Calling all Theistic Evolutionists...
In case you missed it, in the Dawkin's post Aaron asks:
I have a question related to theistic-evolution that a priest/friend brought up and it has really had me thinking...since evolution relies on death as a central element of it's process, can it be something we attribute to God?
This, I find to be an excellent question...think about it: Natural selection - in order to be natural selection - requires that unique attributes of a particular organism give to it a certain (however slight) advantage such that its more favorable genes are more readily passed on to future generations, while those lacking the advantage tend to die before propegating themselves in the same quantities as the organism with the advantage. So, Aaron and his friend are correct: death is required of natural selection.
Now, God has certainly made use of ugly circumstances (unattributable to Him - I think) to bring about good. One example that comes to my Islamophobic mind is the early conquests of Islam that ultimately protected St. Isaac from a heretical Byzantine Emperor. BUT, the problem that I see here is that no matter how you take the Genesis account of Creation, you must agree that theologically and historically death did not enter into the world until AFTER the Fall, no? At which time, presumably, Homo Sapiens would have already been fully evolved?
Well?
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While not really a theistic-evolutionist, isn't the basic natural selection model based on selective advantage in fecundity and not lifespan or mortality risk? Or was I not paying attention in that class?
Although true that deleterious genes may cause early death through disease, defect, etc., it is really only the effect of death on fecundity, lifelong ability to spread one's genes around, that is really at issue.
In other words, mortality is not an absolution requirement. If you have a gene which causes an increase in reproductive success (for us living in the western U.S., let's say a 'Bigger and Cooler Antler' gene), even if everybody lives forever you may nevertheless have selective forces tending to increase the gene in the population at the expense of others.
Thoughts?
Some One's death could definitely be said to be a requirement for absolution [chuckle]
I think you HAVE to have extinction for evolution to make sense. In other words, if you have new species arising and the old one's remaining (even if at a lessor level)...well...we'd have a serious population problem after the millions of years required to go from single celled organism to human being. You'd have a whole host of slightly-less-than-human species and then slight-less than slightly-less-than-human-species etc etc etc.
I'm also not sure that attractive breeding characteristics are enough to lead to such radical changes. I think you have to have other species dying out - being out competed by more succesful species or more succesful genes.
Also, for every beneficial genetic mutation we would expect to see many that are downright disasterous and deadly. Can you have genetic mutations without death? I don't think so.
Dawkins is particularly guilty of using such personified and purposefull terminology...but he grants it as such and has his own notion of reasonings for doing so. For my own part, I agree with you and believe it betrays a grander truth. Nice to hear from you, Gary...I'd like very much to hear some of those sub stories you mention in your profile!
Aaron's question, I think, throws a big ugly wrnech into theistic evolution - one I'd never considered before and should like very much to hear some thoughts from those who would claim belief in theistic evolution.
Evolution is actually a very strong argument that God did give the world freedom.
-Rick
There is death, and then there is death. Even the Theotokos died. So, as I understand it, there is the separation of the soul from the body as a consequence of the Fall, which is traumatic and "unnatural" in terms of God's original intention, but then there is the separation of the person from God, which is a consequence of the person's misuse of free will. We call that Hell: The free rejection of God's uncreated energies, which are experienced by those who embrace them as light and warmth, and by those who resist them as darkness and burning.
Death is not from God. As soon as decide that it is, then the whole view of salvation is changed, for now God (or something in God, such as His "wrath" or "justice") has become the obstacle that must be removed if salvation is to be had. No one can stop anyone from believing this if they really want to, but if we think this is Orthodoxy, we'd better think again.
Gary Patrick
The President wants to talk to you more about your ME Peace Plan. He wants to call it the "Ferrenberg Solution".
Going to the Capital Building tomorrow and try and get Murry and Cantwell to debate some issues in the same room together. I thought we would talk about the weather, what they want for Christmas and try to sell them some of Sharon's chocolate.
Talk to ya' soon.
Jared.
Patrick, with respect to the world's freedom, think for a moment. Are all natural disasters God's will? I don't think that you want to go there.
With respect to the separation of soul and body, this is really death. If this is really death, then the death that animals experience is not really death. Death can only exist for those who have souls. Therefore, the whole discussion about evolution cannot be used by God because of death is really a result of people not understanding the meaning of death.
-Rick
:)
It looks to me like either Orthodoxy has to be false or we don't exactly understand death fully. Whatever spiritual aspect you give to death, this death then applies to evolution as well.
I'm not sure Rick...what do we make of the Resurrection of the dead? I guess I've always understood the "trampling down death" in the same way that we note during the liturgy
Christ's "glorious second coming" in the past tense. While I do not have the theological expertise to say what precisely is different for dead Christians now than for those who died prior to AD 33...but I tend to think that all of what happened there transcends time to some extent.
separation of soul and body, this is really death. If this is really death, then the death that animals experience is not really death. Death can only exist for those who have souls.
Now Rick...help me here...recall you are talking to a "scientist's mind". Are you advancing the notion that prior to the fall that animals experienced something we might commonly (albeit erroneously) refer to as death? And thus once humans had reached their divinely designed climax of genetic mutations that they stopped that? Or that THEIR death took on the TRUE mystical meaning of death: soul and body divorce?
Am I taking all of this too realistically? Liek Gary, I am no great proponent of Creation Science...but neither am I going to argue much for Theistic evolution...especially when this issue still seems to be a huge stumbling block in my mind. You cannot have evolution as it is understood (i.e. an uncoated segment of RNA eventually becoming a human being) without competition, death and extinction.
I have a hard time seeing how this can be reconciled to the notion of death being a product of the fall.
Unless, God caused evolution to function in some capacity that can only be seen as miraculous.
Odd, no?
sf
looks like most of the thread wants to derive science from the scriptures in some form or another.
I simply raise the question, is it reasonable to cite scripture within the context of scientific inquiry? isn't it more accurate to say that the two intersect at the point of Truth? wiser to leave it at that?
sf
Evolution cannot happen - as we understand it - without death. So I feel like we are at a "which came first the chicken or the egg" sort of impass and I've yet to have an explanation that will satisfy my addmittedly simplistic mind.
I think in english, there is more than one state of being which can be called dead. The scriptures speak of some living as "the dead". All this to say, evolution requires the cessation of biological processes, It does not address conciousness.
Moreover, consider that as you raise the concept of generations dying over time, God Himself is outside of time. Necessarily, all times are the present to Him to the extent that sequential time is even relevant in discussing the Godhead.
Evolution is a child of the enlightenment. It rests on a single fundamental premise - that man can KNOW. In a sense, man can become (a) god. This is somewhat antithetical to the scriptures which take the position that knowledge is revealed, man can learn, but not KNOW without revelation. Within this latter construct, that which is worth learning is that that which is revealed, not that which is discovered.
I see here a path for theistic (macro) evolution to the extent that solid reasoning and ample evidence supports it. As a first principle I take that God is the creator and master of the universe. That which I or others discover as TRUTH is of Him, regardless of the process by which it is discovered. In this sense, Einstein and St. Gregory Palamas serve similar functions. One illumines the intellect, the other our immortal soul. As the soul is eternal and thus superior to the intellect, we're probably better off as persons studying St. Gregory, that dosn't mean that Einstein is worthless or inaccurate, or anti-God. Nor does it mean that I _must_ map the two together. Any mapping would have my bias built into it and thus would be subjective rather objective truth. I think the same goes for the theory of evolution and the Christian world view.
ramblingly yours
sf
I have always "rationalized" (admittedly a dangerous hobby) the notion of Christ's trampling down death and our contuning to die as being a factor related to the timelessness of the act - often wondering if we ALL won't be present in the "King of Glory" knocks at the gates.
I am still having a hard time seperating this science/religion dichotomy on this particular issue and I don't think you've cleared it up for me yet.
You are not advocating a complete separation of science and religion are you? In other words, clearly the Resurrection of Christ literally happened and this implies that something bilogical happened when a body that was once dead is no longer dead, right?
Help me out here. Did God create man through the process of evolution? If we belive He did, then spiritualize or rationalize the fall for me so that it meshes or at least doesn't seen to directly contradict what we believe we know about evolution.
Remember, I am a bear of very little brain.