Excuse me, my dear sir… but I will do it as often as I need to … to get answers from you.
I can quote you more than once telling me there is no difference. Now you say there is. Good. Thanks for keeping me updated.
As for your sentence:
And so who, exactly, ever said that nature has creative powers of its own? That’s a pretty bizarre position, don’t you think?
Did you know… I actually work during the day?!
You only get to ask me “Millions of Questions from @John_Harshman” once a week.
And you’ve BLOWN YOUR BUDGET.
Go bother someone else with your millions of questions until next week.
Oh, and one more thing, I never said “atheists think “natural” and “causality” are bogus.”
OK, OK. I’ll get off your lawn.
It’s not usually a Christian position. Though there are a minority who hold to it. It’s called Pantheism…
Proposals such as the third way tend in that direction.
I will also classify TEs who say God did not specifically plan for every organism that has ever existed, in this group.
You must have misunderstood. I don’t remember saying the difference is bogus. It’s relevant to a scientific enquiry. But in a theological sense, it ammounts to the same position that God created all things.
Hmm. So, suppose every morning I have my milk with coffee. I do this every day for 20 years. Someone observing this would be able to predict every morning that I would have coffee with milk.
Then one day, for no reason, I decide to have it black. This would defy prediction.
By your criteria, I would have just performed a miracle. That makes no sense.
No, according to @gbrooks9, free will and actions based on it are miracles, breaks in the causal chain. Given that assumption, there’s no inconsistency. Your decisions to have coffee with milk are miracles, and so is your decision to have it black, all the result of free will.
Ah, thanks. That now a;; makes perfect sense.
Actually, no. That still makes no sense at all. 
Perhaps. But it’s free will itself that makes no sense, not the black coffee thing.
I think you mean, it could be Pantheism.
Romans thought natural features had a spirit to them… that was just everyday, ordinary paganism, wouldn’t you say?
How did you do that? You actually correctly summarized my position.
Now how can you do that when you claim you don’t understand anything I write?
As for @Faizal_Ali, you might be interested to know that I rejected Freewill for a very long time … until I caught a video by one of the 4 Horsemen of New Atheism: Dennett - - on Freewill is real, just not the way you think it is.
He was so clear, so reasonable, I suddenly realized that he had framed the problem so clearly that he unintentionally convinced me that there was Freewill! - - the way Dennett said it couldn’t be.
I concluded that Freewill is so beyond naturalism and causation, that it would take a “miraculous divine entity” for humans to ever think we had Freewill.
And I’ve never been happier with my conclusion!
Freewill choices break the chain of causation… but I’ll offer the one caveat that I allow myself: sometimes, and maybe more for some types than others, not every decision we make is Free… I think it would be impossible to say every decision everyone makes is Free.
But I would say that every decision we make can be Free.
Depends on how much agency is given to nature, and I guess consciousness.
Some ideas in physics about consciousness are panthiestic.
I guess it becomes pagan when one starts worshipping nature.
You said that if God used Evolution to create life, then there was no reasonable way to distinguish between the miraculous and the natural.
Blech… I"m sure we could find your ramblings on that if you really want to see it.
Is there? God’s interference would be a matter of faith… If God used " random" mutations and selection to create . Where is the miraculous?
Obviously, that isn’t what I mean by the “miraculous”… but at the neurological level … maybe it is some kind of miracle.
You know, I just posted my caveat… just because a decision can be free… doesn’t mean that we can tell the difference in real life. Some decisions may not be free at all… or at certain times or for certain people about certain things.
Since you are a psychiatrist, you know that at the level of neurons… it will be a very long time before we understand how the brain makes decisions… or influences the decisions that our soul might have to make.
In my view, God can “pooof” a transpositon of an Amino acid… “poooof” … that’s a mutation.
Or, God could have arranged for a specific mutation from all the way back to the Big Bang… lightning strikes the house, runs along a wire, and through a man or woman taking a bath. It could even be mild enough that they can’t even feel the jump in voltage.
But the charge was just enough to change a key gene on the 18th chromosome. Voila… mutation by natural means!!!
Let me pose the question differently.
Would it be possible for unguided natural processes alone to cause all life?
Evolution is all about unguided processes… i.e processes without an end in mind… because nature doesn’t have a mind.
I guess both of us will say no. And that position is ID. (atleast at a philosophical level).
I’ve decided to use @swamidass’ expression: “i.d., no caps”.
When a person just says “Evolution” … he probably means “unguided”.
But if a person says “Guided Evolution” … you really have to settle down and accept the “qualification” that nouns and adjectives provide.
We don’t go to a Old Earth Creationist and say… “Hey man, you can’t call Old Earth Creationism. When you say Creationism it has to mean Young Earth.”
Nobody does this because qualifiers change the meaning of the whole phrase. They are supposed to do that. That’s how English works.
So… again… let re-emphasize: when someone says “God Guided Evolution”, they mean Evolutonary processes (e.g., natural selection, common descent, speciation, etc.) … but directed by God.
2 different sets of meanings… fused together into a novel new meaning!
That’s good news. Now your objection to ID is only one based on the philosophy of Science… i.e whether Science can detect design.
Let’s say I accept that. However, it doesn’t change what the theory of Evolution is.
The problem is that every authoritative explanation of evolution is one which assumes there is no higher purpose in the process. What body of knowledge will you point to when people ask you what you mean by Evolution?
And how do you resolve the conflict between the purposelessness not Evolution and the purposeful creation by God?
Why not just call it what it is…“id” ?
And why not just call Old Earth Creationism, Creationism? Because it is intentional confusion of terms.
God-Guided Evolution is a religious concept… it is not a science term.
I don’t need to point to a body of science to define God-Guided Evolution any more than I already do:
"Hey, Mac? You know how Evolution talks about natural selection, common descent, speciation and more? But it doesn’t say anything about God, right? Okay, so God-Guided Evolution is a theological stance … that takes Evolutionary principles and says “God uses them to create life.”
Done. Perfecto.
@Ashwin_s, when are you gonna stop messing around with semantics and just accept this is how people are supposed to use modifiers like nouns and adjectives in the English language?
You are free to do it …
I am not going to.