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UPDATE: The Groaning of Creation” – Chapter 1 “Introduction”: Part II
Is God Responsible for extinctions that happen throughout nature? Does he cause them? Is there something good that can come about through the extinction of a species? Or is it a total waste?
Yesterday, we discussed how extinction may not be a total loss, the role of humans in God’s creation, an eschatological ‘need’ for redemption, a response to Ivan Karamazov, and whether or not God played a direct role in the evolution of homo sapiens.
Our response are here.
“The Groaning of Creation” – Chapter 1 “Introduction”: Part II
Above is a reading from a scene between Ivan (a skeptic) and his religious brother Alyosha from Fydor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov regarding the difficulty of believing in a loving God in the face of the abuse and suffering of innocent children.
Though Southgate’s book focuses primarily on the suffering of animals, he uses the illustration above in this chapter to convey his thesis that “[T]he crux of the problem is not the overall system and its overall goodness but the Christian’s struggle with the challenge to the goodness of God posed by specific cases of innocent suffering.”
Masterclass in Neurotheology
NEUROTHEOLOGY Masterclass
hosted by the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (www.thecir.info)
Sept. 10 – Dec. 10, 2016
This advanced interdisciplinary course meets for eight 3-hour Saturday morning sessions over a 3-month period.
No background in theology or science is required, but a commitment to reading the notes, which are drawn from Ron Choong’s PhD dissertation, is expected.
This inaugural CIR Master-Class will feature Ron Choong’s doctoral work submitted as an interdisciplinary PhD dissertation in 2009 to Princeton Seminary.
A Reply from one of our members about the 11/13 post.
Chris wanted to clarify his position on the post i made here about the conversation we had during our last meeting last month that concerned evolution – human evolution in particular.
Here is his statement:
“Perhaps I was unclear in my comments. I apologize.
With respect to whether God directly intervened to make man or it was done by strict
evolution, I am AGNOSTIC. We simply lack the knowledge to decide at this time.
MUCH MORE CRITICALLY, my real point may have been missed.
Whether by God or evolution may not be the real question. The real question is who or
what gives us humans eternal worth?
The real ‘Adam and Eve story’ may be that God DOES directly intervene to imbue us with
eternal value as a totally free gift by His infinite and unknowable Love and through pure fiat.
What does evolution have to do with it? Whether a man or a cockroach what value
without God’s Desire and Will? We could evolve for an infinite amount of time and
reach stupendous levels of intellect, cognition and morality, we will still be (star) dust
and to (star) dust we will return. We will not even possess consciousness of our existence.
What value?
(These are not statements but questions. I appreciate comment, if any. Thanks.)”
– Chris
Article in “The Economist” about the current state of Adam and the Creationist vs. Evolutionist debate in America
From the article:
“Recent research (notably cross-species comparisons of gene sequences rendered non-functional by mutations) has greatly strengthened the case that humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor. A creationist speaker in Baltimore shrugged such discoveries off, declaring that ‘science changes, but the word of God never changes.’
A trickier controversy has been triggered by findings from the genome that modern humans, in their genetic diversity, cannot be descended from a single pair of individuals. Rather, there were at least several thousand ‘first humans’. That challenges the historical existence of Adam and Eve, and has sparked a crisis of conscience among evangelical Christians persuaded by genetic science. “
Project Augustine 