But I really DO think that Christian Darwinism is an oxymoron

_{Denyse O'Leary

December 11, 2010

Darwinism, Religion}

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Something I wrote recently seems to have sparked quite the little discussion. (Dang! Everybody talks to Barry, nobody talks to me … 🙂 )

Briefly, I noted that a friend’s post had been removed from a Christian Darwinist site because the moderator felt that he had intimated that Theodosius Dobzhansky was not a Christian. (He was not a Christian by any reasonable standard.)

How can one tell if a person is a Christian, many wanted to know. Isn’t that just making a judgement (judge not, lest ye be …)?

Barry Arrington made the excellent point that asking the person to affirm the Creed may be setting the bar a little high.

Fair enough: When I have used the Creed that way, I aimed to sort out situations where the person darn well knows what the Creed says and how it may differ from his private convictions. And I had good reasons for asking; otherwise, I wouldn’t bother. I have neither time nor inclination for hunting down heresies. (And none of this is written with prejudice to any other religion. It’s just that salesdarwinists currently target confused Christians more than other confused folk. So, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and others, please pardon us Christians as we set the record straight.)

We must say something when someone like Dobzhansky is fronted as a “Christian” to advance the Darwinist cause. I don’t object in principle to other rational criteria for assessing whether someone is a Christian, ones such as Barry offered. The main thing to see here is that a person cannot in good faith believe two doctrines that oppose each other at the most basic level.

Darwinism opposes Christianity in a much more serious way than is generally recognized: The Darwinist must – and usually does – believe that Christianity accidentally evolved amid the noise of neurons and it spread via natural selection.

Thus it was that man created God.

Now, if the Darwinist also believes that Christianity was the result of God’s admittedly spectacular self-revelations (cf the Creed**), then he believes that God created man. Which is it?

More to the point, if the Darwinist also believes that God can do all that the Creed commands* good Christians to believe, he cannot rationally go on to insist that

🙂 man is a part of nature, and Darwin proved it

🙂 God never intervenes in nature, but does it all by Darwinism

So man created God, but no, God created man. Or God created man with the capacity of accidentally evolve an idea of God as an illusion. Why? Because he couldn’t reveal himself?

So yes, I do think Christian Darwinism is an oxymoron, if the Christian Darwinist is unconfused enough to know what he is saying.

It is hardly irrelevant to this discussion that 78% of evolutionary biologists are “pure naturalists” (no God and no free will).

* You cannot become an adult Catholic, so far as I know, without assenting intellectually to the Creed.

**For those for whom the Creed may be a bit challenging, due to age, haste, extreme suffering, emergency, etc., there is also a more basic prayer, the Act of Faith :

O MY GOD, I firmly believe that Thou art one God in three divine persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit; I believe that Thy divine Son became man and died for our sins, and that He shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe these and all the truths which the holy Catholic Church teaches, because Thou hast revealed them, Who canst neither deceive nor be deceived. Amen.

. Now that is either branch of Christianity or Darwin’s neural noise.

Comments

PS: Christians who are Darwinism supporters, do not get to make the definitions up, and are operating at-sufferance of the materialist power brokers. That is what Ruse is serving notice of. Time to wake up and smell the coffee -- beginning to burn in the boiled out pot.kairosfocus_{December 19, 2010
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Bilbo: A cosmos full of dice taking up the 10^80 atoms generally accepted, for the thermodynamically credible lifespan of 50 mn times the generally taken time from the big bang, would not be able to sample 1 in 10^150 of the configurations of just 1,000 bits. In short, a universe full of resources sometimes is not enough. And, Null has aptly cited Ruse on the point that brings out the contradiction or its kissing cousin. G'night GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{December 19, 2010
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Stephen, the library is closing. I'll get to your "one more try" tomorrow.Bilbo I_{December 19, 2010
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Kairo: [b] is trying to assert that we get to a design result through an inherently non-design process that lacks the required horsepower to do the scope of design required. My comment is that {ii} [b] is where there is either a contradiction or its kissing cousin. There is no contradiction. Nor a kissing cousin of one. The only question is whether there have been enough tosses of the die. You and I would say that there haven't been by a long shot. Darwinists would disagree. That is an empirical matter. Not a theological or logical one.Bilbo I_{December 19, 2010
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Nulla: So let me ask you this question: If A) Darwinism requires that even God not know the outcomes of evolution, and B) Christianity maintains that God knew what the outcomes of evolution would be, then C) granting this, then Darwinism and Christianity are incompatible. Yes they would be incompatible. I dispute (A). Darwinism requires that the mutations be random with respect to fitness. This is in no way incompatible with God foreknowing what the mutations will be. Ruse et al are terribly confused about this.Bilbo I_{December 19, 2010
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---Bilbo: “ I’m saying that IF God allowed Darwinian evolution to happen, then it was because it would produce ends that He desired.” You are probably worth one more try. So here goes: What do you mean if God “allowed” it to happen? Who do you think made it happen? You continue to write as if the evolutionary process was something that needed no cause, as if it could have developed on its own, outside the domain of God’s creative act. If evolution happened, however it happened, God was its cause. If God used it, then God caused it and God designed it. Continually, you refer to evolution in the passive voice, [something that was “allowed” to happen] as if someone or something other than God may have brought it into being while God was off doing other things. Please absorb this. If evolution happened, whatever kind of process it was, God designed it. Therefore, if God designed it, it could not have been a Darwinian process, because a Darwinian process is, by definition, an undesigned process. Somehow, you seem to have difficulty with the fact that a “naturalistic” process, even one that uses variations and selections, may be designed to produce a specified outcome, and need not be a “Darwinian” process, which has no specified outcome. ---“I’m saying that God can choose such a process [a purposeless process] if He so desires.” At the moment, you are saying that God could choose a purposeless, mindless process that is almost sure not to work. Earlier, in this same correspondence, you stated, “I don’t think that it can produce a different outcome from the one God intended.” This is a contradiction. Either the process will infallibly produce the specified outcome or it will not. There is no middle point. ---“But if your parents did not cooperate, you would not exist. So God’s will would have been frustrated.” That’s right. Free will agents frustrate God’s will all the time. What does that have to do with the fact that nature, which has no free will, cannot frustrate God’s will? You are looking for a contradiction here that doesn’t exist. Meanwhile, you are missing a multitude of contradictions that I have identified in your own position. ---“And if your parents had married other people and had sex with them, then different people would exist, who do not exist now. And again God’s will would have been frustrated.” What is it about the difference between a natural law and a human will that you do not understand? ---“You claim that God wouldn’t use Darwinian evolution, because it might possibly produce something that wasn’t His will.” Yes, of course. A Darwinian process will produce a different result every time. Why would an omnipotent God set himself up to fail with a formulation like that? More to the point, A Darwinian process is, by definition, one that God didn’t use. As I have stated multiple times, If God used the evolutionary process, then God designed the evolutionary process. If God designed the evolutionary process, then it can’t be a Darwinian evolutionary process, which, by definition, is undesigned. ---“ But you have no problem saying that God used human free will to create you, even though it might possibly have not produced you, but produce someone else instead.” Here we go again. Nature, which must obey God’s laws, is different from humans, who are free to do all kinds of things. If something is different, that means that it is not the same.StephenB_{December 18, 2010
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PS: It is only now that the more aggressive evolutionary materialists have had a generation or two in US culture to build up a critical mass in a cluster of institutions so the people do not have a memory of the fading Christian consensus. This gives them a level of integrated, unchecked, un-balanced systemic power they have never had hitherto, and that is what the new atheists and other radicals such as those trying to redefine marriage against biology, child nurture requisites and history are sensing. Europe passed that point by the turn of C20 in its decision-making elites, and that is a big part of why the C20 was so bloody, focussed on Europe.kairosfocus_{December 18, 2010
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Bilbo: A 6 on a die is odds of 1 in 6, or about 17%. 6 configs is not even 2 4-state base pairs worth of configs [i.e. 16 possibilities]. Just 500 base pairs worth -- about 1,000 times smaller than unicellular animals -- is beyond the configuration-searching resources of he observed cosmos. That is part of why I have objected to darwinism as a claimed body plan level macro-evo mechanism. Going beyond that, the claim is that this is the mechanism that has moved us from an initial unicellular common ancestor to the diversity we see in the world. Which on observed life forms requires 10's - 1,000's of MILLIONS of additional base pairs worth of genetic information, dozens of times over. So, as baseline, the darwinian mechanism is a non-starter once we look at the FSCI-generation challenge. Going beyond that, the canonical Darwinist claim is that random, undirected genetic variation feeding into incremental change in reproductive success of sub-populations in environments, gave rise to the biodiversity in the fossil and current worlds. Randomness, as already noted, is as opposed to purposeful design, and it has different signatures in the information-bearing elements. Not only is it the case that the DNA -- which bears a functional coded information structure -- bears the signatures of purpose, but to claim that a purposeful result on that scope comes about by chance generation, is infeasible. It also is a trying to claim that design came about by non-design. Remember, canonical darwinism asserts that ALL the DNA information came about by non-purposive processes that generate contingency and variation. Chance, in short. My objection is on two levels:
[i] it can't work, and [ii] the attempt to bridge purpose and randomness not only
[a] cuts across the empirically well- warranted signature in the information, but [b] is trying to assert that we get to a design result through an inherently non-design process that lacks the required horsepower to do the scope of design required.
My comment is that {ii} [b] is where there is either a contradiction or its kissing cousin. A design can indeed use constrained, small configuration space random searches as a part of how it works, but it cannot create the large scale functionally specific organisation and associated information that same way. To try to conflate the two is to confuse two different scopes of design challenge. The extrapolation fails, and your die tossing analogy only reveals the gap. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{December 18, 2010
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Bilbo, How would Darwinists be able to determine that God could not know the future? Good question: They can't. Guess what? It doesn't matter for many, even most of them. It's a dogmatic commitment, not some empirical conclusion. Don't take my word for it. Did you read the Michael Ruse article I linked to recently? He's the one saying that if you believe God knew and determined/permitted the outcome of evolution, even in an utterly "hands off" way, you're forsaking Darwinism. I want to stress that point: According to Ruse, and according to numerous other Darwinists, if God did what it seems you're suggesting - letting evolution unfold and, while He may not be intervening directly, He still knows, determines, and desires the various outcomes of evolution - then what you've described is not Darwinism. It's a guided, purposeful, intentional evolution. It's evolution of some variety, but Darwinism it ain't. So let me ask you this question: If A) Darwinism requires that even God not know the outcomes of evolution, and B) Christianity maintains that God knew what the outcomes of evolution would be, then C) granting this, then Darwinism and Christianity are incompatible. You'd agree? Mind you, if you dispute A or B, that's fine, but at least let me knowing if - granting those assumptions - C would be correct. It's obvious, but I'm hoping this will put everyone on the same page here.nullasalus_{December 18, 2010
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Kairo: On oxymorons, SB does have a point. By canonical definition, Darwinism entails denial of purpose and goal-directed process. You are either at a contradiction in terms or perilously close to try to shoehorn design as an implicit, invisible undercurrent to an inherently non-design process. There is no contradiction. The question is one of probability. Assume that I want to get the number six on a die. If I role it six times, I have a very good chance of getting what I want. So I used an "inherently non-design process" to "design" a specific outcome. The question is how many times must I role the "die" to get a living cell? We IDists claim the answer seems to be more times than there have been chances since the universe came into existence. Christian Darwinists, on the other hand, claim that there have been enough chances to get a living cell at least once. Which side is correct? I think IDists are. But I will not reject Christian Darwinists as being theologically inconsistent. As far as the reigning orthodoxy, materialism has been "in" for quite a while, now.Bilbo I_{December 18, 2010
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Bilbo: Christian Darwinism tries to find a bridge to those who don't want to be bridged. For the moment, due to the balance of social power, there is still some admission at sufferance. But a de facto policy of toleration is always subject to shifts in balances of power. And, what recently happened to people like Francis Collins shows the longer term trend as more aggressive darwinists gain enough power to have their way without fear or retaliation from the general public. Appeasement does not work with the fundamentally insatiable. And how this is liable to work out is that Darwinism, from the outset was anti-theistic in conception. Christian Darwinists are heretics in the Darwinist camp. In intellectual terms, as well, to infer to an invisible design is much like the story about he invisible, undetectable gardener. Sooner rather than later someone is coming along to say that the undetectable gardener is undetectable for the excellent reason that he is imaginary. Actually, that is the gist of a dismissal argument I learned in a university survey course over 30 years ago. Design, if it is real, will have signs such as discussed above. And if there are no detectable signs, then design is unlikely. Moreover, a random process -- the claimed source of the contingency on a darwinian process, runs into the config space problem long before you can get sufficiently complex novel function. On oxymorons, SB does have a point. By canonical definition, Darwinism entails denial of purpose and goal-directed process. You are either at a contradiction in terms or perilously close to try to shoehorn design as an implicit, invisible undercurrent to an inherently non-design process. That is why so many key canonical darwinists keep on saying the sort of things they say about a non-foresighted process that did not have us in mind, and if run again would not come up with us. Indeed, the randomness means that something is indeterminate in the process. I can see constrained, relatively small scope random searches within a general functional system that allow some adaptability, robustness and optimisation, but he overall information generation challenge points beyond what darwinian mechanisms could reasonably do. And 1,000 bits of bio-info is not a lot. More seriously, the evidence points to design, if we do not allow a priori imposition of materialistic assumptions. And, unless that is pointed out and backed up now, the politics of institutional capture may make a system that is ill-founded on the merits, evolutionary materialism, seize such control as to become a dogmatic reigning orthodoxy. This is beginning to happen, as the new atheist rants show. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{December 18, 2010
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Phaedros: Are you certain about this? Scientists believe that one moment is not dependent on a previous moment? They don’t believe that one state determines the outcome of the next? That’s absurd. I think scientists would say that one moment is dependent upon a previous moment, but is underdetermined by it.Bilbo I_{December 18, 2010
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StephenB: I know that you take this proposition seriously, which is why you think that an evolutionary process could exercise its equivalent of “free will” and produce an outcome different from the one God intended. No, I don't think that it can produce a different outcome from the one God intended, unless He allows it do so. But then He would still know what the actual outcome would be. You are trying to define God’s purposeful creative act and its intended outcome in terms of Darwinistic purposelessness and its attendant unpredictable outcomes. Thus, you are reduced to saying that God had to get spectacularly lucky in order to achieve His desired ends. Wrong. I'm saying that IF God allowed Darwinian evolution to happen, then it was because it would produce ends that He desired. Further, you assume that an omnipotent God chose a process that requires luck. I'm assuming nothing. I'm saying that God can choose such a process, if He so desires. Further, you have forfeited any possible explanation for the existence of the immaterial soul that informs the human body. You cannot even approach that subject with your world view. If the soul is made of a different substance than the physical world, then yes, I agree that a physical explanation for it does not exist. As I said to vjtorley, though I tend to favor substance dualism, I'm not sure it's the only explanation for mind. It might be possible that God has endowed physical nature with emergent mental properties that become apparent when living things reach a certain level of organized complexity. To create homo sapiens with the power to procreate exactly as God intended, a set of circumstance over which nature had no control, is not the same thing as creating me personally through the free cooperation of my parents, a set of circumstances over which my parents did have control. But if your parents did not cooperate, you would not exist. So God's will would have been frustrated. And if your parents had married other people and had sex with them, then different people would exist, who do not exist now. And again God's will would have been frustrated. How is it that you do not see the inconsistency of your position? You claim that God wouldn't use Darwinian evolution, because it might possibly produce something that wasn't His will. But you have no problem saying that God used human free will to create you, even though it might possibly have not produced you, but produce someone else instead.Bilbo I_{December 18, 2010
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Hi Kairo, Yes, I think you're argument for ID is probably right. This is different, however, from arguing that Christian Darwinism is an oxymoron.Bilbo I_{December 18, 2010
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Bilbo- "The view of many scientists is that events at the most basic level of nature are stochastic or random, not determined. This is why events would be analogical to free will, where events are also not determined." Are you certain about this? Scientists believe that one moment is not dependent on a previous moment? They don't believe that one state determines the outcome of the next? That's absurd.Phaedros_{December 18, 2010
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---Bilbo: "The view of many scientists is that events at the most basic level of nature are stochastic or random, not determined. This is why events would be analogical to free will, where events are also not determined." I know that you take this proposition seriously, which is why you think that an evolutionary process could exercise its equivalent of "free will" and produce an outcome different from the one God intended. You are trying to define God's purposeful creative act and its intended outcome in terms of Darwinistic purposelessness and its attendant unpredictable outcomes. Thus, you are reduced to saying that God had to get spectacularly lucky in order to achieve His desired ends. Further, you assume that an omnipotent God chose a process that requires luck. Further, you have forfeited any possible explanation for the existence of the immaterial soul that informs the human body. You cannot even approach that subject with your world view. ---"Now you claim that God created you." Yes, of course. ---"Yet that happened through a long series of free, undetermined events. Not solely. God created man and woman with the capacity to reproduce, just as He created them with the power to think and choose. He did not create “nature” that same way. Parents are, in a sense, co-creators with God with respect to reproduction. The former freely choose when and if to mate, but only because God designed the conditions that made it possible. God created me with the co-operation of my parents, and my parents begat me through that same process. To create is not to beget. A creator is always on a higher level than the creature, but a begetter is equal to the one begotten. In keeping with that point, nature has no free will. The human reproductive process cannot decide to start operating differently than it does. That is because God created things to have a nature and only free will human beings can pervert their own nature. A human heart, a physical organ, does not have the freedom to start functioning like a liver. "You find no inconsistency with that thought." There is no inconsistency. Nature has physical laws, people have free wills. God's creative power is involved in every birth. --"Yet you insist it is inconsistent to think that God created homo sapiens through undetermined events." To create homo sapiens with the power to procreate exactly as God intended, a set of circumstance over which nature had no control, is not the same thing as creating me personally through the free cooperation of my parents, a set of circumstances over which my parents did have control.StephenB_{December 18, 2010
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PS: This is of course relevant to the Christian Darwinist position. For, if we have reliable empirical signs of design that show us that no random genetic variation mechanism will be likely to generate significant increments in functional biological information -- culling on differential reproductive success requires prior bio-functional viability and it is to get to such viability in cases of 500 and more additional DNA base pairs that is the question -- then the viability of darwinian explanations as mechanisms for macro-evo, at body plan level is severely undermined.kairosfocus_{December 18, 2010
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Bilbo: While the random and the volitional exhibit high contingency alike (by contrast with mechanical necessity), they do so in very different ways. The volitional reflects intelligence, goals, means-ends matching, and purpose. The random simply reflects a chance distribution of one kind or another. So, for instance, while it is possible to generate random alphanumeric strings with the statistical patterns of English writing, once we get to any significant string-length [say 130 - 150 characters] it will be plain that the volitional will be meaningful relative to sentences, but the stochastic will be overwhelmingly meaningless. The same would hold for a random bit string contrasted with a program code. The irregularity will be common to both, but one will be meaningful the other meaningless. The reason for this -- apart from the difference between the intelligent choosing mind and randomness -- is that meaningful strings are an utterly tiny fraction of the relevant configuration space, once the strings are of significant length. Indeed, this is one way to see the point of digitally coded, functionally specific complex information as a signature of intelligence. And this, too is a reason why we can sharply dispute the concept that out of chemical noise in some warm pond or volcano vent or whatever, language wrote itself, meaningful codes wrote themselves, and algorithms wrote themselves, even as molecules that just happened to be there arranged themselves into executing machinery. Going beyond that, the increments in such dFSCI to get to novel. embryologically feasible body plans by chance contingency is even more vastly remote. So much so that it is practically impossible. For, even though in principle random distributions can mimic any intelligent message, the deep isolation of the intelligent arrangements in the config spaces means that this is not a realistic expectation on the gamut of our observed cosmos. This -- though at first it sounds like glorified common sense -- is in fact one of the core, revolutionary insights of design theory. For, it means that we have an empirically reliable signature of intelligence: meaningfully functional, specific and complex information is a sign of purposeful intelligence at work. Thus, on the manifestations of dFSCI, cell-based life is designed, and major body plans are designed. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{December 18, 2010
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Nullasalus, How would Darwinists be able to determine that God could not know the future?Bilbo I_{December 18, 2010
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StephenB: Nature, by my definition (my dialogue partners never define their terms, they just throw them out there) consists of the material universe, nothing more. I can live with that. Why would you expect nature, which obeys physical laws, to operate like a free will agents, who use physical laws to serve their own ends? The view of many scientists is that events at the most basic level of nature are stochastic or random, not determined. This is why events would be analogical to free will, where events are also not determined. If such is the case, then God has created nature with something very similar to free will. Now you claim that God created you. Yet that happened through a long series of free, undetermined events. You find no inconsistency with that thought. Yet you insist it is inconsistent to think that God created homo sapiens through undetermined events. I find your thinking processes to be very inconsistent.Bilbo I_{December 18, 2010
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above @126. To me, rationality requires the ability to grasp reason's principles, apprehend the natural moral law, reflect on one's own moral behavior, execute moral acts for which he is morally responsible, and, by extension, conceive of such a thing as justice and form opinions about what it means. In keeping with that point, a human, unlike an animal, can militate against reason, pervert his will, and, in time, his nature.StephenB_{December 18, 2010
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---nullasalus: "A minor technicality, but: Wouldn’t evolution have also been ‘designed’ to produce quite a lot more than that? Animals, plants, and so on?" Absolutely. Thanks for the fraternal clarification.StephenB_{December 17, 2010
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StephenB, I am arguing only that, if evolution happened, it was designed in a very precise way to to produce the bodies of homo sapiens. A minor technicality, but: Wouldn't evolution have also been 'designed' to produce quite a lot more than that? Animals, plants, and so on?nullasalus_{December 17, 2010
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---Bilbo: ""But it’s not at all clear that evolution needs to be guided in order to achieve whatever outcome God wants. God wanted you to exist, but He did not control all the decisions that were made that resulted in your birth." I am arguing only that, if evolution happened, it was designed in a very precise way to to produce the bodies of homo sapiens. That point has little or nothing to do with what went on later. Nor does it have anything to do with man's immortal soul, which cannot be produced by evolution or any other physical process. With the arrival of humankind, free will agents began making design decisions of their own, none of which were directed. ---Those were made by a very long series of human choices, most of them made freely." Yes, of course. ---"Though you insist that Nature cannot have free will (or its analogical equivalent — randomness), it is not at all clear that God agrees with you." Nature, by my definition (my dialogue partners never define their terms, they just throw them out there) consists of the material universe, nothing more. A will is an immaterial faculty of the soul by which we make decisions. Why would you expect nature, which obeys physical laws, to operate like a free will agents, who use physical laws to serve their own ends? ---"If natural selection acting upon random mutation can produce us, then it could be that God allowed natural selection to act upon random mutations to produce us." As I wrote earlier, if God used the process, then God designed the process. Your use of the word "allow" suggests that God was using a process that he didn't design. That would make no sense. Inasmuch as God designed the process he used, he would certainly "allow" it to play out and produce the results he wanted. What else would he do--design a process that would not produce the results he wanted? We are, after all, talking about an omnipotent God. By your language, it appears that you think God carefully designed a process that would most likely not have produced the results he wanted. ---"There is no inconsistency to that." I would be remiss if I didn't tell you that your world view is eminently inconsistent.StephenB_{December 17, 2010
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above: I'd like to suggest that you immerse yourself a lot more into the research literature on animal cognition before making judgments one way or the other. A good place to start are the articles referenced in the dolphin paper you address. A comment on a specific complaint you had with the paper in question: "the best that can be inferred from the research is that the dolphin merely recognizes resemblance between objects and sounds but not the notion of “same”" How did you as a child learn the meaning of the word/concept "same"? Probably by being shown items with great resemblances versus items without. And I assume your notion of "same" is still based on exactly that: items that resemble each other closely are the same kind of item, items that don't, aren't. I don't see how it should make a difference that the dolphin can't say the word "same". It can't say the word "resemblance" either. Looks like it could still figure out the concept of resemblance/sameness.molch_{December 17, 2010
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above, I have no thoughts on this, if only because I have no access to the paper itself it seems. Just the abstract, which seems like "not enough". That said, I'd generally share your skepticism. Not to mention how much "interpretation" is at work in such a study.nullasalus_{December 17, 2010
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@Nullasalus Having interracted with you in the past a few times I found myself sharing a lot of common ideas with you. I would be very interested in hearing your opinion about the dolphin experiments I cited earlier. I don't mean to impose in any way of course, but if you have the time and are in any way interested I would really like to hear your thoughts.above_{December 17, 2010
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Bilbo, If natural selection acting upon random mutation can produce us, then it could be that God allowed natural selection to act upon random mutations to produce us. There is no inconsistency to that. If you're saying that God knew what the outcomes of evolution would be (and also permitted these outcomes to come to pass), you're rejecting Darwinism at least as Michael Ruse and many others portray it. The sort of "randomness" they speak of is a randomness that means no one, not even God, foresaw the outcomes, much less preordained them.nullasalus_{December 17, 2010
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@Bilbo -"Though you insist that Nature cannot have free will (or its analogical equivalent — randomness)" Nature (whatever its definition might be on any given day - materialists are notorious in redifining it as they wish - does not have free will. Nor is randomness analogical to free will, nor is randomness (metaphysical) even remotely possible. Now if by randomness you mean something like unpredictable that's a different story. If that's what you mean then no worries.above_{December 17, 2010
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Hi Stephen, But it's not at all clear that evolution needs to be guided in order to achieve whatever outcome God wants. God wanted you to exist, but He did not control all the decisions that were made that resulted in your birth. Those were made by a very long series of human choices, most of them made freely. Though you insist that Nature cannot have free will (or its analogical equivalent -- randomness), it is not at all clear that God agrees with you. If natural selection acting upon random mutation can produce us, then it could be that God allowed natural selection to act upon random mutations to produce us. There is no inconsistency to that.Bilbo I_{December 17, 2010
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