Re: Once again...ID
George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Tue, 28 Apr 1998 15:48:11 -0400Garry DeWeese wrote:
>
> Howard Van Till wrote:
>
> > Comment: Yes, we feel uneasy (perhaps because of our homocentrism), but
> > perhaps there are numerous morally capable and responsible species in
> > genomic phase space, of which we are just one. Perhaps the arrival of homo
> > sapiens was not inevitable, but the probability of at least one of those
> > potential species becoming actualized is practically equal to one.
>
> And George Murphy commented:
>
> > This is the point I was trying to make: _If_ indeed this
> >probability close to unity then the basic physical condition for
> >Incarnation is satisfied.
>
> So, on this view, God really had no idea of what the resultant creatures
> would be like when he created. However he did have a pretty good idea that
> sometime, somewhere, there would evlove intelligent, self-conscious, free
> moral agents who would in fact go wrong and necessitate the Incarnation.
>
> But again I ask how God could know this, if the trajectory through genomic
> phase space is random? How could he (or anyone) say the probabiity of that
> phase space producing such creatures--a probability which depends upon
> counterfactuals of chance--would approach unity?
>
> To understand your view better, are you (and Glenn Morton, too) saying that
> God *did not* providentially intervene in such a way so as to guide the
> trajectory through phase space, perhaps by giving a "nudge" here and a
> "tweak" there at just the right nodes on the phylogenetic tree, say, to
> insure progress towards his previsioned goal? Or are you saying that such
> nudges and tweaks would in principle be indetectable, indiscernible from
> other random influences on the process? Or is there another interpretation
> I'm ignoring?
God is involved in everything which happens in the world, acting
through natural processes. & God has some freedom in so acting because
the pattern (to which our laws approximate) does not rigidly determine a
single outcome from each course of events.
-- George L. Murphygmurphy@imperium.nethttp://www.imperium.net/~gmurphy