>Abstract: A response to Del Dratzch's question: "What exactly
>does upholding come to?", with a return to the "intervention"
>discussion and whether such phraseology has deistic overtones.
>
>Del Dratzch wrote on 9 May 1996:
>
>"But the idea I wanted to at least suggest was that God obviously
>(I think it's obvious) could have created things in nature with
>an inherent ability to continue to exhibit lawed behavior without
>any further action on His part.... The question, of course, is
>then: what exactly does upholding come to?
>
[...]
DT:===
>I want to shift the focus now to the Newtonian world-view. The
>cosmos is a machine and its workings are mechanical. Although
>it is possible to hold these ideas to be complementary to the
>Biblical view of providence, it seems to me that few actually
>did. The mechanical view led to people thinking of the world as
>having an existence independent of God. God was no longer needed
>- although He might intervene from time to time to adjust the
>mechanism. This led to a "God-of-the-gaps" mentality which I
>would class as semi-Deism. It also led to a denial of
>intervention which became full-grown deism. The essence of
>deism is then the "autonomisation" of nature, rejecting the
>moment-by-moment dependence that is conveyed by the sustaining
>and upholding terminology of Scripture.
>
David had many interesting thoughts in this post. As a professional
mechanician, I thought I would key in on the Newtonian or mechanistic
world view. It sort of struck me as odd tonight that although I have
spent practically all of my adult life studying, practicing and
teaching mechanics, I have really never thought much about the
theological or philosophical implications of my field.
In several recent posts I have discussed how depressing the mechanistic
view of nature is. The universe is a huge machine filled with other
machines. We are thrown about by external forces beyond our control,
there is no free will, etc. etc.
Should I feel guilty in advancing such a view by following mechanics as
a profession? Was Satan whispering in the ears of Newton, Kepler, Boyle,
Descartes, Pascal? ;-)
One of the reasons I took an interest in the self-organizational view is
due to the rather depressing philosophical aspects of the mechanistic
view of nature. About a week or so ago I started reading a book that
paints a different picture all together of the mechanistic point
of view. Actually, several articles in the book <God and Nature>
edited by David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers. In particular the article
"Reformation Theology and the Mechanistic Conception of Nature" by
Gary Deason. Here the fundamental assumption of the mechanical world
view is that matter is passive. Matter has no ability to do anything
in and of itself. Matter comes to life, so to speak, only when acted
on by external causes. This is nothing new to me, what was really
interesting was that according to Deason, the mechanists (Newton,
Leibniz, Boyle etc.) adopted this view because of their strong belief
in the sovereignty of God. To take matter as being anything other
than totally passive was to call into question God's sovereignty.
Interesting. Now I think I understand Leibniz's accusation that Newton's
law of Gravity introduced occult qualities into science. No mechanistic
explanation for gravity existed. Therefore (according to Leibniz not
Newton) gravity was some type of innate property of matter, therefore
God was not sovereign.
Now, let me return to David's statement above, which I'll repeat
in part for convenience:
DT:===============
>The mechanical view led to people thinking of the world as
>having an existence independent of God. God was no longer needed
>- although He might intervene from time to time to adjust the
>mechanism. This led to a "God-of-the-gaps" mentality which I
>would class as semi-Deism. It also led to a denial of
>intervention which became full-grown deism. The essence of
>deism is then the "autonomisation" of nature, rejecting the
>moment-by-moment dependence that is conveyed by the sustaining
>and upholding terminology of Scripture.
>
First, I fully agree that this is the "modern" conception of the
mechanical view of nature. But if Deason is right, this represents
a 180 degree about face from the views of the original mechanists.
The mechanistic view was adopted so as to maintain God's complete
control of nature rather than to give the world an existence
independent of God. How could such a switch occur? In another
article in the book mentioned above it was stated that the
mechanistic view slipped into deism in the second generation
of Newtonianism. From our perspective its probably not too
surprising that such a slip would occur.
Newton et al could hold to both the mechanistic view and orthodox
Christianity simultaneously. I think part of the problem may be
the way we view natural law. I think it is a mistake to say that
natural laws provide an "explanation" for natural phenomena that
makes God no longer necessary. Natural law provides an explanation
of sorts, but not in the sense that "explanation" is used in
everyday conversation. Why does the apple fall to the ground? Because
of gravity? I think it was Mach that said this just gives a name
to a mystery without explaining it. Can we say that Newton's law
of gravity caused the apple to fall? No, Newton's law is just an
observation of an observed regularity, it doesn't cause the apple
to fall. We can confidently predict the apple will fall because of
the observed regularity. This reminds me of what Hubert Yockey told
me in one of our discussions: "Science doesn't explain nature, it
just describes her". How then does having a complete, compact
description of nature suddenly make God unnecessary?
========================
Brian Harper | "I can't take my guesses back
Associate Professor | That I based on almost facts
Applied Mechanics | That ain't necessarily so"
Ohio State University | -- Willie Nelson
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