You make the clarification. You brought up a “false road”, meaning a direction you were headed in is either right or wrong. What direction are you talking about?
Ah, ok, that helps. I was confused.
What I mean by that is I don’t have a problem with there being discrepancies occasionally between science and Scripture (the Resurrection and “dead people don’t rise” is an incredibly important one) but if, on the whole, they are mutually exclusive then that seems like a problem.
If what we know about cosmology, radiochemistry, genetics, paleontology, and geology, to say the least, are all flat out wrong, that’s a big deal. That doesn’t seem like “well, we’ll work it out in the end”. That seems like “something is fundamentally wrong here”. Why would experiments and observations (many of them by Christians) be so wrong? That’s what I’m talking about.
I’m certainly not ruling out God’s ability to use miraculous means to create by any means, but why would it look like he used primarily (if not only) ordinary means if he didn’t?
Alright, let’s move on. Let me bring up Peter and John, apostles of Jesus Christ. And let me bring up heresy and apostasy in the first century and how violently they withstood it.
How do you think Peter and John would have viewed you personally and your ideas about theistic evolution in the first century? Would they have casually opposed you simply because you affirmed a faith in Jesus? Or would they have opposed you even to the shedding of blood and carefully warned others of you and your doctrine?
- When did I say I was a theistic evolutionist? I’m pretty sure I never have.
- I would hope Peter and John would greet me as a brother in Christ, as I would greet them.
- I’m sure if I lived at the time of Peter and John I probably wouldn’t have cared a bit about how the first cell got here or how the cosmos was formed, I would be mostly interested in their stories of Jesus and what it was like to walk with him.
Gosh. Then I am clueless. What are you then? If you believe in abiogenesis, common ancestry, a single-celled beginning, and biological evolution. What are we supposed to call you people now? Does that label keep changing?
(Hi Sal… it’s be a while. I hope you are doing well!)
All believers accept at least some of the miracles in the bible. Even deists accept some type of creation miracle. At the very least God made the pre-universe pregnant with the requisite quantum fluctuation.
As to what would count as observable evidence (pardon the redundancy) for a creation miracle-- none of your examples would serve that purpose for me. Take abiogenesis. Perhaps in glory I will learn that it was a miracle of the “normal” sort, a type of instantaneous special creation, and not just God arranging the initial conditions for the universe’s differential equation (1). However, nothing on this side of glory that is at least in principal addressable by science would be, for me, evidence of a miracle. (2) Abiogenesis is addressable by science. If it is truly a miracle then science is doomed to fail to provide an explanation. I can live with that.
I am trying to imagine a physical phenomenon that would not be addressable by science (and so, for me, would constitute a miracle) that is not of the absurd variety, such as the proverbial stars being rearranged into a message of God’s glory in all human languages, but I am hard pressed to come with one. Perhaps an indisputable example of faith healing (3) would indeed do the trick, but even then I am not sure.
(1) Which is miraculous in itself, not to mention the miracle of the right differential equation integrating the right laws of physics to produce the necessary habitability.
(2) And fortunately nothing in the bible tells me that we must regard anything in creation, save the very existence of the created universe, as miraculous in origin. The ancient creeds say “maker of heaven and earth”, and wisely stop there.
(3) I believe God, at times heals, or at least I have no reason to rule it out. But I know of no way to distinguish divine healing from the appearance of a miracle resulting from statistics (there are, by definition, always outliers) or misdiagnoses.
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I never said I believed in any of those. I really like how the IPCC puts their assessment of climate change as a set of statements with associated certainties (highly likely, likely, unlikely, very unlikely). Here’s my version, as of now:
- I think it’s highly likely that biological evolution is the best model, at this time, for understanding the diversity of life on Earth. It could be wrong, but it would be a monumental shift in how we understand the world.
- I think it’s likely that most, if not all, living organisms share common ancestors.
- I think it’s unlikely that we could tell the difference between universal common ancestry and near-universal common ancestry, which accounts for the equivocation above.
- I think it’s likely that Origin of Life researchers will find a plausible mechanism for abiogenesis
- I think it’s unlikely that we will ever know if said mechanism actually happened. I’m fairly ambivalent here.
- I have no idea about single-celled beginnings at this point so I won’t venture an opinion there.
- I think it’s highly likely that God designed, created, and sustains the universe.
- I think it’s unlikely that that indisputable evidence of God’s design will be found through science.
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Very nice @Jordan, this one goes into my quotes file. 
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I’m not clear on this - How could we possibly prevent God from doing his thing?
AND what if you are wrong?
I don’t think it’s a zero-sum game, and science has been around for 500 years without religion disappearing in a blip, so there is evidence to back that up. This zero-sum game notion is very modern development.
Hi DAVE!!!
Just wanted to say you were an inspiration to me over a decade ago and I started studying more physics. I went down the route of condensed matter and biophysics.
I still have your favorite physics book close by, Goldstein’s Mechanics.
Just wanted also to say thank you so much for your posts on fine tuning Luke Barnes vs. Victor Stenger. A real inspiration.
I still profess the reformed faith, and you’re an inspiration there too. I hope you are well, God bless.
EDIT:
You come to mind every time I see a NASCAR!
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It’s very simple: because Jesus didn’t leave behind mountains of evidence that falsify the Resurrection.
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Well, people who reject science have to pretend that scientists reject science, too…
Your evidence? The evidence is everyone’s evidence. You’re just ignoring the vast majority of it.
I find that type of question to be odd, given it is anachronistic. Peter and John would not have known what to make of theistic evolution. They would have no context. Of course they would view it as insanity and probably heresy.
You could also ask this question:
How do you think Peter and John would have viewed your ideas about heliocentricism in the first century? Would they have casually opposed you simply because you affirmed a faith in Jesus? Or would they have opposed you even to the shedding of blood and carefully warned others of you and your doctrine?
To be fair, you would, it seems to me, have to speculate what Peter and John would say about theistic evolution if they had a working knowledge of 21st century science. Would they find it acceptable, or would they find it outside the pale of orthodoxy? Who knows?
So you’re a theistic evolutionist. Why are trying to blur the lines and avoid the label?
So you want to equate descent from apes with the earth’s revolution around the sun. Then you want to say that if Peter added his blessing to one view, then he would bless both. Or contrarily, if he denounced one, he would denounce the other.
Is that what I want to do? I don’t think so. I was pointing out that something that I suspect you accept as established science (heliocentricism) may also have been viewed by the apostles as heresy. That is all I was saying.
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Too much talk about evidence. Let’s go back to another thread where @stcordova laid it on the line. I think he said something like “why even discuss abiogenesis and biological evolution since they have no empirical validation in the first place.”
edit: change biological evolution to common descent
Because I’m not a biologist and so I don’t feel super comfortable about making certain declarations. I also see a whole lot of nuance that is not captured well with “Theistic evolutionist”. I tend to think God is probably more actively involved than many TEs. I feel the most confident in the age of the earth (I’m a chemist who took a few geology courses as an undergrad) being old. I’m much less confident about biology. So far evolutionary theory seems to have worked, but I’m open to other options I guess.
I guess the bottom line is I’m really not that concerned about what “camp” people fall into as I am the way they approach the issues and making sure that they develop the strongest arguments. I’m not trying to run away from a label so much as run towards truth wherever I can find it. I suspect none of the camps have it exactly all right, but that’s OK, we can keep working together to map out the possibilities.
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“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world." (Psalm 19:1-6)
But you don’t wanna look. It appears that this more about your ego than about God.
Why would we do that? Sal ignores the vast majority of evidence too. His statement is false.
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