From: Peter Ruest (pruest@pop.mysunrise.ch)
Date: Sat Apr 19 2003 - 00:37:25 EDT
"Howard J. Van Till" wrote:
>>From: Peter Ruest <pruest@pop.mysunrise.ch> ...
>
> 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?
I have reread Thorson's two-part article. I am in agreement with about
everything he says. I am very glad about his careful analysis, from
which I have learned a lot.
However, with my suggestion of "God's hidden options" in biology I am
not dealing with the same subject. Thorson's (theologically based)
"naturalism" in science defines how we Christians should do science.
This view of science, which I fully share, is presupposed in my
philosophical attempt to describe how God might possibly do some of his
creational and/or providential work. I explicitely proposed these
options as being inaccessible to science, as undecidable quantum events
or selections from distributions of other truly random events, God
selecting among physically perfectly legal and energetically equivalent
events, implying _no_ physical coercion, but the introduction of
information. Of course, God may be working much more subtly. The
particular "mechanism" suggested is of no particular importance - what
is important is that there are perfectly feasible ways (undetectable by
science and unobjectionable to theology) in which God could introduce
all the information needed for making the biosphere - for which science
has, as yet, not provided any plausible mechanism.
It is true that these ideas, which are clearly beyond science, were
occasioned by the realization, forcefully supported also by Thorson,
that natural laws and physical conditions just are not sufficient to
explain biological systems, although these work in physically perfectly
normal ways. While Thorson considers the function of existing biological
systems and their functional logic, I am asking how they could be formed
in the first place, and conclude that what is missing with merely
physical ways of emergence is functional information. Thorson rightly
considers this question of origins to be beyond today's scientific
possibilities.
> 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
Your classification is too simple. I am not proposing a scientific
explanation. So, of course, it is not a proposal within natural science
(in this, I differ from "ID proponents"). Whether you may class it under
natural theology depends on the definition of natural theology. We have
to differentiate between an illegitimate type which tries to prove God
or deduce divine properties from nature and a legitimate one which tries
to remove stumbling blocks (like the problem of evil, or the claim that
there is no need for a creator, or the misconception that atheistic
evolutionism is science) from the thinking of not-yet-believers (cf.
PSCF of March 2003: J.Collins, p.22, and D.Wollert, p.36).
Peter Ruest
-- Dr. Peter Ruest, CH-3148 Lanzenhaeusern, Switzerland <pruest@dplanet.ch> - Biochemistry - Creation and evolution "..the work which God created to evolve it" (Genesis 2:3)
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