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itinerant1
Guest
The answer is that it is all magic.How does philosophy explain God keeping the earth in existence? Seriously.
Actually, I will say something in regard to organisms, which will also apply to non-living matter too as far as its very existence or act of being is concerned. In regard to organisms, the explanation applies to their activities or operations and to their very act of existing. (Existence is an act that is differentiated from a thing’s essence.)
Now, the answer is rather complex, but I will at least state something to give you an a limited idea. The problem with Intelligent Design theory is that it attributes to the “Designer” an efficacy that God has originally given to created things. So, what then, we must ask, is the relation of God to creation as far as a creatures’ actions are concerned? And what are God’s actions in relation to the very subsistence of created things?
The answer involves two apparently contradictory but necessary truths. The apparent contradiction is resolved at a level of metaphysical analysis that would be too much to explain here. So, the two truths are (1) God does whatever creatures do, and (2) creatures themselves do whatever they do.
That is, what each does, is done in a very different way.
God is intimately present in the substance of creatures and their operations . But the intimacy of the assistance He gives them leaves their individual efficacy absolutely intact.
Because God is the supreme Act-of-Being, he is everywhere present and acting by His efficacy. He is intimately present in the very esse whose operation proceeds from creatures. He supports them and animates them from within. Creatures neither are nor do anything except by Him, just as they would not originally exist without Him. Now this would appear to submerge creatures into the divine efficacy, but as noted above, creatures still retain their own being and efficacy.