Cita del Mes

Aqui son dos citas del libro God and Evolution:

Modern science was born of the twin convictions that the universe was the rational product of a rational mind, and that this maker was not bound at every turn by the deductive syllogisms of an earlier age, meaning that the best way for a scientist to determine how the Creator did things is to turn to nature and carefully scrutinize it. (p. 116)

In Ayala's view, right-thinking Christians need to "acknowledge Darwin's revolution and accept natural selection as the process that accounts for the design of organisms, as well as for the dysfunctions, oddities, cruelties, and sadism that pervade the world of life. Attributing these to specific agency by the Creator amounts to blasphemy." Charging Christian opponents of Darwin's theory with blasphemy may seem unduly harsh. Ayala therefore attempts to soften this charge by granting that those who oppose evolution and support special creation "are surely well-meaning people who do not intend such blasphemy." Ayala's concession (and condescension) here is to the intellectual feebleness, as he sees it, of those who cling to the old naïve creationist outlook and have yet to wrap their minds around the stark truth of evolution. In any case he doesn't retract the charge of blasphemy: "This is how matters appear to a biologist concerned that God not be slandered with the imputation of incompetent design."

In turning the table on special creation, however, Ayala has in fact turned it 360 degrees. The table is back to where it was originally, and the problem he meant to shift to special creation confronts him still. Ayala worries that a God who creates by direct intervention must be held accountable for all the bad designs in the world. Ayala's proposed solution is therefore to have God set up a world in which evolution (by natural selection and random variation) brings about bad designs. But how does this address the underlying difficulty, which is that a creator God has set up the conditions under which bad designs emerge? In the one case, God acts directly; in the other, indirectly. But a Creator God, as the all-powerful source of all being, is as responsible in the one case as in the other.

We never accept such shifting of responsibility in any other important matter, so why here? What difference does it make if a mugger brutalizes someone with his own hands (that is, uses direct means) or employs a vicious dog on a leash (that is, uses indirect means) to do the same? The mugger is equally responsible in both cases. The same holds for a creator God who creates directly or indirectly by evolution. Creation entails responsibility. The buck always stops with the Creator. That's why so much of contemporary theology has a problem not just with God "intervening" in nature but also with the traditional doctrine of creation ex nihilo, which makes God the source of nature. (pp. 95-96).