Re: [asa] Advice for conversing with YECs (and now the flood)

On Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:21:21 -0500 "George Cooper"
<georgecooper@sbcglobal.net> writes:
> Bernie,
>
> If God uses evolutionary processes to produce a plethora of life
> forms for
> His own satisfaction and glory, it seems to me that we should
> consider the
> possibility that He would, when a very rare planet hosts a sentient
> life
> form, simply use the evolved DNA and other molecular structures of
> such
> species as His template for anyone He elects to make from scratch
> and give
> spiritual life to by His own spiritual "breath" (eg Adam).
>
> Thus, no hide and seek is played, of course, and no proof that would
> nullify
> faith due to evidenciary knowledge is found (per James point).
>
> Coope
>
A vital point here is that God is free to act as he pleases, without any
external constraints. That said, we need to look at the consequences of
the assumptions behind this view.

Some years ago I owned a Chevy Cavalier. It was at the time that the
engineers were trying to control emissions by adding mechanisms. One
result was that mileage was lousy, with the additional benefit that it
did not run well, even though one time an engineer came out from Detroit
to see what could be figured out. But the result was so effective that my
daughter told her mother, "Get rid of this car before it kills us all."
More recently, the automobile engine has been rethought, all the
additions are pretty well gone, and cars run much better and more
efficiently.

Your suggestion makes God about as bright as the automotive engineers who
designed the dubiously functional cars. We have genes for every step in
the synthesis of ascorbate, with a mutation in one that renders it
nonfunctional for the one step. Why? I see two possibilities that fit
this view. God is as stupid as the human engineers that just added more
mechanisms to old technology. God left the old stuff in the genome to
mislead honest investigators (see the appearance of age in YEC views). I
prefer to junk such speculations and recognize that the Almighty, under
his providential care, had all creatures evolve according to "natural
law." Did he control the process? Of course, but in ways that are not
discoverable through empirical methods.
Dave (ASA)
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Received on Wed Oct 29 18:13:33 2008