1. At various times during the (long) creation period, God
performed a distinctive miraculous creation - eg took one animal
and supernaturally created a new animal from it.
2. As in 1. except the miracles occured with greater frequency
and were less dramatic.
3. Creation occured through evolution, but the success of evolution
is "surprising", that is, one would not have expected the evolutionary
process to be as successful as it has been. Thus God must have
been "directing" the evolutionary process, perhaps arranging (or
pre-arranging) for the process to travel along preordained paths,
leading to much better than expected outcomes.
4. Creation occured through evolution and there is nothing surprising
about its success - we would expect evolution to produce something
like what we see. Nevertheless, creation occurred at God's hand
and evolution was the tool. However, the fact that evolution got
started in the first place is surprising.
5. As with 4. except the fact that evolution got started is not
surprising either. What is surprising is that the laws of the
universe and physical constants are just right for giving conditions
conducive for the commencement of a successful evolutionary process.
6. As with 5. except that the fact that "the laws of the universe
gave rise to a successful evolutionary process" is not really
surprising. Nevertheless, creation occurred at God's hand.
Could someone tell me what the correct label for each of these
positions is?
I would also be interested in critiques of the different positions.
Mark Phillips.