Books on theistic evolution?

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If by this, you mean that the natural world is how God intends it to be, I completely agree. But the word design is problematic, God is not a designer or programmer. That is a limited view of God’s creative power. Does the Church say
“The design in nature is actual design as opposed to ‘it only looks designed’”?
 
I never said it did. I’m just providing the source for edwest’s claim, as per your request. I’m not using the article to make a claim myself.
 
He doesn’t sit down with at a cosmic drafting table, lay it all out, go back and fix the details that don’t quite work, and then turn it over to his creative builder part and say “create this”. Indeed there is no design phase at all. He certainly doesn’t need to reach into the universe and move something around a bit, eg pull the earth at some point of it’s formation the exact distance needed from the Sun, in order to make it all work.

Indeed there is no design phase at all. God envisions it, and it exists, all at once (from an eternal standpoint). That’s why, evolution works so well. From the point of view of nature, a given mutation was random. From the point of view of eternity, it was exactly according to God’s will.
 
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“From the point of view of eternity, it was exactly according to God’s will.” Eternity is an abstract concept. It’s not scientific and it tells readers nothing. God did His work in stages, and Genesis makes that clear. God intervened when man disobeyed the only commandment they had. Then Jesus Christ had to be sent.
 
I am not arguing for a clock-maker God. Yes He intervene(s), Everytime He created a immortal soul or send Grace into our lives, He is intervening.

At what point do we accept that Genesis is not literal in your opinion?

Is the story in Genesis scientific, in your view?
 
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“not literal” represents the thinking behind most posts about this subject. Did you read “Finding Design in Nature”? What were your thoughts?
 
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Not yet, I will. I read your Catholic Answers article, I will read your NYT article also. Have you read any of the ThomisticEvolution website I preferences?
Also, I have posted an article in the past on Edward Fesser’s thoughts on ID theory. Would you be willing to read that?

Now, back to the discussion. Ok, you don’t want to talk about Genesis being literal or not. You say that the concept of Eternity is not scientific and therfore tells us both to my. Do you hold that anything contained in Genesis to the same standard?
 
Hobgoblin said:
Theistic evolution is relatively new because the theory of evolution is relatively new. There’s nothing about the historic teachings of the Church that precludes evolution. It’s just that no one suspected it until now. The same way they didn’t suspect any number of other scientific discoveries.
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Actually the church has been against macro-evolution (even though it didn’t call it that) since the beginning.
 
tafan2 said:
If by this, you mean that the natural world is how God intends it to be, I completely agree. But the word design is problematic, God is not a designer or programmer. That is a limited view of God’s creative power. Does the Church say
“The design in nature is actual design as opposed to ‘it only looks designed’”?
Click to expand...
Why not? design is purpose.
 
I follow the Church’s standard. From Humani Generis:
  1. If anyone examines the state of affairs outside the Christian fold, he will easily discover the principle trends that not a few learned men are following. Some imprudently and indiscreetly hold that evolution, which has not been fully proved even in the domain of natural sciences, explains the origin of all things, and audaciously support the monistic and pantheistic opinion that the world is in continual evolution. Communists gladly subscribe to this opinion so that, when the souls of men have been deprived of every idea of a personal God, they may the more efficaciously defend and propagate their dialectical materialism.
  2. Such fictitious tenets of evolution which repudiate all that is absolute, firm and immutable, have paved the way for the new erroneous philosophy which, rivaling idealism, immanentism and pragmatism, has assumed the name of existentialism, since it concerns itself only with existence of individual things and neglects all consideration of their immutable essences.
  3. There is also a certain historicism, which attributing value only to the events of man’s life, overthrows the foundation of all truth and absolute law, both on the level of philosophical speculations and especially to Christian dogmas.
  4. To return, however, to the new opinions mentioned above, a number of things are proposed or suggested by some even against the divine authorship of Sacred Scripture. For some go so far as to pervert the sense of the Vatican Council’s definition that God is the author of Holy Scripture, and they put forward again the opinion, already often condemned, which asserts that immunity from error extends only to those parts of the Bible that treat of God or of moral and religious matters. They even wrongly speak of a human sense of the Scriptures, beneath which a divine sense, which they say is the only infallible meaning, lies hidden. In interpreting Scripture, they will take no account of the analogy of faith and the Tradition of the Church. Thus they judge the doctrine of the Fathers and of the Teaching Church by the norm of Holy Scripture, interpreted by the purely human reason of exegetes, instead of explaining Holy Scripture according to the mind of the Church which Christ Our Lord has appointed guardian and interpreter of the whole deposit of divinely revealed truth.
  5. Further, according to their fictitious opinions, the literal sense of Holy Scripture and its explanation, carefully worked out under the Church’s vigilance by so many great exegetes, should yield now to a new exegesis, which they are pleased to call symbolic or spiritual. By means of this new exegesis of the Old Testament, which today in the Church is a sealed book, would finally be thrown open to all the faithful. By this method, they say, all difficulties vanish, difficulties which hinder only those who adhere to the literal meaning of the Scriptures.
 
Design is typically meant to be a plan (as a noun) or the planning (as a verb) for building something.
 
So do I, but that is not scientific, so it tells the reader nothing.
 
I am not dumb, I knew that was coming. Not using it in the same sense.
 
I will let Fesser explain for me, I don’t think I am clear.

edwardfeser.blogspot.com

The trouble with William Paley

In The Last Superstition and elsewhere, I have been very critical of both William Paley of “design argument” fame and of contemporary Intel...
edwardfeser.blogspot.com edwardfeser.blogspot.com
 
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