Also, to Michael: I don’t think it’s accurate to say that I refused to answer your question. As with any internet discussion, people reply according to their available time, their interests and the contingent path of the thread. Now that avocationist has made an effort to revive the discussion, I’ll offer some thoughts.

Looking back, I see that Michael addressed post #124 to me. In it he asked, ” Also, if God is the way you said he is. Was he in the hurricane that hit New Orleans?”

Later, avocationist responded to this by writing, “If God was not in the hurricane, does that mean it happened outside his will? Is there a place that God is not? Does it mean that God is present when good things happen to you but absent when bad ones do? How do you know it was not a good event? Can you judge the scheme of things?”

It was to this that Michaels7 wrote, “Thanks for the reply, but I was awaiting Jack’s response and he refused.”

Here’s what I think: anyone who believes in an omniscient, omnipotent, and omni-present God, as most Christians do, have two unsolvable dilemmas to confront: that of evil and that of free will. Millions of words have been written trying to explain how these are reconcilable with an omni-everything God, much less the benevolent and loving God of Christianity.

I believe we cannot logically resolve these dilemmas because of he limitations of our nature. This is another example of my belief that we can’t possible see the world as God sees the world. We are limited by the fact that we exist in time and space, and by having our rational understanding tied to our use of language. All of the world’s great mystical traditions, including those in Christianity, recognize that the highest spiritual understanding is ineffable, and that the logical dilemmas that we face are resolved only by a humble acceptance of their mystery.

So, yes God was “in the hurricane” that hit New Orleans, just as he is in every event, big or small, good or bad, but he was not “in the hurricane” in any special sense.

I like avocationist’s answer to this question, and I’m going to tell a story to illustrate it.

This summer I gave a number of talks relating to the science standards issue in Kansas, and a part of the talk touched on this issue of how God acts in nature. I had pointed out that some people see some versions of ID as positing an interventionist God who generally lets nature run its course except for those moments when he steps in and designs things, and I pointed out that this was not really in keeping with the orthodox Christian concept of an omni-everything God.

In the question-and-answer session, a lady said something like the following:

“I have a daughter,” she said, “who was born with only one arm because of a birth defect. I’m a Christian, and I have faith that what happens is for the ultimate good in his eyes even if it doesn’t appear that way to us, so I have been able to accept this handicap of my daughter’s. But I would be darned angry if the reason my daughter had no arm was because God just wasn’t paying attention that day.”

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I would also like to respond to a point that avocationist made.

He writes,

“All in all, your worldview is very close to ID, as is Miller’s, and it is perplexing that you call yourself a mainstream believer in evolution. What you espouse is not at all the same. Your understanding of randomness and chance, that it only looks that way from our small perspective, is 180 degrees different than what the textbooks are teaching, or most prominent voices in the field are saying. If you have made any valid point, it is perhaps that there IS no mainstream evolution. As I keep hammering, once you posit any God at all, even the deistic one, you are no longer in the same kind of universe, and I respect Dawkins for seeing that.

I do not see the view I am describing as being close to ID, in two important ways. ID posits that some things are demonstrably designed, and that this can be shown via the processes of science by showing that natural processes could not have produced them. I firmly disagree with that.

That however, has not been the point of this discussion. My purpose has been to show that one can be a Christian and also accept evolutionary science.

But I also want to make it clear that one can hold many different philosophical or religious positions (including that of materialism) and accept evolutionary science. Our metaphysical beliefs are choices we make based on factors that go beyond the understanding of the physical world that we reach through the limited means of science. I personally believe that one’s metaphysics needs to be consistent with the findings of science, but I also respect that there are large questions that science can’t answer and that there a variety of legitimate philosophical and religious belief systems available for people to consider.

(Incidentally, this is the favorite hymn of Stephen Clapp, the dean of the Juilliard School — a wonderful person and devout Christian .)

Did you seem my post to you #138? Yes, it’s a shame so active a thread got submerged below the waterline, but you could take a look at 138, 139 and 140; all replies to you.

Michael was referring to his question to you, if God is present in all things, then was he present in the destructive hurricane (or tsumnami!)?

Thanks for the reply, but I was awaiting Jack’s response and he refused.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/02/books/02frac. you can also read the article for free by doing a search of -Pollock painting fractals and accessing the article that way.

Interesting choice of using Pollock for an illustration of randomness. I remember reading a piece about fractal analysis of Pollock’s paintings (sorry,I can’t remember the reference if anyone else knows it please post) and his paintings reveal a significant presence of fractals. So the randomness is actually only apparent. The authors of the article thought the unique fractal characteristics could be used to identify forgeries.

As to the intent or effect of his paintings: “For many, they arouse primitive feelings associated with such sonorous phrases as “the deep” or the “starry firmament”, identifying a universe beyond the human. It was one of Pollock’s singal accomplishments to give such magnitutude and impressiveness to the act of painting as to make us think of the mysteries of natural creation of that “first division of chaos” at the origin of our world.”(Modern Art 3rd ed, 1992, Pub. Harry N Abrams)

-My professor was right- that modern art class would come in handy some day

The way Patrick describes it, one is still thinking about God as a being who usually is *not* part of natural processes, and who just occasionally “co-opts random processes.” The view I am describing holds that God is present in *every* moment – his being pervades the natural world. The entire physical world, throughout all of space and time, is a holistic manifestation of his intelligent design.

I understood that. That’s why I said “pretty much everything is being interacted with all the time.” My primary point was that it’s very different from the viewpoint where a Designer–a clockwork God in this case–allowed for evolution to occur by designing the system and the natural laws which do not require constant adjustments (God is not present in every moment but it’s a deterministic system where the results are inevitable). The position that the Designer is interacting all the time is closer to an ID position if you ask me.

Also, do you yourself support this position or are you posing it as a challenge to the Christians here?

The simplest way of describing the difference is to point out that what is chance to us is not chance to God. From our limited human perspective, the external world contains events that we experience as chance.

Just because something appears as chance to you doesn’t means it appears as chance to everyone who isn’t you.

Richard Dawkins famously said there is the illusion of design in nature.

This is wrong. Design is not the illusion. Chance is the illusion. Einstein said God doesn’t play at dice with the universe. Who are you going to believe; Albert Einstein or Dicky Dawkins? The choice is clear for me – Einstein – in a heartbeat.

Evidently you also believe Einstein. Where you and I differ is in whether we believe math, science, and human intellect has the capacity to see through the illusion of chance to unveil the truth that nothing is left to chance. I have more confidence in math, science, and human intellect being able to discern the truth than you do.