Chromosome fusion

[zoegirl]

The question I am asking is how do we show God as a necessary cause of creation? Within the panspermia or theistic evolution scenarios, and even in your composer analogy, God is either superfluous or contingent. In other words, if we set the premises as 1. acknowledgment of design, 2. undetectable by empirical means, then the conclusion is either inconsistent, or one of the premises is flawed. If we acknowledge design, it can mean design without creation (as we saw in the panspermia example), which leads 1. to either regress or the composer analogy, but not to creation. If we accept 2. it becomes worse, If we say that design cannot be detected, it means that we deny any sort of design intelligence. There is one other way to state 2. which is the way that Dawkins does it: We cannot empirically detect design in nature, although it appears to be designed. In our premise 1. God is contingent, while in 2. He is superfluous.

I don't think you escape either of those two criticisms with your proposal, or else I am just missing it. What is there that you can argue instead of the premises above that necessarily leads to the conclusion of a Christian God Creator? Whenever the argument is brought up, the non-believer will always say that God is possible, but not necessary, and that since there is no empirical evidence, it is unnecessary to postulate that there is a Christian God involved anywhere.

Ahh, got it. Well, I still don't see why the composer analogy or pressive creationism implies God is superfluous. I have never seen this. I know this is the major contention for those critical of PC. For me, I am starting with scripture. And I see that in Genesis God is intimately invovled in His creation, He plans it, He wils it, nothing is left to accident. I believe firmly in the sovereignty of God. I agree that panspermia and deistic creation/theistic evolution is wrong, but they are wrong because, for me, they don't align with the God in SCirpture. BOth of these imply a God who simply placed the ingredients in the grand bowl of earth and simply sat back to watch, an impersonal God as far as His creation goes. So I would reject those models on scriptural grounds.

BUT, I also see in scripture that God chooses to not reveal all that He did. He does not choose to reveal the creation of microscopic organisms, biological processes, subatomic particles, the mysteries of the big bang (or however it started), DNA, genetics... When God revealed to Moses His creative acts, He choose to highlight His omnipotence, His glory, His majesty...."I did this! I did it with order and care and attention" If God meant to reveal all that He did, it would fill a ridiculous amount of books/hard drives whatever. He choose to not reveal why He created such weird creatures as the platypus or aquatic mammals or even why there are similar chromosomal pieces between humans and chimps. I know that many feel that Genesis reveals how He created organsims (He created them by His will...that's that) and feel that this eliminates any possibility that God used a process, but I don't see it. If it is accepted that He did not reveal all of His creative acts then I think it is highly presumptious of us to limit HIm by saying it had to by a certain way. I firmly agree that it was by His will, I just am willing to think that His will might have included using a process.

See, to me, anybody who is a non-believer who initially supports evolution will have to first see if there is evidence of design. I doubt that any science will ever be able to affirm that the designer is the Judeo-Christian God. I think all it can do it point to a designer. But again, here other apologetics will work. Not to mention that I firmly believe that God initiates a person believing. Supporting reformed theology, I believe He calls first. He can use His creation to do that calling, but to those whose hearts are hardened I doubt the creation means much.

The issue is, at least for me, a heck of a lot more complex, thanks to philosophers such as Dooyeweerd. My basic principle is aligned with reformed theology, that the whole Biblical foundation is sovereign creation, fall and redemption.

NOt to surprise you, but...I, too, am quite reformed (gasp). I believe in the historical accuracy of the Genesis account. I am OEC, lean towards prog. creat., reformed...that's why I like the blogs I mentioned before....I've learned a lot from you guys.

I don't want to confuse you (please no insult intended, this makes my head spin too), but one has to consider a few things.

No, in fact, love debating this, makes me, I hope, sharper....I will admit that my focus and love has always been biology and I am weaker in philosophy, so I am unfamiliar with the one you mentioned above.

[quote="august"
1. Did God, in the initial creation, create a temporal or eternal creation? I know one always jumps to the conclusion that it must be temporal, but consider this: Was creation before the fall meant to last forever, or did the fall lead to the entry of death and the limitation of lifespans? More simply: Did man "fall" into time? [/quote]

Good question....at the heart of it...I don't know, intriguing to ponder....I wonder, though, don't you think that the very language of Geneisis implies a timeline? God created all of the elements to measure time, even light at the very beginning, so I wouldn't doubt that He created time at that...time.

2. What then, is eternity? Is it complete timelessness, or is it simply an unending duration of time?

hmm, not thought about this a lot....eternity/infinity is a crazy concept in and of itself. Reminds me of my calculus days when we talked about limits.

3. What is creation's relation to eternity? More specifically, what is man's relation to eternity? Does mankind have a specific starting point in time, with an eternal future?

[quote="august"
4. What is God's relationship to creation, and vice versa? [/quote]
could you be more specific about the vice versa if I end up not adressing it? God is supreme, He is above the creation, He was not created, HE is outside of time, He is responsible for the creation, He sustains the creation.

This is how I see it. The initial creation was outside of the temporal. It was "in the beginning", meaning that it was starting principle or axiom (John 1). As such, to speculate about the length of creation days and the way it happened is to speculate about something that happened in the "eternal" sphere, prior to the fall. That pretty much makes a mockery of any empirical efforts, even if we invoke front-loading with occasional tinkering in the creation process, materialistic macro-evolution, or six-day creation. It also makes a mockery of trying to date things prior to the fall, which is why I reckon we see so many conflicting arguments about the age of things.

Interesting. I wou;dn't disagree with this out of hand, I would be hesistant to immediatley throw out the existence of time prior to the fall. He did make the sun and the earth, were they not revolving around their orbits? Was light of a different nature? Can we even imagine what this creation outside of time means from a creation standpoint. Meaning how would this change the physical laws?

However, this still would not exclude a God who chooses to use genes/chromosomes/forms from multiple forms to create higher levels organisms. We share some genes with bacteria, could He have chosen to use this? Sure, why not? COuld He hav chosen to merge two chromosomes to create one in humans? If it pleases Him, absolutely (I know this sounds like a sop-out, but hey, He is God)

Here it gets a little more complicated. Because God essentially called into existence (Heb 11:3) all of humanity and all of creation, for that matter, in the eternal sphere, the fall causes it to be worked out in the temporal. Seen in Biblical terms, creation of mankind (Gen 1), is in the eternal, while in Gen 2, where man becomes man as we see him today, man is in the process of becoming supratemporal (the coexistence in the temporal and eternal). For man to become a living soul in Gen 2 assumes that man already had to be created before. In Gen 1 we read "created" (bara), while in Gen 2 we read "formed" (yatsar) for mankind, which means to mould, fashion or form. In that second act, that is where man "becomes". With the fall, man becomes bodily temporal, man "falls" into temporality.

To answer my own question then, it is impossible for us to determine whether everything evolved from a universal common ancestor, or popped into being as is. To argue for or against either is to falsify science, since science can only function in the temporal, it is methodologically inextricably linked to time.

Ok, I follow that

Anyhow, this is a very basic description of where I am coming from, just in case you thought I was being difficult for the sake of being difficult and have no counter-ideas. There are many concepts inherent here that I cannot do justice to in such a limited space, but hopefully it shows a little of my approach.

Yep, If I follow correctly then, the very idea of the creation before the fall being outside time negates any empirical evidence from being meaningful towards understanding creation.

So we have a pretty fundamental difference here. I am working on the presumption that the creation before the fall is temporal, meaning that we can examine the evidence trusting that it is indicative of a timeline, whereas a non-temporal pre-fall creation would mean that no data we gather means anything since the two "world" conditions differ and, as you say, science is dependent of time, cause and effect, etc.

I must confess, this is a relatively new idea to me....Is this a common biblical interpretation? Given that I have been in reformed churches my entire life, I have never heard it (or maybe it went in one ear and out the other, who knows), nor have I heard it from any of the more common creation/evolution books. (I mentioned before that my weakness would be philosophy and deeper theology, I have a science degree, not a theology degree )

however, does this exclude God using similar forms/genes/chromosomes, withholding time from the equation?

[zoegirl]

Clarification:

I have heard before that the creation before the fall was eternal, many YEC's support an eternal creation, without death, etc. ....but not that it outside of time, which, as you pointed out, can be a separate issue than eternal.

[zoegirl]

Ok, still thinking on this

Would you elabolrate on your position concenring "eternal creation". I have heard of the position of the creation before fall being eternal. I have alwasy heard this meant that it was within time but, as you say, uneneding time..... But you are also implying that it was also outside time.

See, to me it is crucial to determing if indeed, no empirical data is trustworthy because the creation was outside of time.

If it was simply eternal but temporal, then I would think that data is significant....

If it was eternal and outside of time, then yes, no data could have significance.

So if it was outside of time...no "days" before the fall? no dawn, no dusk, no revolutions? or were these events so fundamentally different as to not indicate a passage of time?

I know this is quite off topic, so feel free to redirect to a new thread or PM or whatever of you wanted to keep this back to c'somal function.

[Byblos]

I agree that panspermia and deistic creation/theistic evolution is wrong, but they are wrong because, for me, they don't align with the God in SCirpture. BOth of these imply a God who simply placed the ingredients in the grand bowl of earth and simply sat back to watch, an impersonal God as far as His creation goes. So I would reject those models on scriptural grounds.

I'm not a theistic evolutionist per se but I just don't get this at all (nothing personal Zoegirl). I've heard this argument wrt theistic evolution and I simply don't understand why it's summarily dismissed. Why, in a TE model, would God be considered impersonal? Why the front-loading assumption that puts limits on God's abilities? Is a newborn created front-loaded with the totality of his knowledge or is it gradually acquired over time through education, life experiences, environment, trial and error, etc. etc.? Doesn't a child need the assistance of his parents, almost totally dependent on them at first, then the dependence diminishes over time as the child grows, matures, and is able to take care of himself? Why couldn't God have intended for the universe to function exactly like that? Fourteen billion years is but a nanosecond for a timeless God yet He still interferes with his creation, nudging it, guiding it, personally and physically attending to it. When God said we are created in his image, would that imply a physical image as well, or just spiritual? Perhaps what differentiates us from lower animals is exactly that, that we are spiritually made in God's image, that at some point we were given a conscience, a spiritual awareness, irrespective of our physical nature and how it came about. Is this an unfathomable feat for a sovereign God? Of course not. Is this the method he chose? I don't know but I wouldn't discount it off hand.

[zoegirl]

Yeah, I can see that, that's why I lean more towards prog. creat. I am stil undecided at to whether I am more of a TE. There is a sprectrum of beliefs with TE as well. Some that God just started it all, more of a deist idea. I don't think what you describe is like this. You are describeing (if I am hearing right) the action of a personal God. God is wise enough and powerful enough to develop something like you said. Even you bring into to play the idea that God guides and nudges it. Some don't do that, however, and claim that He simply is not involved except for the beginning.

My caveat stems from scripture. Genesis points to a God that is intimatley invovled. So I think that rules out the Deist idea.

To me, Genesis points to a God that is in compete control and Knows exactly what will happen and what HE wants to happen. So in the end, I think evoltuion as a term really can't be applied, since it does imply a meaningless process. Prog. Creat. still seems the most accurate term for me now, athough I like your description.

[Byblos]

Yeah, I can see that, that's why I lean more towards prog. creat. I am stil undecided at to whether I am more of a TE. There is a sprectrum of beliefs with TE as well. Some that God just started it all, more of a deist idea. I don't think what you describe is like this. You are describeing (if I am hearing right) the action of a personal God. God is wise enough and powerful enough to develop something like you said. Even you bring into to play the idea that God guides and nudges it. Some don't do that, however, and claim that He simply is not involved except for the beginning.

Let me put it this way, no matter where one falls on the spectrum of this issue, one cannot possibly claim to be Christian and not believe that God interferes intimately with his creation, otherwise they would deny Christ and who he is.

My caveat stems from scripture. Genesis points to a God that is intimatley invovled. So I think that rules out the Deist idea.

I certainly agree.

To me, Genesis points to a God that is in compete control and Knows exactly what will happen and what HE wants to happen. So in the end, I think evoltuion as a term really can't be applied, since it does imply a meaningless process. Prog. Creat. still seems the most accurate term for me now, athough I like your description.

I tend to lean towards progressive creation myself as well but I won't discount TE altogether either, particularly since I think the front-loading and non-interference issues are grave assumptions that need not apply for TE to be true.

[August]

Hi Zoegirl, thanks again for the reply. I am really enjoying the conversation. I hope that you don't feel that I am attacking or belittling you in any way. I appreciate your desire to be faithful and Scriptural.

Ahh, got it. Well, I still don't see why the composer analogy or pressive creationism implies God is superfluous. I have never seen this. I know this is the major contention for those critical of PC. For me, I am starting with scripture. And I see that in Genesis God is intimately invovled in His creation, He plans it, He wils it, nothing is left to accident. I believe firmly in the sovereignty of God. I agree that panspermia and deistic creation/theistic evolution is wrong, but they are wrong because, for me, they don't align with the God in SCirpture. BOth of these imply a God who simply placed the ingredients in the grand bowl of earth and simply sat back to watch, an impersonal God as far as His creation goes. So I would reject those models on scriptural grounds.

BUT, I also see in scripture that God chooses to not reveal all that He did. He does not choose to reveal the creation of microscopic organisms, biological processes, subatomic particles, the mysteries of the big bang (or however it started), DNA, genetics... When God revealed to Moses His creative acts, He choose to highlight His omnipotence, His glory, His majesty...."I did this! I did it with order and care and attention" If God meant to reveal all that He did, it would fill a ridiculous amount of books/hard drives whatever. He choose to not reveal why He created such weird creatures as the platypus or aquatic mammals or even why there are similar chromosomal pieces between humans and chimps. I know that many feel that Genesis reveals how He created organsims (He created them by His will...that's that) and feel that this eliminates any possibility that God used a process, but I don't see it. If it is accepted that He did not reveal all of His creative acts then I think it is highly presumptious of us to limit HIm by saying it had to by a certain way. I firmly agree that it was by His will, I just am willing to think that His will might have included using a process.

See, to me, anybody who is a non-believer who initially supports evolution will have to first see if there is evidence of design. I doubt that any science will ever be able to affirm that the designer is the Judeo-Christian God. I think all it can do it point to a designer. But again, here other apologetics will work. Not to mention that I firmly believe that God initiates a person believing. Supporting reformed theology, I believe He calls first. He can use His creation to do that calling, but to those whose hearts are hardened I doubt the creation means much.

I understand. But like I said, it looks like you are "adding" God to the equation, when it is not necessary. Sure you can claim to start from Scripture, but nothing that you say needs Scripture to describe reality. That is why I say that it may seem as if God is either superfluous or even not needed in the very basis of your view. What positive argument can you put forward for God's necessity in progressive creation through what seems to be natural processes?

Necessity means that it is logically impossible for the contrary to be true. The contradiction I see in your position is that you argue for a process in creation, but that process then becomes the necessity, which leads to God creating contingent on the process. You may then argue that God created the process too, which deals with that objection, but that to me holds several problems. Firstly, we don't read that God created processes, He created what we see. Secondly, created processes are not distinguishable from "natural" processes, which again leads us back to the necessity of God argument. Following on from that, the "creative" processes as currently defined are exactly the processes that are proposed by atheism to disprove the necessity of God in creation! Thirdly, those processes are presumed to still be operational today (that is the very methodology by which they have been defined), while we read in Scripture that God has completed His creative work.

Should you then argue that God created by directing the process, we have still not escaped the contingency. God's creative powers are then limited by what the processes will allow.

NOt to surprise you, but...I, too, am quite reformed (gasp). I believe in the historical accuracy of the Genesis account. I am OEC, lean towards prog. creat., reformed...that's why I like the blogs I mentioned before....I've learned a lot from you guys.

That is nice to hear. And don't think for a second that I am questioning your faith or salvation. It is absolutely not the case.

Interesting. I wou;dn't disagree with this out of hand, I would be hesistant to immediatley throw out the existence of time prior to the fall. He did make the sun and the earth, were they not revolving around their orbits? Was light of a different nature? Can we even imagine what this creation outside of time means from a creation standpoint. Meaning how would this change the physical laws?

The moment I submitted this I knew there would be a host of follow-on questions. Remember, I started by asking what eternity was, and we have a couple of options. Time, as we now experience it, is temporal duration. We sense that it progresses. But why do we sense it that way? We get older, and we know that we will all pass on. The progress of time is inevitable unto death. Death is the end of the temporal, is it not? At our death, we pass into eternity. No, let me rephrase that. At death, our souls are freed from the temporal and exists in the eternal. Death is then the boundary between the temporal and the eternal. But we know that sin, and subsequently death, entered the world after creation, thus erecting that barrier. That is also why we read about our redemption as a restoration. To what are we being restored? It is the pre-death condition, that which Adam and Eve had.

As for the sun, the planets and so forth, we have to answer the question of whether time is necessarily bound to objects, or is space-time a function of the observer? Are space and time inextricably and necessarily bound? I know our current proposals answer that they are, time cannot exist without something to relate it to. This again gets more complicated, by several levels.

Positing space-time as the only reality is questionable. In fact, I flatly deny it, because I believe in an eternal dimension. But there are, according to classic reformed theology, two sides of reality. The first side is in fact that which we see as entities. That which we observe is the entity side of reality. The second side to reality is the law-side. This is the modal framework wherein everything can exist or happen. It constructs a set of modalities in which entities operate, such as physical, biotic, ethical, technical, aesthetic etc. Creation then, is essentially "law-promise". If you do X, Y will result. It also allows humanity freedom, within that law-structure. God upholds both the law framework and the entities by His power.

So then, back to time. You can see immediately that time has a different meaning within each of the modalities. I can post that if you want. For example, we sense the biotic aspect of time: Lifespan and its order - birth, maturity, adulthood and dying. But there is also an analytical aspect, for example - the prior and posterior in logical argumentation. The conclusion though, is that time becomes a third dimension of reality. This dimension underlies the other two by equally having two sides, the law side of time and the entity side of time. However, we need to be careful, because our own faith-soul experience transcends time.

Finally then, at the time of creation, what was created? First the modalities, and then the entities. This contains both an unchanging (modalities) and changing (entities). Creation, in this context, can then be seen as the instantaneous coming into existence of the modalities, because if they are unchanging, time has no effect on them, and the progressive "becoming" of the entities, the process of change. In our limited physical view of both time and the entities, we will seek to reconcile time progression as we perceive it with creation. But as I demonstrated above, that physical version of time only started at the moment that death entered the world through sin. The passing of time during creation has little to do with our current perception, which is limited by the modal. In other words, the earth may have rotated and orbited the sun, in fact, we know it did from the descriptions of Eden. But to say that their perception of time then is congruent with our perception of time is wrong. I don't know how they perceived time, but I take you back to my first definition: Eternity can be seen as outside time (God, because He cannot create time if He is subject to it), or an endless duration with a specific start (which is how I think creation was supposed to function, and still does). Our perception of the second is limited by the entry of death.

Phew. I hope that makes some kind of sense to you.

However, this still would not exclude a God who chooses to use genes/chromosomes/forms from multiple forms to create higher levels organisms. We share some genes with bacteria, could He have chosen to use this? Sure, why not? COuld He hav chosen to merge two chromosomes to create one in humans? If it pleases Him, absolutely (I know this sounds like a sop-out, but hey, He is God)

No it does not exclude that possibility. But for me, to speculate on that is to put man next to God, and in fact, in the place of God. And since we are limited by the physical, we don't know the modal, and that is what determines the "becoming" of the entities. It also does not account for the supra-temporal human. At what point during all of this process did Gen 2:7 happen? 6 million years ago? 50,000 years ago? 6000 years ago? How does this account for the distinction between creation and "becoming"? An entity has to be created before it can become anything else. Are you saying that mankind was created soulless, and then received a soul sometime later, when two chromosomes merged, for example? We know that subsequently, we get a soul while still in the womb.

So we have a pretty fundamental difference here. I am working on the presumption that the creation before the fall is temporal, meaning that we can examine the evidence trusting that it is indicative of a timeline, whereas a non-temporal pre-fall creation would mean that no data we gather means anything since the two "world" conditions differ and, as you say, science is dependent of time, cause and effect, etc.

I must confess, this is a relatively new idea to me....Is this a common biblical interpretation? Given that I have been in reformed churches my entire life, I have never heard it (or maybe it went in one ear and out the other, who knows), nor have I heard it from any of the more common creation/evolution books. (I mentioned before that my weakness would be philosophy and deeper theology, I have a science degree, not a theology degree )

The idea of modalities is quite common. I don't think that it is commonly applied to creation in contemporary literature, however I also don't think that many think it through to this extent. We seem to accept post-modern presuppositions too easily, which immediately leads us down a rabbit trail of physical concepts of time.

however, does this exclude God using similar forms/genes/chromosomes, withholding time from the equation?

No, it does not. In fact, given the existence of modalities, we predict similarities.

I hope this also answered all the follow-on questions you raised.

God bless.

[August]

I tend to lean towards progressive creation myself as well but I won't discount TE altogether either, particularly since I think the front-loading and non-interference issues are grave assumptions that need not apply for TE to be true.

Byblos, read in my response to ZG above what I said about the processes, maybe that helps us go somewhere with the discussion.

The basic problem with TE is that it makes God superfluous. If we assume evolutionary processes, then postulating God is not necessary, but contingent on the process. And I dealt above with the argument that God created the processes. I am confused as to what a consistent TE position holds. There is the front-loading position, which postulates that the first life form was loaded with all the necessary requirements to branch out and become life as we know it, and God wanted. The other position that you mention is similar, but also maintains that God tinkered with creation from time to time in addition to the natural processes, i.e. both primary and secondary creation...If I understand it, the second position is what you are talking about, and what ZG seems to hold to. The simple question is then, where do you draw the boundaries between primary and secondary creation? What is necessary, and what is contingent for each of them?

A further issue I will raise is that if we do not accept direct necessary creation, on what basis can we accept direct necessary redemption? We cannot on the one hand argue for a contingent creation by secondary cause, and on the other hand for redemption that is personal, direct and necessary. (It is necessary because that is the way that God decreed it from the beginning of the world).

[godslanguage]

I think Panspermia would be out of the question, that would require a more advanced or equivalent life form to humans, the question would arise: who created the aliens or how did the aliens come about? Then it really boils down to two things, it would either be evolution or creationism. I believe ID is more intermediate and can argue for both positions, in terms of the hard-scientific evidence. In effect, Panspermia is actually obsolete even if it was true, simply because the aliens would still be rendered or confined to either being created by God or by naturalistic means, also because we are discussing cause and effect, which is the most important variable to consider since we are dealing with a creative process for biological systems.
ID argues that goal directed intelligence is essential for producing information in any system, I find that is the one very element that evolutionists have serious trouble dealing with. Matter by itself does not carry information, and information does not come about through naturalistic unintelligent means (as far as we know). An evolutionist might argue that a binary base 2 notation of 1 and 0 represents voltage levels can come about naturally, but that does not mean that information can come about naturally, only that electricity is inherent in nature. If the cause of information is mind, then how does mind now come into the scene, how would you explain mind physically at that point. A string of binary code might represent a bunch of electrical signals/impulses, but nature doesn't look at the actually sequence of the bits and doesn't interpret them, it also doesn't care for how it's processed or how accurate it is.
Why are they so accurate and precise, why would nature want anything to do with information?
Information constitutes making sense of a logical code embedded in a system that can be interpreted, nothing that nature cares to create in the first place, and it's illogical to think it would. We all know the wonders a base 2 system can generate (ie: the output on your monitor, the internet etc...), the genetic code in biological systems as we know it is a
Base 4 system. If a non-believer dismisses this type of evidence, they will definitely state God as a un-necessary agent. Therefore, it's not whether the non-believer feels its necessary for Gods existence or not, its whether they can count on nature to produce what God has done.

[zoegirl]

I tend to lean towards progressive creation myself as well but I won't discount TE altogether either, particularly since I think the front-loading and non-interference issues are grave assumptions that need not apply for TE to be true.

Byblos, read in my response to ZG above what I said about the processes, maybe that helps us go somewhere with the discussion.

The basic problem with TE is that it makes God superfluous. If we assume evolutionary processes, then postulating God is not necessary, but contingent on the process. And I dealt above with the argument that God created the processes. I am confused as to what a consistent TE position holds. There is the front-loading position, which postulates that the first life form was loaded with all the necessary requirements to branch out and become life as we know it, and God wanted. The other position that you mention is similar, but also maintains that God tinkered with creation from time to time in addition to the natural processes, i.e. both primary and secondary creation...If I understand it, the second position is what you are talking about, and what ZG seems to hold to. The simple question is then, where do you draw the boundaries between primary and secondary creation? What is necessary, and what is contingent for each of them?

But like I said, it looks like you are "adding" God to the equation, when it is not necessary. Sure you can claim to start from Scripture, but nothing that you say needs Scripture to describe reality. That is why I say that it may seem as if God is either superfluous or even not needed in the very basis of your view. What positive argument can you put forward for God's necessity in progressive creation through what seems to be natural processes?

First and foremost, I agree that a process is NOT NECESSARY. God certainly does not NEED to use anything. He could use seaprate direct creation for everything (I don't exclude this for a process, I think everything He created is a unique creation). He could have poofed everything into existence, or could have created the entire universe in a single creation event and then called it good. Ultimatley I believe God used a process or did things in sequential steps because HE CHOSE to do so , not because it was a necessity. I see in scripture 1) a sequential series of created events, He used days (or ages, whatever, point is, He chose to use steps) 2) a God who enjoys working with His creation (taking time to step back and establish it "goodness" "rightness", and any God who creates a platypus and the okapi, not to mention blue-footed boobies HAS to enjoy His creation ) 3) and I see this from observational science.

YOu say that nothing I have said requires scripture. But I have already addressed that Genesis is not meant to be a how-to book of everything that occurred. If He chose to not reveal al that He made, then is it not unreasonable to think that Genesis is not a compete revelation of creation (note that I didn't day it doesn't reveal God's character). I think that even if the fal didn't occur, God would enjoy us investigating His creation. certainly things woud have been different because our reationships with God and the creation were not affected, but I think God enjoys our thinking about Him and how He did things. Doubt we can even remotely understand it completely, so God certainly would have chosen to reveal it all. Point is, GEnesis does not reveal everything about the creation, although it establishes God's role. HE DID IT, HE is POWERFUL, HE IS SOVEREIGN, and WHAT HE WILLED, HAPPENED.

Firstly, we don't read that God created processes, He created what we see. Secondly, created processes are not distinguishable from "natural" processes, which again leads us back to the necessity of God argument. Following on from that, the "creative" processes as currently defined are exactly the processes that are proposed by atheism to disprove the necessity of God in creation! Thirdly, those processes are presumed to still be operational today (that is the very methodology by which they have been defined), while we read in Scripture that God has completed His creative work.

Umm, He created in a series of creative acts, wouldn't you consider this a process? To your second point, I wouldn't necessariy disagree, but then, there's not accounting for an atheist's mind . Two people can look at a crime scence and see the same evidence and draw two conclusions. To your third point, there are plenty of processes, forces, laws, that were established at the creation and yet are still operational. God established all of the physical laws, and yet they didn't cease to exist after the sixth day.

Also, I am not saying that events could have happened without God. Without even looking at scripture, we see limimtations in biological processes. CErtainly we know there are problems with the abiogenesis models, the development of organic molecules, DNA cannot spontaneously polymerize, the development of the cell, the development of the metabolic pathways. We also see limitations in microevolution. See I think we are seeing the evidence of creation and because of our fallen nature and our finite understanding, see it as being a natural process.

To your primary and secondary creation, I don't see the distinction. even if God used a process, He is still the ultimate cause and it is always the primary creation. I don't see it.

A further issue I will raise is that if we do not accept direct necessary creation, on what basis can we accept direct necessary redemption? We cannot on the one hand argue for a contingent creation by secondary cause, and on the other hand for redemption that is personal, direct and necessary. (It is necessary because that is the way that God decreed it from the beginning of the world).

Wow, well, I disagree that what we are considering is not a necessary creation, but that might be something we have to agree to disagree on. I have always said that prog. creat. and SOME forms of TE still describe a personal God. Ken Millers' idea of a deistic creation does not match with the scripture, so I disagree.


As to the time elements, I think that wil have to be somehting I continue to think on. Again I woud necessarily reject it, but I think by and large, God created us with trustworthy senses, I don't think we need to reject what we have discovered about the age of the universe.

[Byblos]

A further issue I will raise is that if we do not accept direct necessary creation, on what basis can we accept direct necessary redemption? We cannot on the one hand argue for a contingent creation by secondary cause, and on the other hand for redemption that is personal, direct and necessary. (It is necessary because that is the way that God decreed it from the beginning of the world).

Wow, well, I disagree that what we are considering is not a necessary creation, but that might be something we have to agree to disagree on. I have always said that prog. creat. and SOME forms of TE still describe a personal God. Ken Millers' idea of a deistic creation does not match with the scripture, so I disagree.


As to the time elements, I think that wil have to be somehting I continue to think on. Again I woud necessarily reject it, but I think by and large, God created us with trustworthy senses, I don't think we need to reject what we have discovered about the age of the universe.

I would only add to what Zoegirl said here that, again, although I don't accept the premise that TE results in a secondary or indirect creation, why should there be a parallel or symmetry between that and God's salvation plan? Who is putting these limitations and why? Second, and this is perhaps the Cartesian product of my Catholic background speaking here, I tend to make a distinction between our spiritual salvation (a direct cause of God's grace) and our physical resurrection (a direct consequence of Jesus' bodily resurrection and his second advent). Once the material and the physical are taken out of the salvation equation, I think CE (Christianic Evolution where God is creator and intervener so as to distinguish it from any other form of TE) becomes a plausible alternative.

[August]

Well ok, I am going to leave it there. Thanks for the discussion.

[zoegirl]

Thank you, you have left me with much to think upon

[godslanguage]

This discussion is not over!!!!!!!!!

August, it seems we have failed you?

[August]

GL, it's not a case of anything like that. I guess I realized how hard it is to have discussions of this kind when we don't share a frame of reference, and we don't have a common understanding of something as simple as the Biblical ground motive. I may have become lost in my own research and thoughts too much, and assumed that it would be easily communicable and understood.

Was there anything specific you still wanted to address or see addressed?