realm of the tools of science, and is
also "elusive" in the realm of religion. But convinced that these two
realities are indeed real, the interplay and interconnection of both must
somehow exist (a demon convulses its victim, for example). Notice that I am
not saying that God is somehow behind it, the spiritual world has its own laws
as the material world does, and Christ is Lord of both (many verses to support
this can be easily found in the NT). God is not to be reduced to just "being
behind it all" or to be spoken of as being responsible of "some things
directly". God is in whom we and the universe exist and moves, and in whom we
humans have our being.
Salu2
Eduardo
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Ranch/3698/index.html
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/1897/
http://castor.wustl.edu/~moros