From: Howard J. Van Till (hvantill@chartermi.net)
Date: Sun Apr 13 2003 - 17:15:20 EDT
From: "Don Winterstein" <dfwinterstein@msn.com>
> Might the ID proponents be able to justify their perspective (relative to
> your comments above) by saying that the physical world is vastly simpler
> than the biological zoo, so that we can justifiably glorify God for the
> cosmic fine tuning while at the same time we search for signs of his
> special intervention in the not-so-finely-tuned bio world? That is, maybe
> the bio world is just too complex and messy to fine-tune in advance.
Yes, I suppose one could adopt this strategy, but it carries the awkward
connotation of suggesting that the job of biological fine-tuning was just
too difficult for God. Hence the need for occasional episodes of
gap-bridging compensation that employed form-conferring acts called
"intelligent design."
> (Maybe the physical world also needed intervention despite the degree of
> fine tuning we see.)
But if form-conferring interventions (now called acts of intelligent design)
were going to be part of the picture anyway, why would a Designer go through
the trouble of any fine-tuning (via thoughtfully setting the values of some
cosmic parameters) at all?
[skip a bit]
> Why should believers even want to say God intervened? Is this the same as
> the evil desire for a sign? In this case I think the motivation to say
> that God intervened is to counter those who say God is irrelevant. God is
> not irrelevant to believers, but believers need a way to defend their faith
> against unbelievers. Defenses based on gaps by themselves will not
> convince anyone, but as long as there are clearly identifiable gaps of any
> sort, unbelievers cannot be sure they are right.
The question of motivation is an interesting one. Contributions welcome.
> If we can't come up with a convincing witness to the activity of God in the
> world, the best alternative would be a powerful witness to the work of God
> in our lives. But this would all be spiritual and of necessity personal.
> Who would believe?
Hmmm. Perhaps persons who are fully alive and whose life experiences, when
candidly examined, lead them to sense the presence of the Sacred. But such
people may, for a variety of personal, cultural, historical, and
philosophical reasons, come to express their understanding or belief in the
Sacred in a bewildering variety of ways. How willing are we to accept and
respect that variety? Most of us were taught that there was only one correct
way, which just happened to be our way. Too bad for those blokes born into
another religious community.
Howard Van Till
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