Isn't Theistic Evolution really just Deism?

[old hume post]

Originally posted 7/1/06:

So how is Theistic Evolution different from Deism?

I take Deism to refer (in this context) to the belief that God created everything & has been "hands off" ever since (the argument being: God doesn't make mistakes; therefore his creation must be perfect and complete just as it is; therefore it could not possibly be improved by later interventions). Another distinctive trait of deism is the tendency to view God as non-personal (or perhaps "trans-personal" -- i.e. beyond personal -- is the deist's preferred term).

Theists agree with deists that God created everything. The distinction from deism seems to hinge on 2 issues: the personhood of God, and the question whether God has to any extent allowed his creatures real power over their surroundings (that is, has he granted them the power to damage the perfection of what he created?).

Theistic evolution does not imply an impersonal / transpersonal God (it implies nothing about this one way or the other). Nor does it imply any particular position about God's interaction with history. Could God have included evolution in his design for creation, and still decided to intervene at specific points in history (in response to the needs, requests, or outrageous behavior of his creatures)? There seems no contradiction inherent in the suggestion. This is a bit like asking, "could God have included gravity in his design for creation, and still decided to halt or alter the trajectory of the occasional falling object if that suited his purposes?" Again, no contradiction inherent in the suggestion.

Standard Creatist views flat-out require God's routine intervention in history -- not for reasons to do with the mistakes or decisions of his creatures, but simply in order to keep the material world moving along in the intended direction. Let's be clear: if so-called "macro-evolution" is impossible, then even if there had never been a Fall, even if everything was "just so," God would have needed to "step in" to make dramatic alterations on literally millions of different occasions during life's history.

So the disagreement here between Creationist and Theistic Evolutionist is over whether God designed things such that he *must* intervene to keep the physical world "healthy." There's no disagreement over whether God can, did, or does intervene for any number of other reasons along the way.

[Josh]

Originally posted 7/1/06:

Thanks for the distinctions. It's helpful to know a little bit more of the details of the brand of theism you are describing.

Stepping back, as a larger bird's eye point regarding why all this might matter:

I personally think that there is a fairly wide spectrum of belief here that falls under the 'pale of orthodoxy'. It's, of course, an evangelical travesty that salvation litmus tests are formed around different articulations of God's creative acts.

I will say, for me, my interest in the possibility that God did indeed 'tinker' with biological history in some way has more to do with an interest in whether God has left us evidence of Himself in life's history. Of course, in any case, He has left evidence of Himself, but I'm talking about convincing apologetic evidence- evidence mitigating against materialism.

Of course, I'm not talking proofs of God's existence, but God is, of course, not above offering compelling evidence of Himself. If God's invisible qualities and divine nature are indeed seen in the creation (Romans 1:20), I am curious whether that means in a general way (the awe we feel from creation) or imbedded in creation in more particular ways (places where evidence points toward the miraculous, much like is the case with Christ's resurrection).

This, coupled with what I see as [possibly or potentially] intractable problems with naturalist evolutionary theory, is what makes the subject of particular interest to me.

[Josh]

Originally posted 7/6/06 and 7/11/06:

In relation to all our discussion about God 'intervening' in His creation, I just read an interesting perspective in NT Wright on miracles, particularly a healthier view on transcendant miracles.

"Some have tried to fit the events of Easter into ... the view [that] God and the world are normally poles apart. In this view, the God who is normally somewhere else, outside our world altogether, sometimes steps in anddoes dramatic things, which should (in this view) be seen as interventions into the ordinary course of events. That is what, for most people, words like "miracle" and "supernatural" mean today. An interpretation of Jesus' resurrection along those lines ("the greatest miracle") has then stirred up others to respond that 'that's all very well for Jesus, but what about everyone else? If God can do tricks like that, why didn't he step in and stop the Holocaust or Hiroshima?"

Dembski on tinkering:

"For a designing intelligence to make a discernable difference in the emergence of some organism, however, seems to require that an intelligence intervened at specific times and places to bring about that organism and, thus again, seems to require some form of special creation. This in turn raises the question: how often and at what places did a designing intelligence intervene in the course of natural history to produce those biological structures that are beyond the power of material mechanisms? One of the criticisms of intelligent design is that it draws an unreasonable distinction between material mechanisms and designing intelligences, claiming that material mechanisms are fine most of the time but then on rare (or perhaps not so rare) occasions a designing intelligence is required to get over some hump that material mechanisms can't quite manage.

This criticism is misconceived. The proper question is not how often or at what places a designing influence first become evident. To understand the difference, imagine a computer program that outputs alphanumeric characters on a computer screen. The program runs for a long time and throughout that time outputs what look like random characters. Then, abruptly the output changes and the program outputs sublime poetry. Now, at what point did a designing intelligence intervene in the output of the program? Clearly, this question misses the mark because the program is deterministic and simply outputs whatever the program dictates.

There was no intervention at all that changed the output of the program from random gibberish to subliem poetry. And yet, the point at which the program starts to output sublime poetry is the point at which we realize that the output is designed and not random. Morever, it is at that point that we realize that the program itself is designed. But when, where, and how was design introduced into the program? Although these are interesting questions, they are ultimately irrelevant to the more fundamental question: was there design in the program and its outcome in the first place? Similarly, in biology there will be clear times and locations where we can say that design first became evident. But the precise activity of a designing intelligence at those points will require further investigation and may not be answerable. As the computer analogy just given indicates, the place and time at which design first becomes evident need have no connection with the place and time at which design was actually introduced."

William Dembski, the Design Revolution p>178-179