The whole truth
Posts: 1554
Joined: Jan. 2012
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At the risk of of posting something that is tldr, I think that this comment by gordon elliott mullings of Manjack heights, Montserrat should be saved here in case he deletes or modifies it at UD. In a response to 'nightlight', gordo preached:
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kairosfocusOctober 3, 2014 at 10:48 am
NL:
Let us hear the thinking of a great theistic scientist on a designer and architect of the cosmos. Yes, Sir Isaaac Newton, in the General Scholium to Principia:
. . . This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. And if the fixed stars are the centres of other like systems, these, being formed by the like wise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One; especially since the light of the fixed stars is of the same nature with the light of the sun, and from every system light passes into all the other systems: and lest the systems of the fixed stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other mutually, he hath placed those systems at immense distances one from another.
This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God pantokrator , or Universal Ruler; for God is a relative word, and has a respect to servants; and Deity is the dominion of God not over his own body, as those imagine who fancy God to be the soul of the world, but over servants. The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect; but a being, however perfect, without dominion, cannot be said to be Lord God; for we say, my God, your God, the God of Israel, the God of Gods, and Lord of Lords; but we do not say, my Eternal, your Eternal, the Eternal of Israel, the Eternal of Gods; we do not say, my Infinite, or my Perfect: these are titles which have no respect to servants. The word God usually signifies Lord; but every lord is not a God. It is the dominion of a spiritual being which constitutes a God: a true, supreme, or imaginary dominion makes a true, supreme, or imaginary God. And from his true dominion it follows that the true God is a living, intelligent, and powerful Being; and, from his other perfections, that he is supreme, or most perfect. He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, his duration reaches from eternity to eternity; his presence from infinity to infinity; he governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done. He is not eternity or infinity, but eternal and infinite; he is not duration or space, but he endures and is present. He endures for ever, and is every where present; and by existing always and every where, he constitutes duration and space. Since every particle of space is always, and every indivisible moment of duration is every where, certainly the Maker and Lord of all things cannot be never and no where. Every soul that has perception is, though in different times and in different organs of sense and motion, still the same indivisible person. There are given successive parts in duration, co-existent puts in space, but neither the one nor the other in the person of a man, or his thinking principle; and much less can they be found in the thinking substance of God. Every man, so far as he is a thing that has perception, is one and the same man during his whole life, in all and each of his organs of sense. God is the same God, always and every where. He is omnipresent not virtually only, but also substantially; for virtue cannot subsist without substance. In him are all things contained and moved [i.e. cites Ac 17, where Paul evidently cites Cleanthes]; yet neither affects the other: God suffers nothing from the motion of bodies; bodies find no resistance from the omnipresence of God. It is allowed by all that the Supreme God exists necessarily; and by the same necessity he exists always, and every where. [i.e accepts the cosmological argument to God.] Whence also he is all similar, all eye, all ear, all brain, all arm, all power to perceive, to understand, and to act; but in a manner not at all human, in a manner not at all corporeal, in a manner utterly unknown to us. As a blind man has no idea of colours, so have we no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and understands all things. He is utterly void of all body and bodily figure, and can therefore neither be seen, nor heard, or touched; nor ought he to be worshipped under the representation of any corporeal thing. [Cites Exod 20.] We have ideas of his attributes, but what the real substance of any thing is we know not. In bodies, we see only their figures and colours, we hear only the sounds, we touch only their outward surfaces, we smell only the smells, and taste the savours; but their inward substances are not to be known either by our senses, or by any reflex act of our minds: much less, then, have we any idea of the substance of God. We know him only by his most wise and excellent contrivances of things, and final cause [i.e from his designs]: we admire him for his perfections; but we reverence and adore him on account of his dominion: for we adore him as his servants; and a god without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but Fate and Nature. Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and every where, could produce no variety of things. [i.e necessity does not produce contingency] All that diversity of natural things which we find suited to different times and places could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being necessarily existing. [That is, implicitly rejects chance, Plato's third alternative and explicitly infers to the Designer of the Cosmos.] But, by way of allegory, God is said to see, to speak, to laugh, to love, to hate, to desire, to give, to receive, to rejoice, to be angry, to fight, to frame, to work, to build; for all our notions of God are taken from. the ways of mankind by a certain similitude, which, though not perfect, has some likeness, however. And thus much concerning God; to discourse of whom from the appearances of things, does certainly belong to Natural Philosophy.
All I will say for now beyond that is, that if your picture of how a theistic scientist thinks cannot at least match up to Newton, you are painting, scorning and knocking over a strawman.
KF
PS: You seem to be caught up in the fixed, propagandistic notion that the actions of an all-wise Creator would reflect “caprice” —
caprice (k??pri?s)
n
1. a sudden or unpredictable change of attitude, behaviour, etc; whim
2. a tendency to such changes
3. (Classical Music) another word for capriccio
[C17: from French, from Italian capriccio a shiver, caprice, from capo head + riccio hedgehog, suggesting a convulsive shudder in which the hair stood on end like a hedgehog's spines; meaning also influenced by Italian capra goat, by folk etymology]
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003
– That, it seems to me would be the exact opposite of a God who would be reason himself, a maximally great being, and would have infinitely wise purpose. Instead, I suggest that C S Lewis in Miracles and in other essays, is far closer to home. His point was that God would use miracles as signposts standing out from the usual order of creation and as such there would necessarily be a usual order amenable to understanding and science. But it would be open to necessarily rare actions beyond the usual order for god purposes of the Creator’s.
And besides, there is no necessity of the miraculous in the creation or diversification of cell based life, even on the part of God. Why wouldn’t God use a molecular nanotech lab to create and diversify?
And if not, that something happened beyond the course of nature or ordinary art, how different is that really from our own intelligent and purposeful creativity? If that is what he wished to do, would that be irrational or whimsical or merely impulsive? I suggest to you, not. (And in the Christian frame, reflect here on the God who would in love hang on a cross as a wounded healer redeemer.)
It seems to me you are caught up in dismissive strawman fallacies and linked polarisation.
Kindly, think again.
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All science so far!
UD link: http://tinyurl.com/plorauh....plorauh
ETA: I don't know why the link goes to comment number 123. I had gordo's number 20 comment showing when I copied the UD url.
ETA: I removed what I said about 'nightlight' not mentioning 'God' because when I looked again I noticed that 'nightlight' mentioned 'God' once before gordo's response quoted above.
Edited by The whole truth on Oct. 11 2014,21:17
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Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. - Jesus in Matthew 10:34
But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me. -Jesus in Luke 19:27
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