Do you understand how oxymoronic that statement happens to be? How can a designer allow something to happen by random chance? It is a self-defeating argument.
God is the grand designer, he created all life. The miracle of the cell and DNA has his fingerprints all over it.
It’s all to avoid “Cosmic Accountability”.
Most folks only want to be held accountable to their own standard, which inevitably is set at just one degree below how they want to live anyway.
“Sin is... being out of alignment with my values.”
Barack Obama, Nov 20, 2008
He didn't go with the random thingy, nor does evolution.
I really dislike these kinds of discussions. It is obvious to me that God exists, that Jesus is the Only Begotten, Virgin-born, Son of God who died for my sins, etc.
It is also obvious to me that there was an inevitable Fall, known by God beforehand and incorporated into His plan “from the foundation of the world”. There was a Fall before Adam and Eve — that guy, what’s his name? Oh, yeah, Lucifer.
Even if you want to take the first three to six chapters of Genesis as something other than a poetic and metaphor-heavy story of creation, you still have to account for the fact that there was something anti-God loose in the cosmos prior to Eve eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Some day, I suspect that scientists will discover that every life-form that has come into existence was predestined in the first strand of DNA that was formed by the hand of God. Or maybe they will never discover it, but it is true anyway.
rjsimon: " Do you understand how oxymoronic that statement happens to be? How can a designer allow something to happen by random chance? It is a self-defeating argument."
“I believe that Christianity can still be believed, even if Evolution is true.” ~ C. S. Lewis
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And which theory of evolution are we talking about?
"...What is the significance of such a theory? To address this question is to enter the field of epistemology.
A theory is a metascientific elaboration distinct from the results of observation, but consistent with them.
By means of it a series of independent data and facts can be related and interpreted in a unified explanation. A theory's validity depends on whether or not it can be verified; it is constantly tested against the facts; wherever it can no longer explain the latter, it shows its limitations and unsuitability. It must then be rethought.
Furthermore, while the formulation of a theory like that of evolution complies with the need for consistency with the observed data, it borrows certain notions from natural philosophy.
And, to tell the truth, rather than the theory of evolution, we should speak of several theories of evolution.
On the one hand, this plurality has to do with the different explanations advanced for the mechanism of evolution, and on the other, with the various philosophies on which it is based.
Hence the existence of materialist, reductionist, and spiritualist interpretations.
What is to be decided here is the true role of philosophy and, beyond it, of theology.
Consequently, theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider _the spirit_ as emerging from the forces of living matter or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter are _incompatible with the truth about man_. Nor are they able to ground the dignity of the person. ..."
- John Paul II October 22, 1996 Excerpted from: Theories of Evolution
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"Without a doubt, the ultimate Black Swan is whatever it was that permitted merely genetic human beings to emerge into full humanness just yesterday (cosmically speaking), some 50,000 years ago.
Prior to this there was existence, but so what? There was life, but who cares? With no one to consciously experience it, what was the point? Without self-conscious observers, the whole cosmos could bang into being and contract into nothingness, and it would be no different than the proverbial tree falling in the forest with no one there to hear it.
One of the reasons why this is such a lonely and unpopular blog is that it takes both science and religion seriously. Most science and religion are unserious, but especially -- one might say intrinsically -- when they exclude each other.
A religion that cannot encompass science is not worthy the name, while a science that cannot be reconciled with religion is not fit for human beings. And I mean this literally, in that it will be a science that applies to a different species, not the one that is made to know love, truth, beauty, existence, and the Absolute. Science must begin and end in this principle -- which is to say, the Principle -- or it is just a diversion. ...."
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Why Darwinists Reject Evolution
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The Fractured Fairy Tale of ___Darwinian___ Evolution
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The Darwinian Tower of Monkey Babble
We left off [on 8/18/2010 - see above] with Ridley's observation that "there appeared on earth a new kind of hominid, one that refused to play by the rules. Without any change in its body, without any succession of species, it just kept changing its habits. For the first time, its technology changed faster than its anatomy. There was an evolutionary novelty, and you are it." Some of you anyway.
Now, this is not supposed to happen under the iron hand of natural selection. But as Ridley properly notes, our species was born in rebellion. It simply "refused to play by the rules," rules that are only invented a posteriori anyway by scientists looking through the rearview mirror with 20/20 hindsight. ...."
I think of the universe as an amazingly complex seed, created, and planted by God, with the full knowledge of where every branch would be, where every leaf would form, and what every flower would look like. Think of the rules which govern the universe as a DNA sequence that He created, with full knowledge of how it would guide the formation of every detail in the world, including mankind.
You’re viewing chance as chance, and out of God’s control, when He created chance, itself, as an inherent part of the universe, and therefore knows how the dice will fall, before they do, everytime.
Perhaps, since He is such a grand designer, you just can’t comprehend what He’s doing?
To argue that evolution is not God's way is to insist that the temporal view from within the material universe of the process of creation must look like the view from God's perspective sub specie aeternitatis. The contrary view, that they may look very different, is supported Scripturally by at least "My ways are not thy ways, saith the Lord." What appears random temporally, may be purposeful sub specie aeternitatis.
Nor are genuinely random elements in a creative process indications of lack of intent, design, or purpose even within the temporal realm: both hardened metal and annealed metal are produced by thermal, and therefore at a molecular level, random processes, but finding a bit of hardened or annealed metal will lead an archaeologist to suspect it of being a fragment of an artifact, a purposeful creation.
It seems a rather poor view of God's sovereignty, to hold that he who framed the laws not only of nature but of reason, including mathematics, including probability, cannot harness things governed by probabilistic laws to accomplish His All-Holy will.