On Mon, 12 Jun 1995 19:44:01 -0500 (EST) you wrote:
LH>On June 1, Mark Phillips inquired as to whether a "God-sustained"
>universe is observationally distinguishable from "unaided
>nature/unintelligent laws."
TG>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.
LH>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).
Agreed.
LH>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.
The atheists view is self-refuting. If fundamentally there is
no personality and all is "particles", the the atheist's assertion
itself is just "particles". How does an atheist derive personality
from the "impersonal", intelligence from the "uinintelligent" and
meaning from "particles"?
If all is matter and indeed "the brain secretes thought like the liver
secretes bile", then what is the essential difference between thought
and bile? Why should the atheists thought=bile be preferred to the
theists thought=bile?
Indeed, it seems to me that if the materialist's assertion that
"matter is all" is true, then the assertion itself is just matter.
But then so would the opposite assertion "matter is not all" be also
matter. However in that case an assertion and its opposite, would at
the most fundamental level be equivalent. But if something and its
opposite are both equivalent they must both be false. It seems the
only way out of this dilemma is to maintain a non-material external
category of meaning that can decide which assertion is true and which
is false. But in that case the assertion "matter is all" is false,
anyway.
Is there a philosopher in the house? <g>
LH>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?
LH>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.
I know this is Reformed Orthodoxy, but I don't believe it is true. I
believe that all men already know there is a Creator-God by virtue of:
a) innate knowledge of God as God's image-bearer; and b) the witness
of the order, beauty and grandeur of creation (General Revelation).
Special Revelation confirms this (Ps 19:1; Rom 1:16ff) and of couse
expands on it in great detail.
My own testimony is that I was brought up in a non-Christian home with
no knowledge of the Bible or Christianity. I became an atheist in my
early teenage years, and in my late teens I looked up at the Milky
Way one night and had an overwhelming feeling that there must be a
God. I did not become a Christian until 2 years later.
My point is that we cannot believe that there is such a thing as
"Special Revelation", let alone that it is "reliable" unless we
already believe in a Creator-God. I agree that later we fine-tune this
"model" by the learning from "Special Revelation".
LH>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.
I believe miracles *must* be "accompanied by revelation", ie. the
illumination of the Holy Spirit. The Jewish religious leaders had
full access to "Special Revelation" and saw Jesus' miracles yet
attributed them to Satan (Mt 12:24 ). Judas presumably saw them all
and was not convinced.
LH>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.
This may be logically true, but I doubt that it is psycho-logically
true. It would only be true of those who already were believers.
Atheists cannot attribute anything to "God" because by definition,
they don't believe that there is a God.
LH>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.
Agreed. Even some of the Biblical miracles may be such, eg. plagues of
Egypt, crossing of the Red Sea, destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah,
etc.
LH>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.
Agreed. Why do we pray otherwise?
LH>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.
I think we can. IMHO all men know that the universe is displays God's
wisdom and power (Rom 1:16ff), but they supress this knowledge and
create an idol universe that is "self-existent one which obeys
unintelligent laws".
You see Loren, I don't believe that people really think this
abstract, intellectual, "logical" way about the universe. They have
either accepted there is a God and the universe is His creation or
they have denied God and they are trying to see the universe as
"self-existent". I believe this not only because scripture says so,
but also from experience.
LH>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_.
Occam's Razor is just a rule of thumb. It begs the question that a
universe without God is: a) the simplest explanation or b) accounts
for all the facts.
For example, it does not account for the fact of "contingency", as
you point out.
LH>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.
Agreed. Either an eternal God or eternal matter/energy.
LH>For the atheist, this is brute matter (or energy
>or space/time or quantum fields or whatever);
Yes. It doesn't matter. It is absurd to believe the universe just
popped into being from nothing.
LH>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.
Agreed.
>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.
Agreed, now that you have further clarified it. Mind you, I believe
that Natural Philosophy proves the existence of God "on a balance of
probabilities" (so to speak). However, it does not give the degree of
detail that Special Revelation does, and of course it does not supply
the way of salvation.
Thanks for this discussion, Loren.
God bless.
Stephen