What does "Guided Evolution" mean anyway?

[Notedstrangeperson]

(Been a while since I posted up here. )

I often see these two arguments come up in debates between theistic evolutionists and creationists:

The first is that creationists say that life was created, perfectly, in it's modern form 6,000-10,000 years ago by God. Now that the Fall introduced death into the world, life is basically "winding down". One of the reasons evolution cannot occur is because of all the bad mutations we're accumulating. Others argue that there are limits to how much a species can evolve, and those limits were set in our genes by God. Evolutionists respond by pointing out that this is basically Deism: God gave us life, but He has now abandoned us. This flies in the face of the Biblical description of a God who takes an active role in our lives.

The second argument is usually a creationist (or sometimes an ignorant evolutionist) misunderstanding how evolution works. They think natural selection chooses "superior" specimens to pass on their genes or they evolve in response to a new challenge. Evolutionists reply by saying that evolution is essentially blind. It does not choose the better or more complex specimen, nor does it "plan" ways to improve a species fitness.

So basically my question is this: if evolution is blind and not pre-programed, then what exactly do we mean when we say we believe in guided evolution?

 

[Standing_Ultraviolet]

Basically, it means that we believe that God guides evolution through means that we can't actually see, using random processes as a tool. We believe that God uses natural processes that appear random from the human perspective to do a lot of different things (forming the Earth, for instance). It's entirely possible for Him to use apparently random processes with a purpose.

 

[metherion]

What GlobalWolf said.

God worked through chance when Matthias was chosen by lots, God used the idea of chance speaking of Jesus having his garments chosen by lot. 2 Chronicles 18 speaks of chance being what caused King Ahab to die, but certainly God was behind it. Joshua 18 speaks of the casting of lots to divy up land, and casting lots is also mentioned in 1 Chronicles 24 and many, many other places in the Old Testament, and a few others in the New.

Then of course, there is Proverbs 16:33

The lot is cast into the lap,
But its every decision is from the Lord.

as well as Ecclesiastes 9:11

I again saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift and the battle is not to the warriors, and neither is bread to the wise nor wealth to the discerning nor favor to men of ability; for time and chance overtake them all.

All chance events are under the oversight of God. I mean, he's God. So, any part of evolution that might be deemed to be 'chance' (which animal a predator catches, which gene mutates, which sperm reaches an egg, whatever), God is actually in control of it, even if it is a chance event. He's in control of it just as surely as He was in control of the casting of lots for land in Joshua, or determining Matthias as Judas' replacement, or orchestrating Ahab's death by arrow.

Metherion

 

[samaus12345]

The point of the "evolution" delusion is to exclude the supernatural. People contending this i cant help.

 

[mindlight]

So basically my question is this: if evolution is blind and not pre-programed, then what exactly do we mean when we say we believe in guided evolution?

You are saying that God had the patience to do something over billions of years that he could have done in 6 days. You are reading the fossil record in a way that allows for this timespan and you are suggesting that the evolutionary deadends and apparent design experiments that you find there all had a Divine purpose even if that purpose is not obvious to us.

Also you would be accepting the conclusions of naturalistic uniformitarian science over the scriptural record and a more catastrophic and supernatural reading of events.