Interesting reply to my post above, Photon. You're right that blindly stumbling head-over-heels into religion is not good, versus believing in one's faith and still seeing science for being a worthwhile endeavor.
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Originally Posted by photon
I guess, if you mean in the same way that God made gravity occur. No one thinks that God takes an active role in making you fall down if you trip, same thing with evolution... the laws of the universe are conducive to it. More of a deist kind of God though.
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OK, I am going to try and explain how I see that issue. I do believe in God and that God created life on earth. I don't see it as if God just turned on a light switch and then left the room, leaving humanity
entirely to their own devices for survival.
I think that the concept of free will could have an impact on something as mundane as tripping... Firstly, theoretically, God could have made us all robots and he's having a great time playing The Sims with us all! But I believe God gave us free will, the ability to make our own decisions and be in control of our actions. Believers like myself use that as a way to try and explain why evil things happen in the world. I think that extends even to "God gave you free will- you are able to control how you put one foot in front of the other, and you screwed it up. Therefore, you fall flat on your face!"
So, what bails God out here? He doesn't sound very nice if he just lets us all fall over when we trip. Why doesn't he stop that, and let no harm ever come to anyone?
See, as a believer in God, and eternal life, I think the whole free will thing is a test of sorts. You live a "good" life according to God , then you get to go to Heaven. It's like being drafted to the Flames, except way better!
However, the whole free will morality test that is life (as I see it) would be faulty if God didn't allow harm to come to us- by way of other human beings in evil deeds (a direct abusal of free will), or even our own mistakes.
I think God tries to balance things out, a plan of sorts to ensure everyone at least has a chance at a degree of happiness over the course of their (earth-bound) life. Sometimes it doesn't work out, I think because mistakes were made by themselves or others- the free will idea as I see it was "tripped up" or violated. We just hope we get "drafted" to the "big show" in the end!
So that's my two cents. I hope I added something worthwhile, but these are certainly some big issues to tackle! (Speaking of tackling, go Cardinals go!
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