Kansas Board Holding Evolution Hearings

Peoplepc news ^ | 5-7-05 | People pc

[mlc9852]

This is apparently from several years ago but I would imagine still valid.

http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/atheism1.htm

[curiosity]

I believe in both the Virgin Birth and the Ressurection, but except on these two points I agree with you. I particularly liked this phrase:

Tinkering with mutations seems inconsistent with freedom. Also if God is tinkering with mutations, then what else? Say a leaf falls. Is that because of chemical reactions at the base of the leaf causing it to separate for the stem, or did God make a miracle for one (or any number) or particular leafs to fall that wouldn't have "otherwise". The effect of affirming tinkerings is to make the world a domain sprinkled with occult effects rather than a whole, coherent and seamless creation.

Your argument is very much like Ken Miller's.

Thinking about all these things, I am now inclined to believe, for theological reasons, that life originated through a natural process. It seems that staying within the the laws of nature is a much more elegant manner of creation than simply "poofing" things into existence. And it seems to me that elgence is something the God of the Bible is fond of.

As you rightly pointed out, miraculous events stemming from the incarnation are in an altogether different class and in no way would reduce the elegence of our God's natural ways.

[curiosity]

If God grows a 50 foot oak tree in 30 years or 30 seconds it is really the same miracle, with the only difference being the time frame.

Depends what you mean by miracle, I guess. God is the ultimate cause of both, but typically we only say something's a mircale if it violates the laws of nature. That is the case of the 30 second oak, not the 30 year oak.

[curiosity]

The virgin birth may be out of the ordinary where our experience is concerned, but I don't think our experience is the ultimate test of objective reality. Do you?

Of coures not. I believe in the virgin birth.

[stremba]

Maybe so, but the statements you quote of theirs are not statements implied by the theory of evolution, but rather statements of their own opinions which are made to promote their personal agendas. Or should we believe that everything that Kent Hovind and Jack Chick say is exactly what all creationists and ID'ers believe?