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To: spirited irish
Sad, as Michael Faraday was a great scientist and devout Christian who would never have put up with such nonsense.

Theistic evolution, formally speaking, doesn't even exist (in the same way that four-sided triangles do not exist). Let me explain: Theistic evolution consists of two essential components - (1) belief in an almighty God, and (2) belief in evolution as the source of the biological wonder we see around us.

I googled "characteristics of God" and the top 10 results confirmed my expectation that the attributes of omniscience and omnipotence are universally understood to be attributes of God. (If ones denies this, one is essentially believing in a very powerful space alien or supernatural being like Q from Star Trek, but this is infinitely less than the God of monotheism).

On the other hand, evolution is distinguished from creation/design as being a process of chance alterations occuring and being selected by natural processes. The only alternative to chance is design (which would make it a creationary process by definition). (Some folks would throw in natural law as a 3rd option, but this is fundamentally in error - it is a component of both creationary and evolutionary processes, but not a sufficient cause in itself without either the role of chance or a designer. You can't get away from those.)

Now consider the concept of "chance". When we roll a die and say the result is the product of chance, we don't mean there is a law or mysterious force of chance guiding the die. We simply mean we are ignorant of the precise mix of initial causes that leads to the observed result. In principle we could measure those causes (the exact position and motion of the die and any surfaces it comes into contact with, the role of gravity and so on) and successfully predict the result.

The important point here is that chance only exists for the ignorant. "Chance" does not exist for an omniscient being. He could not help but be aware of any possible mutation, and have the capacity to either enable or prevent it. There is no dodging this with omniscience and omnipotence. One can say that He set up everything perfectly to unfold in an evolutionary manner (clockmaker deism style) - but in this case the idea of chance is all a facade, and it is all designed down to the nth degree. It is 100% creationary at the root and not at all what naturalistic scientists have in mind when thinking of evolution.

This forces the would-be theistic evolutionist to adapt in one of two ways: Either to deny their idea of God the attribute of omniscience, demoting him from Deity. Or accepting that their evolutionary process is a facade, and they are really micro-creationists, believing God is aware and managing every tiny detail of an illusory "evolutionary" process.

Ironic that a position held by most of the self-described "smart set" in theistic circles turns out to be formally invalid.

7 posted on 12/27/2023 5:19:56 AM PST by EnderWiggin1970
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To: EnderWiggin1970
On the other hand, evolution is distinguished from creation/design as being a process of chance alterations

Your statement is erudite and proceeds from the rules of logic (which are racist, btw). Admirable.

I follow your erudition with a bumper sticker about evolution in general and theistic evolution in particular:

"Given time, rocks can turn into people."

9 posted on 12/27/2023 6:35:02 AM PST by Migraine
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