It is not unlike the story of Joseph. His father’s partiality and Joseph’s dreams were not causally connected, as far as science can detect, to his saving his family from a widespread regional famine.
I suppose that because of God’s sovereignty, omnipotence, omnipresence, and because he seems deeply invested in the universe. It doesn’t seem like, to me, that initial creation was God’s only act. I don’t think it makes sense to say that every event is a miracle, otherwise the term “miracle” loses all meaning. I believe that’s why people distinguish between providence and miracle. In an ultimate sense of cause it may always go back to God, but his action may be varyingly mediated by “ordinary means”. Are ordinary means a description of God’s constancy in action or of his “letting go”? I don’t know.
Nope.
Not necessarily. Take for instance the conservation of energy, that the total energy of an isolated system is constant. We might simply say the universe is not isolated, and therefore conservation is not violated. Or perhaps God converted some energy from another object to give the object in question a push. Conservation of momentum applies to closed systems, with no external force, obviously it wouldn’t apply to this situation. Almost all of the physical laws I can think of are limited in scope (isolated or closed systems) or defined in the absence of external interference (like the conservation of momentum). Those limits are intentional because it allows us to focus on the system of interest. I’m not aware of any law that stipulated that external forces don’t exist or that the universe must be physically isolated. They simply state the behavior is observed under what conditions of the system.
Yes, I think it would be a miracle, though it may not violate any physical laws and so it may not be detectable as such. My understanding is that universal physical causation (materialism/naturalism) is a philosophical position (and a generally useful one for science), but it is not a scientific law that I’m aware of.
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That I didn’t answer doesn’t mean that I can’t. The Earth is a sphere. Think about it.
Speaking of analogy fails.
My view of nature is that it always involves divine activity, not that it always involves divine intervention. It is possible to hold that God sustains everything that happens, while maintaining that God is not a cause of everything that happens.
I reject the natural/supernatural distinction entirely. I think it only serves as to artificially separate god beings from physical reality. If God exists, then he exists in a way that is consonant with physical reality, not categorically separated from it.
So, natural laws are descriptions of how things normally occur, subject to interference by other factors. Is that right? If so, I am on board with this.
It is relevant - it’s distinguishing between different kinds of divine activity. In some sense, everything is a miracle in (with respect to this conversation) this non-interesting sense, but this miraculous activity is qualitatively different to the miraculous activity that occurs when someone is raised from the dead. It’s to this latter I am referring and to which we are talking about.
I think it is better to distinguish between these activities as per Jordans suggestion with Providence, but I just wanted to emphasise the intimate connection God has with nature on an ongoing basis - at least in my view.
Not intervention. In my view, God is essentially a part of the order of the universe. Things that are in order do not require intervention.
You’re importing a Humean understanding in this conversation of miracles. Hume was not just arguing that there can be no evidence of miracles, he was also asserting particular definitions of miracles as violations of the natural law. This was essential to his argument that there can be no evidence.
Such conceptions of miracles are a part of his failure - the notion of a miracle does not necessitate a violation. Maybe some do - but it doesn’t seem to me that there are good reasons to think that some miracle couldn’t be consistent with the laws of nature, particularly given that God is intimately connected to the natural order of things.
Remember, this whole bend in the conversation started with you objecting to the idea that God can act without violating the laws of nature.
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I would add that as scientists we should expect to find conditions that violate known laws if we strive for progress in our understanding of the universe.
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Analogous to Einstein and relativity ‘violating’ Newtonian physics, and QM ‘violating’ wave-particle physics?
The weasel-words “as far as science can detect” destroy the meaning of the first part of that sentence, leaving nothing. It’s really impossible to have any sort of discussion with you.
I don’t see why anything you say above require the universe to disappear. It doesn’t make sense to suppose that every event is a miracle, but that’s where this reasoning leads, which suggests to me that there’s a problem with it. And we still have not been able to find an actual difference between providence and miracle. What does “varyingly mediated by ordinary means” mean?
I would consider intervention from outside the universe to be a violation of the laws of that universe. And conservation of momentum is not stated in terms of closed systems anyway.
Would you agree that there’s a difference between “doesn’t violate physical laws” and “is not detectable as such”? I don’t want to contend about the latter, as I don’t think detectability is relevant. And I think a force with no physical cause does indeed violate physical law.
No, I don’t think it actually is possible. Nor do I know the difference between divine activity and divine intervention.
I’m unable to interpret that sentence.
I don’t know what that means either. What is this interference? What are these other factors?
I can’t see that there are any such different kinds. What is the difference?
Again, what does that mean?
Right. And I do not understand your claim that he can, or how that would logically work. And I still don’t see how Hume or refutations of Hume are relevant.
Once more, why would that be relevant?
Thank you for consistently showing your true colors. I wasn’t weaseling about anything. If you, who do not believe in God nor anything ‘supernatural’ have a better way of saying it without it being a stark non sequitur or oxymoron, given where you’re coming from, go for it.
Cue the irony music.
A better way of saying what? What you said is literally nonsense, but if that’s not what you intended I don’t know what you did intend, so can’t suggest an alternate phrasing.
I don’t either. I wasn’t trying to justify, just offer a possible explanation.
Meaning God could create a human out of dust in front of a huge audience, or, he could nudge a cytosine to replace a thymine somewhere in deep time. The first would seem obviously to be a miracle because it is a huge intervention and break with the ordinary way that humans come to be. The second would be hard (impossible) to tell for sure and would be open to interpretation because of course T->C has some probability of occurring anyway. Some people might call it providence, some might call it a miracle, and some will just call it random. This is perhaps where God-guided evolution may find it’s place for the Christian.
Fine, but you aren’t getting that from the laws themselves, that I can tell. The laws don’t say the universe is isolated or closed, they only say for an isolated or closed system this is how we expect matter and energy to behave, because that’s the way we have always seen it.
From Wikipedia:
In a closed system (one that does not exchange any matter with its surroundings and is not acted on by external forces) the total momentum is constant. This fact, known as the law of conservation of momentum , is implied by Newton’s laws of motion
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I apologize for replying in kind. That is not who I want to be.
That makes perfect sense to anyone who acknowledges the possible existence of the immaterial, who allows that there may be supernatural causality, whatever that means and however it works, but it will not compute to anyone who rigidly disallows everything but the material.
I haven’t gotten to read all of the thread, so forgive me if this has already been responded to. God’s will must be continuously applied for Creation to continue to exist. In this way God is ever present in his Creation.
Question and answer 27 of the Heidelberg Catechism expound on Hebrews 1:3, noting that providence includes God’s upholding “heaven and earth and all creatures.” John Calvin writes, “All things would instantly come to nothing, were they not sustained by his power.”
It should be noted that this idea is agreed to be the Catholic Catechism.
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It doesn’t seem like an explanation to me.
I don’t think that our ability to tell whether or not it was a miracle should be a criterion for it being or not being a miracle.
I know what the people who call it a miracle mean, but I don’t know what the people who call it providence mean. And the people who call it random, in your scenario, would just be wrong.
I have to disagree. If the universe can be an undetectably open system at any time, none of those conservation laws means anything. And if we add God to the system, is it your claim that energy and momentum are conserved?
I stand corrected.
You do that a lot. If you simultaneously apologize and accuse me, it’s not a real apology. FYI.
You have completely missed the point. The reason it makes no sense is that detectability has nothing to do with whether events are independent. A miracle is a miracle whether or not anyone can tell. And note that you have once more insulted me, right after having “apologized”.
I’m just trying to pragmatically look at it. If I can’t tell the difference from scientific evidence then it seems like we’d need other criteria (faith, non-faith, Occam’s razor, etc.) to make an educated guess.
I’m interested in that as well. I don’t normally use the word, and I’m not a theologian so I’m not offering expert opinion, just trying to talk through how I think about it and how it seems to be generally defined (dictionary, wikipedia).
I’ve taught the laws of thermodynamics at the freshman and upper-division undergraduate level for 8 years now, and pretty much that’s how it works. The 1st Law (Conservation of Energy) is defined for a system of interest (a chemical reaction, or a block of metal, or an engine) and is expressed as \Delta E = q + w for a closed system (no transfer of matter transfer in or out of the system) where q is the heat energy transferred in or out and w is the work done to or by the system. For an isolated system, the 1st Law says \Delta E = 0 since, by definition, no heat energy can be transferred and no work can be done. Because the 1st Law focuses on the system and not the surroundings, whether God is or is not part of the surroundings doesn’t affect it.
Similarly, Conservation of Momentum applies to isolated systems where the net force doesn’t change. If there is a net force, there is no conservation of momentum: F = \frac{dp}{dt} .
Both of these physical laws (Conservation of Energy and Conservation of Momentum) are just as valid and useful whether the universe is an open or closed system. In fact, chemists and physicists know that these laws have to be used with their limitations (we don’t have truly isolated systems, etc.) and they are still useful for deriving other relationships.
I’m saying that we could simply add God’s “intervention” as an external force or source of energy and no physical laws are violated. I’m not suggesting that we could identify the unknown force/energy source as God via science, only that no physics I know of would not be violated.
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What reasons do you give for thinking this is not possible?
You’ve now been provided a couple of ways of thinking about the difference between Gods active, sustaining presence and direct actions. Feel free to ask more specific questions if you still don’t understand, or otherwise there are plenty of books fleshing out Gods providence and sovereignty.
Not sure why consonant was put there. It was meant to say consistent.
I see no good reason why we should think of God as being separated into some supernatural realm that is devoid of any connection to the physical world. It’s one thing to say that his existence is different to ours, it’s another entirely to say that this different existence means he must be relegated to some dimension not so unlike DC’s Phantom Zone.
Refer to Hebrews 1:3, 1 Col 17, or the Catholic Catechism referenced by @Rich_Hampton Effectively, the God of Classical Theism is the force of existence itself. As the foundation of reality, nothing could possibly exist apart from this foundation.
That the existence of all things is necessarily grounded in God does not require him to perform any particular action beyond simply having some sort of will or intention that the universe continue to exist.
A crude analogy, but lets think of a person holding a trigger detonated bomb, with his thumb pressed down on the detonator. If he releases his thumb, the bomb explodes. Only, doing so will destroy everything that possibly exists. The person holding his thumb on the button does not ever get tired - so the only real risk of everything coming to an end is if this person decides he no longer cares for anything to continue existing. So long as there is a reason for him not to want everything to end, he will effortlessly keep his finger on the button.
We might extend this to say that, the way that everything came to exist in the first place was by the very act of this person pressing the down the detonator button. In this respect, this person is responsible for performing an action that brought everything into existence (pressing his finger on the detonator button), and remains responsible for keeping it that way without having to do anymore than simply not moving his finger off the button (which is not an action).
This doesn’t preclude that person from performing other actions with his other limbs, some of which we might refer to as miracles.
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