harmonicminer

Two popular notions among certain Christian academics these days are open theism and theistic evolution.

What’s interesting to me is that there is a group of theologians and a few theistic scientists who subscribe to both.  They seem not to be too concerned about the contradiction between:

1) theistic evolution, which basically posits a God who just about never changes his mind in the process of creation, and pretty much never intervenes in a significant way in the working out of the laws of nature as their interplay leads to the universe we see, and almost requires some form of reasonably strong determinism in order to allow its adherents to say “God created the human race,” and

2)  open theism, which posits a God who changes his mind sometimes, can be surprised at how things turn out, doesn’t know the future exhaustively in every fine detail, but only those future events He has predestined in a specific way, and so on.  (Openists would say that God knows all possible futures, including how He will work out His will and foreordained events in each one.)

These sound like two different Gods to me.  And I’m not too sure that either one of them is the God that I worship, though I suppose I’m willing to be convinced by compelling evidence and logic.

A very prominent Christian biologist, Francis Collins, in his book The Language of God, essentially admits that some form of relatively exhaustive predestination is required in order for God to have used evolution to bring about humanity.  Collins doesn’t like the phrase “theistic evolution,” preferring his own term, “biologos,” but as far as I can see, they are the same general idea.   Collins’ distaste for the phrase “theistic evolution” seems to have more to do with the difficulty of selling it to the public than with the inaccuracy of it.  Collins specifically rejects the notion that God did anything directly to bring about humanity via evolution, other than set the conditions of the big bang in the first place.  Presumably he does this to avoid being placed in the company of those foolish, benighted believers in Intelligent Design.  That wouldn’t be respectable, y’know.  So his acquiescence to some form of “pre-creation” determinism makes sense.  How else to say God created humanity, rather than merely a universe in which a planet like Earth might come about, on which life might arise, which might evolve into intelligent beings who might happen to have a spiritual nature as well?

From the Biologos website (the organization founded by Francis Collins, but from which he withdrew to accept an appointment from President Obama to head the National Institutes of Health):

Because evolution involves seemingly “random” mutations, it seems that the Earth could have been the home of a different assortment of creatures.  But belief in a supernatural creator leaves the possibility that human beings were fully intended.  An omniscient creator could also have created the Universe’s natural laws so as to inevitably result in human beings. (emphasis mine)

As in Collins’ book, this seems a clear admission that some form of determinism is required for theistic evolution, as understood by one of its chief scientific proponents.

Open theist Greg Boyd, in his book God of the Possible, presents a view of God’s created order in which the future is not pre-determined, so much so that God does not know it exhaustively.  To quote from the Amazon description of his book,

Boyd sidesteps the more abstruse theological debates surrounding this issue in favor of a patient, but not pedantic, exposition of a “motif of future openness” in biblical narrative and prophecy. These biblical texts repeatedly portray God as changing plans in response to human decisions, viewing future events as contingent and even being disappointed at how events turn out. Boyd clearly believes the debate over open theism has gotten off to an unfortunate start, as disagreements about the “settledness” of the future have unnecessarily been interpreted as challenges to God’s omniscience or sovereignty.

In other words, in contrast to process theology, in which God is seen to change, develop and “learn,” open theism is presented by Boyd as merely “the open view of the future,” i.e., it’s more a statement about the kind of universe God chose to create than about God Himself.

Understandably, historic Christian understandings are often seen to be threatened by either of these perspectives.  My point here is not to challenge them directly, but to point out that they challenge each other.  That makes it very interesting that there are so many academics who appear to believe both.

Consider:  if God brings about his fore-ordained will in an “open future” universe, He is a God who clearly is constantly interacting with it, adjusting circumstances to reflect events that were NOT fore-ordained, and which God did not directly choose.  When the first bacterium turned left instead of right, God moved its food source where it would find it anyway.   (Hey you, the orphan germ, can’t you see where the kitchen is?)   And surely there would be many such events all along the developmental path of life on earth.

The point?  It seems to me that the Intelligent Design view of the development of life is more suited  to the “open future” view (of the open theists) than “theistic evolution” is.   Yet the open theists love to keep company with the theistic evolutionists, to the extent that they appear on the same academic programs at universities, apparently because the programmers of these conferences believe that theistic evolution and open theism somehow support each other.

I guess they buy the notion of a God who doesn’t know how it all turns out, but predetermined it anyway to make sure it turned out like He wanted.

I suppose it’s also possible that God cheats at solitaire.

This is a repost of something I put up last September, before Obama was elected, of course.  I think it’s very appropriate for what has happened under Obama’s watch already, and what’s perhaps about to happen with healthcare.

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Being a politician, and especially being President, has aspects in common with being a parent, and with being a physician.

Good parents, first and foremost, need to avoid damaging their children. Maybe I have low standards for parenting. But if you can raise a child to the age of 18 or so, and have helped them avoid doing damage to themselves (they aren’t substance abusers, high school dropouts, criminals, etc.), and if they know you love them, and they love you, you’ve probably won. Sure, there are tons of nice things to try to do, but they depend at least as much on the nature of the child as on parenting magic. The point: you are to raise the child, help where you can, not go against the fundamental nature of the child by trying to get things from them they can never do or simply hate (and you’ll have to be somewhat sensitive while discovering the child’s nature), and avoid messing the child up. Everything else is gravy, and we all know how bad that is for your health, in excess.

There is a similar principle in medicine, sometimes attributed to Hippocrates, “First, do no harm.” It means, generally, that if you can’t fix it, at least don’t make it worse, or create a new problem. Medical doctors used to attach leeches to “bleed” patients to remove “ill humors” that were making them ill. Of course, they were simply weakening their patients, in most cases. Thalidomide babies of 1950s helped lead to the creation of the modern FDA drug approval process (which has created its own problems), another example of doctors causing harm while trying to do good.

What has this to do with politics? It’s pretty simple: some problems are very complex, and are rooted in human nature and individual choice. The attempt to use governmental power to “fix” them is likely to create new problems, frequently without making a serious dent in the old ones, and sometimes making the old ones worse.

So: beware of the politician who promises things that have never been, that sound too good to be true, that depend on very complex systems managed by governmental power and oversight, and that create incentives for individuals and organizations to behave in ways counter to the intent of the new program or policy. Raise taxes on the rich, and they’ll change their behavior in ways that don’t lead to economic growth, and you’ll actually reduce tax receipts to the government. Offer benefits to unwed mothers, and you’ll have more unwed mothers. Fix prices at some “fair” level, and you’ll have shortages. Provide “free” or “cost controlled” healthcare, and you’ll soon run out of healthcare services…. a special case of price fixing, in essence. And so it goes.

I think it’s very likely that Obama plans huge, radical changes which will have unpredictable effects, not solve the problems he claims the changes are aimed at (or make them worse), and create new ones. The article at the previous link makes it clear that the danger of Obama’s election is not that he won’t keep his promises; it’s that he will. What else can you expect from someone whose ideological hero’s manifesto is titled Rules for Radicals? And he is likely to appoint judges who have similar intentions, to make sure his radical changes are declared to be “constitutional”.

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Unfortunately, it seems that the predictions I made here are coming true.  Obama has made huge changes to the relationship between government, business, and individuals, and seems to plan even larger ones.  FDR used an economic downturn to change the course of America, and we struggle under the programs he set in motion up to this day.   Obama, who only thinks he’s FDR, seems to be going down the same road….  only instead of driving a 1930 Packard, he’s driving a 2009 Corvette….  which he probably “got free” from GM (of course, you actually helped pay for it), and he’s driving us all, pedal to the metal, towards a utopia that never existed, and never will.

Better fasten your seat belt.  Put on a helmet if you have one.  The crash is going to be spectacular.

Is this the end for human space flight?

SO WE won’t be going to Mars, not in my lifetime anyway. And not back to the moon either, not for decades. Buzz Lightyear fantasies are dashed. Don’t believe the spin – the dream is over.

OK, the Augustine panel’s review of NASA’s human space-flight plans outlines several options. Mars may be out, but the moon is still in with a shout, and plans to go to the Lagrange points and even the asteroids are mooted. Technically, all this is probably doable. But it won’t happen, and here’s why.

The problem is not money: the US can afford an extra $3 billion a year. It is psychological. NASA, the only game in town, has no idea what space is for, and no audacity.

Sooner or later, we’ll go. We’ll have to. The earth, large and varied as it is, is finite, and we will need the resources of space, just to sustain life on earth.  And we’ll need to protect civilzation from space-borne catastrophe, sooner or later.

But the people who go, who first reap the benefit, who first control the high frontier (since we seem to be relinquishing it) will probably speak Chinese.   Our great-great-grandchildren may vacation on a Chinese owned space platform, and get there on Chinese vehicles.

Someone is going to do it.  It should be US.