Re: [asa] List of positions on origins

Gregory -

You raise major questions here & at this point I can give only some disconnected, though I think relevant, responses.

1st, the concepts of primary & secondary causation are _not_ essential for a Christian understanding of God's relationship with the world. To begin with, this language is not used in the creeds. What is said is that God is /pantokrator/ or /omnipotens/ - "Almighty." & what that means is that ultimately God does do everything (not, as is sometimes thought, that God _could_ do anything.) 2d, primary & secondary causation is only one of 10 theologies of God's action in the world outlined by Ian Barbour. (I don't, of course, equate Barbour's text with the creeds!) What Barbour calls the "classic" model is essentially that God does everything directly.

2d, speaking of primary & secondary causation (Barbour's "neo-Thomist" theology) is at least one way of insisting that creatures, as well as God, actually play a role in what happens. The classic model, OTOH, pictures God moving around inert pieces of matter in ways that have no necessary connection with what those pieces are. Modern physics tells us that the way things move & interact is intimately related to what they are.

3d, it's worth remembering that not only those levels of causation but the idea of causation itself is open to some criticisms. Hume argued that we are only justified in saying that B follows A, not that B is caused by A. Even if wt go that far, quentum theory raises its own distinctive questions. It's a kinf of physicist's slang that "a measurement causes the wave packet to collapse" but this is very far from making clear how the measurement is actually a cause. (The common explanation that physical interaction with the measured system causes the collapse fails with so-called "experiments with negative result" in which the fact that there was no interaction apparently causes the collapse.) & in any case there is no explanation for why the packet collapses in the particular way it does - i.e., why one of the possible results of the measurement is found.

4th, if God doesn't cause electrons or quarks to behave the way they do by just moving inert stuff around, that is true /a fortiori/ for the behavior of humans. Nevertheless -
     a) Whatever else humans may be, they are physical entities whose constituents obey the laws of physics. Thus whatever
        model we use to describe God's action in connection with electrons & quarks must be at least part of the way we understand
        God's action with humans.
     b) The claim that God is omnipotent applies to non-physical entities too. I.e., even if angels are non-physical pure
        intelligences, God is the ultimate cause of what they do. The same is true of the human mind even if one considers it
        to be something separable from the brain. Of course this gets into theodicy issues, which is one reason the idea of
        omnipotence is rejected by (inter alia) process theology.

5th, it is not the case that divine action through 2d causes is necessarily unguided. The significance of quantum & chaos theories in this regard is that they make it possible to understand how divine action can be accord with the laws of physics & at the same time have some degree of freed
6th, I know little about distinctive ways in which sociologists would want to speak of causation, & am open to instruction. Where, e.g., would I find Archer's ideas?

7th, one reason I use the idea of Gods's cooperation with creatures (i.e., the neo-Thimist theology or primary & secondary causation) as _part_ (N.B.) of my picture of divine action is its pedagogic value. The analogy of a human worker using a tool is easily communicated to people without a great deal of philosophical or theological training.

Shalom,
George

---- Gregory Arago <gregoryarago@yahoo.ca> wrote:
> "The belief that God is the ultimate cause of everything that happens, working through secondary causes, includes everything that happens in culture as well as in the biological realm." - George Murphy
>  
> "one important distinction would be between those whose TE (or EC) views are distinctively
> Christian &hich are merely 'theistic'." - George Murphy
>
> Let me put these two statements together and ask a question: Can a theist reject the distinction between 'primary' (or ultimate) and 'secondary' causality and still be a Christian?
>  
> In other words, following the link below which draws on Alistair McGrath's text (2001), can one say that Aquinas' views of 'causality' are now less coherent and thus harder to accept than previously thought, e.g. in the primary/secondary dichotomy, given that new views have entered the arena?
>  
> http://www.stjohnadulted.org/The_01.htm#God%e2%80%99s%20Action%20Within%20the%20World
> (see section 5 - God's action within the world)
>  
> Let me confirm that I am interested in the topic of 'origins' which is the title of the thread (thanks for re-naming it and correcting the spelling, George), meaning not just 'origin of life' or 'origin of humankind,' but 'origins of human culture' as well. One could say there is a 'causes and effects joint' that is missing or waiting for elaboration here. Though it would seem that Polkinghorne's appeal to 'agency' (e.g. considering quantum events) is most suitable for 'science and theology' interface, it is rather impersonal compared to say the way Margaret Archer approaches the term (e.g. being human), which actually speaks about culture and agency within a Christian worldview. George says (paraphrased) "God is the ultimate cause of everything that happens...in culture," yet 'causal agency' can be spoken about by physicists and by sociologists with surprisingly different emphases.
>  
> Also, the notion of secondary causality's 'indirect action' or 'acting indirectly' would seem to suggest that any 'bio-physical evolution' is not 'directed' or (an even more loaded term) is 'unguided.' In such a view, the safekeeping of science from 'gaps' arguments appears to be higher in priority for an individual than taking a positive view of teleogical explanations and the language that expresses them as being relevant for 'science' too.
>  
> The main question, here, however, it seems to me, is the one about 'primary' and 'secondary' versus other ways to view causes and their effects. George has many times spoken about this in passing, but I fear it is first simply an appeal to the authority of Aquinas, rather than to Aristotle or others, and second, does not allow for the possibility that a better way of speaking about causes and effects in our electronic-information age is available.
>  
> "What, for its partisans, is the strength of the idea of primary and secondary causality is, for its critics, its greatest weakness." - John Polkinghorne
>  
> J.P. Moreland, for example, also addresses primary and secondary causation in the text below, as only one potential model for the relationship of science and theology (which also speaks of the 'natural' vs. 'supernatural' perspective and appeals to the distinction between empirical science and historical science, which will get Moorad interested):
> http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/cri/cri-jrnl/web/crj0180a.html
> His critics will perhaps not fail to note that Steven Meyer is referenced by Moreland for a new way to look at the issue of primary and secondary causes in science.
>  
> A bit of thinking out loud with questions and a yet another friendly challenge to George,
>  
> Gregory

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Received on Sat Feb 21 18:47:23 2009