Intelligent Design

On the topic of 'intelligent design' and 'irreducible complexity, Behe talks about the criterion being the inter-component necessity of all to produce a functional capability.

I think we can go just a little further than this observational summation.

From a systems perspective, the complexity is built up from the non-deterministic grouping of parts that have parsimonious close-coupled interfaces with each other.

The 'non-deterministic' is important. I mean it to convey that the final function is not pre-determined in any of the parts in themselves. This itself tends to point to 'design', indeed from a systems engineering perspective, I would say it lies at the heart of design.

That is, the parts have no in-built teleology that necessitates any particular function, but are brought together a-teleologically (unless by a designer, where the telos would lay) to do something which independently they are unable to do. 

What are the "Gospels"

I've come across a number of references to the gospels/gospel of late.

Muslims 

Muslims seem to think that The Gospel is a book given to Yeshua as the Quran was claimed to be 'given' to Muhammad.

The misunderstanding sets in, it would seem from Christian's casual use of the word 'gospel' to apply to the texts that convey it.

We do it often with a rule book. Typically we would ask that someone passes the rules to them, say, during a game of Scrabble. What they mean, of course is the rule book.

So Mo. thought the gospel was a book. That would make sense for one who had a reputation as an uncritical fountain of stories he had heard but not understood.

As a result Muslims regard the gospels according to the named four as somehow a corruption of what God 'sent down' with Yeshua (or his deprecating Quranic doppelganger 'Issa') 

But the 'gospel' the 'good news' (euangelion) which means 'good news' or 'glad tidings'. The Quran is simply unaware of this.

So the four gospel accounts (which we also shorthand to 'gospels') are four depictions of the work of Yeshua as the foundation of the good news. Fundamentally it is death and resurrection and defeat of death opening the way to fellowship with God through a new life that is the good news.

It is worth noting that some scholars consider the book that Mo. was referring to was the Syriac peshitta, a collection of a number of the books that now make up the Bible

Moderns 

Some detractors of the Gospel, and indeed some followers of Christ I've heard refer to the gospel accounts as 'biographies of Jesus' (sic).

They are not. They are concerned not about his life per se, but about his mission as the Son of Man, Messiah.

They link Yeshua's actions with the OT and show him as Messiah by his actions and words. God is the 'good author' in this way: Yeshua shows us, as well as tells us. Just telling is easy, anyone can do it. Muhammad, for example. 

In modern parlance, the gospel accounts are more like an 'after action' mission report. They sum up the mission, the actions taken, the ground covered, the people and conflicts encountered and dealt with and the final result (it is finished).

Far more focused than a mere biography. The separate accounts are four 'mission reports' by four of Yeshua's band. 

 

Science and metaphysical Christian theism

In his introduction to The Creation Hypothesis' anthology, the Christian philosopher J. P. Moreland lists 10 phenomena that science does not explain, but on which it depends:

1 - the existence of a theory-independent, external world
2 - the orderly nature of the external world
3 - the knowability of the external world
4 - the existence of truth
5 - the laws of logic
6 - the reliability of our cognitive and sensory faculties to serve as truth-gatherers and as a source of justified beliefs in our intellectual environment
7 - the adequacy of language to describe the world (propositional explicability)
8 - the existence of values used in science (e.g. "test theories fairly and report test results honestly)
9- the uniformity of nature and induction
10 - the existence of numbers.

The creation account in Genesis 1:2-2:20 shows these 10 phenomena in God's creating:

1 - the created cosmos (world) is separate from God and external to man while man is within it and comprehends it.
2 - the external world is created in terms of the rational causality set out in the sequence of days of our experience; placing the creation process in our world
3 - God communicates the creation event to  us in language (propositionally with real meaning in our 'space-time' experience of the creation)
4 - God does not deceive us by creating outside history or without sharing his actions with us (thus the natural days place the creation in the continuity of our history)
5 - logic is reflected in the direct causality of the creation, and in Adam's naming of the animals (on the basis of "A" does not equal "not A")
6 - the creation is described in communicable language  (see '3' above)
7 - the creation shows propositional explicability in God creating with language that is meaningful in the creation
8 - the creation account gives us real information congruent with our experience of the world and our perceptual faculties.
9 - the creation is shown to be causally reliable and consistent
10 - God works in countable days that exist in number-like terms of 'evening and morning'.

So to work, science is conducted as metaphysical Christian theism. Nothing to do with 'naturalism' because naturalism gives rise only to...dust.

The simple cell and what it needs.

 

Prof. Lennox: close, but no cigar!

John had a lot of good things to say, but he failed in the manner that most analysis of Genesis 1 fails, although he did touch it lightly: the theology that Genesis 1, the days of creation in particular, gives us.

I'm glad that he didn't avoid the obvious calibration of the days as normal earth days: the 'evening and morning earth frame of reference' type of days. That is their most obvious feature. However, I can't see them spaced out, their numbering and grammatical structure do not permit this. Other references, in Exodus, also preclude this.

So, what do the days do, theologically?

Three things

1. They place God's creating action in history, in the history that we are in. This establishes the basis, in real tangible terms, for fellowship between we his creatures in his image and himself (cf Gen 3:8a).

2. They thus show God present and active in his creation: he is not a God far off; not a God who is uninvolved but at the same time a God who is separate from and prior to the creation. He is not merged into the creation, which theistic evolution is in danger of requiring, destroying his identity. Nor is he the deist god, anonymous, remote, aloof.

3. To identify God and set the frame of reference for our understanding of the creation as those who are to govern it: his creative sequence shows dependency order, is done with rational causality, he shows evaluative summaries each day. His creating is nothing like the rational shipwreck of Enuma elish and other pagan fairy tales: unhistorical, disconnected and irrational, to repeat. The creation is propositional in nature: it shows wisdom and knowledge that we use, also propositionally, in governing the creation. (Prov 3:19, 20)

This also helps us answer Augustine's question as to why did God not create in an instant: this would also be a non-historical event. it would not show God at work and thus frame his identity and connection with us. Taking God thusly out of history would de-personalize him and destroy any intimacy between him and us. He would be then either not separable from the creation, or not identifiable with it.

Finally, it is worth noting that God, in direct speech reiterates the creation event in Exodus 31:12ff; interestingly this follows the 'skilled craftsmen' passage.

As to the age of the earth: pagans have almost universally held to very long ages of cosmic existence, and this would frame pagan stories, placing them in timeless de-historicized nowhere land.The purpose, as in modern long ages (care of Lyell and Hutton), is to keep the creator out of time and out of mind. OTOH, the timed genealogies in the Bible do what genealogies have always done in the ancient world. They show connection. Ours with God, and the timing shows the closeness of the creation and the history of the Creators' acts to our life-world experience of him.

Metaphysics - Another three things.

A few more aspects of the significance of the days as describing real historical events are also worth mentioning:  as the days of creation place God in not only history, but as an actor in the creation per se, and an actor who acts wholly in terms of his own nature; they thereby provide a real, concrete ground that anchors our metaphysics.

A. In a truly 'real' creation, spoken into existence by the God who is, we have certainty of knowledge, at least as possibility: there is knowledge that truly reflects what is in the material world, and is unfolded in the history of redemption. I alluded to this above, but our epistemology is thereby grounded in who God is. For this reason, we have confidence that (modern) science can be fruitful in the pursuit of material truth.

B. Similarly for our conception of being. The actual days framing a real history, imply quite directly that we truly are: the Creation does not elude us by being metaphorical or symbolic, it does not deceive us as illusion or absorb us into pantheism, it does not confound us with the shadow game of Idealism. It founds our true being: it secures an ontology by which we can work to a structural understanding of the external reality and our existential experience of it. We are grounded in the infinite person-ness of the creator.  A far cry from Sartrean recursion that we are merely grounded in our ephemeral selves.

C. Our meta-ethical grasp of value in relationships and actions also spring from who God is: Love. Love is only expressed in true relationship and the primal act of relationship toward us is God mediated only by his word showing his  domain overlaps ours: God and man together (thus going on in contextualizing and grounding the Incarnation).

So we are guarded against being seduced by both the religion of nature (paganism and its offspring) and the religion of the denial of nature (exilic religions that reduce our life-world to metaphysical illusion).

Flowing from this, as in God's image (the only information we have being in the creation account), our words, acts, and affections have real significance in history and interpersonally. They ramify through history meaningfully.

Because if the 'days of creation' are not really real as set out in Genesis 1, then something else happened in our history, and it is this something else that grounds our....everything. Alas, the alternatives then before us must reject that God acts in real days and overturn the great message it gives: God and man together in his Creation. Genesis 3:8a again.

Natural theology: a place and a purpose

For those who say natural theology is not a 'salvation' issue.

From Bray, 2012 God is Love: A Biblical and Systematic Theology, p. 27.

"Natural theology has its importance and is taken seriously in the Bible,  but it is a preparation for the gospel and not a substitute for it. It gives people enough knowledge for people to be able to respond to the message of salvation, but not enough to work it out for themselves."

Emphasis, mine.

The days of Genesis do this by placing creation and God's direct action in the history that we are in and showing that God is close, active in history, communicative, and personal and we are connected to him by his word.

Could God have used evolution to 'create'?

Answer is: NO!

The question presumes that 'evolution', taken as the Neo darwinian evolution theory (NDE), actually occurred, or could occur, as distinct from it being a retrospective effort to justify Darwin's mid-Victorian gross morphology bluster.

It is less a theory and more a set of conjectures that keep manufacturing sets of tendentious illustrative drawings, This instead of talking about mechanisms that even could orchestrate cross-system coordinated gradual change. Change that both 'improved' the organism, rather than just make it circumstantially more fecund, and did not have adverse effects on any of the involved systems, their interactions or general capabilities.

So, could God have used something that didn't happen and is designed to deny his creative action to create?

What would God be doing to bring the creation from a pea-soup of molecules? Would he be orchestrating the massive continuous culling that would leave the 'last man standing' to carry favorable variations to subsequent generations? Would he be making himself invisible in his creation by mimicking what are supposed to be, but evidently are not 'natural' processes, which deny his action anyway? Would he use a method of 'creation' involving continuous massive culling of creatures to produce a creation that was 'very good'?

Remember, the Genesis description of creation if full of life, beauty and love. There is no hint therein of the corruption that we see in a creation now full of death, struggle and decay. Such a God is not only self-contradictory on the face of it, but has merged himself into the creation. This not in keeping with his own holiness and distinctness from a propositionally rich creation, amenable to propositional explication (i.e. 'science'), but in denial of it. The denial is even worse than contradictory: but directly contrary to Paul in Romans 1:20 and Hebrews 11:3, and in keeping, rather, with his observation in Romans 8:20-23.

Furthermore, God expresses his identity in his actions: creation being the magnum opus of this. What 'identity' would theistic evolution demonstrate? A God merged into the creation and not distinct from it? This ends in pantheism, not the personalism which Genesis 1 shows.