--- In [email protected], "authfriend" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], "Nelson" <nelsonriddle2001@> > wrote: > > > > --- In [email protected], "authfriend" <jstein@> wrote: > > > > > > --- In [email protected], "Nelson" > <nelsonriddle2001@> > > > wrote: > > > > > > > > --- In [email protected], "authfriend" <jstein@> > wrote: > > > > > > > > > > --- In [email protected], "Irmeli Mattsson" > > > > > <Irmeli.Mattsson@> wrote: > > > > > <snip> > > > > > > Although I think that also God makes mistakes and learns > > > > > > through and from them. > > > > > > > > > > Question on this one point: By what standard can it > > > > > be said that God makes mistakes? > > > > > > > > > ++++ I recall reading somewhere that he said that he was > > > > evolving which would mean not so much making mistakes as doing > > > > things differently. N. > > > > > > Evolving toward what?
I think there is a big confusion of what evolution actually means. Here some biological definitions: Evolution: The long-term process through which a population of organisms accumulates genetic changes that enable its members to successfully adapt to environmental conditions and to better exploit food resources. www.accessexcellence.org/AE/AEPC/WWC/1994/glossary.html The change in life over time by adaptation, variation, over-reproduction, and differential survival/reproduction, a process referred to by Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace as natural selection. http://www.emc.maricopa.edu/faculty/farabee/BIOBK/BioBookglossE.html In this sense evolution is not the development to a certain pre-existent goal, but rather the successful adaptaion to a given environment by a certain organism. Thhis is what trial and error and natural selection is all about. This makes the idea of an evolving Creator-God fairly upsurd: How could a Creator adapt to an environment, he has created himself? It is even more absurd if you assume an all-knowing God going through trial and error. Pretty much trial and error can be done by machines, and doesn't require a creator at all. That is why evolution, the theory of natural selection is so much opposed by the creationists. Now one can of course try to transfer the idea of evolution to a sort of teleological argument, and that is what many New Agers do. There is a goal, a pre-existent ideal to which nature develops. But if God himself develops, who established the ideal, was it already there or did he create it? And if he created the ideal, why didn't s/he create the ideal creation right away? I think one gets into a big muddle if one tries to combine evolutionary theories which really don't need any God (like trial and error) with creationist ideas. Why should a God evolve, unless he has fallen, and is now involved in his own creation? Of course one could argue, we are all God, and we are all evolving to finally realize this potential of ours. Otherwise its a really absurd idea, with the sort of populistic appeal, the same as that we are all co-creators. It just makes some people feel more important. > > > > > ++++ He didn't say but I would guess that being at level, he would > > be pretty well qualified to decide. > > If he recognizes that ultimate toward which he is evolving, > such that he can see that something he did was a mistake, > or that he needed to do things differently, what is the > nature of that ultimate? > > If what we're calling God is not the ultimate, what is? ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Join modern day disciples reach the disfigured and poor with hope and healing http://us.click.yahoo.com/lMct6A/Vp3LAA/i1hLAA/UlWolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
