In your post on March 1st you wrote:
I feel the conflict (between Science and Religion) only exists because there are Christians who don't want to consider the theory of evolution and there are Atheists who don't want to consider the theory that all is designed...the two aren't really that far apart if you think about it.
So let’s think about it!
First off, the fact that there are scientists who are religious does nothing to support the claim that religion is compatible with science. The issue here is not whether people can accept both but rather whether one can remain consistent in doing so.
In my last post, I pointed to a couple issues with Collins’ theistic evolution, specifically, how does one handle the doctrine of original sin and the existence of the soul. But there are a bigger issues. First, what exactly does God do? According to Collins, we cannot communicate with God:
Just because God is good and loves His creatures does not, for instance, require that we have the ability to communicate with Him, or to have some sort of relationship with Him. (p. 220)
God does not answer our prayers:
Prayer is not, as some seem to suggest, an opportunity to manipulate God into doing what you want Him to. Prayer is instead our way of seeking fellowship with God, learning about Him, and attempting to perceive His perspective on the many issues around us that cause us puzzlement, wonder, or distress. (p. 220)
And God does not violate the laws of science:
Once evolution got underway, no special supernatural intervention was required. (p. 200)
This gives us the picture of a God that in uninvolved in the world. How is this any different than deism? Collins recognizes that this is a problem and addresses the issue on his new website:
Divine Action is defined as God’s interaction with creation. Due to the understanding that evolution accounts for the diversity of present life forms, it might appear God played no role in the process of evolution. (See Question 26 about The Complexity of Life.) Clearly this contradicts the central doctrine of creation for many faiths. Christianity, for example, professes a God actively involved in creation. Many faiths share the concept of an interactive God, or theism. The opposing belief — the belief in an uninvolved, disinterested God — is deism.
Collins’ answer -- God is involved in the world:
In harmony with theism, BioLogos affirms a God who is at all times involved, yet who still allows a degree of freedom to the creation.
We cannot have it both ways. So how does God act without intervening with the natural laws? Well, He acts at the quantum level tinkering around with different electrons and such:
The mechanical worldview of the scientific revolution is now a relic. Modern physics has replaced it with a very different picture of the world. With quantum mechanical uncertainty and the chaotic unpredictability of complex systems, the world is now understood to have a certain freedom in its future development. Of course, the question remains whether this openness is a result of nature’s true intrinsic chanciness or the inevitable limit to humans’ understanding. Either way, one thing is clear: a complete and detailed explanation or prediction for nature’s behavior cannot be provided. This was already a problem for Newtonian mechanics; however, it was assumed that in principle, science might eventually provide a complete explanation of any natural event. Now, though, we see that the laws of nature are such that scientific prediction and explanation are ultimately limited.
It is thus perfectly possible that God might influence the creation in subtle ways that are unrecognizable to scientific observation. In this way, modern science opens the door to divine action without the need for law breaking miracles. Given the impossibility of absolute prediction or explanation, the laws of nature no longer preclude God’s action in the world. Our perception of the world opens once again to the possibility of divine interaction.
Despite the uncertainty and unpredictability of the world, we are not forced to reject the earlier understanding of God’s creation as consistent and reliable. After all, the world still exhibits the same orderly behavior that inspired so many faithful scientists of earlier centuries. Regardless of the irregularity of tiny,quantum mechanical, or complex, chaos theoretical, systems, the sun stills rises and sets, the tides ebb and flow, and objects fall to the ground. Nature is reliable enough to reflect God’s faithfulness yet flexible enough to permit God’s involvement.
Really? To me this just seems like a last ditch effort to show how science and religion can be compatible. Check out this article by Victor Stenger for an explanation of the physics and the philosophical consequences of this view. In any case, it makes for a very strange theology:
http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/Dice/ActFI.pdf
Another issue with the concept of theistic evolution is the idea of human contingency. Imagine if we wound back the clock several hundred million years to let it play out again. Chances are we would end up with a world without human-like or intelligent creatures. Or if an astroid didn’t collide with the earth and the dinosaurs never went extinct there might not be any intelligent life on this planet. It is said that God created us in His image, but given evolution, we realize it is quite possible for us to have never even existed!
We don’t have to discuss Francis Collins in particular. I pick on Collins because you mentioned him earlier in our discussion. Any account of theistic evolution is going to be similar to that of Collins’.
I am going to leave you with the relevant links to what has been called the big accommodationism debate. Check it out. Start by reading ”Seeing and Believing” by Jerry Coyne then follow the rest of the links here:
http://www.edge.org/discourse/accomodationism.html
Some responses to you:
Since you do not believe the bible story of Adam and Eve, you need to reinterpret the doctrine of original sin to be understood differently. But then why did Jesus die? I’ve been to church on Easter and that was all they talked about. “Jesus died for our sins. Jesus died for our sins. Jesus died for our sins.”
There is a case to be made that Jesus never claimed to be God. I am not going to rehash this argument here because this will take us off topic once again. We can return to this issue later. Until then, read the book by John Loftus that I recommended for some discussion on this.
