So what is the difference between what the world view of natural represents and what natural means as far as Gods creation?
Remarkably, one can understand the workings of nature without any regard to God at all. He could have left something to show us that He was the creator, but He chose not to do so. Free will seems to be very important to Him, and if he made belief mandatory for any rational being, that would not be free.
I think there is some ambiguity when it comes to what exactly Natural means. Some can interpret this as being naturalistic as in that it only relates to a materialistic view that everything can be explained within a material cause and there is nothing beyond this.
Science is methodologically naturalistic, like plumbing. Ontological naturalism is impossible in systems like science and plumbing, which have no way of determining such things. Science and plumbing can't know anything about God.
But scientists and plumbers can.
Yet if God works through nature or natural occurrences then there is an intrinsic supernaturalism associated with it. Though we may only understand nature in what we can see and measure as far as cause and effect there may be other things going on. This would as I mentioned relate back to Gods invisible forces being seen in what is seen as the bible says.
Romans 1:20
For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
This is St. Paul's way of explaining natural law; the notion that gentiles are justified by the law written in their hearts. The Golden Rule, and much, much more. Being out alone or with my dog, and seeing nature as it is, often involves a religious epiphany for me. But not for many others. Belief opens one's eyes to the world He made in a way that complements, but does not replace science.
But God made it knowable and learnable, specifically for us.
But learnable in what sense.
In the sense that we can figure out how it works and use it to our ends.
What do you mean divine providence transcends cause and effect.
Because God can use either necessity or contingency to effect His will.
If it did then we would not necessarily put so much faith in the explanation’s scientific materialistic causes of what we see.
Don't see how. After all, we see both operating in this universe.
That’s what people say. But in reality, the overall process of evolution is mostly random.
Observably, it tends to increase fitness in a population. This cannot be random. But there is much random evolution, particularly with mutations that are only very slightly harmful or only very slightly beneficial.
Evolution is not just natural selection but also mutation, genetic drift and the environment. Three out of these four forces are random.
Not always. Darwin's observation about organisms altering their environment applies here. And from a systems perspective, random processes, combine with non-random processes, are non-random.
For living things to evolve into a fitter and more complex life there needs to be an awful lot of beneficial mutation.
Which is what we observe. Hall's bacteria, for example. Or the remarkably fast evolution of a new digestive organ in Adriatic lizards, when moved to a new environment. A series of evolutionary changes quickly (in a matter of two decades) adapted them to their new home.
The problem is most beneficial mutations are rare and only slight. They can often be lost and not fixed especially in small populations when it comes to genetic drift.
It looks more impressive than it is, because we only see the winners, not the countless losers.
But even without drift, it can be a hit and miss process.
It was for demonstrating that, that Luria and Delbruck got their Nobels. Our adaptation to bipedal movment is definitely suboptimal. But it's fairly recent, so maybe not finished.
What may be of benefit in one way comes with a cost where the overall function is negatively affected such as with sickle cell. It has to break a gene to allow it to resist malaria.
The gene isn't broken. It still works, just not very well. But since heterozygotes have a much better chance of living long enough to reproduce, a person with one HbS gene is much more fit (in an area with endemic malaria) than a person with two normal genes.
Which means that half the offspring of two heterozygotes (or a heterozygote and a homozygous normal) will be more fit than normals.
But it doesn't end there. Initially a lot of half-solutions to natural selection, aren't very good, even if they are better than what was before. But now, we see a new mutation spreading in malaria areas. HbC still provides excellent resistance to malaria, but homozygotes are much less prone to disability and death than homozygotes for HbS. Apparently, it doesn't prevent infections, but prevents severe symptoms.
An improvement from an evolutionary standpoint, since it increases the likelihood of one's offspring living long enough to reproduce.
If the environment chops and changes the chances of any benefit is hit and miss.
And we see the frequency of HbS in people whose ancestors lived in West Africa, declining if they live in areas where malaria is not endemic.
Natural selection has no foresight as to what is coming and because of changing environments what is of benefit now can be harmful in the next instance.
Right.
Natural selection is rarely strong and able to cover all directions to always be selecting the same mutation that is of most benefit so in some way’s selection is also slightly random.
Like HbS and HbC. Natural selection merely selects from what is there. It is creation only in the sense that it determines what alleles will be present, in what frequency, for the next generation.
God had to have installed some mechanisms that enabled living things to have some control and self-organisation in being able to live on earth.
He created a universe in which such organisms, and such mechanisms would evolve naturally.
Between random mutations and natural selection, it is not enough, and many scientists are realizing this now. Besides, ask any person who does not believe in God and they will tell you that evolution is capable of creating life by itself without any help from God.
They'd be rather ignorant if they thought so. Evolution is not about the origin of life. Darwin, for example, just supposed that God created the first living things. God, however says that the earth produced the first living things as He intended. So it seems that He was great enough to make that happen naturally, after all.
It is capable of creating greater complexity out of something simpler. Adding a deeper level of information where there was none which is impossible.
Let's see how that works. Suppose we have a population with a certain gene locus with 2 allles, each with a frequency of 0.5. Suppose there is a mutation producing a third allele, and eventually, each of them then have a frequency of about 0.333. (I'm using these numbers to make computation easy, but you can change them, if you like)
What was the information for that gene when there were two alleles and what was the information when there were three? If there's a difference in information, from where did it come?
Not actually. If we could recreate the conditions at the beginning, then the laws would be as they were then. Decoupling obeyed the same laws we have today, and matter condensed out of the initial expansion only when it cooled sufficiently to let electrons and protons come together to form hydrogen.
Whether it happened by design or by contingent processes doesn't matter at all to God.
Then why do scientists talk about how the universe is so finely tuned even from its beginning to have been able to create the universe we have which produced intelligent sentient life.
Let's put a finer point on it. How was the universe so finely tuned that it was able to produce you?
The strong anthropic principle (SAP) says that the universe is as it is, because we are here. The weak anthropic principle (WAP) says that the universe is the way it is, because if it was different, we wouldn't be here to see it. One last version says that it is the way it is, because it was designed by a designer. This is sometimes referred to as the completely ridiculous anthropic principle.
Obviously, an omnipotent creator doesn't need to design. And as Aquinas says, He can use necessity or contingency in His divine providence.[/quote]
