"What Will the Next Biological Breakthrough Be?" (article)

Institute for Creation Research ^ | 6-25-12 | Brian Thomas

[aruanan]

Are the stars currently forming through gravity and nuclear fusion not made by God? Are they less made by God than our own Sun?

Psalm 104 talks about God's relationship to the earth and to living creatures: "When you hide your face, they are terrified; when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust. When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth." Sounds like an ongoing relationship. Remember Paul's assertion to the Corinthians about God, and using one of their own poets for corroboration: "In him we live and move and have our being; as also certain of your poets have said. For we are also his offspring." An ongoing relationship. And then there's Paul's letter to the Colossians in which he says, about the relationship of the Son of God to the universe: "He is before all things, and in him all things hold together." Certainly an ongoing thing. And Jesus said, "“My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.” Another indication of a present tense, ongoing relationship with the world God created.

The Bible tells me I was made “from dust” and “to dust” I will return. But I was also made through cellular processes involving DNA. Was my creation “from dust” less literal than the creation of Adam “from dust”?

Probably. It's a mistake to confuse ongoing operations with those that initiated the operations.

And, again, you're missing the point. You cannot say that God is controlling things through randomness, well, you can say it, but you can't actually be saying anything by it. If God is controlling everything, then whatever else it is, it's no longer random. You could say that God is controlling everything that, to us, appears random. You could say that everything in creation is running on its own unless God somehow intervenes and call that running on its own randomness, though it actually isn't. You could say that if everything has a preexisting cause and has a subsequent effect, then there is no randomness and that God, being the initial cause, is also the cause of all subsequent effects. You could say that there is no God and everything that happens, happens without purpose (though not without cause), and having no purpose makes it random, at least from an emotional standpoint of the observer who thinks he sees that things should go one way but end up going another. But you cannot say, if words are to actually have any meaning, that randomness, as indeterminacy, is being controlled or determined by God.

[allmendream]

Yes, and what and where and how does God do HIS daily work?

Through miraculous intervention in contradiction of the physical laws of the universe, or in the swaying of small things THROUGH the physical laws of the universe that lead inexorably to the fate God has foretold?

A ‘random’ mutation in a blood clotting gene of Queen Victoria changed history forever. Was God not in control of the ‘random’ events of her creation - when God created her “from dust”?

I think it a mistake to assume that there are, on the one hand, physical laws that God uses to create things, and a miraculous magical “special” creation. So the Bible is just being ‘poetic’ when it describes me as being created “from dust” but absolutely literal when it describes Adam as being created “from dust”; a rather interesting if dubious proposition.

I don't have to say it - the Bible says God is in control of random events. You can go down the theological rabbit hole of predestination vs free will all you want - the Bible clearly states that God is in control of random events - as he MUST be - if God is in control of history and able to know the future.

Random implies indeterminate to who? Certainly not to God.

What was God's role in the creation of my physical body “from dust”? Merely in setting up the initial conditions? My genes are a ‘random’ assortment of my grandparents genes - setting up the initial conditions doesn't really determine what DNA I will posses - God has to also be in control of what we perceive to be indeterminate and random.

“The dice are cast into the lap, but every result is from the Lord”