Divine Evolution?

Thought provoking article over at Tech Central Station by Frederick Turner:
Divine Evolution. Turner lays out what he sees as one of the big picture problems:

One important question remains relatively unexplored. Indeed, the value of the debate may be precisely the raising of such questions. The question is this: if, in the opinion of many of the wisest thinkers on the issue, there is no contradiction between the idea of a creative divinity and the theory of evolution, how can this be so? If evolution, as 99% at least of all scientists who have studied biology agree, is quite capable of producing all the lifeforms of the world without outside intervention in the process, what need is there for God?

The awkward issue here is what some cosmologists call the "goldilocks" problem. The initial parameters of the universe -- the speed of light, Planck's constant, the number of families of quarks, the electron volt constant, Avogadro's number, the gravitational constant, the rate of curvature of the universe, the strength of the weak and strong nuclear forces, etc, etc -- had to be "just right" for the universe to have produced life and minds. If, like the porridge or the beds of the three bears, the universe is too hot or too cold, too big or too small, we would not be here to observe it.

[. . .]
This is the problem for anti-design thinkers: though evolution, once it is set in motion, mightn't require further design, design certainly looks like the least implausible explanation for the beginning of the process itself.

But the theological problem for the Intelligent Design advocate is just as awkward. What would we say about a creator who started a universe with the evident intention of producing life and intelligence, but who needed to step in every few billion years, or every few seconds, to fix the process, rewrite the program, give the actors new lines, touch up the brushstrokes of the painting, seize the conductor's baton and introduce a new melody? Wouldn't we say that such a creator was an incompetent artist, that if he knew what he was doing he wouldn't be botching it up all the time and having to come in to shore up the building or fire a midcourse correction burn?

Turner goes on to posit a conception of "God in Nature" using "strange attractors" as a organizing principle:

This conception might be called natural providence, and it has some appealing features from a theological point of view. Whereas classical linear cause and effect "pushes" events into happening, enforces them, attractors "pull" or invite them to happen; what happens next is only one of a number of possible outcomes for the system at that moment -- in effect, choice is built into the physical world. This view of things suggests that if there are divine intentions working themselves out, they are incarnate within nature itself. It brings the will of God into the most intimate recesses of our bodies. And yet it does not constrain belief in God -- a hugely important criterion in the Bible, at least, since we must be free to choose to believe. For we can always dismiss the whole process as merely a natural phenomenon.

I am not sure diehards on either side will see this as helpful or workable, but I found it thought provoking an interesting.