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

I have to agree with you. Why do we have to look for a feature of the
world we know that we can't exploit to give God a chance to act? I have
heard the claim that, if there is extra-physical activity that changes
the physical, it would require a detectable change in energy. Granting
this claim, it may be theoretically possible to detect a few extra
molecules of neurotransmitter on some path in the brain, but in practice
the difference may well be swamped. So even if mind = brain activity, a
change effected from without, one that changes the brain action, would be
practically undetectable.

If God is omnipotent and omniscient, can he not aim a photon or particle
to take out a specific base in the specific DNA molecule? Why would the
Heisenberg limit apply to his knowledge and control? Following this
event, there might be joining of the ends or replacement of the damaged
base. How could we tell that God had determined which event happened?
Where's the gap to detect? How do I know whether God willed the
duplication of a gene or it was only a random event in the course of
nature? Even if I begin by positing a Creator, I can take a deistic turn
and make it purely natural, shortchanging the basic theistic thrust.

Putting together Ephesians 1:4 with Romans 8:29f, I suggest that at the
moment of the Big Bang, God already knew and established who would
believe over 13 x 10^9 years later and be with him in eternity. Does this
limit him to tinkering at the quantum level?
Dave (ASA)

On Wed, 11 Jul 2007 21:11:32 +0100 "Iain Strachan"
<igd.strachan@gmail.com> writes:
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

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Received on Wed Jul 11 23:39:35 2007