APPENDIX

 
      Divine Guidance of Natural Process — Part 2

      Here is a summary, from earlier, of Loren Haarsma describing divine guidance: "God is equally sovereign over all events, ordinary or extraordinary. ...  The Bible teaches that God can precisely select the outcome of events that appear random to us. ...  It is also possible that God gives his creation some freedom, through random processes, to explore the wide range of potentials he has given it.  Either way, randomness within natural processes is not the absence of God.  Rather, it is another vehicle for God's creativity and governance."   Here is more from Haarsma:
      "Some people use the word “chance” as an alternative explanation to God.  When they say that something happened by “chance,” they believe that it had no purpose, no significance of any kind, nothing guiding it, nothing that cares about the final results. ...  Some scientists do use the word “chance” this way in their popular writings,... [but] they are adding philosophical overtones that go way beyond the scientific meaning.  When scientists use the concept of chance scientifically, they mean simply this:  They could not completely predict the final state of a system based on their knowledge of the earlier states.  In a scientific theory, the term “chance” is not a statement about causation (or lack of causation); rather, it is a statement about predictability."  /  This scientific meaning "is entirely compatible with a biblical picture of God's governance.  Many Bible passages describe God working through apparently random events. ...  God could select the outcome of scientifically unpredictable events in order to achieve particular outcomes.  God could do this subtly, interacting with creation in ways that are significant but that we could not detect scientifically.  God could also do this dramatically upon occasion, choosing an outcome that is scientifically possible but extremely improbable, something that might even appear miraculous to us.  Another way God might use random processes is to give the created world a bit of freedom.  Through the laws of nature, God has given the material creation a range of possibilities to explore, and he gives his creation the freedom to explore that range."

      Earlier [in the full-length page], Peter Rüst says: "Both theological and scientific indications point to a continuous, active, but usually hidden involvement of the Creator in all that happens. ...  The spontaneous occurrence of a specific combination of mutations required for the emergence of a certain enyzme activity may, in context, be transastronomically improbable.  Even so, we can never prove it impossible, as the tails of the Gaussian probability distribution extend to infinity. Yet God may have chosen to actively decree it to occur. ...  Selecting specific events means feeding information into the system."
      More from Rüst: "The demonstration of stochastic [probabilistic] distributions characterizing chance events cannot eliminate the possibility of a precise providential predetermination by the Creator, should he choose to do so.  In any case, science has no way of finding out what causes individual elementary events.  The claim that there is “nothing but chance” behind mutations is non-scientific.  It is a matter of personal belief.  Such a use of the concept of chance masquerading as science is an abuse of the popular respect for science. (1992)"  /  God could either "determine the outcome of each elementary event individually, or manage them collectively, e.g. by specifying Gaussian normality, mean and standard deviation, or higher level principles, not caring about individual events as such.  Or he might imperceptibly guide chaotic dynamic systems by means of a few disturbances.  Chance is not an alternative to God's action: it may be the usual way his creative activity “manifests” itself to us. (1992)"
      And later, in 2005: "For each adaptive mutation successfully fixed, there are, in principle, two possibilities.  In the first case — the only one accessible to science — the mutation is truly random (God's providence at the quantum level), the probability of selection is extremely low, the time to fixation extremely long, succesful fixation very improbable, and the increase of information is due entirely to selection by the environment.  In the other case, the particular mutation is determined by God's selective choice (quantum event guided by God), selection and fixation occur according to God's predetermined schedule (maybe through other quided quantum events), success is certain, and God's guidance is the source of the information increase.  In both casess, scientists rightly see such events as random.  In principle, the first case is repeatable and could be shown to be randomly dispersed.  The second case is unique, and so its repeatability cannot be investigated.  On the other hand, both cases are the outcome of God's design, either providential or creative."

      From my page about divine action: "God might influence natural process by converting one natural-appearing result (that would have occurred without theistic guidance) into another normal-appearing result (that actually occurs).  One possible mechanism for natural-appearing divine guidance is for God to convert potentialities into actualities:  from the multitude of quantum possibilities that might occur, God chooses to make one of these actually occur.  In this way, God could influence (or determine) natural events by controlling some (or all) uncertainty at the quantum level, which could be done in a way such that events appear normal and statistically random during this theistically guided natural process.  This theistic action is active, not just foundational, and it could be amplified through a natural-appearing guidance of chaotic systems, to control (partially or totally) their outcomes.  Since quantum interactions occur constantly, not just during “observations” by humans, God could control — but may or may not actually control — everything that occurs. (1998)"  {more about quantum mechanics}

      As explained earlier [in the full-length page], "whether natural process is guided or unguided, the result is natural, but the cause is supernatural."  Due to this ambiguity, when describing events I usually contrast natural-appearing with miraculous-appearing, rather than natural with supernatural, in an effort to increase precision in thinking and communicating.

      Earlier, John Robert Russell says: "Nature at that [quantum] level is open: there are what could be called “natural gaps” in the causal regularities of nature that are simply part of the way nature is constituted. ...  These [natural] laws and processes are open to God's action because God made them that way. ...  We can view nature theologically as genuinely open to objective special providence... with God's special action having specific and objective consequences for evolution.  These consequences would not otherwise have occurred within God's general providence alone, and they can be recognized as due to God's action only through faith."
      More from Russell: "Quantum processes give rise to the ordinary world of our experience, and they also allow for individual quantum processes to trigger irreversible and significant effects in that world.  In doing so they offer us a clue as to how things in general come to be as they are [general divine action], as well as how things in particular happen [special divine action] within the general environment. ...  God created a world open to God's actions. ...   Indeterminism... occurs throughout the universe wherever elementary particles [irreversibly interact with] objects ranging from complex molecules and interstellar dust to those of the ordinary macroscopic world.  To me this suggests a God who acts throughout innumerable occasions in the universe. ...  Quantum mechanics allows us to think of special divine action as the “providential determination of otherwise undetermined events.”  Moreover, though pervasive in its effects on the world's structure, God's action will remain hidden within that structure. ...  God acts in particular ways in the context of the genome, though this action may have indirect consequences at the level of the phenotype and its eventual and occasional expression in populations by natural selection, which we may also identify as acts of divine objective special providence."
      He also explains that time-and-causality is different for us and for God because "God does not foresee our future from our present or foreknow our future by calculating the outcome from our present.  Instead, God as eternal sees and knows the future in its own present time and determinate state.  God's knowledge of what is for us the indeterminate future is God's eternal knowledge of an event in what is its own present, determinate state.  Thus, theologically, God can have knowledge of the future consequences of God's actions in the present."
      And he describes another level of appreciation for divine action: "Regardless of the issue of quantum mechanics, God is already present and acting ubiquitously in nature in and through all the laws of nature and as the source of nature and the laws of nature."

      Here are some ideas — actually they're my paraphrased constructions, which are incomplete approximations of the original ideas — that I've heard about and want to share:  Richard Bube emphasizes that God is on constant interface with everything in his creation, allowing God to intimately interact with and sovereignly govern his entire creation.  John Polkinghorne draws analogy between human action (we're familiar with this in concrete ways) and divine action (usually we simply believe this based on faith);  from personal experience, we know that we can decide to "do something" and make it happen;  by faith, we believe that God can also do this.  In a similar analogy, David Oakley compares God's actions with our actions when we write on a piece of paper, when there is communication between our brain (developing ideas about what to write) and our fingers (writing these ideas onto paper), when small-scale processes (in our brain, nerves, and muscles) are translated into the large-scale action of writing;  similarly, the ideas of God are actualized through small-scale actions by God (at the levels of quanta or chaos) that become, in ways we cannot understand or even imagine, large-scale results we can observe.
      But these ideas, along with other ideas in this page, should be viewed with caution, recognizing the limitations of human speculations with appropriate humility, because "now we see but a poor reflection." (Paul, I Corinthians 13:12)