I’d be happy to try to help with that, but you’ll have to be more specific about what you don’t understand.
Reproduction.
That claim is probably true for many laypersons in the evangelical world who have a poor understanding of Deism in its various forms over the centuries and who have limited theological backgrounds. On the other hand, I can think of a great many evangelical academics I’ve known over the years who would grimace at the wording of that statement. Among other things, confusing things happening “naturally” with Deism is an equivocation fallacy. I certainly believe most of what has happened in the history of the world has happened “naturally” but that doesn’t make me a deist. Moreover, even in the Bible, miracles aka supernatural events were rare by any standard. For the most part they were concentrated in a few relatively brief eras, such as the Exodus and the Canaan conquest, the Elijah/Elisha era, the three-year ministry of Jesus, and the early chapters of the Book of Acts. Indeed, throughout most of the history of ancient Israel the ongoing lament was “Where is YHWH? Why doesn’t he intervene supernaturally?”
Of course, when people don’t have a strong understanding of something, they often tend to fear it and consider it a negative. So the fact that many people may share a particularly fear doesn’t necessarily concern me—beyond the fact that I would obviously prefer that they not suffer from unnecessary fears. (I’m not trying to be condescending here. I have often feared things I didn’t understand. It is part of being human! Indeed, it is survival strategy which has served our species well.)
I wonder how Dr. Haarsma feels about Molinism and its potential implications for the idea of God “nudging” evolutionary processes.
1 Like
No one does. But the likes of you and I don’t have to know what it means, and the folks who are most frequently discussing it don’t care whether they know what it means.
Of course there is no evidence for any of Loren Haarsma’s positions. Perhaps the only reason he is writing it is to give some justification for the $133,000 salary that his wife gets for the “accomplish nothing” job as Biologos President.
2 Likes
What does it mean to “work through natural processes”? What does it mean to “give those processes their causal power”? What does it mean to be “concurring with their effects”? What does it man to be “through his foreknowledge and providence, ordaining everything that comes to pass according to his purposes”?
1 Like
Minimally this just means to use natural processes to get what one wants done. Humans can do this by setting up certain initial conditions and letting nature take its course. (Release some wolves into an area to control the deer population, for example.)
God is able to work through natural processes in a more intimate way than we do in two ways: he can set up the initial conditions for the whole universe to the utmost detail, and he is the one who makes the laws of nature work (see response to the next question).
The laws of physics describe what the fundamental entities of physics do, but by themselves they aren’t an explanation for why they do what they do. The atheistic worldview ultimately sees it as a brute fact that atoms etc do what they do, i.e. it is just a fundamentally unexplainable fact that things move and change and affect each other in such a way that the laws of physics hold.
The theistic worldview, on the other hand, sees God as the explanation: he creates the universe and gives the things within it certain properties, causing them to move and change and affect each other in such a way that the laws of physics hold. Moreover, the theistic worldview sees the things that God creates as dependent on him moment to moment: God is actively willing that the things in nature continue to exist and behave as they do, and if he were to cease willing this, they also would cease.
So by “give natural processes their causal power” I mean that God gives things in nature the properties that allow them to affect each other, that cause natural processes to happen. Without God, natural processes couldn’t do anything, or even exist at all, for that matter.
As an extension of the idea that every created thing is dependent on God for its continued existence and its ability to move or change or affect other things, natural processes only produce their effects if God allows and empowers them to do so.
Setting aside the issues of free will and of potential indeterminism in the fundamental laws of physics (which are, admittedly, big issues in figuring out a coherent model of divine providence, but a lot has been written about that subject and I think there are good resolutions - hence my reference to Molinism), God knows exactly what will happen if natural processes operate on some initial conditions, and what will happen if he were to intervene in those natural processes at certain times to produce miracles, etc. (Given Molinism, God has this knowledge even taking free will and indeterminism into account.)
So it is within God’s power to create the universe in certain initial conditions and cause it to operate according to natural processes, with his supernatural intervention where he so chooses, and have it arrive at a precisely specified outcome following a precisely specified history, again of his choosing. Hence, he can decree everything that comes to pass according to his purposes.
Obviously, it is possible to go into much more detail to describe and clarify these concepts, and many philosophers and theologians over the ages have done. Afraid I don’t have the time to do more than this.
I completely agree, and it makes sense to scientists. I am by no means saying that non-scientists are ignorant or blind to anything. Rather, scientists are more practical and are focused on problem solving. Theologians may not be aware of the types of facts and problems that scientists deal with. This is why sites like BioLogos and PS are so important, to try and bring those two perspectives together at the same table.
2 Likes
So there are no laws of nature and there are no natural processes. Everything happens because God actively wills it, though for some reason his will follows a very regular pattern. Incidentally this is not “the theistic view”; it’s a theistic view.
This doesn’t seem quite coherent. If God is causing every little thing to happen, the initial conditions shouldn’t be that important. And it seems that every event in the universe is supernatural; there is no “nature”. What’s the difference between intervening supernaturally and running the so-called “laws of nature”?
Incidentally, is there or can there be any evidence for these claims?
I don’t want to answer for @structureoftruth, but for me there is a continuum from “God created the initial conditions, and has let the natural/regular world run from there”, to “God individually guides every sub-atomic particle”.
I personally don’t think we can know how God operates, so there is no “right” answer to where his interaction falls on this continuum. And you are right, for some definitions of natural and supernatural, they are one and same. (This is why I’ve really come to like @jongarvey’s focus on “regular” rather than natural.
I don’t think there is, or can be. While it may be interesting to speculate (and for some people to argue over), ultimately I don’t think we can know the answer. It’s definitely not a question for science, and I don’t think the Bible provides an answer so it’s not really answerable theologically.
Which particular hypothesis? The one about God?
What I read in that quote is: God doesn’t “intervene” when he does a miracle … any more than God intervenes when he sends a dino-killing asteroid.
It is not an intervention … it is part of the process.
A dinosaur’s last thought might be that an intervention has occurred… but from God’s perspective… it’s just a change… and only a change in one specific area for a brief moment, with lasting repercussions.
I agree 100% with the distinction you are making in your text I quote below:
But for me, the Theistic view that accepts natural processes as distinct from miraculous ones, makes it easier (not more difficult) to discuss events in the past and in the future.
Why can’t use the definition for what is “regular” and say … that is exactly what we mean by “natural”?
Wow… talk about sweeping generalization!
Yes… it’s all God doing stuff.
But there is a difference between God going “poooof” - - and there is a rain storm out of nowhere…
versus
God engaged in natural processes of evaporation and condensation, and a rain storm appears right where a meteorologist predicts it will appear.
1 Like
I think we probably can. But this is a relatively new idea for me, so I’m still trying to puzzle through whether they are equivalent.
1 Like
I do not see the difference between an intervention and a change.
What does it mean to say this?
What’s the difference between God engaging in them and just happening on their own? What does God contribute to the process? Is God tweaking the weather on a regular basis?
There are laws of nature and natural processes: Natural processes are what happens when things in nature operate according to the properties and casual powers that God has given them. It becomes supernatural when God acts more directly, not through those secondary created causes, to bring about something that the created causes cannot normally produce.
And yes, a theistic view, not the theistic view. I was speaking generally and not intending to say that this view was universal. To my understanding, something like it is common.
Depends what you mean by evidence. I think epistemology of theological claims would be a bit off-topic for this thread, though. We were talking about conceptual comprehension, not reasons for believing any of this. (And haven’t you and @swamidass had that discussion before?)
1 Like
What would it mean to you if God said… (and you could hear him saying):
- I made all these humans in the valley from Evolutionary processes.
but:
- POOOOF! I just made this human, who looks a lot like Brad Pitt,
just now, with only a handful of sand.
If you don’t see a difference in the two descriptions… then I’ll go along for the ride… you are the driver.
But I’m thinking the odds are that you DO see a difference between making something through years and years of evolution … vs. POOOOOF - - right in front of you, from out of nowhere.
Sure… we can’t describe HOW it happened… but we can describe WHAT happened.
(Do you have another link or search parameters for Ted’s analysis in A biblical and christological creation – 1?)
Sorry Dale - Ted made his pont in a comments thread (he was excellent at engaging with posters in those day), and BioLogos eventually had a policy of deleting the comments on articles after a time. I doubt it’s online now.
As I remember it Ted bewailed the tendency to discuss creation/evolutoion without reference to Christ, and remarked that at least he kenotic free creation guys related things to Jesus.
I thought there ought to be a more traditionally orthodox way to handle it, and hence that series.
2 Likes
And that difference is…?
Hey man… it’s an undefinable difference… but it’s indisputably different.
Are you telling me you wouldn’t be able to differentiate between a Brad Pitt clone POOOFED into existence right in front of you … and 10,000 humans living in a valley 100 miles away with fossil traces all the way back to Homo erectus?