Dan , Thanks for the great explanation of Deism.

I now find I have some backers even if they are from the 17th and 18th Century .
It's God "winding up the up the Universe, like a clock, then letting it run ". Yep !

"human free will disappears and all ethical meaning is lost "!

Not so Dan ,it was probably never here anyway - it's simply the reaction of one set of atoms with another and will be probably scientifically predictable in the future.

Already courts are starting to struggle with the concept of the "free will" part in criminal convictions .

Jim, you raise an interesting point.
A multi layered system based on probabilities can still allow for free will at the individual scale. For instance, there is no doubt the odds are stacked in a casino's favour, yet still the house can be broken. It's even possible a casino could suffer bankruptcy, by being broken twice in close succession. If, however, you own more than one casino, your chances of being bankrupted drop considerably.
And if you own all the casinos, you can't lose.
If we accept that we are all a product of 'nature plus nurture' then it does become questionable how much free will we have. I freely acknowledge I have made some bad decisions in my life, yet I don't see how I could have made a different decision, and still remained 'me'.
The counter argument of course is, if the price of being me is making bad decisions, perhaps I would be better off being someone else.

Grim,
James Ussher (1581–1656) proposed a creation of the world at 4004 BC through careful Biblical analysis. He was a noted historian. How many of his critics would come close to his level of Hebrew scholarship would be a telling question.

More striking is to ask how quick his critics might be to throw an accusation of irrationality at these two: Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), who formulated the laws of planetary motion, calculated a creation date of 3992 BC, or Isaac Newton (1643–1727), who vigorously defended a creation of about 4,000 BC.

Is the universe 14 billion years old?

I don’t know. That date certainly puts Ussher’s under a big shadow. The flip side would be that if the true age was any fraction of that unimaginably large number then many would be saying that there wouldn’t have been enough time for evolution to take place. Either way, both young earth creationists and Darwinians are being pushed towards boundaries in their thinking.

Waterboy,
I’m Australian but not living there this year.

I don’t know where it is I’ve been speaking for all Christians. I know we can be a pretty varied bunch. But I am allowed to put an argument for my view of it.

I didn’t address your comments on miracles partly because I’d already reached my word limit for that day. The other reason was I was largely in agreement with most of your view.

The theological importance of miracles is in their meaning and interpretation. However I was earlier discussing the modern question of whether miracles could even occur. I think it is good to establish that they can, at least as a possibility. For the resurrection of Christ, surely a miraculous sign if there ever was one, is a central focus of the New Testament. Also, a miraculous event must first occur before we can interpret its meaning. And such events occurred in a normal space, time reference. The ancients may have viewed signs and miracles somewhat differently to us moderns, but they did have a similar view of time and history.

AJ,
I never said or implied Polkinghorne was a creationist. Neither does the film.

Thanks for providing some links to some of those long debates we’ve entered into last year. It may save us having to go through them again. Anyone who clicks on them will be able to decide for themselves how ‘cowardly, bitter, and intellectually dishonest’ I really am.

In all of the times I’ve ever seen you post anything, it’s only ever been in response to one of my posts. While this is a little flattering in a way, I really think you should get out more.

Waterboy, George, Grim,
Waterboy’s paragraph falls at the first hurdle. “Clearly the genesis of the 'physical' universe is a natural event that can be investigated by science.”

Firstly, to claim it as a natural event begs the question. Also, to claim that it can be investigated scientifically is to say the proposition can be falsified. How do you propose to do that? To falsify it as a natural event would imply a supernatural event which leaves it holding large metaphysical implications.

Relda,
You claim maybe we have difficulties communicating because of different views of hermeneutics. This is possible, but words are words, and we try and make sense out of them as best we can.

I don’t see where I’ve misquoted you. And I’d happily quote you again, for I see the same error in your follow up post. Once again, you’ve claimed that, “creationists and ID advocates are both in the same ‘camp’ in that they appeal solely to Biblical inerrancy and authority in order to refute a scientific theory (i.e. Darwinism).”

However, they do not rely on Biblical authority alone in their arguments. Their arguments depend on observations and reason from many areas of expertise. I could name some books written by ID proponents that contain no Scripture whatsoever. You also say this raises difficulties for their notions of natural theology. This is ridiculous. The famous book written by ID proponent William Paley was called ‘Natural Theology’.

You need to understand the ID theories better before critiquing them.

waterboy,
>> What ... is the point of God raising Lazarus? Why was the blind man given sight? God clearly allows the rest of us to remain in death. She does not see fit to heal all the blind people in the world,even the Christian ones that you and I might have prayed for.<<

Do you think that mocking the Gospels, in a way irrelevant to Dan’s position on science and evolution, is helpful here? It only serves to convince people that a defence of evolution and Darwinism goes necessarily with ridicule of what is sacred to all Christians, fundamentalist or not.

Also, speaking of the Christian (understanding of) God as “She” seems to me as impolite as if somebody deliberately misspelled, or worse, your name. It is not about God’s gender but about the Christian way of seeing the Divine. Of course, others might prefer the "she" approach (see e.g. Tao Te Ching).

Except for this, I agree with what you wrote. When considering the historicity of this or that miracle in the NT, one must take into account not only how we prefer to understand them, or what we think the authors of the Gospels wanted to say, but also what effect that event could have had on the contemporaries of Jesus. A miracle by definition is an event that cannot be explained from KNOWN natural laws; and people in the times of Jesus had a very limited knowledge and understanding of these laws. So in this sense I would agree with Dan.

My impression from some contributions here is that when discussing religion and science, it so happens that a naive understanding of what science - e.g. Darwinism or contemporary cosmology - is all about calls for reactions based on a naive understanding of what religion, especially Christianity, is all about.

And conversely, a naive "literalist" understanding of Christianity calls for reactions based on an outdated understanding of science based on a philosphy of science, which cannot take into account twentieth century achievements in physics that gave birth to contemporary cosmological insights into reality (c.f. my previous reference to Paul Davies' recent book).

Neither of this helps us to find interpretations of science and religion, interpretations that are compatible, hence do not lead to "cognitive dissonance" in the minds of those of us who can or want to embrace both approaches to reality.