Re: [asa] Review of Behe in Books and Culture

I must say I have a problem with this idea of God intervening "at the
quantum level" - perhaps subtly biassing the dice throws in ways we can't
detect.

Despite the fact that from the observer's point of view it looks like the
collapse of the wave function is probabilistic, nonetheless the underlying
Schrodinger equation for the wave function IS completely deterministic (it's
just a second order PDE) and it could therefore be argued that the
time-evolution of the wave-function of the universe is not subject to being
tweaked.

Iain

On 7/11/07, Michael Roberts <michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Ted wrote
> > > A number of modern TEs take the view instead, that God directs
> evolution
> > via controlling certain events at the quantum level, where God cannot be
> > "seen" doing it but where God nevertheless may exert providential
> guidance
> > through direct divine action. I am sometimes attracted to this view
> > myself;
> > certainly Bob Russell, John Polkinghorne, and Owen Gingerich are. As I
> > argued many years ago, however, this is a "gaps" view of a certain
> > kind--it
> > is not subject to the traditional "god of the gaps" objection (and
> that's
> > a
> > huge subject that ought to be studied more systematically), since if QM
> is
> > truly indeterminate (and that's not universally accepted) then the
> "gaps"
> > are genuinely ontological, not merely epistemological, and they won't
> ever
> > be "filled in"--but it is a gaps view nonetheless. There are real,
> > genuine,
> > *permanent* "gaps" in what we can do with our scientific explanations,
> and
> > God does to some extent reside in those gaps. Thus, I would say, quite
> a
> > few modern TEs have "gaps" in their view of nature and divine
> action. Ken
> > Miller, incidentally, endorses precisely this picture of things, and
> Mike
> > Behe says explicitly (in his contribution to "Debating Design," ed Ruse
> > and
> > Dembski) that he's fine theologically with Miller's view on this point;
> > indeed, Behe goes on to claim (perhaps less convincingly) that Miller's
> > view
> > is actually tantamount to ID, b/c there still is design in nature.
> > Polkinghorne notes that selection is not the whole story in evolution,
> and
> > that in itself is consistent with Behe's view.
>
> Michael asks;
>
> I first came across this view of divine action at the quantum level in
> 1971
> when I read G D Y arnold's The spiritual crisis of the Scientific age
> (Allen
> and unwin 1959) (written just about the time when the budding Arthur
> Peacocke went to see him at Hawarden) He gives no references for his
> argument on Quantum action by God p63-7 though I believe Arthur Pollard -
> another Anglican clerical physicist came out with same argument in Chance
> and Providence Scribner 1958 uk Faber 1959 so GDY couldn't have used it.
> It
> is not mentioned in two books from the 50s by the Anglicans, Smethurst or
> Mascall, which GDY had and used. (My copies were his).
>
> Thus I find it fascinating that others have adopted a similar view , but I
> think I better write it up and give GDY and Pollard the priority.
>
> GDY wrote his first Sand R book in 1952 for 17 yr olds (sixth-formers to
> us)
> and C A Coulson wrote a letter picking up a few errors on his chemistry,
> which is in his copy..
>
> GDY was born in 1909, went to Merton Oxford to read physics and got a D
> Phil
> on ionisation of He, then to Nottingham as a lecturer and was ordained in
> 1942. In 1946 he was one of the first civilians to have penicillin used on
> him, which was interesting as his wife's brother in law had worked with
> Florey just before he began on penicillin in 1937. He went into full time
> ministry in 1950. During the 50s and 60s he was involved in Sand or with
> people like Peacocke and John Habgood. Also in 1946 he became godfather to
> his sister in law's son, who wrote this e-mail
>
> I don't think selection is all there is to evolution, but I cannot see a
> theological reason why it cant be.
>
> Michael>
>
>
>
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