No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Introduction (Quantum cosmology and the laws of nature: scientific perspectives on Divine action)
Abstract
It is not at all clear that the notion of Divine action makes any sense, or what sort of sense it makes. If it makes no sense, the Christian faith may for a while cling on to a tenuous and marginal existence as a set of legends outlining an optical policy of life. But it will eventually evaporate to take its place with the great legends of Greek and Roman mythology, its policy of life at last becoming as quaint and archaic as that of ancient Athens. It is therefore a matter of vital importance to examine the idea of Divine action, starting again from first principles, to discover what may be said of it in view of the many difficulties raised in the modern age.
This article presents a coherent and comprehensive proposal of a renewed contemporary Aristotelian-Thomistic approach to the evolutionary view of reality and the position of theistic evolution. Beginning with a proposal of a hylomorphically-grounded essentialist definition of species-framed within a broader revival of biological essentialism-a constructive model of the Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics of evolution is being offered, together with a reflection on the alleged violation of the principle of proportionate causation in evolutionary transitions and the role of teleology and chance in evolution. The theological part of the article addresses a number of questions concerning the Thomistic school of theology in its encounter with the evolutionary worldview, including the question of whether God creates through evolution, the query concerning the concurrence of divine and created causes in evolutionary transitions, and the question regarding evolutionary and theological notions of anthropogenesis. A list of ten postulates grounding a contemporary Thomistic version of theistic evolution is offered as a conclusion to the research presented in the text.
It was characteristic of the Enlightenment-the movement of ideas current during the 18th century- to distrust tradition in cultural matters. Truth was to be approached through reason. At the end of that period Auguste Comte founded a movement which advocated that intellectual activities should be confined to observable facts. The reason why this movement was called “positivism” is that observable facts were called ‘positive’ by Comte.
Traditional eschatology clashes with the theory of entropy. Trying to bridge the gap, Robert John Russell assumes that theology and science are based on contradictory, yet equally valid, metaphysical assumptions, each one capable of questioning and impacting the other. The author doubts that Russell's proposal will convince empirically oriented scientists and attempts to provide a viable alternative. Historical-critical analysis suggests that biblical future expectations were redemptive responses to changing human needs. Apocalyptic visions were occasioned by heavy suffering in postexilic times. Interpreted in realistic terms, they have since proved to be untenable. The expectation (rather than the vision) of a new creation without evil, suffering, and death is not constitutive for the substantive content of the biblical message as such. Biblical future expectations must be reconceptualized in terms of best contemporary insight and in line with a dynamic reading of the biblical witness as God's vision of comprehensive optimal well-being that operates like a shifting horizon and opens up ever new vistas, challenges, and opportunities.
Abstract I comment on moral and theological aspects of human technology, which I consider as an evolutionary moment of our cultural and genetic variation. It is an important moment both scientifically and theologically. Starting from Philip Hefner's theological program of the human being as created co-creator, I distinguish between the limitations and responsibilities of the human being as a created agent and the possibilities and ideals as a co-creator. I develop the idea of the kenosis (self-emptying) of the Creator, which as the root of God's love principle should be reenacted by the created co-creators. I analyze elements of this kenosis presented by Jürgen Moltmann in relation to creation and eschatology.
E. O. Wilson writes that the “choice between transcendentalism and empiricism” is this century's “version of the struggle for men's soul” (1998, 240). The transcendentalist argues for theism—that there is a God, a creator of the world. The empiricist instead makes the point that the notion of God, including morality and ethics, are adaptive structures of human evolution. Before entering the debate of the transcendentalist/empiricist controversy I analyze how things exist and suggest that all that is exists as united diversity, as identity in difference. I argue that oneness by itself is intangible because wholes are concrete only through their tangible parts. I briefly discuss this understanding of existence in the realm of art to show that transcendence and immanence are not mutually exclusive but constitute each other. I conclude that existence, the hypostasis of unity in diversity, might be seen as a gift from absolute existence. In this view, the world might reveal itself as a gift that reflects the trinitarian existence of the Giver.
The approach of experiential realism could indicate where science and faith deal with the same reality, where science questions faith assumptions, and where faith goes beyond the mandate and method of science. Although prescientific, Martin Luther's theology is the classical prototype of an experiential theology. We experience God's creative power in all of reality. We discern its regularities through observation and reason. So faith opens up all the space needed by science. However, experienced reality is highly ambiguous. It obscures God's intentions. God's intentions are revealed in the proclamation of the gospel: God is unconditionally for us and with us and not against us. This proclamation is a promise, appropriated in faith, and geared to a vision of what ought to become. It is based on the interpretation of a catastrophe—the cross of Christ—as God's pivotal redemptive act in human history. It goes beyond the mandate and method of science, yet it is capable of giving the latter a sense of purpose, criteria of acceptability, and authority to act in the interests of humanity and the earth. Theology challenges science to acknowledge the necessity of a transcendent frame of reference and moral accountability. Scientific insight challenges theology to reconceptualize its assumptions on God, creation, and eschatology to integrate best science.
One of the most focused research programs in the science-religion dialogue that has taken place up to the present is the series of volumes published jointly by the Vatican Observatory and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences. Originating with the encouragement of Pope John Paul II, this series has produced seven volumes focusing on how divine action can be understood in light of contemporary science. A retrospective volume published in 2008, Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action: Twenty Years of Challenge and Progress, contains articles reviewing the series as a whole. In this article I analyze the series as a whole as well as some of the pivotal problems discussed throughout the series, such as the zero-sum game, scientific “traction,” falsifiability in theories of divine action, and locating special divine action in the physical world.
This paper is framed as a continuation of a 12th century debate over whether a ‘profane’ account of nature without reference to arbitrary divine acts in its workings (secundum phisicam) threatens the unity of scriptura et natura that was assumed in the natural philosophy which developed out of the Platonic/Augustinian tradition. Currently this issue takes the form of either a commitment to or circumvention of the protocol of ‘methodological naturalism’ in the explanation of natural history, most clearly with regard to evolutionary theory. The focus of the paper is on the latent disagreement over this issue between two poles of the steering committee which oversaw a series of conferences co-sponsored by the Vatican Observatory. One side† was willing to make a sustained commitment to ‘methodological naturalism’, arguing that while nature was not self-explanatory, its inherent characteristics were sufficient for explaining the course of natural history. The other side‡ was initially willing to concede the protocol, but ultimately saw the unity of scriptura et natura threatened. After the introduction, Section II analyzes specific disagreements between the two groups over theological epistemology, theological language, and God as a necessary factor in the explanans of natural history. That analysis becomes the basis in Section III for the assertion that the strategy of the second group involves returning to an older form of natural philosophy with a doxa-episteme progression that allows it to augment the ‘profane’ epistemology of ‘methodological naturalism’ with an esoteric insight in order to recognize what is ‘objectively’ the case. Natural philosophies of this sort permit a ‘semantic variability’ such that the designation of a claim as ‘theological’ can mean that it both is and is not a semantic alternative to claims that follow the protocol of ‘methodological naturalism’. The strength given the claim will depend on the discourse context. The paper concludes with a chart of the multiple and significant differences between the two groups.
In the first part of this essay I sketch a view on cosmogenesis from the perspective of modern science, emphasizing, first, that the laws of nature are outcomes of the history of nature, not imposed on nature from outside of nature; and, second, that the universe, including human beings, is the result of a single, natural process. It consistently brings forth novelty through a probabilistic sequence of syntheses. Consequently, the new emerges from the unification of elements that were previously unified. This universal creative process is both probabilistic and nonlinear. It is probabilistic (historical) because each creative event occurs within a cohort of also possible events. It is nonlinear because the new has qualities that its elements in isolation do not possess. I refer to this model of understanding cosmogenesis as strict naturalism. In the second part of the essay I argue that deistic and theistic models of cosmogenesis cannot cope with strict naturalism because they exclude teleology and supernatural interference in the creative process. In contrast to deism and theism, I show that Christianity is capable of integrating strict naturalism. To do that I focus on the Christian notion of incarnation. At the center of this reflection is the attempt to increase the understanding of Christian faith that only the Word of God creates.
This essay explores a simple argument for a Ground of Being, objections to it, and limitations on it. It is nonsensical to refer to Nothing in the sense of utter absence, hence nothing can be claimed to come from Nothing. If, as it seems, the universe, or any physical ensemble containing it, is past-finite, it must be caused by an uncaused Ground. Speculative many-worlds, pocket universes and multiverses do not affect this argument, but the quantum cosmologies of Alex Vilenkin, and J. B. Hartle and Stephen Hawking, which claim that the universe came from literally nothing, would. I argue that their novel project cannot work for reasons both physical (their “nothing” is actually a vacuum state governed by eternal physical laws) and methodological (physical theory cannot explain the emergence of the physical per se). Thus my argument stands. However, as David Hume showed, a posteriori arguments like mine infer a creation, and Creator, of a certain character, namely, a stochastic concept of creation and a panentheistic, partly physical Creator lacking omniscience and omnipotence. Rather than undermining the cosmological argument, as Hume intended, these limitations liberate the concept of the Ground from unnecessary problems, as Hartshorne suggested.
This paper focuses on four passages in the journey of the universe from beginning to end: its origin in the Big Bang, the production of heavy elements in first generation stars, the buzzing symphony of life on earth, and the distant future of the cosmos. As a physicist and a Christian theologian, I will ask how each of these passages casts light on the deepest questions of existence and our relation to God, and in turn how these questions are being explored through ongoing research into the interaction between Christian theology and the natural sciences.
This paper offers a detailed response to “Religion and the Theories of Science” in Barbour's Gifford Lectures I. Topics include: complementarity, indeterminacy, parts and wholes, and Bell's theorem in quantum theory; metaphysical issues raised by relativity theory and thermodynamics, principally the problem of temporality and “top-down” versus “bottom—up” causality; design arguments and the origins of the universe in astronomy and creation; and God's action in the context of evolution and continuing creation. Areas of agreement and disagreement between Barbour and myself over philosophical and theological implications are presented, and endnotes indicate further areas of conversation.
The “Book of Nature” TraditionScience and the Prerequisites for the Possibility of SpiritualityIntroducing Science into SpiritualityThe Mathematical Laws of Nature and the Ascent to God as TranscendentThe Expanded Experience of Nature and the Immanence of God in the WorldScience and Creation ex nihiloQuantum Mechanics and Special RelativityBiological Evolution and God's Action as CreatorChristian Spirituality in Light of Humanity's Evolutionary OriginsThe Cosmological Far Future and the Experience of Resurrection FaithConclusion
“Religion and science” often is understood as being about the relationship between two given enterprises, religion and science. I argue that it is more accurate to understand religion and science in different contexts differently. (1) It serves as apologetics for science in a religious environment. As apologetics for technology the role of religion-and-science is more ambivalent, as competing and contrary responses to modern technology find articulation in religious terms. (2) In the political context of the modern university, some invoke religion-and-science in arguing for a place of theology alongside the sciences. In this context, secular studies of religion are a major challenge, which is hardly addressed. (3) Within the religious communities, religion-and-science is a battleground between revisionist and traditionalist ways of understanding religion.
The cosmic singularity provides negligible evidence for creation in the finite past, and hence theism. A physical theory might have no metric or multiple metrics, so a ‘beginning’ must involve a first moment, not just finite age. Whether one dismisses singularities or takes them seriously, physics licenses no first moment. The analogy between the Big Bang and stellar gravitational collapse indicates that a Creator is required in the first case only if a Destroyer is needed in the second. The need for and progress in quantum gravity and the underdetermination of theories by data make it difficult to take singularities seriously. The singularity exemplifies the sort of gap that is likely to be closed by scientific progress, obviating special divine action. The apparent irrelevance of cardinality to practices of counting infinite sets in classical field theory and Fourier analysis is noted.
Introduction
The Doctrine of Creation and Its Warrant
Cardinality and Sizes of Infinity
Modern Cosmology and Creation
Tolerance or Intolerance toward Singularities?
Leibniz against Incompetent Watchmaker?
Induction from Earlier Theories' Breakdown?
Stellar Collapse Implies Theistic Destroyer
Stacking the Deck for GTR
Quantum Gravity Tends to Resolve Singularities
Vicious God-of-the-Gaps Character
Fluctuating or Inaccessible Warrant
Big Bang Cosmology Not Especially Congenial to Faith
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.