>On Thu, 7 Sep 1995 02:48:10 -0400 Glenn wrote:
>
>GM>I agree it takes a certain amount of intelligence to write a
>>program but this evades the issue. God easily could have "written" a
>>program into the fabric of nature thus God wrote the rules for life.
>>You commit the fallacy of assuming that if God didn't do it like a
>>magician with flash powder, then God didn't do it. That is not a
>>self-evident proposition. God could have designed the universe as an
>>engineer would rather than as a magician.
Stephen:
>
>Why does it have to be either-or rather than both-and? Does not Glenn
>commit here the obverse fallacy of assuming that if God did it "like a
>magician" (to use his analogy), then God didn't design the universe
>"as an engineer"?
>
Stephen has a point here. If we emphasize the
design-before-the-foundation-of-the-earth aspect too much, we are in danger
of faling into -- or at least being accused of -- deism. If we emphasize
the magician aspect, we run the risk of labelling some natural phenomenon
outside the scope of investigation -- implicitly anyway. Interestingly
enough, I think "God did it as an engineer" contains the seeds of the
solution. Engineers design mechanisms that are then put into service by
users. The users command the mechanisms by a variety of means: brute
force, pushing buttons, programming, and sometimes even spoken words. I
believe God designed the universe for a User: Himself. He designed it to
be so exquisitely balanced and responsive to His will that He could command
it with a word -- as Scripture claims.
I had an insight yesterday. Those of you who saw the movie version of H.
G. Wells' "The Time Machine" may remember a scene in which the hero (can't
remember his name) discovers the manholes leading down into the Morelocks'
underground domain. He listens and hears the sound of machinery below and
asks the girl Weena what the sound is. Weena replies, "Morelocks." The
hero says, "Nonsense. That's machinery I hear." Weena reiterates, "No,
it's just Morelocks." The hero is not saying that the Morelocks are not
ultimately the cause of the noise. He's interested in knowing by what
means the Morelocks are making the noise and why. To the girl, anything
connected with Morelocks is just fearful bogeyman stuff that she has no
desire to investigate. I believe the young-earth creationist rhetoric
appeals to people with Weena's mindset: those nonscientists who would just
as soon have a simple explanation that allows them to consider origins a
problem _they_ need not worry about. I can respect their desires, and
would have no problem with such people if their security did not seem to
depend on others sharing their orthodoxy. On the other hand, a scientist
who is a theist has got to have the mindset of the hero of "The Time
Machine": "I want to find out, if I can, _how_ He does x." I suspect that
an individual who truly wants to find out "how He does it" can begin from a
TE, EC, PC or TR position, and possibly from a young-earth position and do
good science -- with different mindsets showing different rates of progress
on specific problems. It's the Weena mindset we all worry about and would
like to avoid.
Bill Hamilton | Vehicle Systems Research
GM R&D Center | Warren, MI 48090-9055
810 986 1474 (voice) | 810 986 3003 (FAX)