The Divine Lawmaker (original) (raw)
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Natural Law and Divine Action: The Search for an Expanded Theory of Causation
Zygon(r), 2004
Talk of divine action faces its greatest obstacle when it confronts natural law and efficient causation. If all valid explanations involve deterministic laws, and only microphysical causes actively trigger change, claims for divine action can serve no explanatory role. But science does not in fact require the limitation to downwardly deterministic laws and efficient causes. Evidence supports the existence of emergent systems of phenomena, which, though dependent on physical law, also display emergent causal powers not reducible to their subvenient systems. Careful study of top-down causation in biology and of mental causation in psychology offers analogies that are helpful for making sense of the notion of divine action. Theists' ascription of a causal role to God cannot be proven from science or identified with scientific forms of causality. Nevertheless, if the emergence hypothesis is correct, theistic explanations do not need to conflict with science, and a plausible model of divine influence may even be derived from emergent causation. In this article I offer an expanded theory of causation that reduces the distance between two types of causal forces that are often held to be incommensurable.
The Persistence of Natural Law
The purpose of this presentation is to argue that miracles do not subvert the natural order as created by God and that suggestions to the contrary forbid the formulation of scientific laws and advance the theologically repugnant notion of a capricious God who changes the rules of nature to suit momentary whims. In addition, the notion of a God who couldn’t have designed nature well enough that it would cooperate with His interventions advances the notion that God and the universe are incompatible. The argument will first proceed by showing good reasons to believe that the laws of nature as described by modern science are quantitatively probable representations of the functions of the universe, taking into account hyperinflation of the early universe after the big bang. Modern technology will serve as a mediate proof of the suppositions of science. If we didn’t understand how the universe operated, at least at the level of our technology, we couldn’t build those technologies. Second, I will argue that those who try to show that the laws of nature do change, even dramatically, are ignoring well established sciences like geology and physics, and are holding a problematic perspective on biblical interpretation. They therefore, misunderstand the scientific project and biblical rationality. But that doesn’t mean that the laws of the universe do not evolve. Third, I will give reasons for the fine-tuning of the universe over its billions of years in order to disabuse the notion that the anthropic principle is proof of a hastily cobbled fiat creation. I will give a few logical objections to YEC. Finally, I will advance a possible scenario for interaction between God and the universe.
Chapter 1, Introduction to Divine Action, Determinism, and the Laws of Nature
Divine Action, Determinism, and the Laws of Nature (Routledge), 2020
Theologians continue to debate the question of divine action in a law-governed world. Chapter 1 explains why philosophy needs to be more involved in the conversation. The most important reason is that foundational issues are seldom addressed in the science and religion literature. For example, while many deny that God would violate the laws of nature, few offer any analysis of the nature of the laws of nature-a topic widely discussed by philosophers of science. The chapter explains three broad approaches to how divine action relates to the laws that will be used throughout the book and ends with an overview of each chapter.
A Puzzle about Natural Laws and the Existence of God
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 73 (3): 269-83, 2013
The existence of natural laws, whether deterministic or indeterministic, and whether exceptionless or ceteris paribus, seems puzzling because it implies that mindless bits of matter behave in a consistent and co-ordinated way. I explain this puzzle by showing that a number of attempted solutions fail. The puzzle could be resolved if it were assumed that natural laws are a manifestation of God’s activity. This argument from natural law to God’s existence differs from its traditional counterparts in that, whereas the latter seek to explain the fact of natural laws, the former seeks to explain their possibility. The customary objections to the traditional arguments cannot be successfully adapted to counter this new argument, with one exception which has only limited effect. I rebut four claims that the theistic solution to the puzzle about natural laws is paradoxical, though I concede that one of these claims has merit. I consider four objections to the new argument but find three of them more or less unsatisfactory. The fourth, if successful, would undermine our claims to know the truth about the world.
My work considers Michael Foster. Considering the ancient science of Greece, Foster notes that their work was essentially a priori science on eternal forms. Their eternality avoided the problem of science on an ever-‐changing nature. Foster seeks to answer the question: Where does the empirical component of modern science come from? His answer: Christian religion, specifically Creation. Foster believes a religion necessitates a certain philosophy, which in turn entails a certain science. Foster proposes Christianity depends on a voluntaristic theology; this means that God’s creating the world is arbitrary. Final cause must thus be rejected. Reason, then, cannot seek to find this final cause to understand the world. The modern scientist must look to his experience. This embodies the turn of modern science. I analyze Foster on both logical and historical grounds. Early on, Foster criticizes Leibniz for holding both a voluntarist theology and a rational epistemology. Later, Foster pivots to hold precisely the same ‘incompatible’ union. Leibniz also represents a thinker who held to a voluntarist theology and a notion of final cause. I set up the distinction that either Leibniz is a hack philosopher, or his work is logically possible. Supposing the latter, the logical necessity between theology and philosophy and science is not as clear as Foster believes. Historically, Foster claims that the Scholastics have not understood creation philosophically. Instead, they continued to perform ancient science. I argue that Foster’s problematic relationship between modern and ancient/medieval science stems from his focus on Descartes. Descartes’ ambiguity in terms of freedom and determination leads to a troubling account of science in general. Ultimately, I argue that Foster is convincing regarding relationship between the Christianity and the rejection of final cause. This seems to be the impetus of modern science. I do not believe that Christianity must do this, however. Foster’s troubling account of the progression of science precludes me from accepting his thesis completely. Instead, I propose R.G. Collingwood as a better alternative to Foster. The recasting of Foster’s work into a larger historical project allows for future work in the examination of the most contemporary of sciences.
THE CONTINGENCY OF LAWS OF NATURE IN SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY
Foundations of Physics, 2010
The belief that laws of nature are contingent played an important role in the emergence of the empirical method of modern physics. During the scientific revolution, this belief was based on the idea of voluntary creation. Taking up Peter Mittelstaedt’s work on laws of nature, this article explores several alternative answers which do not overtly make use of metaphysics: some laws are laws of mathematics; macroscopic laws can emerge from the interplay of numerous subsystems without any specific microscopic nomic structures (John Wheeler’s “law without law”); laws are the preconditions of scientific experience (Kant); laws are theoretical abstractions which only apply in very limited circumstances (Nancy Cartwright). Whereas Cartwright’s approach is in tension with modern scientific methodology, the first three strategies count as illuminating, though partial answers. It is important for the empirical method of modern physics that these three strategies, even when taken together, do not provide a complete explanation of the order of nature. Thus the question of why laws are valid is still relevant. In the concluding section, I argue that the traditional answer, based on voluntary creation, provides the right balance of contingency and coherence which is in harmony with modern scientific method.
An Empirically Testable Causal Mechanism for Divine Action
Stellenbosch Theological Journal, 2020
A form of special divine action often considered central to the everyday experience of Christianity is that of a personal interaction with God. For example, in The Second Person Perspective in Aquinas's Ethics (2012), Andrew Pinsent characterises this interaction in terms of mutually empathic relations that serve to "infuse" virtues and other attributes into a person. Such interaction requires that causal relations exist between a necessary being and the contingent universe. This paper addresses a central problem of special divine action: that the empirically identifiable causes of physical events are modally ill-suited for (and epistemically distinct from) the action of an eternal, non-composite, necessary being. Accounts of what brings about physical events are standardly empirical accounts, grounded upon experience of the world. In contrast, accounts of how God acts are standardly non-empirical exercises of reason. But as a result, theories about the causality of divine action usually bear no clear relation to the empirical causal modes that, judging by our experience, function to bring about events which God somehow also causes. This is a modal problem in the causal relations of divine action. To solve this problem, I make an (empirical) distinction between material and merely intelligible mind-independent being. From this develops an account of a novel type of causality definitively clarified by the scholastic philosopher John Poinsot, extrinsic formal specification, which is as empirically observable as it is amenable to speculative reason, particularly sacramental and Trinitarian theology.
1. The problem of identii cation and the problem of inference A main issue in the literature on laws is to dee ne criteria which would permit to distinguish genuine lawlike propositions from universally true propositions which describe merely accidental or fortuitous regularities in the world, such as all gold objects have a mass inferior to fty tons, to reformulate a well-known example due to Hans Reichenbach. This is the epistemological problem of identii cation. The challenge here is to formulate criteria, in the sense of suff cient conditions at least, which would justify attributing the title of law to a universally true proposition. If those criteria are satiss ed by the proposition, then we know that it is a law and that it does not just happen to be accidentally true. This is the task that Humean regularists set to themselves. Since, for them, lawlike propositions describe worldly regularities, their aim is to nd criteria which are consistent with their empiricist position and to refrain from introducing ingredients which would go beyond the realm of what is empirically accessible. In other words, serious empiricists are required to shun any kind of metaphysics. As we will see such endeavor is fraught with all sorts of diff culties. On this I agree with van Fraassen who is, in his own words, a " immoderate empiricist " (2000, 1660) and consistently sustains that there are no laws, in the sense that the search for empirically satisfactory criteria which would divide regularities into two distinct classes, lawful and unlawful, is bound to fail. Simply because there is no empirical fact, that is, some empirically detectable special kind of regularities, which would legitimate endowing the propositions which describe them with the title of law. Surely, some regularities are more general than others, but they all are regularities in the rst place and no empirical feature is available which would permit to single out some regularities and endow them with some privileged status. This is why the empiricists who would like to retain the distinction between laws and non-laws, just as scientists do, attempted to devise criteria which are internal to
Both God and Nature: Providential Naturalism as a Middle Way in Contemporary Divine Action Debates
God and the Book of Nature: Experiments in Theology of Science, 2023
Of all the theological problems raised by the emergence of modern of science, the question of how to reconcile naturalistic explanations with God's providential oversight of creation is one of the most difficult. In recent decades various forms of theistic naturalism have been proposed, the goal being in each case to provide a framework for reconciling natural causality with God's action. Those theistic naturalisms avoid one problem implicit in earlier divine action theories-deism-but in doing so they run the risk of re-enchanting the world in ways that make all occurrences in nature the direct product of God's will. In this chapter we describe a historic Christian position-providential naturalism-which locates natural causality inside a providential view of the universe. 1 Those who articulated this view recognized the significant causal independence of nature-a cornerstone of modern science-through a distinction between general and special providence, the former referring to a mode of divine action which empowered created entities to bring about effects in nature but without severing their dependence on God. As their example shows, general providence captures and reflects nature's causal integrity, and does so, we claim, without succumbing to either of two extremes-deism, and attributing everything directly to God's will-that Christians should avoid.