Introduction
Quantum Mechanics –
QM is characterized by several
substantial departures from classical physics; of these, only determinism is relevant to our present
concerns. Classical mechanics is deterministic in the following sense. Suppose
you are given an initial configuration of a material system – that is, a system
of particles together with their positions, masses and velocities – at a time t Now consider any time t* future with respect to t; if the system is causally closed,
there is just one outcome consistent with classical mechanics…Things are very
different for QM. The Schrodinger equation for a system S – a system of
particles, for example – associates a wave function with S; in essence, for any
future time t, the wave function
assigns a complex number to each of the many configurations possible for S at t. This wave function is used (via “Born’s
Rule”) to assign a certain probability to each possible configuration c for S at t: the probability of finding S in c at t. The point, here,
is that (in contrast with classical mechanics) we don’t get a prediction of a
unique configuration for the system at t,
but only a distribution of probabilities across many possible outcomes. Given a
quantum mechanical system, therefore, QM doesn’t say which configuration will in fact result from the initial
conditions; instead, it assigns a spectrum of probabilities to the possible
outcomes.[1]
On p. 99,
Plantinga quotes John Earman, who defines a miracle as “an event that is
incompatible with (what we presume, on the basis of the best evidence, to be)
laws of nature.” As such, he says that the classic Biblical examples aren’t
technically miracles at all, since they are not incompatible with QM.
Q1: Is this the right definition of miracle? How does Plantinga
understand a miracle?
On pp. 98-100,
Plantinga quotes several experts to support his claim that at least some
Biblical miracles are completely compatible with QM.
Q2: What does it mean to say that these miracles are “possible”
on QM? Does QM really make the reality of miracles any more plausible? Does the
scale of typical miracles effectively rule out the possibility that they will
occur, even on QM?
II. What is
the Problem with “Intervention”?
Divine Action Project (DAP)
– The main problem for the project is to find an account of divine action in
the world – action beyond creation and conservation – that doesn’t involve
God’s intervening the world.[2]
Plantinga: What are the problems evoked “for a
rationally coherent belief in God as the creator of that order”? Why should we
expect God to avoid intervention?
(1) Connection to the problem of evil
George
Ellis: …What one would
like here – if one is to make sense of the idea of miracles – is some kind of
rock-solid criterion of choice underlying such decisions to act in a miraculous
manner, for if there is the necessity to hold to these laws during times of the
persecutions and Hitler’s Final Solution, during famines and floods, in order
that morality be possible, then how can it be that sometimes this iron necessity
can fade away and allow turning water to win or the raising of Lazarus?[3]
à Plantinga:
[Paraphrased] Requiring a rock-solid criterion is asking too much. God only
needs a good reason to act; he need not make that reason known to us. We could
be in a situation like Job.[4]
Q3: Do you think it’s reasonable for human beings to expect to
be able to make sense of God’s action in the world? Why or why not? Does the
apparent arbitrariness of miraculous occurrences in the world provide humans
with any justification for denying God’s existence? [5]
Q4: Does creating something give you the right to do whatever
you want with it? What if that thing is a living, autonomous creature (rather
than, say, an inanimate clay pot)? Why or why not?
(2) Fixed, regular laws are requisite for the
exercise of free will
George
Ellis: [I]t seems
probable that fixed laws of behavior of matter, independent of interference by
a Creator or any other agency, is a requisite basis of existence of independent
beings able to exercise free will, for they make possible meaningful complex
organized activity without outside interference (physical laws providing a
determinate frame within which definite local causal relations are possible).[6]
à Plantinga:
What’s at issue here is not so much freedom; Ellis’s point, I take it, is that
if God constantly intervened, the regularities we must rely on in deciding how
to act would be absent…[W]hat counts with respect to the possibility of
intelligent free action isn’t really the absence of divine intervention, it is
rather regularity and predictability. Intelligent free action
would not be possible in a world without regularity and predictability, even if
God never intervened in it; such action would
be possible in a world in which God often intervened, provided he did so in a
regular and predictable way.[7]
Plantinga: What’s required for free action is that
there be enough regularity for us to know or sensibly conjecture – at least for
the most part and with reasonably high probability – what will happen if we
freely choose to take a given action…All that’s required for purposeful free
action is reasonable confidence in substantial regularity in the neighborhood
of the proposed action. And that’s certainly compatible with God’s sometimes intervening.[8]
Q5: Given how resistant the future is to prediction already,
even assuming the perfect regularity of nature’s processes,[9]
do you think divine interference really introduces further difficulty?
(3) “The divine consistency objection” –
Miracles cannot be interpreted in terms of supernatural interference in natural
processes. If such an interpretation were true, the manifestation of the ground
of being would destroy the structure of being; God would be split within
himself.”[10]
Philip
Clayton: “the real
problem here, apparently, is that it is very difficult to come up with an idea
of divine action in the world in which such action would not constitute
‘breaking natural law.’”[11]
Wesley
Wildman: [T]he idea of
God sustaining nature and its law-like regularities with one hand while
miraculously intervening, abrogating or ignoring those regularities with the
other hand struck most members as dangerously close to outright contradiction.
Most participants certainly felt that God would not create an orderly world in
which it was impossible for the creator to act without violating the created
structure of order.[12]
à Plantinga:
[These objectors] still seem to display a list in the Laplacean direction:
Clayton speaks of God’s “breaking” natural laws, and Saunders…speaks of
“overriding” the laws of nature by performing miracles. As I argued earlier,
however, it’s exceedingly difficult to see how God could override of “break”
natural laws by miraculous healings or raising someone from the dead; under the
new picture it’s doubtful that these things are precluded by quantum mechanical
laws, even if we set aside the proviso according to which these laws apply only
to close systems.[13]
Objection: God simply wouldn’t treat the stuff he
has made in starkly different ways; this sort of action is inconsistent with
his unfathomable augustness and unsurpassable greatness…[T]here is something
arbitrary and whimsical in “dealing in two different manners” with the cosmic
process.[14]
à
Plantinga: There would
be arbitrariness and inconsistency only if God had no special reason for acting
contrary to the usual regularities; but of course he might very well have such
reasons…Perhaps he aims to establish basic regularities, thus making science
and free intelligent action possible for his creatures. But perhaps he also has
good reason for sometimes acting contrary to those regularities: to mark
special occasions, for example, or to make clear his love or his power, or to
authorize what someone says, or to guide history in a certain direction.[15]
Q6: Do you think that intervening in the natural order would
reflect arbitrariness or inconsistency on God’s part? Why or why not?
Michael
Murray: There is
something grand, beautiful and artful about a universe which contains within it
everything that is necessary in order for it to bring about the results God
intends for it. God could cause every event that we see in the natural world
directly. But a powerful and rational designer would…display his power and
reason far more manifestly in a universe which is itself a machine-making
machine. A universe which achieved the ends God has for it in this
self-contained fashion does as much to express the glory of its creator as do
the end-products of the creative process.[16]
Q7: Do you agree with the members of Divine
Action Project that God’s action in the world should be non-interventionist?
What considerations motivate your position?
III. What is
Intervention?
Plantinga: What, from the point of view of the new
picture, is intervention? Can we so
much as say what it consists in?
(1) An action that causes an event E which is
contrary to a natural law
à No good, because a the form of a natural
law is “When the universe is causally closed, P.”[17]
(2) A divine act producing an event that
would not have occurred but for that act
à No good because “any act of conservation
meets that condition, and conservation is not a case of intervention.”[18]
(3) An intervention will have occurred at the
first time t* such that S(t0)L does not entail S(t*); OR
(4) Let t*
be the first time after t such that
S(t*) is not entailed by S(t0) & L: an intervention
will have occurred at t*.
à This doesn’t tell us what an intervention
is.[19]
(5) An intervention is an action (divine,
demonic, angelic, human) that causes an event E to occur at time t, such that for some t* prior to t, S(t*)&L doesn’t
entail that E occurs at t.
à No good because this definition entails
that acts of sustaining (e.g., a full-grown horse created ex nihilo) count as intervention, which it shouldn’t.[20]
(6) (INT) An act A (divine, demonic, angelic,
human) is an intervention just if A causes an event E to occur at a time t, where there is an interval of times
bounded above by t such that for very
time t* in that interval, S(t*)&L doesn’t entail that E occurs
at t.[21]
à Plantinga:
(INT) works for the classical context, but won’t work in the QM context…Given
the indeterminism of [QM], nothing like (INT) is available?...[H]ow could God
set aside or override the probabilistic laws of quantum mechanics in performing
those miraculous acts?[22]
(7) An intervention occurs when God performs
an action, the consequence of which is an event that would not have occurred
had God not performed that action.[23]
à No good, entails that conservation is
intervention.
(8) God intervenes if and only if he performs
an action A thereby causing an event E that (a) goes beyond conservation and
creation, and (b) is such that if he had not performed A, E would not have
occurred.[24]
à No good, because this fails to
differentiate between intervention, so construed, and special divine action.
The project is to find a conception of special divine action – divine action
that goes beyond conservation and creation – that doesn’t involve intervention;
if (8) is true, however, every case of special divine action will automatically be a case of intervention
– thus making the whole project of trying to find a conception of special
divine action that doesn’t involve intervention look a little unlikely.[25]
Q8: What is the difference for Plantinga between intervention
and special divine action?
à It seems that what Plantinga is after is
an account of special divine action that:
(a) Coheres with QM
(b) Doesn’t involve breaking the natural laws
(satisfies the conditions of the DAP)
(c) Differentiates between the acts of
creation, conservation, and intervention.
Q9: Why doesn’t Plantinga simply use the same solution in this
chapter that he used in the last, i.e., deny that we live in a closed system?
Does QM add any new difficulty for this solution? If so, what is it?
(9) Violating the created structured order[26]
à
Plantinga: What are
these created structures of order and regularity? Presumably they aren’t the
natural laws as disclosed in QM – once again, God’s performing a miracle
wouldn’t violate them. So what are they?[27]
IV.
Intervention and Divine Action at the Quantum Level
The chief objection…is twofold. First,
there is that concern with intervention as somehow going against the natures of
the things God has created. And second, there is that alleged “inconsistency”:
as McMullin puts it with admirable succinctness, for God to intervene is for
him to “deal in two different manners” with the cosmos he created.[28]
William Pollard (1958): God acts
at the quantum level.[29]
Copenhagen
interpretation: God can
cause quantum events, and, because the laws are merely statistical, do so
without “suspending” those laws. This action on his part can perhaps be
amplified – by chaotic effects or in other ways – to the macroscopic level; in
this way, perhaps, God can cause dramatic effects at the level of everyday
life, and do so without falling into intervention.[30]
Polkinghorne: Occasions of measurement only occur from
time to time, and a God who acted through being their determinator would also
only be acting from time to time. Such an episodic account of providential
agency does not seem altogether satisfactory theologically.[31]
Q10: Does anyone here think that QM is well enough understood to
lend any additional credibility to particular theological views? How could any
of them be tested or confirmed? What predictions do they make?
GRW
interpretation: On this
approach we could think of the nature
of a system as dictating that collapses occur at the regular rate they in fact
display. What is presently of significance, however, is that on these
approaches there is no cause for a given collapse to go to the particular value
(the particular position, for example) or eigenstate to which in fact it goes.
That is, there is no physical cause;
there is nothing in the previous physical state of the world that causes a
given collapse to go to the particular eigenstate to which is does go.[32]
On this view of God’s special action –
call it “divine collapse-causation” (“DCC”) – God is always acting specially,
that is, always acting in ways that go beyond creation and conservation, thus
obviating the problem alleged to lie in his sometimes treating the world in
hands-off fashion but other times in a hands-on way.
Furthermore,
if, as one assumes, the macroscopic physical world supervenes on the
microscopic, God could thus control what happens at the macroscopic level by
causing the right microscopic collapse-outcomes. In this way God can exercise
providential guidance over cosmic history.[33]
Objection: “Isn’t it part of the very nature of
such a system to collapse in such a way as not to violate the probabilities
assigned by Born’s Rule? And wouldn’t God’s causing the collapses in fact
violate those probabilities? Wouldn’t there have to be something like a divine
statistical footprint, if God caused these collapses?”[34]
à Plantinga:
This rests on a misunderstanding: all collapses are unlikely, so there’s no
guarantee that God’s involvement in the process would yield a noticeably
different result than any alternative.[35]
Q11: Is Plantinga right that the difference between natural
collapses (those that are described by Born’s Rule) and divine-causes collapses
wouldn’t reveal any statistical differences? Or does Plantinga think that DCC,
if true, is what is described by
Born’s Rule (i.e., the “nature” is just a pseudonym for God)?
Objection: [D]oesn’t this result in divine
determinism perhaps even occasionalism, in that God really causes whatever
happens at the macro-level?[36]
à Plantinga:
Maybe humans also cause collapses to occur, so that we too can freely cause
events in the physical world via causing the requisite collapses in our brains.[37]
The thought would be that God’s action
constitutes a theater or setting for free actions on the part of human beings
and other persons – principalities, powers, angels, Satan and his minions,
whatever. God sets the stage for such free action by causing a world of
regularity and predictability; but he causes only some of the collapse outcomes,
leaving it to free persons to cause the rest.[38]
Objection: DCC is tied to a particular version of
QM. What happens if that version gets jettisoned? Indeed, what happens in QM
itself gets jettisoned or seriously revised?
à Plantinga:
First: if Christian belief is true, the warrant for belief in special divine
action doesn’t come from quantum mechanics or current science or indeed any
science at all; these beliefs have their own independent source of warrant.[39]
The sensible religious believer I not
obliged to trim her sails to the current scientific breeze on this topic
revising her belief on the topic every time science changes its mind; if the
most satisfactory Christian (or theistic) theology endorses the idea that the
universe did indeed have a beginning, the believer has a perfect right to
accept that thought. Something similar goes for the Christian believer and
special divine action.[40]
Q12: Is Plantinga exaggerating the scale or significance of the
change of mind within the scientific community?
V. A Couple of
Other Alleged Conflicts
Claim 1: Some people claims that science, taken
as a whole, somehow supports or underwrites a naturalistic view of the
universe, one in which there is no such person as God or any other supernatural
being.[41]
à Plantinga:
No it doesn’t, and in fact the opposite is the case (as I’ll demonstrate in Ch.
10).
Claim 2 (or subclaim 1.2): There is a deep difference between
religion and science – one that doesn’t redound to the credit of
religion…[T]here is a profound contrast between what we might call the
epistemic styles of religion and science. The scientist…holds her beliefs
tentatively, dispassionately, only on the basis of evidence, and is always
looking for a better hypothesis, one that is better supported by the evidence.
The religious believer, on the other hand, typically holds his beliefs
dogmatically: he is unwilling to consider the evidence and often holds his
beliefs with a degree of firmness out of proportion to their support by the
evidence; he is unwilling to look for a better hypothesis.[42]
à Plantinga:
Scientists don’t hold their beliefs dispassionately, nor do they easily
relinquish them in the face of contrary evidence. But even grating Worrall’s
characterization of the epistemic practices of scientists versus religious
people is true, this difference indicates a science/religion conflict only if science tells us that beliefs in all the
areas of our epistemic life ought to be formed and held in the same way as
scientific beliefs typically are. But of course that isn’t a scientific claim
at all; it is rather a normative epistemological claim, and a quixotic one at
that…It is scientific hypotheses
which (for the most part) ought to be accepted in the way Worrall celebrates;
but of course not nearly all of our beliefs are scientific hypotheses. In
particular, religious beliefs are not.[43]
Q13: What for Plantinga is the supposed source of religious
knowledge? Does he imagine human beings to posses a unique faculty for
acquiring religious knowledge? If so, what are the conditions under which
beliefs formed via this faculty is justified?
[1] Pp. 96-97.
[2] P. 102.
[3] P. 104.
[4] Pp. 105-106.
[5] See Job 37:5 (“he does great things beyond our
understanding”), Isaiah 45:9 (“woe to those who quarrel with their maker”),
Rom. 9:21 ("Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, 'Why
did you make me like this?'");
contrast with 1 Cor. 2:16 (“we have the mind of Christ”), Rom. 12:2 (“that we
may discern God’s good, perfect, and pleasing will”), etc.
[6] P. 103.
[7] Pp. 106-107.
[8] Pp. 107-108.
[9] Consider, for example, how many books in ethics and
practical reasoning with titles like “Judgment under uncertainty,” or “Who
Knew? Responsibility without Awareness.”
[10] P. 108.
[11] P. 102.
[12] P. 103.
[13] P. 109.
[14] Pp. 109-110.
[15] P. 110.
[16] P. 111.
[17] P. 112.
[18] P. 113.
[19] P. 113.
[20] P. 114.
[21] P. 114.
[22] P. 115.
[23] P. 115.
[24] P. 116.
[25] P. 116.
[26] P. 116.
[27] P. 117.
[28] P. 117.
[29] P. 118.
[30] P. 118.
[31] P. 119.
[32] P. 120.
[33] Pp. 120-121.
[34] P. 121.
[35] Pp. 121-122.
[36] P. 122.
[37] Pp. 123-124.
[38] P. 124.
[39] P. 124.
[40] P. 125.
[41] P. 126.
[42] P. 127.
[43] Pp. 127-128.
