The article is “meh”. I can’t tell is the author is an atheist, young-earth creationist of what. The article has some value in that it gets us to think about this issue more carefully. I read about halfway through the article. I have a few comments, but I don;t have time to post a full critique of it.
1)Just because some “theistic evolutionists” dont make room in their Darwin for theism, it does NOT mean that all don’t.
2) The author says, “The point is that theistic evolution has moved the discussion such that anything science finds out about the natural world can be interpreted as God’s plan” (p. 160). To this I say, “so what?” For every orthodox monotheistic faith, God is sovereign. There are natural laws that God has established to make the universe orderly and predictable for the benefit of all species. This in no way violates the principle that God can choose to direct the universe from time to time towards goals that fulfill God’s plan. There’s just nothing necessarily contradictory; claiming there is is just begging the question.
3) The article writer also says this: “ That is, theistic evolutionists embrace naturalistic evolution as fact, while simultaneously denying the naturalistic implications of naturalistic evolution.” Again, there is nothing inherently contradictory in holding the view that God creates material substance(s) and the laws that govern their behavior, while also having the capability of injecting supernatural causation into the stream of history. The author just keeps begging that which he seems to want to prove.
4) He quotes Rossiter as saying : “ They are not just claiming that the biblical authors of antiquity were ignorant of science (as they most certainly were), but that they were wrong about reality” (p. 63).” This may be the only thing I sort of agree with...namely that hyperliteralism is wrong. But evolutionary theists can consistently hold that God created the universe and guided it via physical laws AND supernatural intervention (miracles). The “days” of Genesis can easily be interpreted as ages/epochs or as a general principle of less advanced life preceeding more advanced life...culminating in God’s ultimate creation, Homo Sapiens.
5) Rossiter says this: ““It is untrue that science has nothing to say about miracles. If a man is spontaneously (miraculously) healed of a deadly virus while lying on his deathbed, doctors (and scientists) can document it. He had the virus, they knew his condition, and now he doesn’t. Of course we may not know why or how, but we can document and study it” (p. 79). Sorry, but he’s laughably wrong here. Science cannot say anything scientific about events who’s causes are not natural. Why? because the event would never follow if natural causes were the only thing in existence. There would be absolutely no predictability involved; science is all about predictions and demonstrations. Many scientists do not like the notion of miracles because it violates the whole, “this MUST follow from this” or “this cannot exist without THIS kind of cause”, but again....so what?
Bishop_Malachi:
"There are natural laws that God has established to make the universe orderly and predictable for the benefit of all species.
This in no way violates the principle that God can choose to direct the universe from time to time towards goals that fulfill God’s plan.
There’s just nothing necessarily contradictory..." Right, well said.
I would further suggest: the "natural realm" is in fact far more miraculous than "science" writ-large understands or wants to admit.
Sure, science discovers some principles or theories which seem to predict this or that, but why?
What (or Who?) created the theory, and what created that?
Ancient philosophers realized where such reasoning lead but modern science is built on the first principle of only natural explanations need apply for work here.
Well, a child can see that only natural explanations don't explain everything, so many years of atheistic training are needed to disabuse such ideas...
This article proclaims theistic evolution "bankrupt", but reality is still what Isaac Newton observed, circa 1726:
