On the choice between materialism and naturalism, one might note that
some have taken them to have different meanings. For example, David J.
Chalmers, _The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory_ (Oxford
University Press, New York and Oxford, 1996) (an excellent book in my opinion:
I agreed with almost all of the first half which sets up the problem, though my
suspicion is that the second half, which proposes a solution, is premature),
argues that the properties of consciousness refute materialism but not
naturalism. (I think that whether is does depends upon one's definition of
materialism, but I agree with Chalmers that the phenomenal aspects of
consciousness do not seem to be logically implied by the laws of physics as we
presently know them, though I would not be averse to including laws of
consciousness within physics if and when such laws are discovered. As Paul
Davies wrote in Chapter 14 of _About Time_, "David Deutsch once remarked that
the history of science is the story of physics hijacking topics from
philosophy.")
I must admit that it is hard for me to come up with an ideal
alternative to MIRM. "Natural law" is perhaps best, but then it leaves open
what is meant by "natural." In some sense "natural" seems to mean what humans
understand, expect, or have formulated laws for. But this depends on who the
humans are (e.g., on when they exist and what understanding they have).
Presumably we might want "natural" to imply something to the effect that
thunder is natural, but the Resurrection is not. It is certainly true that we
understand thunder today much better than the Resurrection, but one might
wonder whether a better understanding of God and His purposes might make the
Resurrection as "natural" as thunder.
Another idea that seems to be in the back of my mind when I use the
word "natural" is that as a physicist I tend to think of natural laws as those
whose ultimate or most basic formulation can be in clear mathematical language
with a certain mathematical elegance and simplicity. One can see in outline
how to do that for thunder (largely described by quantum electrodynamics, at
least if one puts in the properties of atomic nuclei by hand and adds gravity
to keep the earth's atmosphere from escaping), but it does seem that this would
be harder for the Resurrection (at least to get a simple mathematical
description underlying it). On the other hand, although I believe that
presumably there are fairly simple natural laws that tell which physical states
of brains lead to which phenomenal conscious perceptions, we certainly don't
know these laws in any fundamental form yet, and it does seem that it might be
hard to formulate them purely mathematically (mostly because I don't know how
one would formulate the content and qualia of a conscious perception in purely
mathematical terms).
A related nuance of "natural," at least when referring to such things
as the laws of physics, is that in some sense they seem impersonal. I suspect
that this is indeed a nuance that causes many of us Christians to worry when it
is proposed that everything is governed by natural laws. Making that
naturalistic claim is certainly no threat to the concept that God ordained the
laws of nature and creates, sustains, governs, wills, plans, purposes,
sustains, concurs, etc. the universe according to these laws. But there tends
to be the psychological reaction that if God entirely uses these "natural
laws," the universe would be too impersonal for our liking, or for an easy
reconcilation with Christian doctrine.
I think Steven Weinberg expressed it well from an agnostic or atheistic
position in his Chapter 11, "What About God?" in _Dreams of a Final Theory_
(Pantheon Books, New York, 1992), when he wrote (page 242), "If there were
anything we could discover in nature that *would* give us some special insight
into the handiwork of God, it would have to be the final laws of nature," and
later (page 245), "Will we find an interested God in the final laws of nature?
... I think that we will not. All our experience throughout the history of
science has tended in the opposite direction, toward a chilling impersonality
in the laws of nature."
(Incidentally, there are many other insightful comments in this
chapter, including several on Phil Johnson that Fritz Shaefer told me Johnson
liked, that I could quote if anyone is interested and if I have the time to
type them in. I really would like to see a good Christian response to this
chapter if anyone knows of any, since it is one of the strongest challenges to
my own faith that I have seen, with such statements as, on page 255, "the
lessons of religious experience seem to me indelibly marked with the stamp of
wishful thinking.")
Thus it seems to be this apparent impersonality, or lack of apparent
interest in what we consider personal, that is the key element that one might
want to focus upon for "natural laws" or whatever one may wish to call them
("mathematical laws"?). Then there is the question of (1) whether these
"natural" or "mathematical" laws that can seem to be impersonal or uncaring are
really sufficient to describe the action of a personal, interested, caring God,
or (2) whether God has acted in other ways that cannot be described so simply
according to this model of "natural" or "mathematical" laws, or (3) whether
Weinberg and others are right in their guess that there is no interested God
behind the universe.
Don Page