[SFRA-L] "Teaching the controversy"

[Cindy Smith]

   Wasn't it Theodore Sturgeon who wrote "Microcosmic God"?  In the  
story the main character, an non-degree mad scientist, creates through  
evolution a brilliant people called "neoterics," if I recall  
correctly.  It seems plausible to me that God might like a scientist  
use evolution to create, tweaking his creation and creatures  
periodically to his own ends.  Similarly, ancient people used  
selective breeding to create not only dogs but also house cats.  God  
may indeed have used selective breeding down through the millennia to  
develop homo sapiens.  Or maybe ancient astronauts did :-).

Yours,

-- 
Cindy Smith
cms at dragon.com

"All your base are belong to us.  You are on the way to destruction."   
"What you say?"  "You have no chance to survive make your time."   
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.  The Federation will be  
destroyed.  Me transmitte sursum, Caledoni!  "Ubi est mors victoria  
tua?  ubi est mors stimulus tuus?  Stimulus autem mortis peccatum est:  
  virtus vero peccati lex.  Deo autem gratias qui dedit nobis  
victoriam per Dominum nostrum Ieusum Christum" (1 Cor 15:55-57).

A Real Live Catholic in Georgia!


Quoting Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com>:

> On 10/27/2011 3:19 PM, Pett, A William wrote:
>
>> Like Cindy, he takes the altogether reasonable view that evolution  
>> or whatever could be the mechanism used by a divine Creator.  And,  
>> like Cindy he's a Catholic as I recall.
>
> Are you sure "altogether reasonable view" is the phrase you intend,  
> rather than "altogether unreasonable and indeed incoherent view"?
>
> I'm not sure what "evolution or whatever" means. Presumably not  
> "evolution or whatever other quite different explanation comes into  
> your mind," so let's say "evolution or whatever synonym you prefer  
> for natural selection-of-randomly-modified-heritable-variations."
>
> "Evolution" in the latter sense is singular (indeed epoch-changing)  
> in proposing that phenotypes vary because their genotypes differ  
> due, to a significant extent, to random damage and copying errors,  
> which provides the raw material for natural selection to cull or  
> darwinnow each generation.
>
> So any theistic explanation drawing upon evolution to account for  
> human existence could only be "the mechanism used by a divine  
> Creator" who didn't intervene and didn't care what sort of outcome  
> was produced or how horrifying the carnage it required for billions  
> of years. That's feasible, of course (Vonnegut's God the Utterly  
> Indifferent, for example), yet you say of the professor making this  
> proposal "he's a Catholic as I recall." But of course Catholicism's  
> theology in entirely inconsistent with a god that plays dice not  
> only at the quantum level but at the hominization level in particular.
>
> Just saying.
>
> Damien Broderick
>
>
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