[asa] Miracles in ordinary events

In a recent post, I posed the question about so-called "ordinary" events
where God is involved: "did God cause the event, or did he simply infuse it
with meaning through the message of the prophets or by the action of His
Spirit working on human hearts...?"
 
What I meant was that God may not always "intentionally" create a drought,
for instance, but he may use that suffering through the Spirit's influence
to cause people's minds and hearts to turn to Him through repentance, etc.
In that sense, the physical weather catastrophe need not be a "miracle" in
the supernatural sense (overruling normal, natural processes), but there is
a miracle that occurs in a spiritual sense in the effect upon the
individual.
 
To take this further, I've read a number of times the definition of
"miracle" as something which violates known natural processes. For
instance, from Gordon Glover's excellent book Beyond the Firmament, is the
suggestion, "Because these rare events are contrary to the uniformity of
nature and to our everyday human experience, we call them miracles."
 
My comment to this, however, is that an extraordinarily timed, perfectly
natural event, is just as miraculous as one which violates the known laws of
nature. I've suggested this one before without much comment that I
remember, so (at the risk of bring wrong about this one example) what if the
crossing of the Red Sea was actually a natural phenomenon which occurred at
just the right moment for the Israelites? Would it be any less a miracle?
 
However, the other issue from a scientific point of view is detectability.
If a scientific analysis shows that the event in question happens naturally
at other times than at the "miraculous" instance, does pure science have the
means to determine whether the event was a miracle? I would argue that EVEN
THOUGH the event was clearly a miracle, in terms of timing and theologically
understood "purpose", science can't authoritatively state that it was a
miracle, since no laws of nature were violated. Glover comments on the
problem of using improbability to define miracle, because unlikely events
could simply happen, so it's very difficult for science to prove it was a
miracle.
 
 
Jon Tandy
 <http://www.arcom.com/>

-----Original Message-----
From: Jon Tandy [mailto:tandyland@earthlink.net]
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 11:17 AM
To: 'asa'
Subject: RE: [asa] Neo-Darwinism and God's action

Another favorite illustration is the weather. While it may not be purely
random (certain known processes are involved, such as temperature, pressure,
humidity, etc.), actual weather events can be seen to encompass a good deal
of randomness when we look at the detail level, even with modern instruments
and observations. Chaos theory is now invoked to describe these random
processes.
 
Is God involved in the weather? Does God jiggle every particle of dust
through the atmosphere to create a rain drop to be flung to the ground at
His will, or does move every electron in a spark of lightning? Common sense
tells me no, these are natural processes that God doesn't need to directly
manipulate. Yet, does God occasionally bring hail storms as judgment
against sin? Does he bring famine and drought, as predicted by the
prophets, to humble his people and bring them to repentance? Is he able to
bring the rain again after the people repent, due to the ministry of an
Elijah?
 
I suspect if questioned, Logan would respond that these specific examples of
God "directing" the otherwise natural and random processes of weather, are
evidence of the NON-randomness of those particular events. But this is an
ad hoc distinction. Looking from a neutral, scientific perspective, the
events in question, though perhaps unlikely, would be part of the random
distribution of possible weather patterns and indistinguishable from
"non-directed" events. It is only by looking at those events with a
theological perspective, knowing that in some cases there is a revealed
"purpose" and intention behind them, that one can say they are non-random or
directed. (And even then there is the question in many cases, did God cause
the event, or did he simply infuse it with meaning through the message of
the prophets or by the action of His Spirit working on human hearts,
bringing them to repent of their ways?) In so doing, there has been
introduced a completely different level of observation, and I suspect even a
different definition of randomness when viewing the event from the
perspective of "theological purpose" versus "physical process".
 
So from this, I guess the biologist could look at the scientific evidence of
evolution and observe many features resembling randomness, but the
theologian looking at the same process could claim directedness and
purposefulness in God's action from a Theistic Evolutionary perspective. Is
this a case, somewhat like in Special Relativity, where two different
observers can both be correct from their own frame of reference, even though
their observations differ from one another?
 
This is a valid question for Theistic Evolutionists -- for those who defend
"undirected" evolution as the mechanism of evolution, do you also hold the
idea of purposefulness at a higher level? Is there any Theistic
Evolutionist who doesn't confess directedness and purposefulness behind
evolution, when viewing it above the level of scientific and biological
fact? Isn't this the very meaning of the term "Theistic" Evolution?
Evolution is the mechanism of the biological level, theism is the mechanism
of a higher order.
 
I also like the illustration that has been given before, of the words "God
is love" written on a blackboard. At one level, they are simply solid bits
of chalk adhering to the board. At a lower level, they are not solid at
all, but are mostly empty space consisting of random motions of electrons,
protons and neutrons. At a higher level, it can be seen that there is a
non-random design and intentionality in the pattern of chalk, provided one
recognizes the language of English in which they are written. And at a yet
higher level of cognitive and emotional awareness, the words "God is love"
mean something more than the pattern of the letters reveals, and on the
highest level is God's love itself which incapable of being fully
understood. Which one of these levels of perception is the "true" one --
the random motion of electrons, the designed pattern of bits of chalk
created by human hand, or the divine reality of God's love that transcends
mortal ability to comprehend? They are all true from different frames of
reference.
 
Jon Tandy
 <http://www.arcom.com/>

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of Don Winterstein
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 4:05 AM
To: asa; Randy Isaac
Subject: Re: [asa] Neo-Darwinism and God's action

 "Logan seems to believe that if there is divine guidance there will
necessarily be evidence of non-randomness."
 
Yes, he believes it because he says, "...The agency is potentially
detectable" if events are not random, and "When intelligent beings direct
events, the events are not random..." Detecting an agency would be
tantamount to detecting non-randomness.
 
However, it's easy to come up with a model of divine activity that would
involve guidance but be indistinguishable from purely random processes. One
such model:
 
Suppose the world is distinct from God in that it could continue functioning
in God's absence. Its functions would be determined by properties built
into its constituents--in other words, laws of nature. Suppose God most of
the time actually allows such world to function on its own but closely
monitors it to see how it is evolving and on occasion tweaks it to keep it
going in a desired direction.
 
God's guidance therefore would consist, first, of the initial creation of a
robust world, and second, of these occasional tweaks. If such tweaks were
rare and also at the quantum level, they could not necessarily be detected
as departures from quantum randomness. A sequence for a random process can
contain any point within its probability distribution and not be detectably
nonrandom even if one or a few points had been divinely determined. Only if
a point lay outside the allowed probability distribution could it be
attributed to miracle (divine intervention). One can suppose that God with
his foreknowledge could do his tweaking early enough to avoid such miracles
and hence remain undetectable.
 
Furthermore, God could do lots of miracles and still remain undetected if he
restricted his miracles to times when no one was looking.
 
Don
 
 

----- Original Message -----
From: Randy Isaac <mailto:randyisaac@comcast.net>
To: asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2008 7:16 PM
Subject: [asa] Neo-Darwinism and God's action

Jack Haas just drew my attention to Logan Gage's response
<http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/02/of_providence_and_evolution_a.html>
to my letter in the Jan 2008 issue of CT. I would greatly appreciate your
views on the last two paragraphs of his article. We have touched on
randomness several times in this forum and I believe it continues to be one
of the fundamental questions. Logan seems to believe that if there is divine
guidance there will necessarily be evidence of non-randomness. Or have I
misunderstood him?
 
Randy
 

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Received on Tue Feb 19 00:17:31 2008