Any good books on Theistic Evolution?

[Willtor]

OK, maybe that was a bad term. Let me rephrase: "It would seem like a weakness for God to have to guide a process that is incapable of exhibiting free will against Him".

God knowing where a sparrow falls does not necessarily imply that God is making that sparrow fall supernaturally. Just because something was intentional does not mean that it was not natural.

No, of course.

I think you are trying to argue free will and the second cause of nature, and I am trying to argue the omnipresence and sovereignty of God; things which I don't think are at odds.

 

[marlowe007]

 

[lucaspa]

A bit off-topic, but I've always viewed this as a kind of "dominoes falling" effect - and omnipotent God would be able to start a process and know exactly where it will eventually lead. It would seem like weakness for God to have to micromanage a process that is incapable of exhibiting free will against Him.

You are actually talking about omniscience, not omnipotence. Omniscienceis the ability to know everything -- including the future. This assumes that there is no contingency in the universe; that we have a universe of very strict determinism. However, we do not have a strictly determinant universe. The future is not completely predicted by the past and present.

For whatever reason, God did not create a universe where He can be omniscient. There are simply some things that cannot be known within the universe. Originally, God was viewed simply as very knowing. Only later did this get extrapolated to "omniscience". It is probably better to ask the question: is it necessary to be omnipotent and omniscient in order to be God? I would say "no".

Whether God has to interfere with evolution depends on what God's objectives are. If God wants a creature able to communicate with Him, then God does not have to micromanage at all. As natural selection explores the Library of Mendel (all possible genomes), eventually it is going to get to the wing of genomes that code for creatures capable of communicating with Him. Those creatures do not have to be modified apes, but could have other shapes and physiologies. Perhaps on other planets they do.

OTOH, if God particularly wants the present human form, then yes, God is going to have to guide evolution to get it. There are at least 2 ways He can do this without being detected by science.

 

[gluadys]

OTOH, if God particularly wants the present human form, then yes, God is going to have to guide evolution to get it. There are at least 2 ways He can do this without being detected by science.

Would you expand on what those two ways are?

 

[lucaspa]

Would you expand on what those two ways are?

Ironically, both have been proposed by very prominent atheists.

1. God can cause specific mutations (Richard Dawkins). The background of "random" mutations is so high that if God directs a specific cosmic ray to a specific nucleotide or interferes with gene duplication, etc. we cannot detect that.

2. A bit of artificial selection (Daniel Dennet). If God engages in a bit of artificial selection to weed out variations He does not want, we cannot read the fossil record fine enough to detect that.

"Darwinism is widely misunderstood as a theory of pure chance. Mustn't it have done something to provoke this canard? Well, yes, there is something behind the misunderstood rumour, a feeble basis to the distortion. One stage in the Darwinian process is indeed a chance process -- mutation. Mutation is the process by which fresh genetic variation is offered up for selection and it usually described as random. But Darwinians make the fuss that they do about the "randomness" of mutation only in order to contrast it to the non-randomness of selection, the other side of the process. It is not necessary that mutation should be random in order for natural selection to work. Selection can still do its work whether mutation is directed or not. Emphasizing that mutation can be random is our way of calling attention to the crucial fact that, by contrast, selection is sublimely and quintessentially non-random. It is ironic that this emphasis on the contrast between mutation and the non-randomness of selection has led people to think that the whole theory is a theory of chance. ...
One could imagine a theoretical world in which mutations were biased toward improvement. Mutations in this hypothetical world would be non-random not just in the sense that mutations induced by X-rays are non-random: these hypothetical mutations would be systematically biased to keep one jump ahead of selection and anticipate the needs of the organism ...
Darwinians wouldn't mind if such providential mutations were provided. It wouldn't undermine Darwinism, though it would put paid to its claims for exclusivity: a tailwind on a transatlantic flight can speed up your arrival in an agreeable way, and this doesn't undermine your belief that the primary force that got you home is the jet engine." R Dawkins, Climbing Mt. Improbable, pp 80- 82.

Dennett, from Darwin's Dangerous Idea, pp. 317-318 "Indeed, all the biologists I have queried on this point have agreed with me that there are no sure marks of natural, as opposed to artificial, selection. In chapter 5, we traded in the concept of strict biological possibility and impossibility for a graded notion of biological probability, but even in its terms, it is not clear how one could grade organisms as 'probably' or 'very probably' or 'extremely probably' the products of artificial selection...It would be foolhardy, however, for any defender of neo-Darwinism to claim that contemporary evolution theory gives one the power to read history so finely from present data as to rule out the earlier historical presence of rational designers -- a wildly implausible fantasy, but a possibility after all."

 

[gluadys]

Ironically, both have been proposed by very prominent atheists.

1. God can cause specific mutations (Richard Dawkins). The background of "random" mutations is so high that if God directs a specific cosmic ray to a specific nucleotide or interferes with gene duplication, etc. we cannot detect that.

2. A bit of artificial selection (Daniel Dennet). If God engages in a bit of artificial selection to weed out variations He does not want, we cannot read the fossil record fine enough to detect that.

"Darwinism is widely misunderstood as a theory of pure chance. Mustn't it have done something to provoke this canard? Well, yes, there is something behind the misunderstood rumour, a feeble basis to the distortion. One stage in the Darwinian process is indeed a chance process -- mutation. Mutation is the process by which fresh genetic variation is offered up for selection and it usually described as random. But Darwinians make the fuss that they do about the "randomness" of mutation only in order to contrast it to the non-randomness of selection, the other side of the process. It is not necessary that mutation should be random in order for natural selection to work. Selection can still do its work whether mutation is directed or not. Emphasizing that mutation can be random is our way of calling attention to the crucial fact that, by contrast, selection is sublimely and quintessentially non-random. It is ironic that this emphasis on the contrast between mutation and the non-randomness of selection has led people to think that the whole theory is a theory of chance. ...
One could imagine a theoretical world in which mutations were biased toward improvement. Mutations in this hypothetical world would be non-random not just in the sense that mutations induced by X-rays are non-random: these hypothetical mutations would be systematically biased to keep one jump ahead of selection and anticipate the needs of the organism ...
Darwinians wouldn't mind if such providential mutations were provided. It wouldn't undermine Darwinism, though it would put paid to its claims for exclusivity: a tailwind on a transatlantic flight can speed up your arrival in an agreeable way, and this doesn't undermine your belief that the primary force that got you home is the jet engine." R Dawkins, Climbing Mt. Improbable, pp 80- 82.

Dennett, from Darwin's Dangerous Idea, pp. 317-318 "Indeed, all the biologists I have queried on this point have agreed with me that there are no sure marks of natural, as opposed to artificial, selection. In chapter 5, we traded in the concept of strict biological possibility and impossibility for a graded notion of biological probability, but even in its terms, it is not clear how one could grade organisms as 'probably' or 'very probably' or 'extremely probably' the products of artificial selection...It would be foolhardy, however, for any defender of neo-Darwinism to claim that contemporary evolution theory gives one the power to read history so finely from present data as to rule out the earlier historical presence of rational designers -- a wildly implausible fantasy, but a possibility after all."

Thanks, that's basically what I expected, but it is good to get the citations.

 

[lucaspa]

Thanks, that's basically what I expected, but it is good to get the citations.

Good. Personally, I do not see why God -- who has no physical form -- would care what the physical shape is of creatures who are capable of communicating with It. Therefore, there is no need to meddle with natural selection. In fact, by not meddling and letting the process proceed on all the planets capable of supporting life, God gets a myriad of species with whom It can communicate. If not, then the universe (to quote the movie Contact), is a lot of wasted space.