I reply to the following part of Timaues' latest missive:
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?
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Ted comments:
I have some sympathy with Timaeus' objections here, but also some sympathy with Russell's wish to avoid an "interventionist" picture of divine action, as far as possible. Let me elaborate.
As most on this list probably realize, the problem of divine action in modern times can be stated as follows. If the universe is lawlike and deterministic, everywhere and always, then neither God nor humans can act freely--at least it so appears, and many would agree with this. A God who "intervenes" can act freely, but this seems to imply (at least to many) that divine action is mainly to be seen as "interventions" into the otherwise inevitable course of nature, "interventions" that in the classical account would amount to miracles. Most of us have probably not experienced even one genuine miracle in our lives, and if that's really true then God is pretty much an absentee landlord. Russell's point is that God acts constantly, everywhere and always, but nearly always does so without "intervening" in this sense. The action is objective, insofar as if God weren't putting information into the world (a phrase that an ID advocate like Timaeus should appreciate), then many th!
ings that happen would not happen; but it's not "interventionist" in the sense of violating laws of nature (at least not if one takes the Copenhagen view of QM, which I realize Timaeus doesn't necessarily agree with).
Furthermore, following a number of modern thinkers (some theologians, some not; an example of the latter would be Richard Bube), Russell is more than a bit reluctant to use the term "intervention" for theological reasons. Quite often, the term is coupled conceptually with the notion that God acts only at certain times and in certain places, which does (many would argue) tend to imply that God is not acting the vast majority of the time--in other words, the problem of having a God who is not really both transcendent and immanent, ie., the biblical God. I have no doubt that Timaeus realizes all of this, but I'm not sure that he realizes the overtones that "intervention" carries for someone like Russell. So, if I understand why Timaeus thinks this is a distinction without a difference, for Russell the difference is very important. For good reasons (above), Russell wants us to think of God as acting, really and objectively, always and everywhere, but nearly always *within* n!
atural laws, in the genuine *ontological* (not merely epistemological) "gaps" within the created order--an openness put there by the creator. Since these are ontological gaps, then, unless something like David Bohm's deterministic view of QM can be shown to be the only valid interpretation, they aren't subject to being "filled in," and not subject to the "God of the gaps" objection.
ID proponents are, no doubt, keenly aware of the conceptual baggage that certain terms carry, in certain conversations about science & religion. Russell is no less aware of this. If ID's want to be given the right to define "design," "Darwinism," and "evolution" in certain ways, then TE's want to be given the right to define "intervention" in certain ways. In both cases, the definitions will be contested (as Timaeus is doing here), but just as Timaeus wants TE's to be able to articulate the issues fairly, even while contesting certain definitions, TE's want ID's to do likewise.
For more on Russell's view of "Non-Interventionist Objective Divine Action" (NIODA), I recommend chap 5 in his recent book, "Cosmology from Alpha to Omega." Let me add that his notion, whatever one may think of its full clarity and consistency, was not just cobbled together overnight, in order to create a TE alternative to ID (sometimes certain TE positions seem to be treated in this way, and some of them might indeed fit that description). Russell and a working group of high-powered people from various disciplines argued with one another for the better part of a decade, before there was an ID movement to speak of. And, the group included some pretty bright philosophers--a pertinent example is Tom Tracy (see e.g. his review of Saunder's book, a book that Timaeus would probably agree with for the most part, at http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=1319). There are numerous unsolved problems with the NIODA approach; as I say, I'm sympathetic to both Russell and Timaes. But ID,!
as Timaeus notes, has the luxury of avoiding the problem of posing a theory of divine action, even if many (most?) of its adherents seem to have (not very positive) opinions of various TE ideas concerning divine action.
In other words, when it comes to divine action, as with evolutionary biology, ID mainly takes a negative, critical stance--I'm from Missouri, show me. Show me the specific mechanisms that gave rise to the bacterial flagellum, or to the vertebrate eye, or to the Cambrian explosion. Show me all the details, and then I'll grant the validity of your science. We can't show you an alternative theory, mind you; the best we can do is to say that "design" is necessary to explain these things, that Darwinian mechanisms won't do the job. To the extent that scepticism is an important part of the scientific attitude, to that extent ID is IMO scientific. But to the extent that not having a better theory is a very serious drawback, to that extent ID is not a scientific alternative to Darwinian evolution. If, as I suspect, many ID's (though perhaps not Timaeus) hold a more classical, "interventionist" picture of divine action, then to keep quiet about that simply means that serious cr!
iticisms of their views on this will come later, rather than sooner, although (frankly) many very pointed criticisms of that view have already been made, and the silence may mean in some cases an inability to do better than Russell's NIODA view. That's my own working hypothesis, at least.
Ted
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Received on Tue Nov 25 11:00:52 2008
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