[Mormons and Evolution] 12/02/2005 02:01:30 PM
Jeffrey, I definitely don't believe all the things I say. ;-> I like to explore many angles and may play devil's advocate, even when my true position is actually closer to that of my interlocuter.
I agree, in very many places in nature it is apparent that God doesn't care exactly what is happening---at least it's not relevant for humans---and this probably is the case with many peripheral ecosystems as you mention.
Whether the task is creating a specific creature or an entire ecosystem... Just thinking out loud here, suppose the task was to bake a cake. Would God directly create a fully-formed cake, or mix the ingredients and put it in the oven, letting natural law take over? Would the latter be called inefficient, wasteful, etc.?
There are many important differences with evolution, but still it suggests the attractiveness of what you call deistic evolution. While seemingly slow, wasteful, whatever from the point of view of time, it's exceedingly efficient with regards to the amount of effort God himself has to put in. Nature does the heavy lifting. A version of this in which God is involved not only at the beginning, hut comes around only from time to time and adjusts only crucial things is also possible (and indeed suggested by our creation accounts).
A key question is how contingent evolution really is. One deist-style solution would be that God kicks off evolution on many worlds and only in some of them do beings arise that are close enough for him to call his "children."
For Mormons, however, this would be giving up a lot because the First Vision is strictly interpreted to mean that God is exactly anthropomorphic. Also our creation accounts suggest nothing like this, but rather successful involvement with a particular planet. Again, this involvement could be quite intermittent, mostly hands off. But again, with any "hands off" approach there is still the problem of contingency; even if getting to some sort of intelligent being were roughly automatic, getting something that looks just like God---close enough to seem like his literal offspring---seems like a tall order.
In summary, next to atheism, the deist-style position seems to be most consonant with "waste" in nature (and some degree of occasional "checking up" may not be ruled out), but the contingency this implies makes it a tough fit for Mormon conceptions of what it means to be a child of God, made in his image.
Posted by Christian Y. Cardall
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Posted by Christian Y. Cardall to Mormons and Evolution at 12/02/2005 02:01:30 PM
I agree, in very many places in nature it is apparent that God doesn't care exactly what is happening---at least it's not relevant for humans---and this probably is the case with many peripheral ecosystems as you mention.
Whether the task is creating a specific creature or an entire ecosystem... Just thinking out loud here, suppose the task was to bake a cake. Would God directly create a fully-formed cake, or mix the ingredients and put it in the oven, letting natural law take over? Would the latter be called inefficient, wasteful, etc.?
There are many important differences with evolution, but still it suggests the attractiveness of what you call deistic evolution. While seemingly slow, wasteful, whatever from the point of view of time, it's exceedingly efficient with regards to the amount of effort God himself has to put in. Nature does the heavy lifting. A version of this in which God is involved not only at the beginning, hut comes around only from time to time and adjusts only crucial things is also possible (and indeed suggested by our creation accounts).
A key question is how contingent evolution really is. One deist-style solution would be that God kicks off evolution on many worlds and only in some of them do beings arise that are close enough for him to call his "children."
For Mormons, however, this would be giving up a lot because the First Vision is strictly interpreted to mean that God is exactly anthropomorphic. Also our creation accounts suggest nothing like this, but rather successful involvement with a particular planet. Again, this involvement could be quite intermittent, mostly hands off. But again, with any "hands off" approach there is still the problem of contingency; even if getting to some sort of intelligent being were roughly automatic, getting something that looks just like God---close enough to seem like his literal offspring---seems like a tall order.
In summary, next to atheism, the deist-style position seems to be most consonant with "waste" in nature (and some degree of occasional "checking up" may not be ruled out), but the contingency this implies makes it a tough fit for Mormon conceptions of what it means to be a child of God, made in his image.
Posted by Christian Y. Cardall
--
Posted by Christian Y. Cardall to Mormons and Evolution at 12/02/2005 02:01:30 PM
posted by Christian Y. Cardall at 2:01 PM
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