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To: Ethan Clive Osgoode
Because "evolution" usually refers to some naturalistic process by which man arose without any supernatural act.

"Usually," huh?

If the entirety of man's appearance, to include his development from single-celled organism to a being with a soul made in the likeness of his Creator, was set in motion by an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent God from nothing, with no other agent of influence upon it other than that Creator, then ALL of it is supernatural.

Your false differentiation of "naturalistic" as something separate from God's will, knowledge or plan seems absurd to me.

116 posted on 10/29/2014 2:18:59 PM PDT by Trailerpark Badass (There should be a whole lot more going on than throwing bleach, said one woman.)
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To: Trailerpark Badass; Ethan Clive Osgoode
If the entirety of man's appearance, to include his development from single-celled organism to a being with a soul made in the likeness of his Creator, was set in motion by an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent God from nothing, with no other agent of influence upon it other than that Creator, then ALL of it is supernatural.

If everything is a miracle, then how do miracles serve as signs of the special providence of God?  Under that reasoning, no act of God can be distinguished from any other act of God.  The word "natural" loses its meaning completely.  Or conversely, the word "supernatural" and "natural" refer to the same thing, and there really are no miracles that can convey the intervention of a personal God.  

But we see in Scripture that miracles are those things which DO convey a special action by God.  That is their whole intent in the narratives in which they appear.  It is not natural for a man dead and buried four days to come back to life.  It is not natural for a pot of water to be suddenly filed with high quality wine.  It is not natural for a man born blind to suddenly begin seeing.  So then according to the testimony of Scripture, "natural" and "supernatural" are distinct after all. There can be no supernature without there first being nature. A pot of water is minding it's own business, just being water and sloshing around in the pot. Then the Son of God speaks and the water's materiality is exposed as an unclosed system, that there exists a back door through which the Creator can, without violating natural law, introduce unexpected causation by a short cut, and bring new things into being ex nihilo, and make them part of the things that already have their being, which is what we normally mean by "miracle."

Which is precisely why they are part of the narrative of Immanuel, God with us.  Miracles are the signature of God's presence with us. Only God can make that which never was, and call it into being for the first time.  But after it has it's being, it is real.  It has it's own existence.  It is distinguishable from the Creator. It is creature. And it behaves according to the principles of it's being reliably.  Unless a miracles occurs, unless the Creator takes a lump of already created dirt and breathes life into it.  He might have breathed life into anything, or pressed upon any creature the image of Himself, as those creatures were already there, all created before man.

But that's not what the narrative says.  He ignored all those other created, already living things, wonderful as they were, and set his focus on a lump of dirt.  And it was this dead dirt which He formed into a lifeless man, and into that stillness He breathed the breath of life, and Adam came to be, as a living soul. If we take that narrative seriously, we cannot see some precedent chain of lesser living creatures, but only dead dirt, created ex nihilo some days ago, but now having it's own continuous and rather boring existence, and coming suddenly to life only after God intervenes ex nihilo once again, by a new miracle, a miracle of intervention in the existing order of nature, and therefore an act of supernature.

So we do not exist as a result of the ordinary, natural behavior of dirt, mixing with lightening and water and whatever else the "primordial soup" is supposed to have contained, all running along their natural, predictable path of being.  We exist as a result of God intervening in His own created order to introduce something that order could never otherwise expect to see.  We are the surprise package snuck in through the back door.  Nature, even as God created it, never saw us coming. Born of a miracle, and born again by an even greater miracle, by the God of infinite surprises.

Peace,

SR

118 posted on 10/29/2014 5:30:38 PM PDT by Springfield Reformer (Winston Churchill: No Peace Till Victory!)
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To: Trailerpark Badass
If the entirety of man's appearance, to include his development from single-celled organism to a being with a soul made in the likeness of his Creator, was set in motion by an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent God from nothing, with no other agent of influence upon it other than that Creator, then ALL of it is supernatural.

Can you show me where this notion appears in an authoritative text on evolution?

122 posted on 10/30/2014 8:03:35 AM PDT by Ethan Clive Osgoode (<<== Click here to learn about Evolution!)
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