From: Steve Petermann (steve@spetermann.org)
Date: Thu Sep 04 2003 - 15:29:33 EDT
George wrote:
> I think that any one of us, standing at the counter in Mickey D's,
believes and
> feels that he/she can actually make a real choice about whether to get a
Big Mac,
> Chicken McNuggets, or something else. It takes a kind of dogmatic
defiance to insist
> that that sense of choice is really an illusion.
My claim is that the basic presumptions of most scientists concerning the
scientific method would preclude belief in free will no matter what our
intuitive feelings are about it. One cardinal principal of the scientific
method is repeatability and with it peer review(repeatability again). But
what does this demand entail. It entails that we live in a mechanistic,
unfree cosmos. If its mechanistic then it is repeatable. Now quantum
theory puts a bit of a kink in this because of its indeterminism. However
science is still looking to mechanical explanations(within mechanistic
statistical limits), whether it be Newtonian mechanics or Quantum mechanics,
its still mechanics. Whatever the case, science offers no room for
freedom(in the common sense definition) for these mechanics. Even the
indeterminacy of quantum mechanics is considered by most physicists as
random or unguided.
So if the dominant scientific view is that the cosmos is mechanistic,
allowing the use of the scientific method, then to be consistent, its
conclusion must be that humans are also inevitable, organic machines.
>>>>>>>>>>
& at a more theoretical level, the
> kind of "loose-jointedness" in connections between events that both
quantum mechanics
> and chaos theory have revealed seems to give some room for both creaturely
& divine
> freedom of action without any need to think that the laws of physics are
violated.
<<<<<<<<<
There is a difference here between the mundane and the divine. By most
definitions the divine is not bound by the constrains of space-time. The
means the divine does have a freedom that we who exist in space-time do not
have. Now it may be(and I think there is) an open space to talk about human
freedom and divine action via quantum processes, however, I don't see how
that freedom can be explained in a science friendly manner where humans have
a freedom, autonomous from God. Without God, humans are constrained by an
unfree mechanistic cosmos.
Regards
Steve Petermann
----- Original Message -----
From: "George Murphy" <gmurphy@raex.com>
To: "Steve Petermann" <steve@spetermann.org>
Cc: "ASA" <asa@lists.calvin.edu>
Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2003 12:33 PM
Subject: Re: lame creation concepts
> Steve Petermann wrote:
> >
> > George wrote:
> > > There's a big difference between kenosis, which is the idea that God
> > limits
> > > God's own self, and the process concept that God is inherently
limited.
> >
> > Agreed.
> >
> > > With kenosis,
> > > one says /inter alia/ that the existence of suffering &c in the world
is
> > due to God's
> > > decision to create a world which has its own integrity and relative
> > autonomy -
> > > Polkinghorne's "free process defence" - & that God pays the price for
this
> > by sharing in
> > > the suffering of the world, preeminently in the Incarnation.
> >
> > Seems to me, this notion of relative autonomy drives too much of a wedge
> > between God and creation. The whole idea of free will is incredibly
> > difficult to accommodate with our current scientific understanding. The
> > only tact is to create a mind/body dualism that is not science friendly
at
> > all. Standard theisms and process thought do this. Seems to me that
human
> > freedom can only be a reasonable concept when it is framed within some
sort
> > of monism or mystical union with God(who is free).
>
> Kenosis means that God refrains from exerting the kind of control of
creation
> that he could exert - in scholastic language, God exercises only his
"ordained" & not
> his "absolute" power. It's like a parent refraining from doing everything
he/she could
> to control a child so that the child can actually do some things and learn
how to
> function. But there is no external "wedge" that forces either God or the
parent to act
> (or not act) thus.
>
> I think that any one of us, standing at the counter in Mickey D's,
believes and
> feels that he/she can actually make a real choice about whether to get a
Big Mac,
> Chicken McNuggets, or something else. It takes a kind of dogmatic
defiance to insist
> that that sense of choice is really an illusion. & at a more theoretical
level, the
> kind of "loose-jointedness" in connections between events that both
quantum mechanics
> and chaos theory have revealed seems to give some room for both creaturely
& divine
> freedom of action without any need to think that the laws of physics are
violated.
>
> Shalom,
> George
>
> George L. Murphy
> gmurphy@raex.com
> http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
>
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