> Terry Gray wrote:
> >In my view there is no such thing as "unaided nature", everything is the
> >result of God's sustanance and governace. I dislike the distinction
> >between "natural" and "miracle" and prefer the distinction "regular" and
> >"irregular". You see, I am a creationist! Given this I see absolutely no
> >reason to reject evolutionary theory on its biological claims. My version
> >of evolutionary theory is just as creationistic as is a Progressive
> >Creationist. I happen to find the evidence for evolution compelling and
> >the arguments of its critics not compelling. I realize there are many here
> >who judge the matter just the opposite, but that's why we're talking, I
> >guess.
>
> A question for Terry and others of similar view:
>
> It seems to me that what you are saying is that, underlying the very
> fabric of our universe, at the finest level, God is sustaining and
> governing the universe. That is, at the most fundamental level, our
> understanding of the universe must include an intelligent, creative
> personality (being). This is (of course) at odds with the atheist,
> who believes that the fundamentals need only be described in terms
> of impersonal, unintelligent laws and fundamental particles.
>
> My question is: is there any way for us to determine which of these
> two "fundamentals" models is correct (God sustained vs unintelligent
> laws)? That is, does the "God sustained" model have any consequences
> for the universe (which we could observe) which would not occur in the
> "unintelligent laws" model (or vice versa)? Or are these two models
> indistinguishable from an observational point of view?
My own answer:
There IS a reliable way to determine which of the two "models" is correct:
through Special Revelation. We believe that the universe is
"God-sustained," rather than self-existent, because of God's special
revelation, not because of science or Natural Philosophy or Natural
Theology.
There is another (less reliable) way to determine between the two models:
by studying miracles. Super-natural miracles imply the existence of God,
especially when accompanied by revelation. If ALL events revealed to be
miracles were OBVIOUSLY super-natural, it could make sense to postulate a
"self-existent" universe (which normally acts via unintelligent laws) into
which God sometimes "intervenes" supernaturally. However, many events in
which God reveals himself to be acting personally and perposefully are not
_obviously_ super-natural -- they are events which could be explained by
natural laws, but whose timing is special. We may sometimes feel God
leading and guiding our own lives through events of this type. This
suggests to me (although it doesn't by itself prove) that God is
personally active in the more "mundane" workings of the world, as well as
in miraculous events.
But suppose we ignore special revelation and miracles, and just study the
ordinary workings of the "laws of nature." Is there a way to
observationally distinguish between a "God-sustained" universe and a
self-existent one which obeys unintelligent laws? Well, personally, I
can't think of one.
An atheist friend of mine once tried to use "Occam's Razor" against God's
existence. His argument, in a nutshell, was: You can either have a
universe by itself, or a universe plus God; God is such a _big_ hypothesis
that you should discard it. (He believed it possible to account for all
human historical and religious experience without God.) But this argument
ignores the question of _contingency_.
The universe is full of "contingent" entities -- that is, things which
depend for their existence upon the existence of other things. But
everyone's philosophy requires that there be at least one self-existing,
non-contingent entity. For the atheist, this is brute matter (or energy
or space/time or quantum fields or whatever); for the theist, this is God.
The atheist REQUIRES that the universe be non-contingent. For the theist,
the universe could be contingent (moment-by-moment) for its existence upon
God, OR it could have been created, once it was created, to be (in some
sense) self-existent, self-sustaining, and no-longer-contingent -- obeying
its unintelligent (albeit God-created) laws of behavior. Since these two
possibilities are not observationally distinguishable, the theist, unlike
the atheist, can (apart from special revelation) remain "agnostic"
regarding whether or not the material universe is moment-by-moment
contingent.
Since we cannot, purely from the standpoint of Natural Philosophy,
observationally distinguish a God-sustained, moment-by-moment-contingent
universe from a universe created to be non-contingent and self-sustaining,
we look to Special Revelation to decide the issue.
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"... Another victim of applied metaphysics." | Loren Haarsma
--Hobbes (_Calvin_and_Hobbes_) | lhaarsma@opal.tufts.edu