[CS-FSLUG] Intelligent design...

[James Thompson]

I have'nt chimed in on this topic but want to inject my opinion, and
that is all this is, regarding the presuppositions behind your
comments. From your comments you serve a very limited, deistic, God.
You presuppose that God's intervention must be explainable naturally.
To make such an assertion places God in subjection to His creation. I
would say that the method by which God raised Jesus or created Adam is
completely irrelevant. Theistic Evolution is an interesting idea
except that it produces theological problems because it places man in
descendency from animals which the biblical account does not do. Man
is a special creation, seperated from God's creation of other animal
species so any adherance to evolutionist ideas becomes problematic for
theological reasons.

I do not advocate the promotion of intelligent design or creationism
as a science because it is fundamentally rooted in theology. But I
reject evolution and even its theistic branches because they produce
theological difficulties.

I also submit that it is unreasonable to subject God to our
naturalistic understanding of the universe because it is far too
deistic and shrinks God. God can override the natural order and I
would assert does. I would say that the ressurection accounts in the
Bible are wholly unnatural because our universe is defined by death
and decay due to the fall which is overriden by ressurection. Also
think of the account of the Sun standing still from the Old Testament,
this is a wholly unnatural occurence and can only be explained if we
allow God the sovereign ability to override the natural.

To require natural expalnations damages the sovereignty of God and is
something I would absolutely reject. We do not have a picture in the
Bible of a God who is bound by nature but of one who is supreme over
the natural. Also, remember that in the resurrection of Jesus His body
was different and unnatural by our estimations. I would reject any
ideas of a spiritual ressurection but acknowledge that God
fundamentally changed the nature of Jesus' body in the ressurection
act, and I would submit that as another evidence of God's ability to
override all that we understand as the natural order.

Be very careful in subjecting God to our modernist and naturalistic
thinkings because eventually you remake God in our image and become
the servant of a very weak God.

On 9/18/05, Timothy Butler <tbutler at ofb.biz> wrote:
> >> The bigger problem, though, is that the chances of  such
> >> conditions occurring in the wild is even less likely. :-) But,
> >> the thing is, Genesis tells us God made Adam from earth, so
> >> essentially that's not really different from what scientists claim
> >> possible, other than that they refuse to admit an intelligent
> >> force behind it.
> >>
> >>     And, then comes Nathan's point: they have to point out how it
> >> wasn't done intelligently... which, if they thought that, would be
> >> true.
> >>
> >
> > Adam was "designed" from the "dust" by God himself. After all, Adam
> > means "from the red dirt". Man does not come from the dirt. Man
> > comes from God. Our bodies may be dust but we are not.
> 
>      Right, but think about how God did it. Obviously somehow he
> changed the dust into flesh. I'm betting He did it by essentially the
> same means as the scientists would like to argue happened (e.g.
> creating amino acids through a fairly complex process), only God
> could do it without any problems since He has a "bit" more power than
> scientists.
> 
>      It reminds me of a question that skeptic Michael Shermer asked
> to a believer, on the PBS program Question of God, last year. He
> asked the fellow, who was an M.D., did you ever wonder how God raised
> Jesus from the dead (physiologically speaking, that is)? Obviously,
> Jesus was physically dead and then brought back to life. From our
> standpoint, it really doesn't matter so much how, but obviously
> somehow God did it, and he probably did that, and the raising of
> Lazurus, and the creation of Adam, etc., by means He could explain to
> us if He wanted to.
> 
>      It seems to me in such cases, God probably didn't suspend the
> laws of nature so much as control the environment in a way far beyond
> what we could ever do, and hence arrived at the result that the laws
> He created say should happen given those circumstances. :-)
> 
>      -Tim
> 
> ---
> Timothy R. Butler | "Now  that  I am a  Christian  I  do have moods
> Editor, OfB.biz   | in which the whole thing looks very improbable:
> tbutler at ofb.biz   | but when I was an  atheist I had moods in which
> timothybutler.us  | Christianity looked terribly probable."
>                                                        -- C.S. Lewis
> 
> 
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-- 
James W. Thompson, II (New Orleans, LA)
http://thompsonsites.com/personal