Um…can you show me one?

St. Augustine coined the term.

Evolution depends on random mutation. But replace the word “random” with “non-deterministic”, and then one could say that some non-deterministic events are indeed random, but some are choices made by God, and/or other creative entities.

I may be putting words in is mouth, but everything he said is fully consistant with a someone who believes in “process philosophy” and also accepts basic Catholic teachings like God’s creation of the universe, and the miricle of Christ. So that is what I would expect he believes. That, or something very close to it.

http://www.lilydaleassembly.com/

This place is like psychic central. It’s about an hour’s drive from where I grew up and has been around for over a century. My family has been going there on occasion since before I was born. My first memory of it is going on 50 years old. I took my children there too. It’s quite an experience and while it isn’t free it’s less costly than Disney World.

As for natural processes producing life, I would argue that we are seeing more and more that unguided natural mechanisms cannot produce life at the complexity which we observe. When we consider things like Irreducible Complexity and the Cambrian Explosion, it seems to point towards purposeful supernatural events.

I certainly do not reject supernatural events outright, and I do consider their legitimacy. The Bible certainly is an accurate historic document in many regards. I do not view eye witness testimony as particularly compelling evidence. There is no shortage for modern eyewitness testimony of the existence of ghosts.While I would like to believe in the existence of ghosts however history has shown that many such claims are fradulent or a case of an overactive imagination.

Early this century mediums were the rage. Scientific American offerred a substantial cash reward for any medium that could demonstrate the authenticity of their craft. Many mediums attempted to claim the prize and many were debunked by the review board. There were a few however that were “verified” by the review board and nearly claimed their prize. That is until Mr. Harry Houdini stepped in to expose their quite ingenious tricks. If no one could demonstrate an ability to contact the dead then it is likely that nobody could do so today and that the psychics are almost certainly frauds or victims of self-dellusion, but hey who isn’t.

Sorry for the digression. As far as my views on the supernatural and the history of life go, I think it a good bit more likely that we are a product of natural processes. I think there is a tremendous amount about the mechanisms of evolution that is not currently understood, but that lack of understanding is not, for me, a compelling reason to abandon the search for natural processes i.e. science.

They also wrote:But it is important to note that, according to the Catholic understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence.

NS is not incompatible with Catholic teaching. That’s not the same as saying Catholic teaching insists on NS. The position stated above, I believe, fully conforms to Michael Denton’s in his Nature’s Destiny. God “could” use NS–and many IDers agree that He does when it comes to “microevolution.” But Nature itself does not confirm that “macroevolution” results from NS.

jboze3131: yeah. but both the pope and the cardinal posit purely natural processes that god used to create life and finally humans. i see problems denying creation itself…but i see even bigger problems with positing natural processes and not god guided processes that bring man about.

The Catholic Church would never deny “divine causality.” The argument is–and they give science great latitude in trying to determine this–is the causality “primary”, that is, God “directly” brings something about, or is it “secondary”, that is, God brings is about through created causes (the causal natural order). What is essential, for faith, is “divine causality”, not whether it is primary or secondary. You seem intent on saying, definitively, based on the Bible, that it is primary. I remember what a Jesuit told me once: “Look at the creation account. The sun was created on the third day. How can you have a “day” without the sun?” Moral of the story: let’s be careful.

When you couple the historical evidence with the subjective experience of countless transformed lives today… you can build a cogent case, in my opinion.

“we have a modern western prejudice against the supernatural ”
“we shouldn’t be willing to disregard something because it doesn’t fit in to our little prejudiced paradigm”

Bombadill

Its not a prejudice against the supernatural. There is just no compelling evidence for supernatural events. Everything we know about the universe suggests that it and everything in it behaves according to natural laws. If someone (in the West) is not indoctrinated with fundamentalist teachings they simply see little reason to believe in the supernatural. Many non-fundamentalist christians believe in the immaculate conception and other biblical events, but for whatever reason are not so apt to believe in modern supenatural events.

The way I see it
We ascribe supernatural causes to unexplained events or phenomena. Knowledge about the world has always shown these events or phenomena to be natural. I am not going to say that the supernatural world does not exist or that it cannot interact with us. I could not possibly prove such things. What I can say is that I have good reason to believe in a world governed by natural laws and no reason, as of yet, to believe in the supernatural. To me the human religious experience is perfectly natural and indeed necessary. It does not offer anything in the way of proof as I see it.