One of the obvious pieces of background material to the Apostle Paul's claim in Romans 1:20
(For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse)
is the oral examination that God gives to Job after his lengthy discussion of God's ways with his friends.
Job is to realise God’s power and wisdom when he surveys biology. E.g Job 39:26
Does the hawk fly by your wisdom?
Here we are pointed to God’s aeronautical brilliance. It is surely in the sense of design that God is using this word here. Just as he gave wisdom to Bezaleel to follow His design for the ark of the covenant God uses his own wisdom and engineering brilliance to make a wonder for us to see something of the splendour of his superior intelligence.
To suggest that God is somehow belittled by analogies with human engineering is entirely wrong. It was the Spirit of God who came upon Bezaleel to enable him to accomplish his works of wood and metal working brilliance. It is the outworking of the image of God in man that allows us to be designers and engineers and to discover God’s thoughts after Him.
3 comments:
I would like to know how a Christian who is also a scientist can altogether dismiss the idea of design as a reflection of the mind and activity of God in creation. Even a scientist who accepts evolution as the means through which God brought into being the natural world as it now is surely prepared to accept that God had a purpose in mind which this method would bring about. That is clearly design. It may be possible to argue that God built into his original creation the capacity for forms to develop into other forms. But in doing so he provided living forms with the information (DNA) that they would need for this process to occur. For them to reach their end point as they did, the information, or "language" was clearly extremely complex. This implies complexity rather than simplicity at the very earliest stages of evolution. That position only differs from ID in the type of teleology involved, not in the presence or absence of teleology.
Roger,
Dr Alexander has said he will try to respond to these articles....but he is a very busy man so I am not holding my breath.
Is there a detectable objective difference between a universe that has happened entirely by chance and one which is designed by God to get to a certain point but which gets there entirely by chance?
I think Dr. Alexander would argue for intelligent design of the basic principles/laws of existence so that the Big Bang then happened. All his intelligent creative input occurs at the moment of begining and then invisibly as He sustains everything in a faithful manner so that His will is done (apart from the interventions of sign miracles and revelation)
Roger,
Thanks for your comment by the way... it made me think...
I think that Dr. Alexander would say that life originated entirely by chance on this planet millions of years ago and that the variety of life including human life is the result of millions of years of natural selection including violent death prior to the "fall" whatever the "fall" really is for a theistic evolutionist. I'll try send this to him to see if he responds!
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