From: Howard J. Van Till (hvantill@chartermi.net)
Date: Thu Apr 17 2003 - 20:09:45 EDT
>From: Peter Ruest <pruest@pop.mysunrise.ch>
> I have argued this view both on this list and in the Perspectives on
> Science and Christian Faith: P. Rüst, "Creative providence in biology",
> PSCF 53/3 (Sept. 2001), 179-183;
> http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2001/PSCF9-01Ruest.pdf; and P. Rüst, "God's
> Sovereignty in Creation - a reply to Howard Van Till", PSCF 54/3 (Sept.
> 2002), 216-217. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to convince Howard that the
> biological problems were different from the physical ones.
Perhaps not, Peter, but you are an excellent advocate of your point of view.
In the March, 2002, issue of Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith,
Walter Thorson offers a theologically warranted, "naturalistic" point of
view that shares some of the criticism that you and several ID proponents
have directed toward a biology built on the concepts of the physical
sciences alone. Here is an excerpt from the last page of Part II of his
essay:
> This essay does not aim to deny the "weak" evolutionary hypothesis that
> living things have emerged by some sort of process involving biological
> descent. Rather, I argue that the rules governing such unfolding are still
> largely unknown to us because they cannot be derived only from the
> mechanisms and constraints which physical science deals with. If biological
> systems are "machines" in a scientifically meaningful sense, they will be
> found to exhibit rules of proper function and organization, essentially a
> logic of achievement, employing the lower-level logic of physical structure
> and mechanisms for performing their higher-level achievements.
Have you considered Thorson's proposal? If so, what is your evaluation of
it?
Because you explicitly include a form of divine action in your explanation
of how living things came to be as they now are, I believe Thorson would
place your view in the category of natural theology rather than natural
science. Would you agree with that classification?
Howard Van Till
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