And, as you say, the process of arranging must involve some kind of supernatural force. Of course many interventions couldn’t be detected. After all, creation of Adam and Eve separately from the evolution of humans couldn’t, at this late date, be detected. Plenty of room for miracles in the ancient past, and plenty of room for sufficiently subtle miracles right now. But I don’t think that’s what George is talking about; if it could only be discovered what he’s talking about, we could know.
Yes I think we are on the same page here. I’d be interested to know how @gbrooks9 would distinguish between natural and supernatural intervention.
So, from the Christian theistic perspective, there is no such thing as “erosion happening on its own without any special involvement of God”. The forces of nature get their causal power from God. He sustains the universe in being; were he to withdraw his involvement the winds would not be able to sculpt Everest, and in fact Everest and the winds would both cease to exist. This is the usual position of Christian theologians (drawn from, for example, Hebrews 1:3).
You might say that this is just God’s normal involvement rather than any special involvement, but that distinction is hard to maintain if, through foreknowledge and/or predestination, God intends the specific outcome that results from the natural processes that he is sustaining. I don’t see a problem with saying that God created life through evolution, even if we can trace that evolution to (what are from our perspective) purely natural causes. Natural causes are given their causal power by God, and their effects are part of his plan and intent.
Thanks for your response, Matthew. I don’t think we’ve interacted before. For the record, my Ph.D. is in Religious Studies, and I’m well aware of basic Christian theology, having taught it at the university level.
Yes, that is the point.
Augustine, Aquinas, etc. did not find the distinction hard to maintain. Aquinas in particular insisted on it, especially in reference to the doctrine of Creation. You can read about it in the books of Michael Chaberek, a Dominican expert on Aquinas.
Nor do I.
I certainly agree.
Evolution, however, as normally described by scientists, is an open-ended process with no inbuilt final aims or ends. That is not the case with, say, planetary orbits, which can be determined in advance. Of course, if you are supposing that God “front-loaded” the entire course of evolution at the time of the Big Bang, that would certainly be compatible with God’s omnipotence and providence and so on – but I doubt there is an evolutionary biologist in the world – and certainly no biologist on this site – who thinks that God determined all the results of evolution in that rigid way.
To be clear, I do not reject the conception of theistic evolution / evolutionary creation outright. I was criticizing the particular formulation it often receives from American scientists. Often it amounts to nothing more than repeating exactly what atheists say about evolution, and then adding, “Oh, but I believe in Jesus, too, so I think God is behind the evolutionary process somehow, someway, somewhere, somewhen.” For a less theologically fuzzy, more Biblically based and tradition-based account of how evolution fits in with classical Christian teaching, I recommend that you bypass BioLogos and most of the papers written by ASA scientists, and go to the discussions on Hump of the Camel, a website run by Jon Garvey.
I did notice the “Religious Studies” headline next to your name, and didn’t intend to imply that you didn’t know these things. Just giving my perspective and what I understand to be the situation. 
From a scientific, natural perspective, of course evolution has no built-in teleology. But I wouldn’t be surprised if there were biologists who think that it could have teleology imprinted on it by God from a theological, supernatural perspective.
I also don’t think predestination by God makes the results of evolution rigidly determined (whether the scope of that predestination is over all or only some of those results). Being a Molinist, I think that God predestined the course of my own life, but that doesn’t negate my own free choices.
I do agree that BioLogos would do well to be more clear about how God is involved in evolution. (I think they could do better in a lot of other ways as well.) I am not speaking for them. I’ve seen a bit of @jongarvey’s site before; any posts you would recommend on this issue specifically?
You can argue and wrestle with it all you want … but I’m quite sure you aren’t going to “Get it”.
A] If God is answering prayers, it means he is “on the job”.
B] If God is keeping the Universe “together”, he is “on the job”.
C] If God is PLANNING his next big miracle, between Natural Process Event #123399082900
and Natural Process Event #065421865838920, then he is “on the job”.
I don’t have an answer to your question, “What is Natural Intervention”… because that is not a valid concept.
God isn’t Intervening in someone else’s project… he is ENGAGED 100% of the time in the Universe.
Just because he switches from “natural process” to “miracle” now and then is not a reason to call it an Intervention. To do so is to make meaningless God’s use of evaporation and condensation to make it rain on the Just and the Unjust.
I think one of the reasons you are having a problem with all this, @John_Harshman, is because you are trying to convert a THEOLOGICAL CONCEPT into a PHYSICS CONCEPT.
Drop the effort.
It’s THEOLOGY, and you don’t know what to do with it.
There is no natural INTERVENTION. If you want a term, use ENGAGE and ENGAGEMENT…
There is NO difference between Natural Processes, and God’s ENGAGEMENT In Natural Processes.
It’s a theological stance… it’s stating that GOD is the one who arranged the natural processes…
So with this stance would you say then that arranging the natural processes could be a 1-time job, and wouldn’t that mean God doesn’t necessarily engage with creation naturally, only supernaturally? Otherwise he could simply allow the natural processes that he arranged to keep things going.
There is no single answer to this question. Different groups solve the problem in different ways.
Behe and @Eddie have used the “front-loaded” concept without risking Deism.
This can be done by pointing out:
[A] God is answering prayers as soon as souls are deployed… Deism doesn’t allow for that.
[B] Depending on the unique mechanics of the metaphysics already established by a group, they can also take refuge into the idea that God’s ongoing presence/engagement is necessary to keep the Universe from disappearing.
[C] Depending on the complexity of God’s goals … it may be necessary for God to engage a miracle or two, in order to reset (locally or universally) the direction of creation.
This seems inevitably true if God is allowing for Free Will in the midst of all those smoothly operating natural laws!
How would you explain the difference, Eddie?
That makes sense to me. I think what @John_Harshman is questioning though is if God really can engage naturally with his creation, or if all of his interactions are supernatural because he is supernatural. Am I understanding that correctly John?
I tried to make an illustration of where there would be some push back on that:
In God of the Gaps, it’s an either/or. Something is either natural or supernatural so if you can make a natural explanation then the supernatural is rejected. Or if you want, God’s divine action and natural mechanism are mutually exclusive, as soon as we find one, we can reject the other.
I think the historical position of Christianity is that God of the Gaps is not an accurate picture. I’m not sure if “providence” is the right word for it, but the idea is that God is working through all things, those that are regular and amenable to science and those that aren’t (miracles, “supernatural” or whatever). I think they would say F = ma is just as much God as the Resurrection.
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I would – if I were inclined to make such a statement, which I’m not – provide a few paragraphs of theological exposition about the various ways in which God is said to act. In the exposition I would present the views of the classical Christian tradition, not trendy ideas floating around at liberal Wesleyan colleges where manifest heretics like Oord teach. I would then state which of those ways applied to “God sculpted Everest through erosion.” I would also make sure I included some biological examples, and in particular the origin of life and the origin of man, so that any important differences between living things and non-living things would not be obscured.
But most of all, I would speak for myself as an individual, without the slightest concern with whether or not my view met with the approval of anyone else at BioLogos, or whether or not my view was in agreement with the vague, useless, “motherhood” statements of BioLogos on such questions. I would not, like virtually everyone at BioLogos, hide behind the amorphous, unclear “group position.” I’d stick my neck out, even if meant frontally challenging the theological views of other top people at BioLogos, in full public view.
The point of John Harshman’s objections (though of course my religious position is different from his) is that in most versions of TE/EC God is superfluous as an explanation for anything we observe in nature. And I agree with his analysis, on that point at least.
How does that fail to risk deism? What’s the difference?
Is he? Are you sure? Anyway, we could consider answered prayers as irrelevant to what we’re talking about here, unless someone has been praying for evolution to happen in a particular way.
Seems a poorly designed universe, if so. What sort of engagement would that have to be? I’ve heard it claimed that Jesus is the strong nuclear force, but I’m dubious.
That would of course be supernatural intervention. But you have said that isn’t what you’re talking about. So what are you talking about?
Perhaps, though I wouldn’t put it that way. I just want to know what “engage naturally” means, if it isn’t the same as just letting things happen as they would without him and it isn’t the same thing as causing events that wouldn’t have happened without his action. I can’t think of what else there might be, and George won’t tell.
Great. But what does it mean to say he’s doing that?
Whoahhh there, John!
Just why exactly isn’t God engaging his creation through natural processes as “causing events that wouldn’t have happened without his action”?
I suppose buried in that sentence is the belief that the Universe could exist without God. But that’s YOUR issue… not mine.
ANY natural event is an event that God has conceived, prepared for by means of natural or super-natural processes, and executed (by either natural or super-natural means).
And John, you just won’t hear it. You keep asking Why, Why, Why, Why, Why.
I guess you’ll have to get into a conversation with God and ask him.
In contrast to this, we have Behe who seems to think God engages in SOME parts of Evolution and not in some OTHER parts. Now THAT is just wrong.
So go ahead. Stick your neck out. Stop hiding behind vague allusions as to what you might say given the opportunity. This is your opportunity. Go for it.
Go ahead, tell us what predictions would be made by your explanation and how such predictions could be falsified.
You’re taking potshots at Christian scientists for making theological statements that are superfluous according to both you and Harman. I invite you to step into the arena and lead by example. Please explain the standard you would use that TE/EC does not use. Then please make one or more statements about the relationship between God and nature that can act as a testable explanation of anything we observe in nature. Please explain how your explanation would be tested and not just be a superfluous gloss.
That’s not my point. I am trying to figure out what “God acts through nature” and similar statements actually mean. I have been unable to get any real answers on that point, and my suspicion remains there it means nothing. And that’s not just because such action would be undetectable, though it probably would. It’s that it seems to be not just indistinguishable by examination from doing nothing, it also seems to be identical in principle to doing nothing. At least so far.
@John_Harshman, it means it was HIS idea… and HIS work.
If he doesn’t plan it, and he doesn’t WORK, it doesn’t happen.