And so your credibility will suffer…
because, as an example, who would take me seriously if I told every Old Earth Creationist that he or she is really just talking about Young Earth Creationism?
I could explain that the Bible doesn’t say anything about an Old Earth … only a Young One.
And they would rightly consider me some kind of jerk.
Oh, sorry. Thought you had flounced.
Except the process doesn’t work “by itself;” it works because God actively enables it to work. The distinction between supernatural and natural is in whether the chain of causality runs through the things that God has created, or not.
A deist with exceptions is a theist. 
Even if you don’t accept my characterization of God acting through natural processes, the supernatural interventions that Christianity claims have happened in human history make an important distinction from deism.
Atheists and their kin need not reply, but maybe the Christians among us will get it, and I think it is what @gbrooks9 has been saying, that the how in God how works in providence is something we can’t get. That’s also why atheists typically say they just haven’t seen the ‘evidence’.
Back a while, I think it was when @terrellclemmons came on, we were talking about God infusing meaning and purpose into an event or series and groupings of events. Atheists will say that we are inferring meaning where there isn’t any, pareidolia-like, perhaps, but Christians will say that the meaning is there for us to discover, and frequently impossible not see. The point with respect to this discussion is that God’s M.O. is very frequently, if not in a vast majority of times, using natural means. ‘Natural’ means within the realm of physical cosmos, time and space, matter and energy, no ‘poofing’ required. (I introduced the term ‘hypernatural’, not of my coinage.) How does he do it? Good question. It’s a wonderful mystery. He is atemporal or omnitemporal, sovereign over time and space, timing and spacing, and he cares for his children.
Here is a sweet example, one among a boatload, of his sovereign, immanent, personal and interventionist activity into my life (again, atheists, please restrain yourselves):
Do you mean that God has to constantly push the gears around rather than just winding it up and letting it go? Why? Couldn’t he manage to make a self-sustaining engine?
Incidentally, be warned that your language is so unclear that you seem to be contradicting your prior claims frequently. Please attempt to be clear and precise.
See, now, I have no idea what that means. I think you might have reversed the order of items between the things being distinguished and their distinguishing characteristics, but it’s hard to tell for sure. I will assume that “natural” means “through the things that God has created”; but in that case, why does God have to actively enable causation? Sounds as if the chain is illusory and only seems to be there because God continually recreates it that way.
It isn’t that I don’t accept it. It’s that I don’t now what you mean by it. Either he’s acting at the beginning and letting things run, or nothing happens without his direct action. At times you seem to be saying one or the other, freely substituting. I say again: what do you mean by “acting through natural processes”? How does it differ from not acting?
How would God use natural means? As I’ve said, he must insert a cause that wasn’t there before and was not part of the universe, whether it’s to jiggle an atom that otherwise wouldn’t break a bond or to drop manna from heaven, it’s still a form of poofing.
This link seems not to exist.
Sorry, I must need more practice pasting 
: Request and Articulate Reply
Or not.
God is timeless or ‘timeful’, atemporal or omnitemporal, and all of our language is tensed, restricted to linear time…
Or he ‘planned’ it from eternity past, ‘planned’ being linear time word in the past tense, and ‘eternity past’ being a technical term to help us deal with the language and conceptual issues. But neither term really apply to the timeless and always Present tense, the ‘I AM’ that God calls himself, or as Jesus said, “…before Abraham was born, I am!”
You’re right. I interpret it as pareidolia plus poor estimation of the sample space and biased deletion of all the times prayers are not answered.
If not, then what happens?
Well, at least you aren’t claiming that only Christians can get it, unlike some. But that excuse just shuts down discussion.
Regardless of how God would perceive it, if he planned is from eternity past, that just means it was built in from the beginning of the universe, the deist notion, and no intervention during what we see as later time is necessary. The block universe God answers prayers in quite a different way from what we would think, building both your prayer and his response into the initial conditions of the universe. Odd.
Please notice that all your verbiage is tensed. “It was built in from the beginning of the universe.” Past tense. Okay, I can grant that. But God has a present relationship with his people, and his creation, too (including you). Beyond understanding, isn’t it. (That’s also how evolution ‘works’, too, to God’s ends.) There is a dynamic between the time-bound, us, and God, who is wholly other in his relationship to our linear time.
How could you not, since you don’t believe God exists.
It’s not just about prayers, either. Hardly.
Why, exactly, are you struggling with “Nothing happens without his direct action.”
It’s a pretty clear statement. Maybe it’s not how you would run a Universe… but I think that’s how many of us Theists conceive the nature of the Cosmos.
We’ve discussed this. Most Theists see an ongoing need for God to continue to engage miraculously with the Universe… especially once we have human Freewill shifting the course of history - - obviously in ways that could, in the aggregate, send the Universe away from what God ultimately wants to happen.
So with corrective “pooofs” here and there … the causal chain is adjusted at various points in the timeline… it’s not something God can walk away from. And if Theists believe God “speaks to them”… whether he says No to some prayers or not, God’s communications are not something he can tape-record for the future listening pleasure of humanity!
Oh for goodness sake…
Take the basic elements we find in Deism… and ADD things… lots of things!
1] Add “poooofing”… in real time… “real time” to humans anyway.
2] plus communicating with the devoted … also in real time.
3] plus literally maintaining the quantum integrity of quarks every instant of the timeline … without this real time activity … there is not only no Time … but there is also NO space!
4] and finally, acknowledge that from God’s perspective, the beginning and end of all Time-Space creation is a single instant… Space-Time is what the universe looks like from a human perspective.
If you have questions, you should probably ask @swamidass… I’m going to bed.
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I am not familiar with any known biological controls that limit variation! Could you explain that evidence please?
There is the tendency that free exchange of genetic material provides stability to any given population of living things.
But as populations get divided into sub-groups that eventually no longer exchange genetic information (because of physical barriers, for example), each population is free to respond to mutations and natural selection in ways that are unique to each sub-population.
One group gets smaller… the other gets bigger.
One group gets hairier … the other group loses it’s dependence on hair.
One group spends more time on the shore … the other group spends more time high on mountain slopes.
Where exactly do you see variation being limited here? The more differences are accumulated … the more a population can turn into something completely new.
I know of no biological buzzer that sounds when “there’s just too much variation here!”
No. Easily understood, if true. I have “present relationships” with probably thousands of beings that could easily be understood and demonstrated. That’s because those beings and and relationships actually exist.
Not too complicated, is it?
Manna is more like “timing migrating insect poop” than “poofing.”
https://www.momentmag.com/manna-is-real-and-not-so-heavenly/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/what-the-heck-was-manna-anyway-56294548/
Combine the details herein with the speculative, ancient “coincidentally timed,” mass migrations of a certain type of flying beetle, and you have the biblical scenario, rather than the modern skeptical position.
A similar miracle of “coincidental timing” occurred as they crossed the Jordan river, to enter the Promised Land. A small earthquake upriver collapsed an embankment that stopped the water’s flow for several hours, and it has happened many times since then, also.
He is appealing to mystery.
The main motivation seems to be a desire to conserve the essentially unguided nature of evolition while acknowledging the possibility of God’s action as found in this quote. My understanding of the three main points-
I believe that God designed the laws of nature so that biological evolution could, through its ordinary operation, bring about new life forms and increases in complexity. As a Christian, I believe that God could cause a series of guided mutations whenever God wanted to. As a scientist, however, I believe that God didn’t need to do so in order to create the rich diversity of complex life we see in the world today.
Takeaway point - God’s action is not necessary to explain the complexity of life. Birds, animals, etc can be explained without needing to resort to God’s action as an explanation. I don’t think this is biblical. But it is consistent with evolutionary theory.
Points 2 and 3 contradict each other . In Point 2 the author claims that God is “in charge” of all natural process. I love the idea…
Then he goes on to claim in point 3 that God does not micromanage nature…
Quoting the point
I don’t think God needed to nudge it down particular paths in order to produce what God intended.”
So basically God is in charge of all natural events while He does not nudge it (natural history) down any particular path.
This sounds like a contradiction to me.
Obviously it isn’t, or I wouldn’t be asking you what it means or be confused by apparently mutually contradictory answers. The question isn’t whether I agree with your view or even whether it’s true. It’s about what your view actually entails and what its implications are. So far you’re all over the place, and thus it’s impossible to consider the implications. But nobody else seems any better, so don’t feel singled out.
The basics start with DNA repair and Apoptosis which are part of the basic cell cycle. There are other controls based on hormone levels. If you believe that living organisms are ultimately designed by God what we don’t see is a feature that will allow cells to vary to significant degrees to accommodate more than simple adaptions. The weakness in the NGE claims is that they also cannot describe mechanisms beyond simple adaptions.
I am not claiming it is not there but at this point it is not visible.
You left the timelessness/timefulness of God out of your analysis and statement of faith.
God, in an instant, has created Space-Time, Sustained Space-Time, presented all these events in a timeline perceived by human consciousness to billions of years, rather than an instant.
But the human perception is that in Space-Time, nothing happens without God’s direct action, plus human free will.
What are you even trying to say?
Fact 1 about Evolution … individuals do not evolve… they adapt.
Fact 2: Populations, over time, evolve. It’s practically impossible to stop this, because it is based on unavoidable imperfections in genetic replication.
Fact 3: Since each step in evolution is “fixed” in the current generation, the only way to build a limit to evolution is to stop having new generations.
Fact 4: There are virtually no known life form that has lost its ability to create a new generation.
Fact 5: According to Genesis… when animals are no longer able to reproduce, they are no longer a “Kind”.