George wrote:
Speaking of "the continuity of the creaturely cause/effect system"
ignores the possibility we discussed in connection with Peter Ruest's
proposal, that God is active at the quantum level. For the problem with
understanding measurement & the apparent collapse of wave packets in QM is
just that the collapse seems to happen discontinuously & that standard
descriptions of QM don't provide a closed cause/effect system: They give no
reason why we find the photon along one arm of the interferometer rather
than the other.
Again, I have problems with the idea that God simply steps in &
collapses all the wave packets. But there does seem to be a lack of full
creaturely causation here.
1. Re "the continuity of the creaturely cause/effect system": OK, perhaps
the term "continuity" must be qualified here to include quantum phenomena
(with all of their peculiarities) but to exclude coercive divine action that
would supersede the creaturely system.
2. Re "full creaturely causation": Looks like the creaturely system of
causation has some openness to contingency here. Another way to say it is
that there are numerous examples of creaturely processes for which the final
state of some event/process is underdetermined by all that can be specified
about the system's initial state. As I understand it, Peter's proposal
places God's decisive action (selecting one particular option) here.
Question: Does this divine decision (Peter's proposal) supersede creaturely
action? Is it coercive or non-coercive?
Howard
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Nov 07 2001 - 09:35:42 EST