Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul
I’ll be picking it up for myself soon, hopefully…
…that God put His will on the Primelephas, the species our modern day elephants evolved from, and little by little, caused it to evolve into the elephants we know of today? This would go the same for every single organism of life.
Does the Church believe God controled every single movement, pulled every single string, and is still doing that today as things continue to evolve?
I’d definitely say
yes. But “pulling the strings” is such a negative way to say it… God’s Divine Providence provides for every motion of every subatomic particle. And when you really get down to it,
someone has to “pull the strings”, because everything needs a cause. Something cannot come from nothing. It all goes back to God’s Divine Providence in the end anyway.
I’ve taken the belief that God created all energy and matter in the univerese, having His will set upon that, exploded it (the Big Bang) and some point during the explosion He released His will allowing His creation to flow a free course, where things freely evolved.
What does it mean for physical energy/matter to be “free”? But moving on… does a “chance” event have a cause? If no, then you’re granting that something can come from nothing, which is a bad idea. But if yes, what’s it going to be? Maybe a deterministic universe… except that destroys free will, and modern science has essentially ruled it out anyway. Why not allow Divine Providence to be the ultimate cause behind everything? Why not let God choose to develop every aspect of the universe as He sees fit, being intimately involved with its development every step of the way? Why do want him to step back and exist part-time as the “watchmaker God” of the Deists?
God, knowing eveyrthing, knew eventually Mankind would come, and He wanted us to be with Him, to have an eternal soul as He has, so waited until we would be able to experience His Presence, He waited until we evolved an auditory processing to hear His voice, visual processing to see His face, and cognitive processing to make sense of His message.
It’s a little more than just
knowing, though… God deliberately chose to create this universe as it is. He chose to create our bodies as they are… and He
had to be intimately involved every step of the way. Creation can’t sustain, guide, and give purpose to itself… it, just like all creatures, is completely dependent on God at all times. It can’t
not be.
And so once mankind evolved this, a process which He began then let go of in order that we would be totally free creatures to accept or reject His love, He appeared to us and gave us an eternal spirit…
That’s more or less where Ken Miller seems to lose me, yeah. I think the whole idea is just a little bit confused. How does God “let go” of the process? How
can he? What’s there to “let go” of? The universe doesn’t have free will to make decisions on its own.
"Ken Miller:
What many anti-Evolutionists don’t seem to get, is that a strictly determined chain of events in which our emergence was preordained, would require a strictly determinant physical world. In such a place, all events would have predictable outcomes, and the furture would be open neither to chance nor independent human action. A world in which we would always evolve is also a world in which we would never be free, but puppets of God.
This part, I think, has a good point. Unpredictability needs to be somehow built-in to the physical world, so that we can actually exercise our free will. If our brain was a strictly deterministic organ, we’d be out of luck… God would have to break/undo his own laws of physics for us every time we went to make a choice.
Ken Miller:
It is often said that a Darwinian universe is one in which the random collisions of particles govern all events and therefore the world is without meaning. I disagree. A world without meaning would be one in which a Deity pulled the string of every human puppet, and every material particle as well.
I’m more of less agreed with him on the “pulled the string of every human puppet” part, but not at all on the “every material particle as well”. Why can’t Divine Providence give every material particle a purpose, and guide it toward a specific end? What’s the big problem? The next sentence?..
Ken Miller:
In such a world, physical and biological events would be carefully controlled, evil and suffering could be minimized, and the outcome of historical processes strictly regulated.
Except God is always omnipotent anyway, so those problems are never going to disappear, even if God
could “free” creation from His guidance. I don’t see what Ken Miller thinks he’s solving here… even if you could “free” yourself from Divine Providence, nothing
really changes. So what’s the point? People can complain about the existence of evil all the same if God is intimately involved or if He is just sitting back and doing nothing.
Does God get involved in every single act of nature and creation? Well I suppose He could, but that would eradicate free will.
Leave human freedom aside for now… and tell me, in
all other cases,
whose free will is being eradicated? Because the universe doesn’t have free will… so when
we’re not involved, it’s either God in control, or nothing. And I don’t see why you’d ever have a reason to pick “nothing”, especially since it’s so opposed to Catholic teaching.
When one who is close to the Lord, who also loves animals, drives to work and a puppy runs out in front of the car and gets killed, did God do that? I do not believe so, not at all. When a loved one dies in a car accident, is that God’s doing?
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=261039
Surely if he was in control of EVERYTHING that wouldn’t of happened, oh unless of course He’s “testing” us.
So your response if that He’s
not in control of everything? Are you denying His omnipotence now, or not? Are you perhaps denying His omniscience? Because even
if God didn’t choose for them to happen, He certainly
knew, before He even created the universe, that these events
would happen. And yet He
chose to let it happen anyway. There’s no escaping the fact that God
is completely in control. If He didn’t
make it happen, He
let it happen. There’s no easy way out. You simply have to learn to trust Divine Providence.
…because just as we are free, so is the universe…
We have free will. The universe doesn’t. That’s a HUGE difference in “level of freedom”, if you ask me.
I know many disagree, but let’s go back to the elephants for example.
Sure. Let’s do that…
So we are to believe that God was working His will on a small organism quite unlike the elephant today over 50 million years ago, that He evolved; over time He crafted scores of new species, His designs gradually drifting closer and closer to the modern elephant. Then, in the last few million years He constructed in rapid succession nearly a dozen semifinal drafts until Elphas Maximus finally came off His drawing table.
Ah yes, this sounds like Ken Miller’s argument again… but I’ll let you finish.
This goes the same for every single living organism on the planet, if God willingly brought them into existence, He took his time, created, and destroyed thousands of species until they were what they are today. And even now, He will destroy hundreds more as He willingly evolves them into other entities.
Don’t you see how RIDICULOUS this sounds?
Nope!
But honestly, no. Come on. Yes, thousands of species died. But each one of those species served its purpose. Each one was adapted to fill it’s own ecological niche, for however long it was supposed to. And no, not every variation of every species was meant to survive to today… some were meant to do no more than serve as food for the species that God chose to maintain. Some were meant to produce descendants that would provide us with the selection of animals that God has covered the earth with today.
The same thing happens with people… some die in the womb, some die in infancy, some live a long life and produce descendants. But they’re all
people, they’re all infused with spiritual souls, and they all serve a purpose, even if we don’t know what it is right now. God’s Divine Providence is active at all times, everywhere, always providing for His creation. And unless you truly don’t trust that God has a plan, and always knows what is ultimately best for His creatures, I really don’t see the point in trying to run from it.
I don’t think he’s very clear on what “chance” is, and how it’s related to Divine Providence. Don’t ask me why… I don’t think it’s that difficult, myself. But yes, I’ve noticed similar “blurry areas” – usually he nails the philosophical arguments right on the head, but sometimes he’s just a little bit lost… not fatally so, but enough to make me shake my head in confusion. (Unless perhaps his new book clears this up a bit? Probably not, but I don’t know for sure, because I don’t have it quite yet.) 