RDehaan237@aol.com wrote:
> On Thursday, Nov. 1, 2001, Howard Van Till wrote:
>
> ...........................................................
> VT: To be candid, however, I see no need to introduce a supernatural
> intervention at any place in the process. I use the term "supernatural
> intervention" in the sense that David Griffin specifies: a divine action
> that interrupts the continuity of the creaturely cause/effect system and
> supersedes all creaturely action; a coercive divine action that functions as
> the sole cause of some occurrence/event.
>
> Your statement is irrelevant to my position. I do not accept Griffin’s or
> your description of my position.
>
> Divine action does not interrupt continuity. Divine action kicks in when
> a given stage has run its course, accomplished its purposes, and prepared the
> way for a subsequent stage to follow.
>
> Divine action does not superceded creaturely action. It uses all
> processes and materials that are available as needed from previous stages,
> and adds the new dimension that is peculiar to the new stage. In the case of
> the origin of life, the addition is irreducible complexity, purpose, or
> teleonomy (as Franklin calls it).
>
> Divine action is not the sole cause. The divine action is part of the mix of
> creaturely/divine actions that initiate the stage.
Both Bob & Howard's positions here seem open to some question.
Bob -
When you say "Divine action kicks in when a given stage has run its course"
it sounds as if God is not doing anything while a stage is running its course.
I.e., God makes use of what natural processes have done & then adds something. Is
this what you mean?
If not - if God is also active with natural processes during each stage -
then what is the difference between that action & what takes place to move from one
stage to another? Why could not natural processes - with divine cooperation - be
capable of achieving these transitions? Teilhard de Chardin pointed
to the analogy between such transitions (e.g., the development of consciousness) &
phase changes in a material when it's heated. No miracle happen, but something
qualitatively new emerges.
(To suggest that is not, of course, to claim that we now understand all the
physical processes that make the emergence of life, consciousness, &c possible.)
Howard -
Speaking of "the continuity of the creaturely cause/effect system" ignores
the possibility we discussed in connection with Peter Ruest's proposal, that God is
active at the quantum level. For the problem with understanding measurement & the
apparent collapse of wave packets in QM is just that the collapse seems to happen
discontinuously & that standard descriptions of QM don't provide a closed
cause/effect system: They give no reason why we find the photon along one arm of
the interferometer rather than the other.
Again, I have problems with the idea that God simply steps in & collapses
all the wave packets. But there does seem to be a lack of full creaturely
causation here.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
"The Science-Theology Interface"
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