Faith Well Grounded

In another thread , an argument for an intelligent creator was questioned.

Let's see if I have the argument straight: a type of biological complexity (human intelligence) is the only known cause of manufactured complexity, therefore a supernatural intelligent agency must be responsible for biological complexity. It's a non sequitur, as I'd like to think Newton would agree.

I answered:

I was over at a sport's forum, where I sometimes go and check up on my favorite team news. When I logged in recently I had a private message awaiting me from someone I do not know, and with whom I have never had interaction. As far as I can tell, the private message was nothing more than a Buddhist apologetic, via an Einstein quote (which is Ok by me for what it's worth). Since I enjoy any opportunity to set Christianity on the "truth-scale" against any worldview, I responded and invited a dialogue.

In comments here lately I have professed the fathers of modern science as working within a creationist framework. This is in response to the claim that ID is not science, and my making the point that the recent definition of science that bars the supernatural as a potential cause is just that-- recent. The fathers of modern science worked within a creationist's framework, and you can't separate their science from this framework. You just can't-- especially when they went through great pains to prevent us trying.

In my recent defense of Dr. Michael J. Behe, I revisited the court transcripts of the Dover trial and it struck me that there was a lot of philosophy being doled out in the name of the law. Now, please bear in mind that this post isn't written to answer whether it's right for the bench to be used to choose between philosophies. This post is written to point out that Judge Jones' philosophy was just bad.

This is the promised follow-up to the peer review blog post found here. It's a copy of the senior adviser's review of his submission to a science journal, and Behe's response (copied and pasted from http://www.arn.org/docs/behe/mb_correspondencewithsciencejournals.htm). I thought it interesting.

...or just a more consistent atheist?

Take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through with the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet you act as if there were some sort of rightness in the universe by which it may be judged.

-Death

"In the beginning, God…” Genesis 1:1, excerpt.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God…” John 1:1

I love these verses, great beginnings to the stories of beginnings. Both start with the utmost central subject of our existence: God. Both begin the Creation story, in which God creates with Word as deed. By Word alone, He creates from nothing. In Him is existence with such perfection that He can give existence as gift.

I’m thinking lately on the problem of pain-- that of evil, that of misery, that of the overarching “wrongness” of the human condition. I’m tending to agree with C.S. Lewis that the problem of pain is a problem strictly for the Christian (in the philosophical sense, anyway).

“Pain” is not a problem for the naturalist/atheist, since it could not be expected that a random, self-created, amoral Universe would be mindful of its product. It shouldn’t be expected to care for its creation, or provide comfort as such. It can’t be expected to be mindful of us at all.

Part two in the e-dogg questions:

What follows is a second response to honest inquiries into the gospel. It has been "built" more than written- hopefully "led" more than built. Unfortunately, I fear that the heady subject and the "building" of the response may make it seem a bit choppy and disjointed, since I've gone from point to point to point within the overall subject. There is a lot to fit in here, and much more left out for the sake of brevity.

e-dogg raised two very good and important questions in one of the Miracles threads. I'll summarize them in this and the next blog. (e-dogg, if I have missed your points please chime in and clarify).

I'll try to provide the theology based on sound scripture. Since this is such a deep and profound doctrine, please don't expect my initial responses to be all-encompassing. I'm looking at this as an overview that should act as the springboard into a discussion that will hopefully get us to the sweet center of the gospel and God's immense love for us.