Is Evolution Dependent On God'S Creative Activity?

[supersnail]

If I catch a ball in midair or use a fan to change the ball's path through the air so that it lands on a certain spot, or start the ball off in a certain direction and put a spin on it, that doesn't invalidate gravitational theories. Plain and simple, and in that respect evolution is no more complicated. It is entirely possible that God can exert influence through sensitive dependence on initial conditions, as BCSpace mentioned, or through stochastic processes, and doing so would have the additional benefit of not taking away from the lawful appearance of reality--lawfulness that God surely wants us to recognize.

If my saying any of that is aesthetically displeasing to anyone who doesn't care to ascertain the truth or falsity of the outrageous claim originally made--an evolutionary equivalent of saying that gravity is false because of possible interventions or additional forces (or inversely, that, because of gravity, those interventions or forces cannot be)--sorry.

If people would admit when they have made a mistake, fewer of the same questions would keep being raised. If anyone wants to disown any of the ideas I've critiqued, feel free to do so.

Edited July 28, 2012 by supersnail

[supersnail]

Another issue has to do with inappropriate attachment to the empirical in general--what we can observe with our senses. It is possible for us to worship things we can see with our natural eyes. It happens all the time. It's called idolatry. And even people who claim to not believe in any god are idolaters--including those particular atheists who see no incompatibility between eugenics and evolution and population control and evolution, but somehow see an incompatibility between God and evolution because God is not specified in the mechanisms of evolution scientifically presented.

Even if there were irrefutable evidence of God's influence, at some point we may observe something else that is very difficult to explain according to established scientific theories. The question would become how do we respond to that, and the answer unfortunately may be idolatry. Not everything that appears to be supernatural leads to worship of God.

[Carborendum]

The less likely something could have happened by coincidence, the more likely that it was one consciously.

[littlechild]

Evolution would have to be dependent upon the activity of a God, to have any reality whatever. I personally believe that evolution is a hoax, a deception and a con job.

[shalamabobbi]

Was it you who linked the article on evolutionary algorithms used by NASA to create the optimal antenna?

No, that would be me..

[Nofear]

I continue to assert that one of the most overlooked doctrines of Mormonism is the plurality of human inhabited worlds. Unguided evolution cannot account for this fact (the fringe convergence theory notwithstanding). That does not mean at all that the mechanisms of evolution are not at play on earth -- only that there is necessarily more to the story.