[asa] independent world; was: Re: Review of Behe in Books and Culture

" Either God decides the results of all measurements (which returns to the cosmic dictator model) or God only decides some, in which case we have to ask what decides the others."

What might you have against a cosmos created with an ability to function independently of any divine acts or interventions but in which God nevertheless chooses at various points to intervene? That is, most of the time the world would act as atheistic scientists believe it does--namely, in accord with physical laws built into the matter itself, but God on occasion would intervene to get the outcomes he desires.

This is my preferred model, and it seems so reasonable I have difficulty understanding what holds everybody else back. So, in your example, "what decides the others" would be simply the laws built into matter.

Some of the problem I suspect has to do with the idea that God continuously sustains the world. My model would say that God sustains only in the sense that he is personally and intimately involved and could instantaneously obliterate if he wished, but otherwise the world would continue "on its own" if God were to go on vacation.

Don

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: George L. Murphygmurphy@raex.com<mailto:Murphygmurphy@raex.com>
  To: Iain Strachan<mailto:igd.strachan@gmail.com> ; Michael Roberts<mailto:michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk>
  Cc: Ted Davis<mailto:TDavis@messiah.edu> ; asa<mailto:asa@calvin.edu> ; Louise Margaret Freeman<mailto:lfreeman@mbc.edu>
  Sent: Thursday, July 12, 2007 11:20 AM
  Subject: Re: [asa] Review of Behe in Books and Culture

  I also have some problems with this view of God's action at the quantum level. Either God decides the results of all measurements (which returns to the cosmic dictator model) or God only decides some, in which case we have to ask what decides the others.

  But at least in the present state of QM there does seem to be a measurement problem. Yes, the Schroedinger eqn describes a deterministic time evolution of psi (it's 1st order in t so one needs to know only the initial wave fn), but the problem is precisely that with a measurement psi seems to change ("collapse") in a way that the Schroedinger eqn doesn't predict.

  BTW, Pollard's 1st name was William.

  Shalom,

  George

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Received on Sat Jul 14 02:35:24 2007