Startled by Existence

What is the Fall..”

Rock formations can be spectacularly beautiful. So it’s not surprising to find them featured in books or other items in Christian bookstores. A coffee table book or calendar might have Grand Canyon pictures accompanied by, say, “The everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the Ends of the Earth.” (Isaiah 40:28) ((However))

Today’s canyons, including the Grand Canyon, are the consequences, not so much of God’s creative design, but of the forces He unleashed in divine judgment on sin. So when we contemplate the Canyon’s awesome beauty, as simplistic “God made this” is really inadequate. In fact, everything around us is not the world which God made, or at least not the way He first made it. Whether geological or biological, all aspects of it have been marred by a real, historical curse on all creation. (Genesis 3, Romans 8:19-22). This universal change came about because of a real, historical rebellion by a real, historical man, Adam. (Grand Canyon, a different view section by Carl Wieland. P 90)

When Creationists talk about God creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance humming birds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, [a worm] that is going to make him blind. And [I ask them], “Are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an inn0cent child’s eyeball? Because that doesn’t seem to me to coincide with a God who’s full of Mercy. “

From M. Buchanan, Wild, wild life, Sydney Morning Herald, The Guide, pg 6 March 24 (As quoted in the New Answers Book, edited by Ken Ham p 260

What is teleology

Or What is ateloic

Teleology is a philosophical system which explains natural things in terms of formal and final ends.[1] Within this system, it is observed that phenomena in nature fulfill functions, attain goals, and achieve purposes. Organelles, cells, organisms, and the harmonious coinciding of the natural constants, all indicate purpose and design in nature.

The roots of teleology stretch back to the foundations of philosophy itself. Pre-Socratic philosophers, and all great thinkers, have addressed the teleological school of thought, whether to espouse it or to dismiss it. (Wickipedia http://www.researchintelligentdesign.org/wiki/Telelogy

Routinely misscharacterized by journalists and cynics, intelligent design is a cooperation of teleological reasoning and the widely accepted foundations of modern science. In addition to making a positive case based on logical and empirical means, ID simultaneously mounts criticisms for atelic ontologies like philosophical materialism and Darwinism.

What is Naturalism?

If Naturalism is true, every finite thing or event must be (in principle) explicable in terms of the Total system. I say “explicable in principle” because we are not going to demand that naturalists, at any given moment, should have found the detailed explanation of every phenomenon. Obviously many things will only be explained when the sciences have made further progress. But if Naturalism is to be accepted we have a right to demand that every single thing should be such that we see, in general, how it could be explained in terms of the Total system. If any one thing exist which is of such a kind that we see in advance the impossibility of ever giving it that kind of explanation, the Naturalism would be in ruins. If necessities of thought force us to allow to any one thing any degree of independence from the Total System—if any one thing makes a good a claim to be on its own, to be something more than and expression of the character of Nature as a whole—then we have abandoned naturalism. For by Naturalism we mean the doctrine that only Nature—the whole interlocking system—exists. (CS Lewis, Miracles (The Cardinal Difficulty of Naturalism p 12)

What is man?

I see no reason for attributing to man a significance different in kind from that which belongs to a baboon or a grain of sand. Oliver Wendell Holmes.

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou dost take thought of him? And the son of man, that thou dost care for him? Yet thou hast made him a little lower than God, and dost crown him with glory and majesty! Thou dost make him to rule over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet.

Y.M. You have arrived at man, now?

O.M. Yes. Man the machine--man the impersonal engine. Whatsoever a man is, is due to his MAKE, and to the INFLUENCES brought to bear upon it by his heredities, his habitat, his associations. He is moved, directed, COMMANDED, by EXTERIOR influences--SOLELY. He ORIGINATES nothing, not even a thought.

Y.M. Oh, come! Where did I get my opinion that this which you are talking is all foolishness?

O.M. It is a quite natural opinion--indeed an inevitable opinion--but YOU did not create the materials out of which it is formed. They are odds and ends of thoughts, impressions, feelings, gathered unconsciously from a thousand books, a thousand conversations, and from streams of thought and feeling which have flowed down into your heart and brain out of the hearts and brains of centuries of ancestors. PERSONALLY you did not create even the smallest microscopic fragment of the materials out of which your opinion is made; and personally you cannot claim even the slender merit of PUTTING THE BORROWED MATERIALS TOGETHER. That was done AUTOMATICALLY--by your mental machinery, in strict accordance with the law of that machinery's construction. And you not only did not make that machinery yourself, but you have NOT EVEN ANY COMMAND OVER IT.

Y.M. This is too much. You think I could have formed no opinion but that one?

O.M. Spontaneously? No. And YOU DID NOT FORM THAT ONE; your machinery did it for you--automatically and instantly, without reflection or the need of it.

…..A man's brain is so constructed that IT CAN ORIGINATE NOTHING WHATSOEVER. It can only use material obtained OUTSIDE. It is merely a machine; and it works automatically, not by will-power. IT HAS NO COMMAND OVER ITSELF, ITS OWNER HAS NO COMMAND OVER IT.

Y.M. Well, never mind Adam: but certainly Shakespeare's creations--

O.M. No, you mean Shakespeare's IMITATIONS. Shakespeare created nothing. He correctly observed, and he marvelously painted. He exactly portrayed people whom GOD had created; but he created none himself. Let us spare him the slander of charging him with trying. Shakespeare could not create. HE WAS A MACHINE, AND MACHINES DO NOT CREATE.

What is Inteligent design

What is Intelligent Design?

Or, who are Micheale Beehe and William Dembski.

The fundamental claim of intelligent design is straight forward and easily intelligible: namely, there are natural systems that cannot be adequately explained in terms of undirected natural forces and that exhibit features which in any other circumstances we would attribute to intelligence.

(William Dembski. The Design Revolution (IVP 2004), pg 27

When applying ID to biology, it is observed that all living cells necessarily utilize the functional information found in DNA.
Considering the principle of causality ID asks, “What is the cause of functional information?” In all cases where we know the source of functional information, it always originates from an intelligent and teleological cause. Additionally, there are no verified cases of functional information arising by chance, by atelic processes, or by non-intelligent causes, nor by their cooperation. Complex specified information, the functional information content, is best explained by intelligence. Contrarily, philosophical materialism argues that a directive intelligent cause does not exist; complex living organisms are brought about by unintelligent, purposeless causes alone.
Employing the principle of uniformity, ID proposes that all functional information uniformly originates from teleological intelligence, even the functional information of DNA. Like any other truly scientific endeavor, ID proceeds from current verified knowledge into new knowledge. To accept a non-intelligent source for the functional information of DNA is to deny the verified scientific evidence. Intelligent design then asks what types of new data, concepts, and experiments result from proposing that functional information is teleological.
http://www.researchintelligentdesign.org/wiki/Telelogy