AAAS Response to Expelled

As the church lady would say, “Isn’t that special”.

How many on this site would have to give up their faith if they discovered that law alone explained it all?

Not Me.

For that matter, how many on this site do not hold to a particular faith position?

I bet, about 10%

How many are IDers because of the scientific evidence alone.

I am.

‘C-mon yous guys, respect the facts of the data. There’s good data-based reasons for many to take an ID position. Your simple formula ID = religion is full of it!

Dave, your powerfully concise analysis of TE confusion may be the best that I have ever read.

It’s good to see somebody downplaying the so-called war between science and religion anyway. That’s one thing I would agree with them on.

The irony is this: It is the TE who pits religion against science, because it proposes a divided truth—one for religion and one for science.

ID assumes the unity of truth, and therefore encourages the proposition that religion and science are compatible —each provides one aspect of the same truth.

Well spoken Dave!

These guys nauseate me to no end! Give me an honest atheist or agnostic any day! I hate to say it but religion in America is sick! sick! sick! Not everyone, of course, but do we even have a minyan with their heads on straight?

“How many on this site would have to give up their faith if they discovered that law alone explained it all?”

There would still be the problem of what explains the law.

Perhaps both NDE’s and TE’s have a vested interest in not pursuing the evidence wherever it may lead.

In other words, there a huge difference between a people that believes and has faith in god & and afterlife, and one that knows there is a god and an afterlife.

I don’t think such knowledge would exactly be conducive to maintaining the daily status quo, which might be something NDE’ers and TE’ers wish to maintain.

Dave,

I get the impression from those in this video that they
think its ok to believe in God if you are a scientist, as long as God remains a bit “fuzzy”. In other words, those who believe in TE will say they see the hand of God, but don’t ask them to be too specific. ID is specific, which is what it is meant to be. BTW, ID says nothing about God and yet those in the video mention the designer is God. There are therefore extrapolating in a way ID does not.

Personally I think these people are either liars who are not convinced they see God all over the place or they are being truthful in becoming convinced of things with no rational evidence…

Hmmm… I’m not inclined to think such people are deliberately lying; however, I do suspect that what they say about faith may be (highly?) colored in many cases by the fact that on some level they want to believe. I’d guess that, as scientists, they’ve been trained to filter out what would ordinarily be obvious evidence of design, so that in fact they do NOT “see God all over the place.” They’d just rather not admit to themselves that their faith is pretty much dead in the water. Just a guess, though.

Sorry if I’m offending anyone but these people disgust me. They’re all like “I believe in rational inquiry, science, and bearded thunderers who live in the sky and worry about my immortal soul”. Please. Choose one or the other but not both.

Haha! What?? You? Offend someone? No…! (And I’m sure the thought of it would lie heavily on your conscience!)

I have pretty low tolerance for such myself. Knee-jerk is to think of them as “educated idiots.” I probably wouldn’t trust their science beyond what can be demonstrated in the lab in the present, and I probably wouldn’t care to trust a religious “testimony” from them at all.

Yet these people aren’t stupid; some of them are no doubt highly intelligent, as well as educated. I’d surmise they’re just intellectually inattentive to things that they’re not pressured to examine carefully and probably aren’t inclined to anyway.

In March I posted a lecture from the Teaching Company about how the science discoveries of Newton and the physical laws he discovered led at first to an awe of God but eventually to a feeling that there was no need for God since the laws replaced God. Essentially this was the rise of the Enlightenment. If one wants to read it, the link is below

http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-190514

Ten years ago I was what would be called today a theistic evolutionists I knew next to nothing about evolution except that survival of the fittest made sense and if everyone in biology thought Darwin’s ides were right then it was ok by me.

But I thought there was an overall order to the world and everything just fit into place and had no problem with God and thought it absurd that this could happen by itself. No science. So these people may have similar feelings to what I had 10 years ago.

Except my ideas changed when I attended a conference at Cooper Union in New York in which Behe, Dembski and several others talked. That was the start of my journey to support ID. Now the order in the world made even more sense. The people in this video have the same access to the knowledge I have and yet are now on a different path. Why?

—–Gil: “How exactly does one argue that we were made by God in His image (an absolutely essential part of both Judaism and Christianity) through an unplanned, goalless, unguided, purposeless material process?”

A couple of TEs visited this blog a while back and I asked them almost that same question in a number of different ways. The funny part is that I can’t report on their answers because they were too incoherent to summarize.

Someone recently asked Robert Russell, a dedicated TE and fierce ID opponent, to respond to Simpson’s famous statement: “Evolution is a purposeless, mindless process that did not have man in mind–Yes, or no! Russell responded, “from a theological perspective, no, from a scientific perspective, yes.” up.

Jerry,

I read you post from March. Very interesting. My impression is that Newton was distrubed theologically by his mechanistic laws. He understood the implications of them, that the laws imply a universe that does not require God. However, whats missing is what we have discovered in the 20th century. Underlying all this order is an uncertainity, namely quantum mechanics. QM places limites on what we can know.

This video is ridiculous.

Other than the voluntary lying to themselves thing (or worse!), i believe they see no problem between physicalism and Christianity simply because they dont care much about the law of non contradiction.

Anyway, AAS peeps must be really desperate to call Christians to do their defense

I understand Russell’s statement (end of #13), for what that’s worth, and I think I have non-incoherent thoughts on the matter. However I think it would take a friendlier environment to try to explain - the depths of hostility here are pretty deep.

Jack Krebs: “I understand Russell’s statement………

Well, Jack, my derivative question was probably too easy anyway. Why not answer Gil’s fundamental question, and I’ll stay out of the way. (for a while)

I don’t disagree with my fellow IDers here but I do want to point out that there are more ways to knowledge than merely science. Since I don’t believe anybody here really subscribes to scientism I would presume that we also accept logical and philosophical evidences for God or faith, as well as, for the Christians, history and revelation.

Gil:

How exactly does one argue that we were made by God in His image (an absolutely essential part of both Judaism and Christianity) through an unplanned, goalless, unguided, purposeless material process?

Mind if I put my TE hat on for a bit? I don’t find it unreasonable that God has chosen to hide his face. If God chose to not be found by science, he will not be found by science. It could be, for instance, that he established a set of laws which, without further guidance, with only the same determination that water has to find its way to the ocean, will produce intelligent life. It is even reasonable to suggest that as God knows that water will flow to the ocean, he knew that intelligent life would eventually arise. As God need not have charted every tidbit of the course that water would take, he may have not needed to chart every step of the process of evolutionary development. For all of science, it looks like life meandered in an unpurposeful way, yet the results are ultimately obligated by the laws.

I don’t find TE to be theologically illogical. To me, the schtick is in the data. The big bang looks like a God act to me. Life looks like a God act to me. I note the fact that the hunt for first life has produced no genuine fruit. I look at the arguments against irreduceable complexity, and find them painfully unconvincing.

What I am convinced of, by this movie, is that the AAAS genuinely believes that religious conviction is the heart and sole of ID. For me they are wrong!

—–Charlie: I am completely in agreement with you. Science is a very high road, but by no means, the only road to knowledge. Indeed, the most important truths of all undergirds science. What is at issue is the unity of truth and the TE proposition that it can be divided. Rationality cannot accomodate more than one truth and sustain itself.

—–bfast: “Mind if I put my TE hat on for a bit? I don’t find it unreasonable that God has chosen to hide his face. If God chose to not be found by science, he will not be found by science.”

Well, there is the other half of the equation to be worked out. According to the Christian faith, God’s handiwork was made manifest, such that those who deny it “are without excuse.” How does one reconcile a Scriptural God who promised to show himself in nature with a God who hides himself in nature. That is the theological point.

Somebody said “educated idiots”—I rather like the term erudite nincompoops.

As for Newton—his voluminous notebooks are now available on line. Newton is typically blamed for the deterministic view of materialist physics, but when you read him you see that he was as far from that as one could get—he was ID all the way. The opposite is Einstein’s universe—utterly determined, no now, no free will. The Darwinists, evidently not understanding Einstein, have taken the opposite tack—nothing’s determined, it’s all an accident.

Newton questioned Church authority and its theology and thus his religious insights have not been very popular with churchmen. He would have been burned at the stake had he not been such a gift to Britain.

Jack, I think Russell’s statement is unobjectionable as well. And I’m not exactly TE.

The thing is I think I see the disconnect, as well. On the one hand, I buy that we shouldn’t presume where the evidence is leading. You may believe one thing, but that doesn’t make it inevitable. And working in this “humble”, agnostic way allows you to at least get another piece of the puzzle in focus, that you don’t have to presume about the big picture. Thus looking at the mechanical minutia, it is purposeless.

However, being a fierce opponent of ID means that you don’t think that the trail can lead toward God, so you are being at least somewhat presumptuous of it. In addition you’re standing on the line with atheists who are trying to fill in the blanks–and let’s face it evangelize society with the new capabilities of a mind free from “God”.

I see it this way because I can see the purposeless perspective. But I don’t see that the only valuable meta-narratives are ones that presuppose a total absence of purpose, when we don’t know how the mechanics speak to the idea of purpose.

If you believe in God, you most likely believe that this is in some way a positive statement: Purpose exists. Purpose is a thing or state of something. The only difference is the question is it detectable? Now we might have settled with our own explanation that bridges the gap between God’s likelihood and his lack of evidence. But that doesn’t mean that we’ve arrived at God’s intended balance.

(Now, in case anti-ID or materialist onlookers are whirling into a tizzy of bad reading, let me clarify why my frequent mention of “God” in this piece does not violate the distance between the “designer” and “God”. 1) Theological Evolution is in view here. Therefore “God” is entirely within context. 2) The complete absence of anything but a suggestion of design.)

Quickly: Btw, I also understand that sometimes YECs and ID-ists can be too hostile to TEs.

Gil:

But then evolution was not unplanned or purposeless, was it? It was designed.

Sometimes “knowing” it and proving it are two different things.

Gil, “But then evolution was not unplanned or purposeless, was it? It was designed.”

And if you listen early in the interview Miller declares that in his opinion the universe is designed, its just that the design is not detectable.

bFast:

How many on this site would have to give up their faith if they discovered that law alone explained it all?

Ahh. But I might never have come to faith, if it had. When I broke from being a nominal Christian at the age of 17, I had NO desire to go back to it. I was emancipated, free. The years have shown me it was only ever a belief.

jjcassidy, I’m confused. Did you go from being a nominal Xn to a true Xn or from a nominal Xn to a non-Xn?

—–”Sometimes “knowing” it and proving it are two different things.”

Gil wasn’t making an epistemological statement, he was making a metaphysical statement.

—–bfast: “And if you listen early in the interview Miller declares that in his opinion the universe is designed, its just that the design is not detectable”

Here is what I find interesting about that. Christianity teaches that the design is detectable, so why does Miller, who claims to be so devout, deny a fundamental teaching of his faith by saying that it is not detectable. Also, he doesn’t really believe that the design is real anyway, because he is a Darwinist, which is another way of saying that design is an “illusion.” The contradictions are all over the place.

StephenB:

he is a Darwinist, which is another way of saying that design is an “illusion.”

For whatever reason Dr. Miller himself is not part of this dialog, so I’m doing a bit of mind reading here. However, I would suggest that the above statement is not necessarily true.

Back to the water analogy — though gravity obligates that the drop of water will find its way back to the ocean, it doesn’t micromanage the drop’s path. If a series of laws obligates that, given enough time, intelligent beings will arise, the path of development may seem painfully random, but the destination may be sufficiently predictable. The design can be very real, and the random process may also be very real. The general result may be fully predictable, but the specifics of the result very unpredictable.

bfast: I like your water analogy, but my question has to do with Miller’s committment to Darwinist processes which allow of no teleology. What you are describing sounds like front loaded ID evolution which is teleological and inconsistent with Darwinisms no-loaded evolution. I guess what I am saying is that if you load up evolution in any way, Darwin has left the building. Or, do I misunderstand your point?

Also, there is still that problem about his own religion’s teaching about the detectability of design, which he rejects.

Gil, you are right, and I think that I started the confusion. I am back on track now. Thanks.

StephenB, in light of the confusion that I have also engaged, I am responding to post #32 in the correct thread.

Gil, “But then evolution was not unplanned or purposeless, was it? It was designed.”

And if you listen early in the interview Miller declares that in his opinion the universe is designed, its just that the design is not detectable.

Wherever Miller’s statement comes from, it is pertinent here. To believe that the Big Bang must have been designed has an enormous impact on how one feels about life, the universe, and all that, but it has no practical impact that I can see on the conduct of empirical science.

Is design not detectable in the aftermath of a designed Big Bang? No, what is detectable is apparently-improbable order, and one has to make some sort of judgment not strictly required by the empirical data to interpret that improbable order as design originating with some intelligence beyond spacetime.

Many folks do not realize is that a statement like “beyond spacetime” is inherently absurd. Faith is always absurd. If a belief were justifiable by some rational process, we would not call it faith. The most important of all my beliefs are absurd.

russ:

jjcassidy, I’m confused. Did you go from being a nominal Xn to a true Xn or from a nominal Xn to a non-Xn?

Both.

It’s the first–by the way of the second–although I’m reluctant to call myself a “true Christian”, just one that tries my best.

What I thought I was saying is that the the notion that there was a better world out there without belief was only ever a belief.

Gil wasn’t making an epistemological statement, he was making a metaphysical statement.

That’s exactly what prompted my comment. I’m expressing how a viewpoint similar to what Russell and Miller expressed relates to questions about what actually is. That that what is reducible by method is not necessarily equal to what is actual.

I agree with their skepticism, but it’s a little problematical if they also argue that Darwinism is true because the evidence points there. Perhaps the manner of 6-day creation is just a little hidden as well. Perhaps the evidence of the “Cambrian Explosion” just means that God does not disclose the exact details. But that kind of skepticism would get them laughed at. But it’s valid if one can argue that the set of all methodologically derivable things and the set of all true things are not equal.

Do they really think this video is going to offset the realities pointed out in Expelled? If so then I would call into question just how competent the AAAS really is.

Either way, I want my tax dollars back.

Hello readers,

It’s time for, wacky comments from YouTube with me your host, reluctantfundie.

OK, so the AAAS responds to Expelled with a video on how religion and science are compatible and I couldn’t agree more. I have a lot of respect for Collins and other Christians who don’t leap all over ID and call us all names. But then we come to the comments on the video and there we see the Darwin Army spouting the most ridiculous nonsense. Here are a few picks

While I don’t agree with the conclusions that these people are making, they do serve to negate the false dichotomies that idiots like DaveScot and the rest of his ilk over at Uncommon Descent force down the throats of their readers.

So reader’s here at UD, apparently DaveScot is cramming nonsense down our throats. Actually, I can sympathise with this comment in a way since every time I turn my computer on there’s a default script been inserted which automatically opens Firefox and jumps immediately to this blog and *forces* me to read everything and leave a positive comment before I can go anywhere else on the internet. Now, I’m a supporter of ID so that’s not a problem to me but for all those poor saps who DaveScot has hijacked and forced his material onto their computer screens, I feel a twinge of sympathy

Yes, the people in this video are most likely incorrect in their beliefs. However, the error does not mean that the ID creationist side is true. Quite the opposite.

OK, it’s spot the nonsense time. How to say very little in as many words as possible. Let’s summarise:

* Francis Collins’ views on religion are probably wrong (how he knows this I’m not sure)

* But because they’re wrong it doesn’t make ID right (huh? If Collins is wrong about God’s existence then so are creationists and the ID supporters who are religious)

Then we retreat to the I-pulled-it-from-the-ncse-handbook-to-speaking-to-religious-nuts weirdness

No gods are required to explain life and no evidence exists to support ID creationism.

*sigh*

Here’s another rational, scientifically balanced commentary from Zed1967

I’ve got a better idea.
F*** FAITH it is for idiots who talk to an imaginary dad in the sky.
Celebrate science that can provide EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE for it’s claims unlike religion.

Erm…well…I…OK.

In the meantime, while I respect Collins et al, I fail to understand how they can hold two entirely contradictory precepts in their head. Either God created everything or he didn’t. You can’t say he did but then try to explain it all naturalistically, that’s a gaping double standard.

Anyway, I liked that video, I don’t agree with it but I thought it was gracious and balanced.

TRF

Celebrate science that can provide EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE for it’s claims unlike religion.

That’s funny. ID exists because the Darwinists can’t. The only rejoinder that Darwinists can make is to ask ID-ers not to hold them to such a strict standard, it’s being worked on.

What scientistics don’t understand is that Science does provide empirical evidence for its’ claims. But it’s just like forensics. Where there is forensic evidence to convict, they’re very good at putting together a case and convicting. That does not mean the percentage of unsolved cases is 0.

This takes logic: knowing the limitations of the “some are”, existential, statement. Science has solved some questions with empirical evidence. However, if you were to construct a purely empirically-based definition of evolution, you have what Behe points to in the Edge of Evolution. So while Scientistic Zed claims that it’s all about what you can prove materially, the Darwinists depend on just the faith-based, non-empirical elaboration of Zed’s belief.

The complete empirical picture is either important or it is not. If it is, Darwinism has fallen far short. Sometimes is just good to know logic.

What a sad movie, To see such hypocrisy in Collins is depressing. You keep givin it to them both barrels Dave.

bfast: “For that matter, how many on this site do not hold to a particular faith position?

I bet, about 10%

How many are IDers because of the scientific evidence alone.”

sorry for the late response to this first response (still reading the rest).

I’m of the 90%. I didn’t come to faith out of ID. I came to faith out of an intuitive sense of the eternal, and then I rationalized the probabilities of the finite out of that:(The need for a First Cause, the impossibility of an infinite regression of finite events, etc… and without access to much data, mind you). I sense that perhaps most people come to faith out of a similar dynamic.

So it was philosophical thinking, although somewhat elementary that led me to faith, but ID is one of the rationalities that support that faith.

Dave Scott: “Personally I think these people are either liars who are not convinced they see God all over the place or they are being truthful in becoming convinced of things with no rational evidence which technically means they are hallucinating and probably shouldn’t be allowed to drive a car lest they start seeing these big designing hands in the road and swerve to avoid them.”

I think that they are products of modern thinking, which tends to be seasoned with a smigin of postmodernism.

I don’t think they have rationalized to themselves that they want it both ways. They haven’t delved deep enough to be aware of the contradictions. I don’t think they are intentionally lying to us from the depths of their thinking, but perhaps they lie in the presentation of their thinking due to the inherent inadequacies. I’m reminded of a passage of scripture: “having a form of godliness, yet denying the power thereof.” Some people want to hold onto “old” forms of thinking out of a “need” to respect tradition, yet they want to remain thoroughly “modern” for practical purposes, and as such, they are not detecting the larger inconsistencies of their thinking. But their thinking is comfortable for them.

But I think that any one of us, given similar circumstances in the formation of our own worlviews, might have made the same choices, so being more correct does not make us better. We are all vulnerable to worldly intellectual temptations, and not one of us sees the whole picture.

I said: “They haven’t delved deep enough to be aware of the contradictions.” I am also aware that they might be intentionally overlooking the contradictions.

tragicmishap: “It’s good to see somebody downplaying the so-called war between science and religion anyway. That’s one thing I would agree with them on.”

Is it really a war between religion and science, or a war between two contradictory philosophical worldviews?

GilDodgen: “Substitute “an unplanned, goalless, unguided, purposeless material process” for “evolution” (which is what the word means when used by AAAS “scientists”) and then see how the religion-and-evolution-are-perfectly-compatible argument sounds.”

Take this argument to logical conclusions, and say that they became scientists themselves out of an unplanned, goalless, unguided, purposeless material process. Point that out to them, and see how it gets their gander.

I have a question for one of you engineer/mathematicians.

How much horsepower/torque would this be for a alternator size motor in a car:

http://www.reasons.org/tnrtb/2.....ing-gears/

excerpt:

The flagellum is one of nature’s smallest and most powerful motors—ones like those produced by B. subtilis can rotate more than 200 times per second, driven by 1,400 piconewton-nanometers of torque. That’s quite a bit of (miniature) horsepower for a machine whose width stretches only a few dozen nanometers.”

Better yet, how much H.P./torque would it be for a V-8 size motor?

To be fair, Francis Collins does outline actual evidence for his belief in God. He cites the existence of the moral law (a la C. S. Lewis), and the Big Bang and anthropic coincidences. So he does believe in a kind of ID. He just believes that the designer, whom he will call God, stopped interfering once the Big Bang happened. His argument is that evolution of the Darwinian kind can explain all life, and that we have no right to use OOL as evidence for God, as all previous gaps have been filled in with science and therefore we must live in fear that OOL will succumb to science and our argument for God’s activity here will fall flat on its face.

It does seem to me that argument from the existence of the moral law suffers from the same defect as argument from OOL, but that’s how he argues in The Language of God.

DaveScot,
Thanks for the explanation of the non-linearity of scaling for HP/torque for the flagellum.

Paul, I appreciate your caution here, and I agree that Collins acknowledges physical and cosmological design. That’s worth something, but not much. Here’s why.

[A] On the one hand, he holds for methodological naturalism in biology where ID takes its stand. In that context, he can join Darwinists to use MN against ID scientists and to discredit their work. On the other hand, he conveniently abandons MN for physics and cosmology and allows himself the luxury of following where the evidence leads. If methodological naturalism is something he can use or not use as he pleases, why can he not grant us that same privilege?

[B] It is obvious the Collins does not understand ID because he thinks it is a “God of the gaps” argument. If he is going to join the anti-ID gang, he has a moral obligation to understand his adversaries’ arguments.

[C] On the outside of his book, we find the picture of the human genome. Since the title of his book is, “the language of God,” the reader has every right to assume that this same genome is part of that language. So, in effect, the book’s packaging, title and picture, argues for biological design, while the inside of his book argues against it. If he is going to be honest, let him put a circled X over the DNA molecule, or else let him use a picture of the solar system.

This question of the position of “theistic evolution” (TE) comes up over and over here, and is not very well received. For instance, one poster recently said that the TE position is incoherent, and accused TE supporters of not being willing or able to defend their position.

I’ve often tried to defend TE as a logically and theologically valid Christian viewpoint. I’ve decided to try to thoroughly outline some of my thoughts on this, which I do not think are incoherent.

What follows is quite long, but it is not rambling, so I hope that those of you who are interested will be willing to read with the intent of truly trying to understand my points.

Let’s start here: reluctantfundie at #41 writes,

While I respect Collins et al, I fail to understand how they can hold two entirely contradictory precepts in their head. Either God created everything or he didn’t. You can’t say he did but then try to explain it all naturalistically, that’s a gaping double standard.

I thoroughly disagree. I do not understand why it is a contradiction to think that God creates within and through the natural processes of the world. I think this issue contains the fundamental confusion about the nature of TE, and ultimately about the difference between TE and ID.

In #19, bfast writes, “Mind if I put my TE hat on for a bit?”, and then goes on to explain some of his understanding of the TE perspective.

I’d like to put my TE hat also. However, I don’t think bfast has accurately characterized the TE position, at least as I understand it. So allow me to develop some ideas here for you all to think about.

First, the issue is not evolution. TE’s have not adopted a particular position on evolution separate from their broader understanding of the nature of God, and particularly the nature of God’s active presence in the world. A TE’s position on evolution is no different than his position on what goes on in the daily lives of all of us: that everything that happens to us reflects God’s will and design for us specifically and for the world in general.

We may not understand why certain events, sometimes sorrowful, are meant to be a part of God’s design for our life, nor do we understand how events which appear as lucky or unlucky to us are actually instrumental in fulfilling God’s will. For instance, it is customary, and completely orthodox theologically, for a Christian to explain a lucky event - perhaps missing a plane that later crashes - by explaining that it was part of God’s will that he not die now; or conversely, to explain an unlucky event - perhaps the untimely death of a young child - as God’s plan for that person even though we can’t understand why God would have it that way.

In all these cases, the Christian view is not that God had to intervene in nature in order to cause these lucky or unlucky events to happen, but rather that these naturally occurring events - all naturally occurring events - are ultimately caused by God: all that happens is a manifestation of God’s will.

The big question that follows is “how is this possible.” How are we to understand how the events that look contingent (including lucky and unlucky) and imbedded in proximate local natural causes are in fact also, simultaneously, the will of God, their ultimate cause.

It is here that I disagree with bfast, who offers what a think is a common but erroneous answer to this question. bfast writes,

I don’t find it unreasonable that God has chosen to hide his face. If God chose to not be found by science, he will not be found by science. It could be, for instance, that he established a set of laws which, without further guidance, with only the same determination that water has to find its way to the ocean, will produce intelligent life. It is even reasonable to suggest that as God knows that water will flow to the ocean, he knew that intelligent life would eventually arise. As God need not have charted every tidbit of the course that water would take, he may have not needed to chart every step of the process of evolutionary development. For all of science, it looks like life meandered in an unpurposeful way, yet the results are ultimately obligated by the laws.

First, I think (with my TE hat on) that God has not hidden his face at all: it is present in the mere existence of the universe and in the wonder of every moment. To the TE, our daily experience puts us face-to-face with the face of God, and to the TE scientist, every bit of science has just added to our wonder and our appreciation of the intricate depths of that face as it appears in nature.

Second, bfast offer what is essentially a deistic answer to the question: God made the laws of the universe and set them in motion, knowing that the laws were such that intelligent life would eventually arise. I think deism is a flawed perspective, and that it contains a fundamental error about the nature of God.

Let us contrast our perspective with God’s perspective. We are limited beings, embedded in time and space. As time goes by, we see events happening in sequence, and we have learned, both through common experience and through more systematic investigation via science, that there are regularities in these sequences of events that we identify as proximate causes.

Being embedded in time, we never experience anything but the present moment: the future is potential and unformed, although to some extent we can accurately foretell it by extrapolating from what we know about the present and the causes we have identified, and the past is known by the evidence it leaves behind (including the memories we have.)

God, on the other hand, is omniscient, omnipotent, and omni-present. We really can’t know what the world looks like to God, although we can try, with some humility, as I hope I am doing here, to think about the subject.

The key thing for this discussion is that God is not embedded in time. He