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To: fr_freak

I respectfully disagree that compatiability requires a disinterested God.

Going back to the cake analogy, the study of how the cake solidifies is not incorrect because the baker takes the cake out and puts icing onto it --- you just have two forces at work.

It is like how scientist recently showed that the Red Sea can naturally part --- certain wind conditions, tides, and all that. "No miracle!" some cry. "Heresy!" cry others.

Well, the miracle was not the parting, the miracle was parting just as Moses showed up with Pharoah on his tail, and then closing back up.

I am quite sure God put the wind, tides, etc, in motion a million years ago to get that one just right.

Same with evolution. He created just the exactly right conditions for things to be as he wanted.

It's very similar to a baker putting the micrograms of whatnot to get a souffle to rise just so.

Yes, God could intervene and bypass His rules of nature. But why? He made the rules. He knows how they work. Why should he not follow His own rules?

So to answer your quandry: "we would never know which species evolved purely from evolutionary mechanisms, and which were given a helping hand by the Creator"

This assumes God made a mistake in putting the Universe in motion.

ALL were given the exact helping hand by God --- be it by a timely asteroid killing dinosaurs just as those mamals got going, or by parting the Red Sea at the right time.

I do not presume that God would make a mistake. I presume He did it right and it is exactly as He desinged it.


170 posted on 12/21/2004 1:00:00 PM PST by MeanWestTexan
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To: MeanWestTexan
So to answer your quandry: "we would never know which species evolved purely from evolutionary mechanisms, and which were given a helping hand by the Creator"

This assumes God made a mistake in putting the Universe in motion.


No, this does not assume a mistake. Look at it this way: if you were the Creator of a pot of stew, you might put all the meat, vegetables, seasonings, and water into the pot, turn on the heat, and walk away, returning in an hour to see what happened. The ingredients would interact, then, according to the conditions in which you had set them. After an hour, you'll have a certain type of stew, with a particular look and flavor. If you did the same thing later, using all the same materials and the same amount of heat, for the same length of time, you would get exactly the same stew each time.

However, you probably wanted a particular result, not whichever result you get from letting the stew cook itself for an hour. So, rather than walk away and come back later, you watch the pot and make your adjustments: you stir it, you add seasonings at certain points, you adjust the level of heat. After an hour of that, you end up with a stew of different flavor and color than you would have if you had left it alone, but it is the stew you really wanted; it was not a mistake.

Now, thousands of years later, scientists discover remnants of your stew preserved in amber, and they want to determine how it was prepared. They have a good idea about the meat you used, and the vegetable, and the water. They also know about the stove and what its capabilities are. So, from that, they surmise that all of these elements were placed in a pot, the stove was turned on, and it cooked for an hour, and that if they do the same thing, they can reproduce your stew. But they never are able to reproduce it, because the rules they are following are not sufficient to explain the result, and they have no idea that you did not allow the stew to cook itself, but manipulated it along the way. In other words, their theory of the Evolution of Stew is flawed because it cannot possibly predict the manipulations of the stew creator that went on during the cooking.
185 posted on 12/21/2004 2:25:21 PM PST by fr_freak
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To: MeanWestTexan
I respectfully disagree that compatiability requires a disinterested God.[...]

It is like how scientist recently showed that the Red Sea can naturally part --- certain wind conditions, tides, and all that. "No miracle!" some cry. "Heresy!" cry others. Well, the miracle was not the parting, the miracle was parting just as Moses showed up with Pharoah on his tail, and then closing back up. I am quite sure God put the wind, tides, etc, in motion a million years ago to get that one just right.

Same with evolution. He created just the exactly right conditions for things to be as he wanted.[...]

Yes, God could intervene and bypass His rules of nature. But why? He made the rules. He knows how they work. Why should he not follow His own rules? So to answer your quandry: "we would never know which species evolved purely from evolutionary mechanisms, and which were given a helping hand by the Creator" This assumes God made a mistake in putting the Universe in motion. ALL were given the exact helping hand by God --- be it by a timely asteroid killing dinosaurs just as those mamals got going, or by parting the Red Sea at the right time. I do not presume that God would make a mistake. I presume He did it right and it is exactly as He designed it.

Very well said. Or, in the words of the Talmud, kol hanissim b'derech hateva, "all miracles happen in a natural way."

196 posted on 12/21/2004 4:41:58 PM PST by Lurking Libertarian (Non sub homine, sed sub Deo et lege)
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