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

Heya Coope,

I see this argument a lot. Let me ask - doesn't the idea that God would only
create the 'best' creatures imply a God vastly more foreign to Christianity
than a God who would allow for the creation of 'inferior' creatures, and
nevertheless offer hope and betterment to them?

Just a thought. And I say this as a TE myself.

On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 6:08 PM, D. F. Siemens, Jr. <dfsiemensjr@juno.com>wrote:

>
> 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 18:26:08 2008