In 1000000AD Mt Rushmore could cause some big problems. I presume there
would be erosion of the four major faces and perhaps there may not be
instantly recognisable as 4 presidents.
However what would they do if they excavated just to the left (as you face
Mt Rushmore) and find another face. You can see it today as there is a very
vague simian face) Would they then try to identify this rather simian
looking president (or was it George III:)) and then look for a sixth between
him and George Washington?
An interesting thought!
Michael
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ted Davis" <TDavis@messiah.edu>
To: <asa@lists.calvin.edu>
Sent: Monday, November 24, 2008 8:36 PM
Subject: [asa] Rejoinder 10B from Timaeus – to George Murphy on Divine
Action in ID and TE
This is my rejoinder to George Murphy. It will probably be my last, unless
someone comes up with something unexpected.
T.
I would like to respond to a couple of remarks made by George Murphy in his
post of November 16, on the subject of the nature of divine action. I will
first reproduce Mr. Murphy’s remarks, then discuss them.
a. Regarding my criticism of the “God hides behind quantum indeterminacy”
argument as vague, Mr. Murphy grants me this much:
“I agree that the theological implications of quantum indeterminancy need
to be fleshed out more fully.”
However, he elsewhere says:
“The picture of God working with creatures as instruments is of course an
analogy but I am wary of attempts to get closer to a precise description of
the way God interacts with creatures. I think what’s sometimes called “the
search for the causal joint” is misguided because it suggests that we can
understand the God-world interaction in somewhat the same way physicists try
to understand the interaction between charged particles and an EM field – we
know the world and God parts of the equations and just need to find the
interaction terms!”
b. Regarding my comments on the relative modesty of ID theorists in
comparison with TE theorists in speculating about divine motives and divine
actions, Mr. Murphy seems to grant me a point in this comment:
“We should certainly be hesitant to say more about God & God’s action than
what scripture & its clear implications entitle us to say. (Cf. Luther’s
“scripture or cogent reason” at Worms.) I try to observe that warning ...”
But he then goes on to write:
“... but also bear in mind that some theological creativity is required in
order to
deal with new circumstances, such as those with which science often
confronts us. My complaint about many ID proponents in this regard is that
they think – or, I would have to say
sometimes, pretend – that there are no theological issues involved in the
debate at all. It’s all a matter of science & philosophy. & that’s just
not the case, at least for anyone who believes that there is a God who is
involved with the world.”
*****************************
A. Why ID Does not Require a Theory of Divine Action
I think it is important to be clear that ID is not, and does not pretend to
be, a theory of divine action. This does not mean that ID proponents do not
have their own private theories of divine action. ID has support from YECs,
OECs, and generally from a wide variety of Christian believers in Creation,
as well from Muslims, Jews, etc. I am sure that there are dozens of notions
of exactly how God interacts with the world running around in the ID
community. But none of these notions belong to ID proper, and I will
explain why.
Suppose I find a sheet of paper with old-fashioned typed characters on it.
Let’s say it contains an argument refuting Hume’s critique of miracles. Now
ID says that you can infer that this piece of typewritten work was produced
by intelligence. ID does not claim to be able to tell, however, whether the
typing was accomplished by an Underwood manual typewriter, and IBM Selectric
electrical typewriter, or a Panasonic printer with a daisy wheel. All three
devices make impressions upon paper, and nothing in the argument against
Hume indicates which of the three devices was used. Nor, even supposing
that we could determine, say, from the depth of the type impressions, which
device was used, would that make any difference to the correct inference
that the words were typed by an intelligent being. We can know the author
to be intelligent without knowing how the author got the words onto the
paper.
Similarly, if an archaeologist from 1,000,000 A.D. excavates Mt. Rushmore
from underneath deep sand dunes, and, due to a loss of all historical
records and all artifacts from the period, knows nothing about the
technology available to the sculptors, he may never be 100% sure how the
sculpture was carved, but he can be sure that it was carved by intelligent
beings.
In these examples, the design inference does not depend on any “theory of
typist action” or “theory of sculptor action”; the design inference is
reliable with no knowledge of these things. Regarding living things, the
design inference claims to be reliable (or at least plausible), without
knowledge of exactly how God interacts with nature. God may interact via
front-loading, spot miracles, or continuous guidance; God may interact with
nature as soul interacts with body; God may interact through some
intermediate entity, unknown to us, which is in part immaterial and in part
material, and thus can bridge the gap between the divine and the physical.
ID has no commitment regarding any such speculations. Its very nature
requires neutrality regarding any such speculations. Thus, individual ID
supporters are free to imagine the God-nature connection in any way that
they like, and are welcome to have private theological discussions about
divine action among themselves,!
on a voluntary basis, any time that they like. No ID theorist will ban or
condemn such private thoughts or discussions. But ID as such observes a
policy of strict neutrality about them. It not only does not desire to take
sides; methodologically, it cannot take sides. Its methods cannot touch the
divine nature, action, purpose, etc.
So, do most ID theorists believe that there is a “God who is involved with
the world”, as Mr. Murphy puts it? I would say, overwhelmingly, they do.
There might be a few front-loaders who have a more deistic picture, and who
think that God sets it all up, then retires. But my impression is that most
ID supporters are theists, not deists, and that most of them are
conservative, church-going Christians, and I know of very few conservative,
church-going Christians who do not believe that God is involved with the
world. I think that most ID supporters believe in the continuing
possibility of miracles, for example. I know for a fact that many of them
pray for things like healing, which fits in very well with this. And in my
experience, most of them don’t suppose that God’s involvement with nature
was merely to build it, like a machine, and set it running; they think that
God sustains the world in continued existence as well. So I cannot imagine
where Mr. Murphy or a!
nyone might get the idea that ID people have a tendency not to think that
God is involved with the world.
(Indeed, ID people often have this same notion about TE people! They see
TEs as very “iffy” about historical, Biblical miracles, and they have some
doubts whether TEs believe in things like prayer for healing today. They
wonder if TE really takes seriously the notion that “God is involved in the
world” in any meaningful way, i.e., in any way that would make the slightest
difference how we study nature, or how we employ nature technologically.
Some ID people have therefore accused TEs of deism. I am not saying that
the accusation is true, but it is important for any TE who suggests that ID
does not believe in God’s involvement in the world to realize that ID people
have the same impression about many TEs. Obviously, there is some
miscommunication going on.)
B. How TE Could Avoid a Theory of Divine Action
I believe that TE could avoid a theory of divine action altogether, and in
this respect be in accord with ID. It could do so by limiting its
assertions to these:
1. Evolution, understood as a process, occurred.
2. This process did not occur through chance and natural laws alone, but
was guided at least partly by God, to ensure that at least certain results
(e.g., the creation of man) occurred.
3. We do not specify the ways (e.g., front-loading, miraculous
interventions, continuous interaction, etc.), but we are confident that God’s
intelligence has guided the outcome.
Now if TE limited “theistic evolution” to these claims, it would not need a
detailed theory of divine action. Certainly it would not need to specify
any “causal joint” between God and nature. Further, it would be compatible
with forms of ID.
C. Why TE Is Compelled to Wade into Theories of Divine Action
The above assertions (1-3) are all logically compatible with each other. It
is undeniably possible that all three of them are true simultaneously.
Since there is no logical incompatibility, there is no need to make an issue
of any particular theory of divine action which any TE might hold. Indeed,
TEs who held to this bare-bones summary would not even be required to state
their detailed beliefs on divine action, which could remain (as in the case
of ID) entirely private, and no part of the TE position as such.
However, TE, or at least, many TEs, are not willing to stop at the
bare-bones theory given above. They insist ALSO on commenting on a couple
of other matters, i.e.:
4. Evolution has occurred according to the processes set forth by Darwin
and neo-Darwinism.
5. God cannot be the direct author of evil.
(Pretty well every TE seems to agree with point 4, and a good number of them
seem to agree with point 5.)
It is the addition of these statements that entangle TE in the need for a
more specific and precise theory of divine action. Thus, though Mr. Murphy
is “wary” of demands for too precise an account, it is his own colleagues in
the TE movement who have made the claims which necessitate the more precise
account. When you make big, complex claims, you have to expect that people
are going to ask you for the details.
So, for example, when Russell (a very intelligent and learned man, I hasten
to add), in his essay in *PEC*, affirms both the truth of Darwinism and God’s
guidance simultaneously, he is going to be asked how he reconciles the two,
and is going to be asked for some details. Does God make a difference in
what would evolve, in the sense that evolution would be different without
his “special action” or “special providence” (as opposed to “general action”
or “general providence”)? Russell says clearly, yes, at the beginning of
his essay. I applaud, cheer, whistle, and stamp my feet. But then he ALSO
says, a few words later, and throughout the rest of the essay, that God’s
“special action” in relation to nature is just as “naturalistic” as his
“general action”. If it’s just as naturalistic as God’s general action, how
does it allow for God’s steering of evolution, since Darwinian naturalism
rejects the very notion of steering? And if the !
answer is that “quantum indeterminacy” allows for a naturalistic yet
steering intervention of God, well, since God’s “general action” in relation
to nature ALREADY includes quantum indeterminacy, and hence the requisite
“openness” for divine steering, why introduce the added category of God’s
“special action”?
Apparently the answer is that a “special action” is needed to “collapse the
wave function”. Russell tells us that the wave function cannot determine
for itself what particular value will be settled on. So he’s apparently
telling us that it’s God’s will to “collapse the wave function” so that it
takes on a single, unique value. This means that God makes a particular
decision which is not necessitated by the wave function, or by anything
“natural”. It implies that God arbitrarily asserts his will, to ensure that
this value rather than some other value of the function will be realized.
God decides that, out of all the infinite possibilities within the wave
function, THIS (and not some other) energy level of the electron will be
realized, THIS (and not that) will be the exact time or angle or velocity of
emission of the alpha particle from the radioactive nucleus. God’s will, in
the form of a single, unique, unrepeatable, historically distinct physi!
cal result, therefore becomes the starting point of a new sequence of
natural events, a sequence which would have been entirely different had he
willed differently. Now even if Russell declines to call this “miraculous”,
in the sense of God’s violating a “natural law”, it is still a contingent,
historical action. It is thus, in any ordinary sense of the word, an
“intervention”. God comes into nature and makes a decision which way things
will go. So why is Russell dead set against calling such choices (which he
fully admits that God makes) “interventions”? Why does he insist that God’s
“special actions” are “non-interventionist”, when they are, given his
explication of the God-nature relationship, clearly interventions?
This insistence that, beyond God’s “general” action in nature, God’s
“special” action in nature is needed to make evolution work, while denying
that “special” action is interventionist, makes for an argument that is,
from a philosopher’s point of view, muddy. Why call the action “special” at
all, if it is an action that nature would produce without intervention?
What is stirring up the muddiness appears to be a contradiction between two
things which Russell very dearly wants to assert, i.e.: (1) the
uncompromising naturalism dogmatically asserted by Darwin and all
neo-Darwinists, and by modern science generally, and which Russell, as a
licensed practitioner of that science, accepts as a condition of membership
in the scientific community; (2) a God who really matters because he really
does something, beyond just inventing some natural laws and setting off the
Big Bang. Were Russell willing to swallow deism, he wouldn’t have to invoke
God’s spec!
ial action at all, and the contradiction could be resolved that way. And
were his Darwinism and naturalism negotiable, Russell would not have to go
to such great efforts to make it sound as if God is not really intervening,
even though he is.
Russell could of course resolve this by realizing that he has already
compromised on “naturalism” with regard to the Incarnation and Resurrection
(p. 343). Clearly in those cases, for Russell, God performed a “special
action” which was not entirely effected through naturalistic causation. For
him this is true “interventionism”. But once interventionism is granted in
even one case, there is no principled reason why it cannot be granted in
another. If the natural processes of reproduction can’t explain the
Incarnation, and if the natural physiology of death can’t explain the
Resurrection, how does Russell know that the natural processes of
inheritance aren’t similarly incapable of explaining macroevolutionary
change? Or, put in the positive form: if he’s so sure that a full,
naturalistic explanation for even the most difficult stages of
macroevolution will some day be available, how can he be sure that a full,
naturalistic explanation for a man risin!
g from the dead won’t some day be available? Isn’t accepting the
Resurrection as miraculous just another case of “God of the gaps” reasoning?
Shouldn’t Christians remain non-committal on the theological explanation for
the Resurrection, just in case science some day embarrasses Christianity by
providing a naturalistic explanation?
All of the above difficulties follow from Russell’s knotty and obscure
account of divine action. Now when a very bright guy like Russell produces
a very long, learned and complex essay, which voluntarily undertakes to
explain something about divine action, and fails to convince the reader
because of obscurities such as I have indicated, it is not unreasonable for
the reader to demand a clearer account of the divine action. Thus, though
Mr. Murphy is “wary” of the demand for full accounts, it is Mr. Russell, by
claiming to have presented a coherent account, and failing, who has invited
the demand for a fuller account. There’s an old saying: if you can’t take
the heat, get out of the kitchen. If he can’t take the heat, Mr. Murphy isn’t
obliged to stay in the kitchen while Mr. Russell’s account is being
criticized. But he must make a decision to do one of two things: stay in
the kitchen and defend Mr. Russell’s account, or leave Mr. Russell to handle
hi!
s critics himself. The one thing Mr. Murphy can’t fairly ask is for me, or
other ID critics, not to demand a clearer account of divine action, when it’s
Mr. Russell, not us, who postulated the theory of divine action in the first
place.
Similarly, when Francisco Ayala and Ken Miller, and Nancey Murphy (as
reported by Russell), bring the problem of evil into their discussions, they
commit themselves to a view of divine action: God would not be directly
responsible for evil, so he must use a non-directed, i.e., Darwinian process
(with a quantum twist in Nancey Murphy’s case) to produce new species,
rather than a directed form of evolution. And then they embroil the TE
position in theological argument, since many Christians, and the author of
Isaiah, to name one Biblical author, are quite comfortable with the view
that God creates evil, and will not accept the premise shared by Ayala,
Miller, or Murphy.
The aforementioned TE people give the impression that they favour Darwinism
at least partly because they think it helps their theodicy. From the ID
point of view, a common TE position seems to amount to this: “We must have
a theory of nature which does not allow God to be the direct creator of such
an evil as malaria. Therefore, we must on principle, no matter what
evidence the ID people put out, deny that malaria is designed. It must have
come into existence without being directly willed or planned by God.
Darwinian theory is perfect for this, because it makes the production of
malaria a nasty fluke contingent upon natural processes (to which God, not
being a “tyrant”, has given creaturely and co-creative freedom). Therefore,
nature in its freedom, not God in his sovereignty, is to be blamed for the
horrors of malaria. Whew! That was a close one. Good thing for Christian
theology that Darwin came along!” ID people find this sort of thinking to be
an unwarra!
nted interference of theology in the realm of science (design is ruled out
because it would have an unpleasant theological consequence), and also find
it to be an arbitrary assertion of a private theology regarding the causes
of evil, a private theology based on individual or modern sentimental
preferences about what nice guy God ought to be, as opposed to what
Scripture or tradition teaches about God. From the ID point of view, this
is the sort of illegitimate outcome that occurs when a theory of divine
action (including a theory of divine motivation) is mixed up with science.
The ID approach to the problem of evil is quite different. It does not work
from the theology to the science, but from the science to the theology. Its
procedure is this: (1) Decide whether or not Feature A of nature requires,
in addition to mechanical causation, the imposition of design (by whatever
means); (2) Deal with the theological fallout later. So if it looks as if
malaria is designed, and if we suppose that the designer is God, then, from
the ID perspective, God obviously wanted this deadly killer in his world.
WHY he wanted this is a subject for private, non-scientific, theological
discussion, and ID tolerates all kinds of differing views on that ultimate
question, because it claims no authority in the theological sphere. This
seems to me to be more reasonable and less doctrinaire than the TE approach,
which always seems to me to be trying to peddle one TE’s theodicy as more
truly Christian than anyone else’s.
By way of summary regarding points 4 and 5 above, note that, since ID theory
is not committed to either proposition 4 or proposition 5 above, it does not
have to become embroiled in arguments regarding either divine motivation or
divine action that follow from adding points 4 and 5 to points 1, 2, and 3.
The logical contradictions and theological hostilities that TE encounters by
wading into the theory of divine action are of TE’s own making.
In conclusion:
1. ID as such does not offer any account of divine action, of the how or
the why God does what God does.
2. This does not mean that all ID supporters believe in some mechanical
form of Deism, on the grounds that Deism is all they can infer from nature.
They of course believe many other things about God than that he is a
Designer. But they get those other beliefs from revelation, tradition, and
so on, not from science. And among those other things, for most Christian
ID supporters, are the beliefs that God is active always, sustaining nature,
and that he has been specially active in the past, in the form of miraculous
actions, and that he sometimes performs miraculous actions even now. I don’t
see how this differs from TE beliefs – unless TEs scrap the part about
miracles.
3. TE could avoid any detailed discussion of divine action by (1) accepting
evolution as a process, while regarding all particular explanations of
evolution, e.g., the Darwinian, as tentative constructs, readily revisable,
and not firm enough to deserve a fixed place in the Christian view of
nature; (2) not entangling theologically derived views about the cause of
evil with current evolutionary speculations.
4. TE, however, usually involves itself in discussions of divine action,
because (1) it cannot untangle the mess it makes fusing Christianity and
Darwinism, without getting into some fancy theological footwork to get rid
of the apparently blatant contradictions between the providential God of
Christianity and the non-providential god (i.e., blind nature) of Darwinism,
and (2) it cannot resist the temptation to pronounce upon what kinds of evil
a “loving God” or a “Triune God” or a “suffering God” would or would not
create.
5. If TE wishes to entangle itself in theories of divine action, that is
its business, but it is simply unjust to criticize ID for failing to do so.
ID is a project of design detection. It may be a hopeless project, or it
may be a project which will finally break the back of materialism and show
that a designer must exist. Time will tell. But it is a project of design
detection, not a theory of divine action. It does not owe to the Christian
churches or to Christian theology or to neo-Darwinists like Coyne and
Dawkins or to TEs any account of divine action, regarding gravity or quantum
mechanics or evolution or the origin of evil or anything else. It never
promised to deliver such an account. And its claims do not require one.
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