My objection is over the idea of randomness itself. What we do not understand, we tend to call “random”, “chaotic” or “accidental”. I’m not a Deist, but I do believe that God generally lets His design run it’s course. Intervention isn’t necessary because it was perfectly designed in the first place. That’s not to say that He doesn’t intervene at times, just that it wasn’t required by the design. What appears random to us is really just beyond our comprehension. The roll of a die can be calculated according to the laws of physics given near perfect knowledge – without knowledge of physics and mechanics it would be impossible. Is it therefore random?

Perhaps it comes down to time and our place in the flow of it. I had a professor once who challenged my statement that God is outside of Time. I’m not sure that he was serious, but it did make me think about the implications and meaning of such a statement. I guess I don’t believe in randomness, just limits in our ability to see causes and consequences.

Also, I always hated studying probability theory. I suppose in some ways it was/is interesting, but I just couldn’t ever wrap my head around it.

Now, I only heard part 3 of this 4 part series, but it was certainly difficult for me to separate Stuart’s obvious challenge to Naturalism from an attack on the principles of Evolutionary Theory. I will only say that I feel even more that we need to be clear about challenging and refuting Naturalism and Materialism without rejecting good science. God is not threatened by discovery of truth, why should we fear reason? We should certainly challenge ideas that go beyond the evidence, but let’s be careful not to create ludicrous or foolish explanations for ideas that are not, in themselves, anti-Christian.

Stuart did make a very cool point about religion and violence: 130 million people (at minimum) were killed in the 20th century by or in the name of Atheistic regimes. Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, the Khmer Rouge, and on it goes. Religious conflict has never come close to that level of killing, so what do we make of the claims that religion causes all conflict?

Collins’ theology at times seems a bit too liberal for me, though I agree on the crux (sorry) of the argument. The principles of theistic evolution, or as Collins calls it “BioLogos” are these:

1. The universe came into being out of nothingness, approximately 14 Billion years ago.

2. Despite massive improbabilities, the properties of the universe appear to have been precisely tuned for life.

3. While the precise mechanism of the origin of life on earth remains unknown, once life arose, the process of evolution and natural selection permitted the development of biological diversity and complexity over very long periods of time.

4. Once evolution got underway, no special supernatural intervention was required.

5. Humans are part of this process, sharing a common ancestor with the great apes.

6. But humans are also unique in ways that defy evolutionary explanation and point to our spiritual nature. This includes the existence of the Moral Law (the knowledge of right and wrong) and the search for God that characterizes all human cultures throughout history.

I still need to chew some of this over, but it seems like a very clear and defensible position on biology and the nature of life on earth.