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N. T. Wright on Epicurus, Deism, and Darwin

William Dembski
June 30, 2009
Intelligent Design
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In case people missed it, at the end Wright mentions the 1755 question and the problem of evil. 1755 was the year of the Lisbon earthquake, one of the greatest natural catastrophes in history and one of the watershed periods in human history. People all over Europe began to ask why did God allow such a horrific event as this earthquake to happen and this led intellectuals to question the existence of God even more.jerry
June 30, 2009
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"Once God get's pushed out of the process, then of course what happens must happen from within rather than from outside. Then you can caricature the idea of divine intervention because if you are a deist or epicurean you have this distant God who if He is going to do anything in the world would have to reach down and would have to incongruously mess around and then go away again." Compare this to the Kors lecture that I transcribed over a year ago https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/rush-limbaugh-reviews-expelled-on-talk-radio/#comment-190514 At that time I made the following comment about science "One objection to the use of science to show the necessity of intervention is just what is phrased in the Kors lecture about the need to repair the system and what that means about the designer. But the elimination of that concept of God repairing the system and exalting him to even greater heights has led us to our current circumstance where God is not needed."jerry
June 30, 2009
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I recently wrote a little on a related topic, on how Darwin's theories were in some sense a product of his time. The post is on Darwin, racism, and 19th century anthropology and can be seen here.jlid
June 30, 2009
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Slightly off topic: The End of Darwinism: And How a Flawed and Disastrous Theory Was Stolen and Sold, by Eugene G. Windchy. http://townhall.com/columnists/PatBuchanan/2009/06/30/making_a_monkey_out_of_darwinGilDodgen
June 30, 2009
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A good job of slotting Darwin's suppositions into his world, and why such views are (equally as) prevalent today, but problematic when we come - theologically at least - to seeking to marry evolution and creation (the God who used pain, death, extinction, etc, as all part of a "natural" process deemed 'good'). "Creation" by such a system leaves us not only with the problem of evil, but (as I believe Jonathan Miller once put it) the god of Auschwitz. Biblical theology is replete with the miraculous, including the origins of a mature universe. The denigration of that state occurs with the fall and the 'bondage' of the physical realm to decay until the time of redemption.howard
June 30, 2009
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How much does God involve himself in the world according to the Bible? As a reader of the Bible, I have noted that the Bible directs a lot of attention to chronicling miracles. Supernatural events that defy the normal physical laws. The authors of the Bible know that these events are extraordinary and that they are miracles caused by God intervening in the ordinary course of events in the world. If the authors of the Bible did not understand that things in the world behave according to certain orderly laws created by God, they would not be able to distinguish a miracle from a normal event, nor would they see miracles as something exceptional to take note of and write about. A case in point would be the miracle of the floating axe head. The authors of the Bible knew that an axe head does not float. That is why they knew that a floating axe head was a miracle and something to write about for all posterity. Had they no knowledge of normal physical laws, they would have not identified the miracle.Jehu
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