On Fri, 27 Aug 1999 15:00:55 -0400 (EDT), Loren Haarsma wrote:
[...]
LH>Personally, I suspect that God did use self-organizing complexity
>(rather than miraculous fiat) to make the first living cells. I figure
>that if God went to all the trouble to create self-organizing
>strategies to take creation all the way from fundamental particles up
>to organic molecules on a hospitable prebiotic planet, and if God went
>to all the trouble to create self-organizing strategies into the
>mechanisms of biological evolution of living cells, then it's
>reasonable (though by no means certain) to guess that God created self-
>organizing strategies of abiogenesis to get from one to the other.
This is just theistic naturalism, ie. theism controlled by naturalistic
categories of thought. On this type of reasoning, one could rule out any
miraculous intervention by God on the basis that God has already set up
naturalistic processes that look like they could do the job, so why would
God go to all the trouble to act supernaturally?
Followed consistently (as it is by radical theologians like Tillich and
Bultmann, and the so-called `Jesus School'), applying Loren's canons to the
Bible, one would end up with a fully naturalistic Christianity, which would
be useless for supernatural salvation.
There are two question-begging fallacies in Loren's post above. First, it has
not been shown that naturalistic processes *could* do the job. Second, it is
not any "trouble" for God, which ever way He created.
It is perfectly reasonable to assume that God has created the universe to be
self-sustaining, without it being self-originating. If life was an automatic
process which happened whenever the conditions were right, then life
would be popping up everywhere, every time conditions were right. If God
did not want life to be popping up everywhere, for example if His goal was
to have life originate on only one planet, and culminate in only one creature
in His image, then He would have to be continually intervening everywhere
to stop life originating, or killing it off after it had originated.
A more rational approach would seem to be to set up the universe so that
life cannot pop into existence, except where God supernaturally intervenes
to make the conditions, in a way that nature alone could not do, so that life
originates only where and when God wants it to.
A modern analogy is the Uniloc system of software distribution on CDs.
The designer puts all the programs on the CD, and they are fully functional,
except for a PIN number which only the system designer knows and
withholds, until the conditions that he has pre-arranged are fulfilled. When
the are fulfilled, as pre-planned, the designer supplies the final piece of
intelligence, and then the software, with all its myriad complexity and
interrelationships, springs to `life'.
In the case of origins, the right approach is to approach the data with a full-
blown "explanatory filter" that is open to the three logical possibilities of
causation: 1. law, 2. chance, and 3. intelligent design, and not to constrain
what is possible, just because it fits the convenience of modern scientific
materialist-naturalists!
Steve
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"Evolution is the greatest engine of atheism ever invented." (Dr. William
Provine, Professor of History and Biology, Cornell University.
http://fp.bio.utk.edu/darwin/1998/slides_view/Slide_7.html)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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