You said:
> It seems to me that one of the central issues is just what "natural
> mechanisms" are. Are they different from supernatural ones? -- assuming
> that there are some supernatural ones. Could one, by empirical
> observation, distinguish between a natural and a supernatural mechanism
> (or event)? If an event or mechanism seems supernatural, is that simply
> because our understanding or account of natural is deficient?
My definition of a supernatural mechanism in Creation is identical with my
definition of a miracle and is based upon ideas found in the book Miracles
by C.S. Lewis. An supernatural mechanism in Creation, as in all Miracles,
is an event that has no backward link in the chain of cause and effect
within our universe. The cause of such an event is by definition outside
Nature.
The only way we could verify such an event occurred is by fortuitous
observation by being in the right place at the right time. The problem is
that such events are not subject to scientific analysis. Much like General
Evolution--they cannot be observed or repeated under controlled conditions.
If we should trace backward through the cause and effect chain, I am
doubtful that this would take us to the uncaused Cause. We would always
think we are missing something or somehow limited in our understanding of
the operation of Supernature--even if we thoroughly comprehend the natural
laws--which we do not.
This brings us to one of the most important things to understand about
supernatural mechanisms in Creation. As soon as such things occur, Nature
immediately aprehends them and applies all her laws in full force. The
following excerpt from _Micracles_ by C.S. Lewis (Chapter VIII, Miracles
and the Laws of Nature) is the very best explanation I have every read for
how miracles (including supernatural mechanisms of Creation) enter Nature
and what she then does with them. I know it is lengthy, and please feel
free to skip it if you do not care to read it, but I believe you will be
very impressed with his conception of the matter.
"It is therefore inaccurate to define a miracle as something that breaks
the laws of Nature. It doesn't. If I knock out my pipe I alter the
position of a great many atoms: in the long run, and to an infinetesimal
degree, of all the atoms there are. Nature digests or assimilates this
event with perfect ease and harmonizes it in a twinkling with all other
events. It is one more bit of raw material for the laws to apply to, and
they apply. I have simply thrown one event into the general cateract of
events and it finds itself at home there and conforms to all other events.
If God annihilates or creates or deflects a unit of matter He has created a
new situation at that point. Immediately all nature domiciles this new
situation, makes it at home in her realm, adapts all other events to it.
It finds itself conforming to all the laws. If God creates a miraculous
spermatazoon in the body of a virgin, it does not proceed to break any
laws. The laws at once take it over. Nature is ready. Pregnancy follows,
according to all the normal laws, and nine months later a child is born.
We see everyday that physical nature is not in the least incommoded by the
daily inrush of events from biological nature or from psychological
nature. If events ever come from beyond Nature altogether, she will be no
more incommoded by them. Be sure she will rush to the point where she is
invaded, as the defensive forces rush to a cut in our finger, and there
hasten to accomodate the newcomer. The moment it enters her realm it obeys
all her laws. Miraculous wine will intoxicate, miraculous conception will
lead to pregnancy, inspired books will suffer all of the ordinary processes
of textual corruption, miraculous bread will be digested. The devine art
of miracle is not an art of suspending the pattern to which events conform
but of feeding new events into that pattern. It does not violate the laws
proviso, 'If A, then B': it says, 'But this time instead of A, A2,' and
Nature, speaking through all her laws, replies, 'then B2' and naturalizes
the immigrant, as she well knows how. She is an accomplished hostess.
"A miracle is emphatically not an event without cause or without results.
Its cause is the activity of God: its results follow according to Natural
law. In the forward direction (i.e. during the time which follows its
occurrance) it is interlocked with all Nature just like any other event.
Its peculiarity is that it is not in that way interlocked backwards,
interlocked with the previous history of Nature. And this is just what
some people find intolerable. The reason they find it intolerable is that
they start by taking Nature to be the whole of reality [as in Sagan's
Cosmos] and they are sure that all reality must be interrelated and
consistent. I agree with them. But I think they have mistaken a partial
system within reality, namely Nature, for the whole. That being so, the
miracle and the previous history of Nature may be interlocked after all but
not in the way the Naturalist expected: rather in a much more roundabout
fashion. The great complex event called Nature, and the new particular
event introduced into it by the miracle, are related by their common origin
in God, and doubtless, if we knew enough, most intricately related in His
purpose and design, so that a Nature which had had a different history, and
therefore been a different Nature, would have been invaded by different
miracles or by none at all. In that way the miracles and the previous
course of Nature are as well interlocked as any other two realities, but
you must go back as far as their common Creator to find the interlocking.
You will not find it *within* Nature. The same sort of thing happens with
any partial system. The behavior of fishes which are being studied in a
tank makes a relatively closed system. Now suppose that the tank is shaken
by a bomb in the neighborhood of the laboratory. The behavior of the
fishes will now be no longer fully explicable by what was going on in the
tank before the bomb fell: there will be a failure of backward
interlocking. This does not mean that the bomb and the previous history of
events within the tank are totally and finally unrelated. It does mean
that to find their relation you must go back to the much larger reality
which includes both the tank and the bomb--the reality of wartime England
in which bombs are falling but some laboratories are still at work. You
would never find it within the history of the tank. In the same way, the
miracle is not *naturally* interlocked in the backward direction. To find
out how it is interlocked with the previous history of Nature you must
replace both Nature and the miracle in a larger context. Everything *is*
connected with everything else: but not all things are connected by the
short and straight roads we expected.
"The rightful demand that all reality should be consistent and systematic
does not therefore exclude miracles: but it has a very valuable
contribution to make to our conception of them. It reminds us that
miracles, if they occur, must, like all events, be revelations of that
total harmony of all that exists. Nothing arbitrary, nothing simply 'stuck
on' and left unreconciled with the texture of total reality, can be
admitted. By definition, miracles must of course interrupt the usual
course of Nature; but if they are real they must, in the very act of so
doing, assert all the more the unity and self-consistency of total reality
at some deeper level. They will not be like unmetrical lumps of prose
breaking the unity of a poem; they will be like that crowning metrical
audacity which, though it may be paralleled nowhere else in the poem, yet,
coming just where it does, and effecting just what it effects is (to those
who understand) the supreme revelation of the unity in the poets
conception. If what we call Nature is modified by supernatural power, then
we may be sure that the capability of being so modified is of the essence
of Nature--that the total events, if we could grasp it, would turn out to
involve, by its very character, the possibility of such modifications. If
Nature brings forth miracles then doubtless it is as 'natural' for her to
do so when impregnated by the masculine force beyond her as it is for a
woman to bear children to a man. In calling them miracles we do not mean
that they are contradictions or outrages; we mean that, left to her own
resources, she could never produce them."
Miracles, C.S. Lewis, pp. 59-62.
There are two relevant things to infer from this: 1) that it is unlikely
we would ever be able to scientifically prove a miracle occurred; 2) that
limitation does not hinder our ability to aprehend and comprehend the use
of supernatural mechanisms in Creation. We might one day discover a bit of
information or a toppled mountain which we just could not account for
within the cause and effect sequence of Nature.
The existence of miracles (supernatural mechanisms) does not violate
Nature. She can handle input from within and without.
Russ
Russell T.Cannon
rcannon@usa.net