On Mon, 19 Aug 1996 10:30:05 -0400 (EDT), lhaarsma@OPAL.TUFTS.EDU wrote:
SJ>So does TE differ from NE in that the former says that
>random mutations are directed but unpredictable and the latter says
>they are undirected and unpredictable ?
LH>That's one important difference(*).
OK. Thanks. So do you not grant Johnson's main point that the
"E" in "TE" obscures this crucial difference between NE and TE,
namely that the scientific understanding of evolution is an
*undirected* natural process:
"Now the first thing to understand is that this term `evolution' as
it is used in the scientific literature, as it is used by all of the
popularisers and propagandists of Darwinism, as it is used by the
scientific establishment, rejects creation, not just in the literal
Genesis sense, but in the broad sense as well. They do not use the
word `evolution' as a word which can be consistent with creation in
the way in which I have just described it. Because to them
`evolution' means fully naturalistic evolution. It means evolution
which involved only purposeless material processes, because these are
the only processes which are open to science. So if we say we
believe in `evolution' what we are saying that we believe in (in the
scientific understanding of the word) is not a process which God
guided, not a process which God employed, directed, in order to
produce human beings for a purpose, but a completely materialistic,
purposeless process which is fulfilling no purpose whatsoever. So
that it employs only processes which are mindless and purposeless.
It employs random mutation, which is just random genetic changes,
which are chance, pure chance, and that's what you might call the
gasoline, that's the fuel pushing the thing along. And the driver of
this car, the steerer, that makes the changes into complex organs,
organisms that produces wonders like eyes and brains, is nothing but
the fact that some organisms are better at surviving and reproducing
than others. That's all it is - natural selection. So the
combination of random genetic processes and natural selection
produces everything that there is - God has no part in it. It's not
directed, it's not going anywhere. If it happened to produce human
beings, that's just an accident. If you did it again, it wouldn't.
That is what is meant by `evolution' in the scientific literature.
Now when you understand this, I think you can already see why so many
of us have had so much trouble with that third category, that I began
by introducing - Theistic Evolution. You see its practically a
contradiction in terms, isn't it? Because "evolution", as it is
understood in the scientific world, is undirected *non-theistic*
evolution. So its almost like theistic atheism, to bring that two
together and the position survives only by blurring this important
definitional point." (Johnson P.E., "Darwin On Trial" , 2 tape set,
First Evangelical Free Church, Fullerton, CA, Oct 1992).
To avoid the charge of misleading advertising, should not TEs (and
ECs) use another term than "Evolution", for example Mediate Creation:
"But while it has ever been the doctrine of the Church that God
created the universe out of nothing by the word of his power, which
creation was instantaneous and immediate, i. e., without the
intervention of any second causes; yet it has generally been admitted
that this is to be understood only of the original call of matter
into existence. Theologians have, therefore, distinguished between a
first and second, or immediate and mediate creation. The one was
instantaneous, the other gradual; the one precludes the idea of any
preexisting substance, and of cooperation, the other admits and
implies both. There is evident ground for this distinction in the
Mosaic account of the creation. God, we are told, " created the
heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void; and
darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved
upon the face of the waters." Here it is clearly intimated that the
universe, when first created, was in a state of chaos, and that by
the life-giving, organizing power of the Spirit of God, it was
gradually moulded into the wonderful cosmos which we now behold.
..There is, therefore, according to the Scriptures, not only
an immediate, instantaneous creation ex nihilo by the simple word of
God, but a mediate, progressive creation; the power of God working in
union with second causes." (Hodge C., "Systematic Theology", Vol.
I, 1892, James Clark & Co: London, 1960 reprint, pp556-557).
LH>Another is that TE says that the laws of nature, which establish
>the landscape of "genomic phase space," were designed; while NE
>offers no answer that I can discern, beyond capital-C "Chance," for
>natural law's existence and characteristics. I could probably think
>of a few more differences, but those two will suffice for now.
PC would of course believe that "the laws of nature ... were
designed". It seems the difference between TE and PC is that the
latter believes that God also may have/has intervened at strategic
points in life's history. You have often quoted David Wilcox:
"Anyone who is a fully biblical theist must consider ordinary
processes controlled by natural law to be a completely and
deliberately the wonderful acts of God as any miracle, equally
contingent upon his free and unhindered will." (Wilcox D., in Wright
R.T., "Biology Through the Eyes of Faith", Apollos: Leicester UK
1991, p110)
But Wilcox does not see that as any reason to exclude God's
supernatural intervention:
"I have no metaphysical necessity driving me to propose the
miraculous action of the evident finger of God as a scientific
hypothesis. In my world view, all natural forces and events are
fully contingent on the free choice of the sovereign God. Thus,
neither an adequate nor an inadequate ''neo-Darwinism (as mechanism)
holds any terrors. But that is not what the data looks like. And I
feel no metaphysical necessity to exclude the evident finger of God."
(Wilcox D.L., "Tamed Tornadoes", in Buell J. & Hearn V., eds.,
"Darwinism: Science or Philosophy?", Foundation for Thought and
Ethics: Richardson TX, 1994, p215)
LH>I think it was Brian Harper who made the most succinct
>distinction: "Mindful Intention."
>
>( (*) Both PC and TE have descriptions in which every event is
>"directed," and both have descriptions in which every event is overseen,
>but not every one is necessarily "directed" (i.e. God self-limits
>himself in granting his creation a cetain amount of freedom,
>analogous to human freedom).)
Agreed. As a PC I am certainly not wishing to deny God "a certain
amount of freedom, analogous to human freedom" in governing His
cosmos. But does not TE in effect deny God *the freedom to intervene*
in His cosmos, beyond the boundaries of His normal self-limitation?
God bless.
Steve
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