We talk with a lot of engineers. We have determined that it is okay to know something and okay to not know something. It is good if you know that you don’t know something. However, the guy to watch out for is the guy that doesn’t know that he doesn’t know.

I think we will realize how much we don’t know what we don’t know. We don’t even know a lot of the questions – and yet we think we understand the mind of the universe creator. Wow…

The Orthodox Christians of the east are much clearer on this point than some in the Roman and Protestant traditions. That is, the Orthodox accept that God is largely unknowable, and *other* from us, and we cannot know anything about Him that He does not reveal to us.

My point was that Christians believe that God has revealed Himself in two ways, special revelation (for us, that means scripture) and general revelation (nature and the universe). It is not necessary for us to start out thinking we “know the mind of God” to attempt to interpret and make sense of either of these revelations, except to the very limited extent that we assume God wants us to try to do that.

Is it presumptuous to think we “know the mind of God” that much, namely that He wants us to pay attention to His two forms of revelation? No, not for a Theist. If you think it is some kind of condemnation to suggest that Christians think they know the mind of God by that much, then you are likely a Deist, or an agnostic… but you are not a Christian.

Christians would say that they “know the mind of God” only to the extent that God wants them to, and then only if they earnestly seek Him.

Do you see that as some kind of philosophical or theological problem? Do you have a preference for belief in some kind of unknowably remote God that has nothing to do with human life?

I browsed your website in response to your posted comment. May I suggest a book to you for consideration? It is by Michael Behe and is entitled “Darwin’s Black Box”. The book is published by Free Press and it is available at Amazon.com It presents a significant challenge to Darwinian theorists. Let me know what you think.

“Theistic evolution” is an attempt to have it both ways, to get along with (and keep the good regard of) the secular, atheist establishment while clinging to a belief in a God who created US, not just a universe where a planet like Earth might happen, and where life might happen, and where something like us might happen to evolve.

I checked out your webiste, and I agree that there is dishonesty in the portrayal and caricature of both sides. So: I avoid that by taking the people who “own the terms” at their word, not by foisting an extra layer of meaning on top of evolution and claiming “God did it that way”, nor by deleting an essential meaning of the Creation Story, which is that God made US, exactly as we are, with full intention and specificity in His design of us.

Just curious, Paul: are you aware of http://www.reasons.org and the work of Hugh Ross, Fuz Rana, and their team?

In the meantime, you might want to check out my “Next Great Awakening series” at a tab at the top of the page.

One of the dangers that occurs in the western Christian world today is what I call ‘Hollywood Christianity’. The bigger one’s church is (and size is always advertised) the more credibility one has in the book selling world and the pastor’s convention world and the “making a name for oneself world”. Thus, the endorsement from other pastors with big churches printed on the cover of one’s book, etc. The one thing most pastor’s don’t seem to do is to actually read the other guy’s book or sit under his teaching for any appreciable amount of time in order to test his true theology. We have such a mix-master of theological thought out there today that it’s every man for himself. The one book few seem interested in reading and talking about is the Bible. I can picture us all on judegment day – Confused Modern Day Christian: “But Lord, I read every book that was published by Zondervan, Intervarsity Press, Regal Books, etc. and I went to 3 pastor’s conventions every year, so how could I have gotten so much wrong?” God: “I gave you my book, in your native language, and offered the Holy Spirit to help you understand; why didn’t you study it?” CMDC: “I didn’t like so much of what it said!” God: “Really!”

Paul, it doesn’t make sense to me, either. But that is the position of those who defined the concept of theistic evolution, as far as I can tell. I am not sure that you are one, as defined by the people who created the term, based on your description of your beliefs.

What you describe (God’s intervention at various places along the way to bring about the result He wanted) is exactly what some Intelligent Design advocates say. And those believers in ID are the ones that theistic evolutionists specifically oppose.

In principle, if we learn enough about how it “would have worked” without any intervention by God, then we might be able to detect God’s interventions here and there into the overall system that He created. But that is the very point that is denied by evolutionists of all kinds, theistic or otherwise. The essential core of “evolution” is that the mutations were random, and the circumstances that led to some of them thriving and others not thriving were also random.

I don’t believe that. For me, theistic evolution means that I believe the earth when it gives up information about itself and its history. Evidence says life as we know it evolved. There’s nothing in science that can address whether God intervened at points along the evolutionary trail. Was it his will and purpose to make a certain mutation an A rather than a G in some creature’s DNA? Did he do that repeatedly? Did he never do that?

Who knows! Neither science nor Scripture can answer that question. So, in my opinion, theistic evolution has to leave it unanswered as well. Some individual can guess and give his opinion, but I can’t imagine why anyone’s opinion would matter on that issue. No one has any way of knowing?

Belief in God shouldn’t come from science. God desires to be known in the inward parts, and he bears testimony to the human spirit through nature. As for his Son, Jesus, the testimony he bears, according to Scripture, is that “he who has the Son has the Life, and he who does not have the Son does not have the Life.” It is the supernatural life of real Christians that is the testimony of God.

None of that has anything to do with science. Science tells us about evolution. That’s interesting to me as a theist because it tells me something about God, who has declared himself to be Creator in his revelation to man through Israel first and later the body of Christ.

But the idea that theistic evolution precludes God’s intervention in evolution or creation … that doesn’t make any sense to me.