Well, I wasn’t asked for my opinion, but I’ll offer it anyway.
I don’t think that “crafting” ever occurs without design. The craftsman is always working from a design, even if the design isn’t written down on paper. The craftsman has an idea in his head of what the cupboard, lamp, canoe, pair of boots, or whatever else he is crafting is going to look like and be like: size, shape, materials, etc.
So by calling God a craftsman rather than a designer, you haven’t eliminated the idea of design; you’ve merely moved it out of sight, to where it is only implicit, rather than explicit.
Another way of putting it: while all designers may not be craftsmen (e.g., an architect may not lift a finger build a house he has designed), all craftsmen are inescapably designers (or at least, followers of someone else’s design, which still requires envisioning and understanding the design).
So if God is a craftsman, he is also a designer.
If your point is that the Bible emphasizes the “crafting” (i.e., the actual making) more than the “design” (i.e., the conceptualizing), that may well be true, though to settle that would require a careful word study of the entire Bible.
But if your point is that it is wrong to call God a designer because he is described as a craftsman, I would disagree. He is both: he plans and he also executes.
I think I have heard you make this claim of confusion before, but I am not sure who, in your view, has been confusing “design” with “creation”.
“Creation” in the Bible and Christian theology implies design (i.e., God knows in advance exactly what he wants to produce, what its properties will be, etc.), but the word denotes more than design; it denotes bringing something into existence, not merely conceiving of it as a plan or intention. I don’t know any Christian theologian who would reduce “Creation” to “design”.
If I say, “God designed the living cell,” I’m saying nothing more than that God, in advance of the first cell’s existence, had the layout of all the organelles etc. in his mind, and all of their complex interactions; but if I say, “God created the living cell,” I’m saying something much more, i.e., that God brought the living cell out of the world of his mind and into physical reality. The meaning of the two terms is quite distinct, and if they are carefully used, there should be no confusion.
I know that some of the BioLogos and ASA critics of ID have confused “X is designed” with “X was brought into existence by miraculous, non-natural causes.” For example, Dennis Venema seems convinced (despite an explicit statement of Behe to the contrary) that Michael Behe insists that everything that is designed must be created by supernatural intervention. That is, Venema seems to equate “designed” with “supernaturally created.” Is that what you are thinking about? If so, I agree that this is a bad confusion, and I’ve tried to address it, time and again, on various blog sites. But many TEs have been reluctant to let go of this blurring together of the two terms, for reasons of their own.
I agree that if anyone confuses “create” with “design,” this will create all kinds of problems for discussions of origins. But I don’t think we have to replace “design” with “craft” in order to avoid this problem. I think we simply need to insist on the fullness of the Christian meaning of “creation,” and then the distinction of “creation” from “design” will be easily perceptible.
Yes. Why raises the question as to why we are making it dominant when it is out sight in Revelation.
I disagree that we could possibly know this. How do you know God crafts in a way that requires design? One can have purpose and intent without planning. Sculptures often describe a negotiation with with stone they carve. Planning is often tacit.
It is not clear that this the case at all. In Genesis 1 God speaks, calling forth, and the land produces. The land does the creating here even as this is ascribed to God. He made the land, but the land made life. This is very hard to frame as design. The imagery is of a king commanding a subject. Not of a king designing. God called it forth, and in this sense he created life. The planning here would be in creating land with the capacity to bring forth life, but not life itself.
Another model might be instructing a child to create character. A child is an entity with a life of its own developing on its own, but the parent guides and directs and the child remains totally dependent on the parent.
It seems like a good goal to distance from Aristotle and Plato.
I suppose I am not concerned with substantial forms in this context, and I am not sure why I should be except when talking with a Thomist, for the purpose of understanding the Thomist. I however, am not a Thomist.
This is no different than the free will challenge to providence, and has several solutions. Molinism is one solution, but there are others. Open Theism rejects all these solutions,
Moreover I’m not saying God doesn’t plan. I’m just saying that the language of crafting and instructing does not require a total plan, even though there is a purpose.
It doesn’t make any difference. If God has the details of life, such as the components of a cell, or how various cells come together to form a human etc in mind before the action of creation (this is required in all scenarios except open thiesm), then he had a design/plan beforehand. The distinction becomes trivial unless you are claiming God did not have the plan/details of creation in mind.
I believe in the Christian version of Intelligent Design Theory. I do believe that the universe is ancient. Do I accept common ancestory not? I have had a change of mind and reject it.
I was making a distinction between the meaning of the word “design” and the meaning of the word “create.”
Do you agree with me that the meanings are distinct?
If so, what are you questioning here? Whether or not God designed the first cell?
If he didn’t design it, i.e., conceptualize it before it first appeared in reality, what are the alternatives?
Have you in mind a model of “creation” like that of the avant-garde painters of the 1960s, who would throw a bucket of multi-colored paint at the canvas with their eyes averted, leaving it to chance how the paint splashed onto the canvas? Is that how God made the first cell – by acting without thinking or planning? By deliberately not thinking or planning, so that he could “surprise himself”? What would be the Biblical or traditional warrant for thinking of God’s creative activity in that way?
Purpose and intent refer to the end result. So, literally, one could have an end result in mind without granular, stepwise assembly plans, but having a determined end result is a plan, and that is what the purpose and intent point to. But if you are talking about God as One who fashions, using whatever method He chooses, and suggest that in His omniscience, He would craft without a plan, when the entirety of the cosmos seems to have been purposefully planned for life right here on earth, it does not seem like a good fit to me. Negotiating with a stone has more to do with adapting a plan to fit the stone one is working with. Soft spots will crumble, hard spots can contain more detail. It doesn’t mean that there was no plan, but rather that there were contingencies.
With life and scripture, it seems that “crafting,” “designing,” and even, in some cases, “evolving” all fit well. But none, in my opinion, fit without an original plan or design. With each day, steps were made to bring the earth closer to being habitable for man. These are things that can now be quantified scientifically, albeit not all will embrace this data in the same way.
To me, the scriptures show that God created, according to kinds, such that the land, sea and air would be filled. Each class of animals would be “fruitful and multiply.” To me, this is an indication of a self-sustaining ecological system, and this is what we have seen in different epochs throughout time and what continues today.
It seems most likely to me that God masterfully planned, as He did with the cosmos, from the biggest-big to the smallest of smalls, the details of each species, such that they were given the ability to enter into the right time and place (however that happened) such that the ecology was maintained, and the conditions on the planet were advanced in preparation for the advent of man.
You are failing to grasp the sociological context in which ID came along. It is not as if ID is a theological movement, abstracted from social and cultural conditions, that has willfully decided to overemphasize design, just out of theological taste.
I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, reading popular science, science fiction, etc. I read hundreds upon of accounts of “evolution” by literate, persuasive scientists (Asimov, Sagan, etc.) and journalists and popular writers (writing books for both children and adults). In those accounts, evolution was overtly or implicitly treated as “without design” – as unguided, unplanned, random, chancy, dependent on non-necessary contingencies, etc. In those accounts, life was presented as originating from raw molecules by chance from a swirling chemical soup, and developing all the way up to man, without plan or intent, according to the bounces of random mutations provided by stray cosmic rays, etc. Even in the comic books, most of the “mutations” that created the superheroes and supervillains were seen as accidental, unplanned events, where the character just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and thus was transformed into the Hulk, Spider-Man, Daredevil, etc.
It is against this backdrop that ID reacted. It is not as if the ID folks were reading the Bible one day, and said, “Hey, look at all the times design is mentioned here!” It is that they saw that the reigning popular account of evolution was one that excluded design and gave a huge role to chance. It is that they saw words like “unguided and unplanned” in the earlier versions of Miller’s textbook, in statements by national associations of biology teachers, etc. They saw that a certain metaphysical propaganda, interpreting the origin and development of life as a series of accidents, was widespread in our society, in the educational system, in popular literature, in television specials on science and nature, etc. And they saw that this propaganda was more often than not being spread on the authority of “science,” and quite often by people with Ph.D.s in science, moonlighting as cultural ambassadors for atheism and secular humanism.
That’s the cultural context in which ID arose. So it is no wonder that against the vision of a designless, unplanned world, ID people reacted. And it is no wonder that they concentrated on the claim that “science” proved that the world was without design or plan, and tried to combat it with scientific findings which appeared to indicate the opposite, i.e., that much planning or design went into the world, from the fine-tuning of the cosmos for life, to the intricate feedback mechanisms in cells and organisms.
As for design ideas in the Bible and Christianity, I will deal with them in a separate post.
Why? Having made the land, God knew what it could produce. When he made it, he had a design for it, a role for it, that it was meant to carry out. Or are you suggesting that it was just dumb luck that the land had the ability to produce vegetation? In that case, you would be denying creation ex nihilo (standard Christian doctrine) and opting for a dualism of God and nature, in which nature has some properties for which God is not responsible.
I agree that the imagery is of command (though I’m not sure where you get “king”, without bringing in conceptions that aren’t found directly in Genesis 1). However, I thought we were discussing the meaning of the passage, not just the particular images used. A king commands his subjects to do only that which they are capable of doing. He doesn’t command them to flap their arms and fly to the moon. God must have known that the land was capable of producing vegetation. So unless land had that capacity on its own, even prior to creation (dualism), then God must have put that capacity into it. So when God made the land, he gave it certain biological and chemical properties needed for the task of producing vegetation. That presumes planning or design on God’s part. Of course, the planning or design would be effortless in God’s case, whereas it requires mental sweat in the human case; but it’s still planning and design.
All through Genesis 1, God is envisioning a future reality and commanding that it be brought into being. He has those conceptions in his head in eternity, before they are realized in time. When he says, “Let us make man in our image and likeness,” he had a definite idea what he wants; he isn’t saying, as Ken Miller suggests, “Let us make some sort of rational being with which I can have a relationship, and I’m not too fussy about whether it’s an advanced mollusk like an octopus, or an advanced vertebrate like man.” He has in mind man – a primate with two arms and two legs, with an internal anatomy like ours, intelligent, etc. He has a design, a layout for our type of being, in mind. And then he executes the design.
So design is implied throughout the Genesis 1 account, even though the word “design” isn’t used.
I find it very odd that you are reading verbs in Genesis so literally. As someone who supports evolution, shouldn’t you be arguing that the expressions in Genesis are poetic, not photographic descriptions of what actually happened in the past, and that only their broad intent (that God is responsible for the universe as we know it), rather than their exact sense, is relevant to understanding origins? If you start seizing on particular poetic expressions, and saying that the creation of plants or fish or animals happened in this way, rather than that way, you are reading the text in a way similar to that of the creationists.
It has nothing to do with God in particular. You used the word “craft”, and cited Biblical examples of craftsmanship. The word “craft”, as far as I can see, always implies design. Even your Biblical examples imply it. Who “knits” anything if they don’t have an image of what the final product is going to look like in mind? (A shawl, a blanket, a pair of mittens, etc.) The weaver also has to plan out the end product, and use the loom in a very calculated way so as to achieve it. The carpenter cuts his boards to a certain length in accord with the design he has in mind for his shed, his house, his cupboard, etc. The very idea of a “craft” suggests the subordination of means to ends, as the worker shapes his materials into the product he desires to make.
That may be the case, but tacit planning is still planning. The fact that it often occurs on the unconscious level (due to the fact that the craftsman has so much experience) doesn’t mean the design isn’t there in the back of the craftsman’s mind.
May I ask a question? Why have I not be considered in the conversation of ID. Is it because I no longer accept macroevolution? Is it that I only accept microevolution? Is it because I accept the creation tory as literal history?
Hello, Charles. I think I remember you from BioLogos and Hump of the Camel. Are you the same fellow?
I’m not sure what you are asking.
I understand ID in accord with the statements of the Discovery Institute. According to Discovery, ID is not intrinsically anti-evolutionary; it is compatible both with evolutionary and non-evolutionary (special creationist) accounts of origins. So you can accept or reject macroevolution and still be in the ID camp.
You can be an ID young earth creationist, like Paul Nelson, or an ID old earth creationist, like Steve Meyer, or an ID evolutionist, like Mike Behe.
So you don’t have to reject macroevolution because you want to support ID. You can endorse both macroevolution and ID. But in that case, you won’t conceive of evolution as a directionless, unplanned process, but as one crafted in God’s mind beforehand to produce certain outcomes that God desires. (I say God, rather than some abstract Designer, because you have indicated that you are a Christian, and therefore would see the designer as God.)
I’m not telling you that you should accept macroevolution, but merely that you don’t have to dump macroevolution merely because you are attracted to ID. Whether or not you accept the evidence for macroevolution is up to you. And as far as being a good Christian goes, I don’t think it matters. I think that Mike Behe, who accepts macroevolution, is as good a Christian as Steve Meyer or Paul Nelson, who apparently don’t.
It is good to hear from you. I remember the conservations on Biologos and Hump of Camel. Perhaps I was imaging things. I have also respected you and Jon on you discussions. I could accept ID Young Earth Creationist or ID Old Earth. Do I totally reject ID macroevolution? I was thinking about it; however, I think about those creatures two or three miles down. You are a gifted guy, Eddie. I want to think about this some more. I believe you have moved my mind about it. God bless you, my friend. I hope we talk again soon.
Charles
That is a theological claim that neither does justice to theology or craftsmanship.
We could just as easily object to God not immediately sanctifying us and relying on a trial error and correction proeccess to formnoir characters. The language of craftsmanship often includes a notion of relationship and exchange with the medium, such as “listening to the wood, or feeling out the marble, or seeing what the paint will do”, ascribing agency where we know there is none. God uses much of this language with us, and we are not merely extensions of his being.
Seems to me you have a problem - you’re trying to avoid mechanical terms like “design”, but if you also reject the kind of concepts in A-T or Platonist thinking, it’s not clear that you have any possible model _other _ than a mechanical one, only somehow one in which inanimate nature offers creative suggestions (undesigned?) and God reacts to them - which, as Ashwin rightly says, is pretty much Open Theism, the God whose creation forms him as much as, or more than, vice versa.
You talk about the sculptor working in cooperation with the stone - but in the case of the world, God the Sculptor is the only agent available to make the stone, so he is working with what he himself has already made.
And although Eddie was willing to run with it, the idea that “Let the earth bring forth vegetation” implies the co-creatorial power of the earth ignores the rather more obvious phenomenological reading - that the earth brought forth plants, as it does to this day, because somebody put living seeds in it (as described of God in Ps 104:14-17). Job 28:5 also describes food coming from the earth in the present - and there is no idea in this of co-creation or evolution - just the blindingly obvious fact that plants grow from the earth, and that God makes it so by his sovereign power.
I dare say that when God said in the previous section of Genesis “Let the waters below the heavens be gathered together” he was not talking about the creative power of water, but the creative word of his power. Actually, most likely the omission of “making” verbs on some of the days, all of which begin with "Let there be… " statements, has to do with literary considerations - there are exactly seven uses of “bara” in the creation account.
In fact, in this account, which is all about “What God did”, remember, and not “the various forces that shaped the world”, God’s work is set forth as describing, calling, distinguishing, approving, blessing, commanding, creating and making (or more generically, “doing”, encompassing all the other activities.
If the earth did have power to bring forth vegetation on its own, by the way, it would be an Aristotelian power or potentia (built into its nature by the wisdom of God, as Eddie rightly says) - there are no such powers in the mechanical philosophy, but only laws imposed by God himself on inert matter.
So what are we trying to preserve here, in protecting God from the acccusation of planning ahead, as Scripture repeatedly speaks of him doing? Is it something like “spontaneity” in nature - and if so what does that even mean? I sense some incoherence here.
But I though the thread was about how God created us, not about how he deals with us once we are created. How did I cooperate or resist before I existed? The one thing Genesis 1 tells me it that I was created after his image and likeness. Not quite an extension, but I don’t recall playing any part in that.
