On Wed, 18 Oct 1995 16:31:43 -0500 you wrote:
>I wrote
BH>...God intervenes in human history because it suits His purposes.
>If He can accomplish His purposes in biological history without
>intervening, then I presume He wouldn't.
>Stephen responded
SJ>Agreed. But no-one has demonstrated that God *could* "accomplish
>His purposes in biological history without intervening"....God has
>intervened in human history, so it is reasonable to assume that He
>couldn't accomplish His purposes in human history without
>intervening.
BH>I'm the one who introduced language that implies things about God's
>capabilities. I sense things will get messy and we will smother in a
>mass of increasingly detailed definitions if we pursue that avenue
>too far. Sorry.
That's OK. If we are going to avoid the curse of Babel, we are going
to need to be speaking the same language! :-)
>BH>However, I disagree with your implication that TE implies God does
>not intervene. I am simply claiming that God's means of intervention
>(or more properly, as a Calvinist, I should say "governance" since to
>me intervention implies a change in plans) are not necessarily
>visible to humans.
SJ>Why does intervention imply "a change in plans"? Why could not God
>have *planned* to intervene? Rev 13:8 says that Jesus was "the Lamb
>that was slain from the creation of the world.". This indicates that
>God *did* plan to intervene in human history.
BH>Here's how the online dictionary
(http://c.gp.cs.cmu.edu:5103/prog/webster) defines "intervene":
Thanks for the Web site! :-)
>n.ter.vene also in.ter.ven.er \.int-*r-'ve-n\ \-'ve--n*r, -.no.(*)r\
>\-'ve--n*r\ \-'ven-ch*n\ vi [L
>intervenire to come between, fr. inter- + venire to come -m more at COME
>1: to enter or appear as an irrelevant or extraneous feature or circumstance
>2: to occur, fall, or come between points of time or events
>3: to come in or between by way of hindrance or modification {~ to settle a
>quarrel}
>4: to occur or lie between two things
>5a: to become a third party to a legal proceedings begun by others for the
>protection of an alleged interest
>5b: to interfere usu. by force or threat of force in another
>nation's internal affairs esp. to compel or prevent an action or to
>maintain or alter a condition -
>in.ter.ven.or n
BH>It seems to me that the relevant definitions (2,3,4) imply that
>intervention is something that occurs as particular times, and that
>inbetrween interventions, the flow of events just occurs without any divine
>interaction. I would prefer to say that God continuously interacts with
>His creation. And continuous oversight is governance, not intervention.
>Maybe I'm nitpicking, but this distinction is important to me.
I suggest that you are imposing your continuous philosophy on
Scripture. While of course "God continuously interacts with His
creation", the Bible is full of God intervening in a special way that
is in addition to His normal "continuous oversight". This to me is
so obvious and fundamental, that if you cannot see it, then we had
better agree to differ.
>SJ>If science cannot resolve the difference between TE and PC, then
>the decisive factor is theology and one's interpretation of the
>Biblical evidence.
BH>Science, as I've said before, is not the right tool to resolve such
>differences. To ask science to resolve the difference between PC and
>TE is somewhat like asking an automechanic to explain the
>thermodynamics of combustion.
Agreed - I said "If...". It was Loren's point that I was responding
to.
>BH>If science were static, that is if we could know that a particular
>discipline has gone as far as it can go and no further understanding is
>possible, then I'd agree with you totally. But there's no way of knowing
>whether additional investigation will yield additional knowledge, other
>than pursuing it.
SJ>Unfortunately you and I are not going to live forever (in this life
>anyway!). We must make our hearts and minds up on what we do know
>*now* . I am willing to stick my neck out and say that science will
>not be able to resolve the difference between TE and PC, at least in
>my lifetime (I am nearly 50 so that's in another 20-30 years! :-)),
>so for me at least the decisive factor in closing between TE and PC is
>my theology and my interpretation of the Biblical evidence.
BH>Agreed. I suspect that when we all see the Lord, He's going to
>tell us how Calvinists had x wrong, how Arminians had y wrong, how
>PC's had z wrong, and how TE's had a wrong. Remember what Paul said:
>"for now we see through a glass darkly..."
Agreed. But I don't think that PC has got "z wrong"! :-) PC tries to
be fully *Biblical* but IMHO TE seems more interested in imposing an
evolutionary philosophy on the Bible?
SJ>There is one caveat on the above. IMHO it is possible, even likely,
>that Darwinist macro-evolution will collapse of its own internal
>contradictions, eg. Haldane's Dilemma, etc. Then the "E" in TE
>would presumably collapse along with it?
BH>If it did, then of course. For it to collapse under its own
>internal contradictions, those contradictions, if they exist, must be
>stated and demonstrated in a way that makes sense to practitioners in
>the field. To date that hasn't been accomplished by creationists.
I think "creationists" are having more impact than you realise. IMHO
Darwinism is collapsing and when the history is written, it will point
out the criticism of anti-Darwinists (eg. Koestler, Hitching, Taylor,
Macbeth, Denton) and creationists (eg. Morris, Gish, Johnson), that
put pressure on Darwinism and forced it to confront and modify its
fundamental assumptions about the mode and tempo of evolution.
>BH>So it seems to me very unlikely that there will ever be a juncture
>in history -- prior to the Lord's return -- at which scientists in
>any field will be ready to use the Bible to resolve an ambiguity in
>the interpretation of physical evidence in their fields. They would
>rather continue investigating.
SJ>Perhaps when the Lord returns we will not need "scientists" (1Cor
>13:12)? :-)
BH>Perhaps not. Science seems rather trivial when compared with being
in His presence. Science is intended to be a way of learning about
natural phenomena with the physical and intellectual capabilities
available to anyone who wants to practice science.
There would be no problem with this, except that Darwinists do not
stop there. They are actively involved in metaphysics and make
pronouncements about God, meaning, and purpose, etc.
BH>To make science explicitly take account of revelation, I suppose
>you'd have to have Christian Science (no relation to Mary Baker Eddy
>:-)), which would probably split into evangelical science, Catholic
>Science and..., Hindu Science, Moslem Science, Jewish Science,
>Animist Science, ...
This is a caricature. No one is arguing for a "Christian Science".
But I am arguing for the primacy of the *Christian metaphysic*. Where
that touches on science, eg. origins, ethics, etc, then the Christian
metaphysic must have priority. It is illegitimate for scientists to
promote their own metaphysic based on scientism.
BH>In such an environment, it would be difficult tof Christian
>Scientists to witness about Jesus Christ to other scientists, and
>that IMO would be a great loss. For science to work as a
>multinational, multicultural enterprise, it has to impose some
>limitations on itself. Perhaps shedding these limitations could
>unshackle science and yield great progress. But try to get the
>scientists to agree on _whose_ metaphysics they will adopt.
SJ>I can understand that 99.99%, even scientists who are Christians,
>will not use the Bible of the time in resolve ambiguity in the
>interpretation of physical evidence. This is because 99.9% of the
>time science is concerned with questions of the ongoing operation of
>physical laws and normal natural events.
>But the issues that TE and PC differ on are the 0.01% of issues that
>are to do with *origins*. In the case of *origins*, we are dealing
>with unique, unobservable and unrepeatable events. Science, OTOH can
>only deal with regular, observable and repeatable events. Where
>science attempts to reconstruct the past it can only do so in terms of
>inferring regular processes that operate now operated then.
BH>When events are not repeatible, we can still use science to learn
>about them by studying multiple lines of evidence. The point that
>creationists seem to ignore (or not respond to or it goes over their
>heads or...) is that multiple lines of evidence support the current
>theory of evolution. Dan Ashlock, one of the talk.origins regulars
>put it this way once, (loose paraphrase) "There are about 100 lines
>of independent evidence that support the currently accepted theory of
>evolution. Even if 95 of them were totally bogus, the probability
>that the theory is correct is still 1 - 2^(-5) = about 97 percent."
>If your argument were correct, then it would seem also futile for
>historians to ply their trade.
I disagree with the above. While I do not know exactly what these
"100 lines of independent evidence", all are, but from what I have
seen to date, the evidence equally (or better) supports PC.
SJ>It is precisely those areas that science cannot handle that the
>Bible claims to speak.
BH>TOTALLY AGREE. Who God is. How man is to stand in a right
>relationship with God.... Science can't tell us diddly about these
>issues.
I would add ultimate origins to this as well! (Job 38:4) :-)
God bless.
Stephen
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