It may well be that you have a bad nerve, and that generally having a
bad nerve will cause to lose the ability to move your fingers. I only
suggest that if this is true, it is only true because God sustains
this relationship between having a bad nerve and losing feeling.
(Such relationships in medicine are broken far more often than
relationships like gravity).
You go on toward a couple of things that I think are very important.
> If it is God who is taking his time in firing my neurons, why should I go see
> a doctor? And if I should, how (and more importantly why) does medicine
> affect God's behavior?
Medicine only affects God's behaviour where medicine has been given
authority over disease. God sustains that authority. Unfortunately
medicine's authority is generally pretty weak.
Related to this, why did Jesus' disciples have authority over disease?
Jesus gave it to them:
And He called the twelve together, and gave them power and
authority over all the demons, and to heal diseases. [Luke 9:1]
I go to see doctors because they typically have more authority over
disease than I have. But I recognize that their authority is given
by God (Rom 13:1), so I look to Him for the ultimate resolution of my
afflictions (2 Cor 12:8).
If the non-mechanistic view is correct, then it should not contradict
much of what we actually observe, though it might provide a different
interpretation of our observations.
> I really don't mean any of this to be or sound like a put down because I do
> find your view quite interesting. I am merely trying to find the logical
> conclusions it leads to.
It is the logical conclusions of such a view that are important to me also.
A non-mechanistic universe makes God far more central to all issues of
life. His purpose and intentions become far more important
than just understanding how the crank turns for some set of mechanisms.
It is reasonable to express gratitude for all things, because I know that
all things spring directly from Him. Prayer becomes exceedingly central
and exceedingly powerful. His activity becomes a framework to interpret
all of reality -- from presidential politics to the significance of
somebody cutting me off on the freeway at a particular time. I find
myself in a universe ruled by God, not ruled by law. The kingdom of
God is good news.
It seems to me that many believers take these conclusions for granted,
yet embrace a mechanistic view of the universe anyway. Perhaps they see
the universe as mechanistic with lots of intervention. But for me there
is an incompatibility, and I have found the non-mechanistic view to
bring me into less conflict with Scripture than I experienced before.
One of the reasons I originally got interested in this topic was
that I wanted to understand prayer. It logically seemed to me that prayer
was extremely limited in its effect. Yet this contradicts the Scripture.
So I started seeking after a logic to the universe that empowered prayer.
The view I found also allows me to take literally Scriptures such as:
The lot is cast into the lap, But its every
decision is from the Lord. [Prov 16:33]
--Dave