If you are saying God's involvement with nature was just to create the physical principle of the universe, then that is deism. However if you see God's involvement as going much deeper, that he works through natural processes as well as just creating them, that we can pray for our daily bread which God providentially answers rather than simply creating wheat 6000 years ago, if we can say God formed me in my mother womb, rather than simple creating Adam and Eve able to reproduce, then that is theism.
No no..you see, we do agree that God works in his creation...all the time. What we do not agree with is that he used "natural processes" or naturalism. Random processes in this sense that are unguided are seemingly nonsensical. I agree with Natural Science (Natural Selection, Variation, Speciation and Adaptation see-
http://creation.com/refuting-evolution-chapter-2-variation-and-natural-selection-versus-evolution ) but that the evidence from it supports a creation ex nihilo..and that God has had a hand in its direction all along. Both theories give an explanation about how the world operates, its just that I believe Evolution gives the wrong one when we really look at all of the evidence. And thus for that matter, even if we were to declare that God caused Evolution to occur...this understanding would still be wrong due to some developments in Genetics and Microbiology that we have seen over recent years. In Science, we need go where the evidence leads.
Does human reproduction occur naturally? Does wheat grow naturally? The issue behind the deism/theism discussion is whether we can look at natural processes like evolution and see the hand of God at work, that God can create through natural processes as well as supernaturally. The problem creationists have is they say evolution is a natural process so it cannot be God, in doing so they remove God from working in the universe and end up in deism. In fact I think most Creationists are deeply theist and assume God works providentially, that they pray for good weather, for their daily bread, or for a safe delivery of their unborn child, it is just that there is a massive disconnect between their relationship with God and their creationist arguments.
This assumes what it is trying to prove. That evolution is true. We need to address a few things on this one. Do they occur naturally? Let me explain what a Creation Scientist would believe. What I think you are missing from Creation research actually is that they don't just have a negative viewpoint on Science that is antagonistic towards Evolution. They instead provide a positive theory of their own that is also supportive of Science, but centrally based around what the Bible declares. Jonathan Sarfati declares that Creation Scientists do not disagree with the operational Science of what Evolutionary Scientists agree with. We all utilize that "same Science" if you will. Instead, it is the origin Science in which we differ. Unlike Evolutionary advocates though, who want to claim "that Evolution isn't about origins" (keep in mind we love it when something is dead from the starting line), we are willing to look at both and all sides and take each into account, rather than just supporting a Materialistic dogmatic agenda. We look at all evidences. What you perceive to be natural processes are induced instead from thought initially
which is supernaturalistic in its origen, and thus we don't need natural processes, and given that there is no information increases in the genome..things need be created in a completed form...evidenced in irreducible complexity, or we would die off. You also need to remember, there is a difference between a well informed Creation Scientist...and the majority of the general population who agrees with Creation..but doesn't understand the actual application of Science as it pertains to it. A good friend I work with used to agree with Theistic Evolution..and oddly enough rejected it due to its "deistic" approach, the same issues you are accusing Creation Scientists of agreeing with, after he learned more about what Creation Science taught.
I also find the understanding of sexual selection from an evolutionary perspective to be hilarious as well. I'd think that we'd all just die off trying to figure out how to reproduce if God did not code these instructions into our brains from the initial outsettings. I think a good read for yourself would be Summa Theologia by Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas states that the A Priori categories of the mind demonstrates that humans have a natural capacity for understanding these types of issues when they are introduced to the mind (self evidence). This involves intelligence (which is not a naturalistic process), which from it initiates an action. How can Evolution explain that one?
Beneficial mutations are a different argument, not that God couldn't work through evolution but that evolution itself can't work. Perhaps a discussion on beneficial mutations would be better in a new thread as we are getting pretty far off topic already.[/
I'd love to discuss Beneficial mutations..though we need to remember that Information Theory is key to understanding what is really going on within the genome. They still involve decreases of genetic information..which is contrary to what Evolution needs in order to work. We can get to that stuff later, but Werner Gitt has a good book on it.
