I apologize if I was unclear, but I did not say that it was such a force. Rather, it is a process made necessary by the conditions in which life blossomed, and continues blossoming.
I think I touched on the fine tuning argument in my previous post. It's still logically flawed. There is no reason to believe that only our universe's configuration could have possibly led to life. Certainly there are many more possible configuration that can't support life or exist for no more than a few picoseconds, but that doesn't mean a god had to arrange our universe in such a way that life exists. If you think about it, our universe isn't even really fine tuned for life anyway. Just look at all the hazardous things that exist in nature, storms, earthquakes, gamma ray bursts, blackholes, cosmic radiation, asteroids, volcanoes, tsunamis... is this really evidence of a god who wants life to blossom? Doesn't it make more sense that the universe just happens to be able to support life, but isn't actually designed for life?
Oh? Who says all theistic evolutionists are Christian?
I didn't, I specifically mentioned that theists who do not subscribe to a specific religion do not need to back themselves up with scripture. However, if they want to claim that their position is rational, they're going to need evidence.
Besides, considering that the early Christians met to essentially put together the bible, who is to say all of the scripture is accurate? Faith is about finding the bits that make sense, even if there's no current evidence or it's profoundly unprovable
Well that's the problem now isn't it? Frankly, I'm not a huge fan of faith itself. I think taking bits and pieces from two fundamentally different methods of gaining knowledge is foolhardy and you always run the risk of falling into a golden mean fallacy. That's essentially what you're doing with TE. You don't want to believe that evolution alone led to our existence, yet believing that God magically poofed us into existence is becoming more and more untenable , so you chose something in the middle. This type of compromise might be good in politics or arguments with your wife, but it's not good science and it's not good logic.
and it says something about Fundies that the bits which ring true to them are about rulership through fear, the suffering of those who disagree with them, and dogma trumping reason
I agree wholeheartedly with that.
In reality, what MAKES a Christian, rigid adherence in belief to every facet of the scriptures, or a belief that Jesus' message of "love thy neighbour" made sense? Also, the quote would more accurately reflect theistic evolution if it went "Well, I think there's a purpose to things, and that there IS someone watching out for us, but evolution seems to be true, and God wouldn't have given us the ability to discern proof if he didn't want us to use it".
Well if that's all there is to being Christian than I dare say I am a Christian :D
Seriously though, I kind of agree with you in a metaphorical sense. I do think we have a purpose, but not a purpose ordained by some external being, it's a purpose that we need to make for ourselves. Jesus did have some great ideas, he was indeed ahead of his time. He did say somethings that seem a little primitive or even barbaric if you like hyperboles, but he was just a product of the time he lived in. All things considered, he was ahead of his time. Of course, when you make him a god, he can no longer be "just" a man ahead of his time.
Of course, it's naturally going to happen when competition is necessary for the available resources. The amount of resources available is another factor in the metaphorical program.
But why bother? God is omnipotent, he doesn't need to slosh through billions of years of evolution, he doesn't need to engineer a system that can only progress though the death of "inferior" organisms. That brings everything back around to my original statement that it really does make a lot more sense for God to just poof things into existence in whatever configuration he wants. Now we can discuss what a hypothetical God might be thinking all day long and use plenty of cop outs like "mysterious ways" etc, but we won't really get anywhere.
The solution with the fewest unneeded variables isn't always the correct one. Occam suggests merely that it is most likely correct. In truth, there's no proof either way, so one might as well go with whatever explanation makes one happy.
Well of course it's not absolutely always the right answer, but it's a very good way of comparing two competing theories logically. The "no proof either way" comment is just begging for a burden of proof smackdown :p
It's alright, Jonathan, you're actually doing a really great job, and I'm genuinely enjoying a clear-minded discussion on this topic with you. ^_^
I completely agree. Even though we'll likely never be able to convince each other I enjoy the mental workout. I always tend to ramble on and on and repeat myself when discussing these things so I worry that things might not make sense to someone who isn't inside my head. :D
On a related note, as much as I'm enjoying the discussion, I doubt it can go much further than this. We've pretty much reached a stalemate at faith, you have it, I don't. I doubt either of us will be able to take this conversation much further, but I'll definitely read any follow up posts even if I don't respond to them.
Uhh is this guy arguing for the existence of the Christian god or is he saying that evolution completely destroys the bible???
Evolution certainly takes away any hope of having a literal interpretation of the bible. I was just trying to say that serious Christians who consider scripture important should find some sort of justification for theistic evolution besides a golden mean fallacy.