Images and Correspondences of God in Quantum Physics

Let us find what connections we can see between God and Quantum Nature. If we find some relation or correspondence between them, that should help us to understand both a little better.

We know there must be some connection, since the God is Life Itself, and hence the source of all the power and activity that we have. All spiritual, mental and physical things must depend on God for their sustained existence and capacities for action. That dependence is what theism asserts.

Let us now focus on the beginning and the end of the chain of being: God as the source and the physical world as the final effect. Let us omit the middle stages for now.

God, we should know from our religious background, is all of

1. a God of Love, 
2. a God of Wisdom, and 
3. a God of outreaching activity.  

The love of a being is its substance, so Love is the substance of God. There should be no surprise there.

Wisdom is concerns all true thoughts. Now thoughts are about the forms of things. To think of something is to consider by abstraction its structure and properties, and not to interact with it directly. God's wisdom is the source of all true thoughts, so we can think of divine wisdom as the complete set of true forms. But forms of what? Forms of some substance, of course. So, with God, wisdom is the form of divine love. 

Outreaching activity is the proceeding divine that created, sustains and enlivens the world. It is therefore somethings specific for each part of the world, and it enables us to make our own actions.

Quantum reality, we should know from our physics education or from our reading, concerns collections of things that have the following features:

1. some energy, comprised of kinetic and potential energy,
2. a wave function that spreads out with some form, following Shroedinger's equation, and 
3. some specific outcomes that result from measurements produced with some probability.

The energy of a quantum particle is represented mathematically by an operator called the Hamiltonian operator H(t) for that particle. The Hamiltonian usually has two terms: the kinetic energy term and the potential energy term. We assume (for simplicity now) that these are given.

The Shroedinger equation, namely

,

describes how the wave function  varies with time and space. Wave functions are mathematical objects, and are therefore forms. Forms of something, necessarily (since the physical world cannot be made just out of abstract forms), but forms of what?

The outcomes that result from measurements depend on probabilities calculated by the square-modulus of the wave function ||².    Wave functions therefore describe (by means of their square modulus) the propensities for specific outcomes.  The substance of whatever the wavefunctions describe is therefore that propensity. (Here the introduction to this kind of inference.) 

The measurements in quantum mechanics are not yet properly described in quantum mechanics.  That is why there are so many interpretations of quantum physics. Their common thread (in all except the many-worlds interpretation) is that measurement is some kind of selection between distinct outcomes. Measurement, then is the final act of the quantum world in the transition from a partially-determined future to a fully-determined past. I wrote a whole book about this process. 

Comparing God and Quantum Reality, we see some similarities:

1. Love is like the energy of a particle.
2. Wisdom is like the form of the propensity of the particle.
3. Measurements are the outreaching activity that are the final effects.

I am certainly not saying these are identities. Love is not energy, but like energy. Wisdom is not a spatiotemporal form, but like a form. The divine outreaching acts are not measurements, but are like measurements. All these 'likes' are because the divine elements and the physical elements function in similar ways. These functional similarities are called correspondences by Swedenborg, who has described them in more detail than I have found elsewhere. According to him, they arise because all things of creation, not just humans, are kinds of images of God.

You may have considered the deep conflict in quantum mechanics to be between 'waves' and 'particles'. Lee Woofenden recently, then, tried to find the divine correspondences of waves and particles. 

However, 'particles' never appeared in by description above.  Let me quote from my book:

One feature of the present account of substance is that [quantum] objects need not be located in small fixed volumes of space as, for example, the corpuscles or particles of classical physics would be. The propensity fields that have been defined do not need to have any special ‘center’ distinguishable from all the other places in the field. They may have no center at all that could be regarded as the ‘true substance’ whereby the surrounding field could be regarded as just the ‘sphere of influence’ of the central substance.

It is commonly believed by many physicists, that high energy scattering experiments allow us to conclude that fundamental particles like electrons, quarks, etc. are point particles, like real objects of zero size. However, this inference is incorrect. What the experiments show is that there is no lower limit to the size that the wave packet of an electron (for example) may be compressed. They never show that there is actually a point particle, as this would contradict the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle by requiring infinite energy to be used in producing it. Some other objects (e.g. atoms or nuclei) do have a lower limit of compression, and this is interpreted as arising from a composite internal structure. No matter how small we then compress the wave packet for an atom’s centre of mass motion, the atom as a whole cannot be made arbitrarily small. At all times, both fundamental particles and composite objects have some varying finite size that depends on time and circumstances and may be legitimately said to occupy the volume of this size in space. Whether they also fill that volume depends on the probabilities of interaction with instruments, which may be small or large and so are a matter of degree in a similar manner to the way that air ‘fills’ a room according to its pressure. 

A substance-field of propensities may have a variable spatial size. Sometimes it behaves more like a spread-out wave, and when at other times it interacts, it behaves like a localized particle. (Starting Science From God, pp. 47-48)

Stephen Barr on connecting God and the world

In my previous posts here and here, I discussed the position of catholic physicist Stephen Barr, starting from his article at First Things. He was advocating a view in which the influence of God on the world was confined to the 'deep principles' of physics.

The (unfortunate) consequences of this position for biology and evolution are now the subject of vigorous discussion at the blog Uncommon Descent, first here and now here. Barr wants to claim that scientific theories cannot confirm or deny the existence of purpose, and that any scientific theories (including materialism) which e.g. appear to deny purpose have to be reinterpreted. The trouble, then, is that the materialists would not even recognize their own theories any more.

In theistic science, by contrast, we explicitly make purpose an integral part of the operation of the universe. A universe, that is, which is not just material, but has also mental, spiritual and divine operations. According to theistic science, the grand claims of materialism are simply false. And hence also the exclusivity of natural selection in the production of biological creatures by means of (non-Darwinian) evolution. Only then can we have a proper causal account of how we have evolved. Being a causal account, we go further than activities investigating intelligent design, which deliberately refrain from examining the causes of design.

Why evolution is true (within theism)

There are many similarities of theistically-driven evolution with raising a family or raising democracy in a nation. We never begin from scratch. Sudden changes are rarely successful. Everyone must gradually develop his own character, as if from himself. Molecular designs will have been selected, not only for physical efficiency, but also, as we discussed, for their ability to receive theistic influx and so represent some small part of the human functional form in the mental and spiritual degrees. It may be that putative examples of ‘bad design’ have their good uses when the needs for reception are taken into account. We certainly cannot decide ‘good design’ on purely physical grounds since the overall purpose is always the coming into existence of human-like beings who are able to spiritually receive, retain, and delight in (and hence return) the love of God. When evolution comes to the spiritual stage where actions during the life have very long-lasting consequences, then phenomena of disease, predation, etc take on new importance and have to be managed to minimize their occurrence.

Many scientific investigations are still needed, even given the concept of theistically-driven evolution. We still have to understand the history of life on earth and the frequencies of genes in the various populations. We still have the problem of finding transitional species. Even in the hands-on limit, there must still be transitional forms between the main taxa of life in the various eras. There are the same needs here for evidence as in Darwinian evolution. The development of a new species may now seem easy to explain, perhaps too easy, but speciation is still a difficult process to understand and to accomplish. There must have been preparatory collection and harboring of new genetic information in the non-functional parts of existing genomes until these new sections could be activated together to give birth to a new species. How, given what we know of molecular genetics, could that have been managed?  And managed simultaneously in several creatures of a species (especially if there is sexual reproduction)?  Apart from that word ‘managed’, the questions of the continuous variations of genetic structures are very similar to those asked by Darwinian evolutionists. Therefore such research work is still needed.

The origin of life is still difficult to understand, even if now it is not so astronomically improbable as it would be according to a purely naturalistic account. We need to understand how the materials for life were assembled together into a form that keeps some perpetuating structure of its own. If you watch these materials in detail they will not follow exactly the laws of physics of inanimate bodies. Only the very simplest structures can be directly assembled (for reasons explained above). After the first assemblies, all else must follow by driving ‘behind the scenes’ to make these evolve gradually into new forms of life. The difficulties, even for God, of assembling organisms (as if from themselves) are sufficiently numerous that the idea that all the world’s creatures came from just one ancestor (‘universal common descent’) seems (to me) to be rather plausible. Whether it is also true must be the subject of scientific investigations, but, certainly, universal common descent cannot be used as distinguishing feature of only Darwin’s theory.

No Instant Adults in Theistically Driven Evolution

Many people wonder why God does not immediately create humans and other creatures, instead of going through the long-winded process of birth and growth. The earth has been the basis for life for a very long time, but the processes of making species, people, societies and democracies all seem to take longer than we think they should. The reason, according to theism, comes from the nature of God, as Life Itself. That life cannot be given immediately, but we have to grow a foundation which can receive, retain and reuse that life, if we are to be at all satisfied with living.

That is, God cannot create robust theistically-sustained organisms immediately. By ‘theistically sustained’, I mean like us (humans, animals, and plants), sustained by reception of all the discrete degrees of life according to theistic science. By robust, I mean organisms that can fend for themselves in the physical world. For this, the organisms must be sufficiently ‘thick skinned’, rather than ‘thin skinned’ and overly susceptible to contrary influences from outside. 

Suppose someone creates a new spiritual affection or a new mental idea. This can be done rather easily, and then we may have that affection or idea in our mind. But be careful, lest we forget it!  Forgetting can done even more easily than formation. Forgetfulness is common if we do not constantly pay attention and if we do not make some memory to remind us in the future. Memories make a permanent physical trace that is caused by the idea. New content in the mind is evanescent and disappears quickly if there is no physical effect either from producing an outward action or from an internal memory trace. This would not construct robust individuals with an apparent life of their own. To be created immediately like this is to have no ‘skin’ at all. A lack of skin is the condition which corresponds to having no physical basis for the permanence of one’s spiritual life.

Some religious people ask, but did not God create Adam rather quickly, and was he not a whole person?  In reply, I first note that I believe that the first 11 chapters of Genesis have only a meaning based on correspondences and not a literal or historical sense. Still, let us examine the story of the creation of Adam and Eve for its spiritual meaning. In that story, God did create Adam almost immediately. Adam (and Eve) were ‘very good’ and lived full of innocent, unashamed and wonderful love in the Garden of Eden. But look what happened next: there was a ‘fall’ within the first generation!  This was hardly a robust life. Adam and Eve were thin-skinned rather than thick-skinned individuals. And look what prompted their fall in this story: it was the desire of Eve to ‘be as gods, knowing good and evil’. To want to ‘be as a god’ is to fail to realize that one can not be a god. It is to argue from appearance and to forget that one has life only ‘as if’ from God. These newly created individuals lacked a robust intellectual discrimination concerning even a fundamental truth of theism. They were therefore easily led astray by superficial and erroneous conclusions.*

To create permanent and robust individuals, they must be developed so that, at every stage of their life, they are thick-skinned, which is to have a substantial history of physical actions in the past and mental and spiritual lives built on that. Since not even God can create history, this means that a longer and slower process of creation is needed if a race of people is to be developed who have fully-developed and long-lasting characters to be loved and to love in return.

The creation of such people must be gradual, by means of a series of beings that themselves have their own personal histories. The process may only start by some simpler physical action by God if one could be found that did not require a history of its own. Once such an ab initio physical event has occurred, all subsequent actions must be gradual and by means of successive modifications of what already exists. This is what we (should) call evolution. It is needed by God. Not Darwinian evolution of course, but something different that we might call theistically driven evolution, a subject for further discussion. There can be no immediate creation of new beings, neither plants, nor animals, nor humans. There are no instant adults. There can only be gradual internal modifications of already-existing beings. God has to be patient.

These arguments concerning biological evolution may hardly be widespread among religious people or theologians today, but surely they can see the same logic at work in the development of individual spiritual lives and in the creation of new religions or churches. When developing our spiritual life, God works with what we are and tries to improve that. Such changes cannot be sudden, or we would lose our sense of individual existence. That certainly could not be permitted. Some will argue that the influx of grace may have a sudden effect and that the creation of a new religion by revelation or incarnation is surely a sudden process. My answer is that gratuitous grace has indeed dramatic influence, but the real task of religion is afterwards, when we return to our original lives and diligently seek to modify our previous habits into the new pattern that was briefly glimpsed. With Paul, the well-known recipient of grace, the assimilation took more than ten years, probably fourteen years!  It is similar with new religions. Miracles do convert quickly. Jesus always asked beforehand whether the person was prepared: whether he or she ‘had faith’. That meant there would be some continuity even in these miraculous cases. It is well known that the receivers of a new religion are often recalcitrant in keeping their old rituals that are supposed to be given up. The greatest number of religious conversions are by assimilation rather than by replacement precisely because of the need for continuity in our most permanent biological and spiritual lives.

* Such superficial conclusions are those reached on the basis of only appearance and external knowledge and not on understanding or wisdom. To conclude on the basis of only appearance is to have eyes not looking up but only at ground level, like a snake.

 

We are connected with God, but we are not characters in God's novel

Continuing the previous discussion about how we have viewed, and should view, the relation between God and the world:

One view is that we are related to God as are the characters in a book to the Writer of the book.  Edward Feser, a new Aristotelean-Thomist philosopher, encourages us to use this metaphor:

On the classical theist conception of God, God is not one causal factor in the universe among others, not even an especially grand and powerful causal factor. He is not a “first” cause in the sense of being followed in a temporal series by a second cause, a third cause, a fourth cause, etc. Rather, He is “first” or primary in the sense of being the fundamental cause, the necessary precondition of there being any causality within the universe at all, just as the author of a story is the “first cause” of what happens in the story, not in the sense of generating effects in the way the characters and processes described in the story do, but rather in the sense of being the necessary precondition of there being any characters or processes in the story at all.

The same metaphor was developed at some length in the talk by physicist Stephen Barr at the 2012 Science and Faith Conference: "Can Science Inform Our Understanding of God?", the video for his talk being available on youtube. This metaphor of a Writer and his book characters has the virtue of emphasizing some of the great philosophical / ontological differences between us humans and God. God is (thereby) not just another person among us persons, or another object among the world's objects, but can be the necessary precondition for the existence of any of us persons or objects.

This Writer metaphor, however, has a serious defect, and one which I believe is fatal. This is that a writer can never love his characters in any manner which respects their freedom. And the characters can never love return love to God-as-writer in any way which gives delight to God. The ontological chasm between God and creation, having been made great, is now in fact too great to be bridged, even by love. Even God (who is love) cannot now make anyconjunction which should be of love.*

I wonder whether Thomas Aquinas has something to do with this separation. Was there something in his views which emphasizes separation rather than conjunction? I read more about Aquinas in an article by Elizabeth Johnson, for example:

One of the strengths of Aquinas's vision is the autonomy he grants to created existence through its participation in divine being. He is so convinced of the transcendent mystery of God (esse ipsum subsistens) and so clear about the sui generis way God continuously creates the world into being that he sees no threat to divinity in allowing creatures the fullest measure of agency according to their own nature. In fact, it is a measure of the creative power of God to raise up creatures who participate in divine being to such a degree that they are also creative and sustaining in their own right. A view to the contrary would diminish not only creatures but also their Creator: "to detract from the perfection of creatures is to detract from the perfection of divine power.'' (SCG 3.69.15) This is a genuinely noncompetitive view of God and the world. According to its dynamism, nearness to God and genuine creaturely autonomy grow in direct rather than inverse proportion. That is, God is not glorified by the diminishment of the creature but by the creature's flourishing in the fullness of its powers. The nature of created participation in divine being is such that it grants creatures their own integrity, without reserve.  

This participatory relationship has strong implications for the question of agency. The power of creaturely forces and agents to act and cause change in the world is a created participation in the uncreated power of the One who is pure act. Conversely, God's generous goodness and wisdom are seen especially in the creation of a world with its own innate agency.  

Admittedly her article comes from part of a polemic by the American Association for the Advancement of Science in their 'perspectives' about evolution, but I still believe what she says about Aquinas.

If so, then Aquinas has a serious problem in his theory. He wants to be "allowing creatures the fullest measure of agency according to their own nature". However, our agency requires us to have things which only God has: we need being, we need love, we need wisdom -- we need life in general. And God, in theism, is being itself, love itself, wisdom itself, and life itself. Aquinas does indeed recognize this about God: he acknowledges the 'aseity of God'. The word 'aseity' come from 'a se - ity', where 'a se' is latin for 'in itself'. But he does not acknowledge that we have to receive love, receive wisdom, receive life from God. This cannot be done arbitrarily 'at a distance', but must be done by the actions of God. And the actions of God require the presence of God. So it is certainly not the case that "nearness to God and genuine creaturely autonomy grow in direct rather than inverse proportion."

Aquinas seems to follow the traditional view of God creating the world, that is by fiat, taking literally the commands 'fiat lux: let there be light,' and so on. He, and other theologians since, have usually separated the question of how God sustains the existence of things from the question of their dynamical properties. These properties are taken to give rise to secondary causation, which is assumed to be independent of whatever primary causation there is from God.

The creation of substantial objects nevertheless involves God giving them their being (since he is being itself). There can be no power without substance nor without some kind of presence. It is impossible that God sustains merely the existences of things while at the same time remaining completely absent. In the theism of my book, the immanence of God, by which all things are sustained, is less an abstract  metaphysical principle and much more the immediate and mediate re-generation of life by continual influx from God. The sustaining of being by re-generation does allow this, as long as the beginning of the chain is in the presence of God.

The fact that God sustains all beings by such 'influx' can be the meaning of Matthew 5:45: "He ...  sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." Alternative imagery in the same verse refers to light rather than liquid flow: "He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good."

For more discussion of these things, and the broader picture, see www.beginningtheisticscience.com.

Law and Divine Intervention

It is assumed by many people that religion should become accommodated to modern science, and that the best that can be hoped for from theology is that we have evidence that God created the world, and that the governing constants of the physical world are ‘fine tuned’ to make life probable. On this basis, we hope that thereby we can come to know that ‘we are wanted’, and that there exists a ‘plan for our lives’. In such a theology, divine intervention into the world is not strictly necessary, and may indeed be said to be ‘poor management’: as if God could not have set up the world to behave properly in the first place. Such ‘modern believers’ may yet admit that miracles were ‘once’ necessary, for example at the beginning of their religion in order to convince by means of miracles, but that now ‘we are mature adults’ and so miracles are no longer necessary. Divine intervention does not occur ‘in modern times, so they can follow with a clear conscience the principles and findings of those sciences which specify the causal closure of the physical world. This amounts in practice to deism, as distinct from theism.

Such a view misses the point of creation. We are not made for God either to ‘intervene’ or ‘not intervene’ in the world, but for God to reside in the world. The physical world provides the overall framework in which God can place his life, in order to infill and enliven us with the life (spiritual and mental) that comes only from God. It is like asking a resident: are you going to intervene in your house, or not intervene? Or asking a person, are you going to intervene in the world around you, or not intervene. In theism, it is not a question of intervention, but of presence and residence. And what is residence and presence, but constant contact; and how can there be constant contact except by persistence and bilateral causal connections. The purpose of the world, in theism by comparison with deism, is not just that we are in God’s plan (which is a thought), but that we are present and enlivened by God’s love (which, we have seen, means a substantial presence, and reciprocal causation). Presence in reality, rather than only in thought, is an essential part of our whole dynamic ontology, where, as proposed on Chapter 3, we follow the Eleatic Principle: that existence should only be given to that which has causal power. We lose nothing by applying this also to the Divine. We only have to then to reconsider science at the same time as theology, as science (especially empirical science) is concerned with whatever has effects in the world.

The reciprocal causation in theism, I have explained, is not equal on both sides. Rather, it follows the generation + selection pattern described in my book: on the side of God, it is generation; and on our side, it is selection. The result of this asymmetric conjunction is yet to render a workable whole, and yields an effective bilateral cooperation between God and the world. In this bilateral cooperation, both sides have important roles to play. God’s role is to produce and govern all the loves and life that comes from him. Our role is to select by our actions those loves and life that we wish to see become permanent within our own persons. There are many intermediate stages in this process, as will be explored in the next Part IV.

In the meantime, we might reflect on the role of physical laws in describing the processes that occur in the physical world, and whether the actions of God in that world might not after all be described as ‘divine intervention’. Do occasional interventions ‘suspend’ or even ‘violate’ those laws of physics? Think, for example, of conservation of energy and momentum in closed systems. Are those conservation laws in fact broken by God when there occur what some would call miracles?

To answer this question, we have to note that the true law that governs the world of theism is one that describes the multiple generative levels that start from God, and eventually end up with the definite physical actions that beings perform in the world. Any so-called miracle that actually occurred or occurs must follow that true law. Anything that appears to be ‘inexplicably miraculous’ means that we do not understand the true laws of the universe, or the true intentions of the persons (including God) who may be acting within the structure of those laws. Even given that understanding, however, what we still might not understand would be the occasion or speed of operation of those laws.

The other remaining paradox, however, is that many people today believe in physical laws (such as the conservation of energy), since they appear to be held without exception. Much of modern science is built in the assumption that these laws hold universally and without exception, but, according to theism, this is not correct. Rather, these (apparently universal) laws are held only locally within those physical systems whose purpose within theism is to provide an overall container or enduring structure that can persistently select a rather complicated set of internal dispositions. In theism, therefore, we should expect that there are complex organic bodies with a large amount of ‘physical autonomy’. The bodies are never entirely autonomous within theism - only to a large part - but have the purpose of sustaining (by corresponding generation + selection relations) equally-complex internal mental and spiritual bodies. The existence and dynamics of these internal bodies will be discussed in Part IV. Each kind of body (physical, mental or spiritual) is nearly autonomous, and purely-physical laws are nearly but not completely universal: that is the pattern that should be expected within a theistic universe.


Slightly edited from Section 20.5 of my book Starting Science From God

The Pernicious Influence of Immanuel Kant

Here is a good critique of the influence of Immanuel Kant, from a Christian perspective. The errors are the same from any theistic perspective.

The article's conclusion section starts as

Kant posits three questions regarding the ultimate issues of life: “All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?” How a Christian answers these basic questions may serve as an aid in evaluating whether he is more influenced by Kant or Christ. With Kant there is no confidence in objective divine knowledge, no confidence in objective divine guidance or empowerment, and no confidence in objective hope. This stands in stark contrast to those under the influence of Christ who brings confidence in objective divine truth to discover and grow in, confidence in objective divine knowledge and empowerment “to do” (Rom. 7:23), and confidence in divine hope. In fact, Christ is the Blessed Hope (Titus 2:13). Only Christ promises objective truth, enablement, and hope. All Kant offers is doubt and agnosticism which precludes confidence in the arguments of natural revelation or confidence in special revelation. What hope can there be when such revelation is precluded by Kant? What cure could possibly exist for an agnostic who precludes really gaining objective knowledge and truth in natural theology or sacred theology? What a useless and protracted “Kantian revolution”!

God does not support the world only by physical laws

It is generally agreed that, according to theism, God has not only created the world, but also sustains it in its day-to-day operation. If God stopped sustaining the universe, then everything in it would immediately cease to exist. Such a view can be contrasted with deism, whereby God was only the creator of the world, and has no further part or role in its existence or operation. In deism, the world must have within itself its continued principles of being. Both those views, of course, are to be distinguished with a-theism, which is like deism only without God: there is only the world continuing to  exist independently.   Note, finally, that all the above views are compatible with both universe and multi-verse theories of the world: we simply take 'the world' to refer to everything that exists.

We can order these views as theism -- deism -- atheism, with progressively fewer roles for God. In the last atheist view, there is no role. Theism is the opposite: that God is the direct or indirect source for actual causes in the world.

It is claimed often that modern science supports the view that the world (universe, multiverse, or whatever) exists in a self-sustaining manner, and has no causal input from outside it. That is to claim that scientific evidence supports the causal closure of the world. In that case, there are apparently no effects of God, and hence divine existence is unnecessary.

Some scientists with religious inclinations, and those desiring to see how the existence of God may be compatible with the supposed scientific evidence, insist that God still has a role. Namely, God is responsible for the laws of nature, and hence that God sustains the world by means of those laws. This view is essentially deism, but in popular culture the application of this theory to evolution has been called 'theistic evolution'. Under that name it has been supported by prominent scientists such as Francis Collins, Francisco Ayala and Stephen Barr. It is often taken as originating with Kepler, though in later posts we will investigate some earlier roots.

The laws of nature in modern physics are often essentially characterized in terms of their symmetries. These are the reflections/rotations/dilations that are allowed at the deepest level. More precisely, it is the 'underlying group structure' of the fundamental forces / fields / strings that is used to describe and distinguish different theories. Superstring theory is essentially the adoption of a particular set of fundamental symmetries at some deep level, though not at those levels we see with our eyes.

 

If God only sustains the world by means of natural laws, and these laws are only strict at some deep level, then it suggest a slightly more active role for God than in deism. But is it enough for theism?  Stephen Barr wrote along these lines in his First Things article "Fearful Symmetries" last year. He sees God essentially as producing the "great thought" that describes the deep symmetries, and hence sustains our world. This account enables him to continue as a mathematical physicist, and investigate these symmetries and these laws. However, it has particular consequences that hardly allow it to qualify as a theism.

The main consequence -- one Barr endorses completely -- is that "the world we experience is the result of processes that move upward". By 'upward', he means upward from the laws of physics to the evolutionary processes that produce living and then thinking creatures. These are just the processes that atheists point to, and he agrees that "that history--of matter self-organizing and physical structures growing in complexity--is correct as far as it goes."

Barr's view implies that all biological and mental processes are 'matter self-organizing', and can therefore be reduced to physical laws. The divinely-produced physical laws, he may insist, but physical laws nonetheless. There is nothing special in the human mind (if such minds are allowed at all to exist as minds) that allows humans to spiritually approach God in love, or even to think rationally. He might be reluctant to accept that conclusion, but that is the one that follows from his premises. He might seek endlessly for an account of 'non-reductive physicalism' for the mind, but, I believe, he will eventually fail.

The reason for this failure is that, in a proper theism, God enters into human life by means of spiritual and mental processes, and that God has causal effects in our spirits, minds, and hence also in our physical bodies. This is necessary not just for religious experiences, but also for day-to-day operations within us. In a fully fledged theism, the world is not causally closed, because it is open to God. 

Stephen Barr is reluctant to allow this openness to God to affect his science. He wants to keep some deep rationality of physics as the dwelling place of God in the world, rather than in the souls / minds / body complexes that make up humans (and other living creatures that might be sufficiently similar).

Part of this reluctance stems from a desire to follow the so-called theistic evolution theory (more accurately called 'deistic evolution' as I explained above), and to not allow the possibility of intelligent design. To allow divine input into specific creatures appears to unacceptably 'violate' the purity of his deep rationality, and remove from his mind the firm basis of natural laws at the physical level. 

Allowing divine input into the world, and allowing for causal laws that are not purely physical, is the task of the theistic science to come. For that, see the new book at www.beginningtheisticscience.com.

What can be evidence for theism?

Sometimes it is claimed that we cannot have any evidence for God. We cannot, they say, put God in a test tube, or examine him under a microscope!

Our discussion within theism will focus on the features of God that are dynamic and therefore have an effect on the world. So I reply to the claims above: are you sure that God is not in the test tube, and that is he is not in the space under the microscope? Are you claiming that the omnipresent God is everywhere in the universe, but not there?

More seriously concerning theology: for God to make a world that functions within theism, then not to leave any evidence about where to find him at all would be pointless, since God is the source of all intellectual discernment and love. If he had everything that we need, and wanted to give it to us, but gave us no way to find him, would be self-defeating! Moreover, if you want to talk about purpose: our purpose is the receive that love and discernment from God. It is certainly not a purpose independent of God.

If God is to make any practical difference, it must be possible for the divine to have effects in the natural word, and those effects must be able to be examined by scientists. If an angel appeared to heal the sick, then science should be able to investigate it rigorously. The above skeptics go on to argue that since such angels never appear, the theistic predictions fail and therefore theism should be rejected. I respond by arguing that theism was most often not correctly understood, and so the predictions were not correctly made. I will present new predictions for confirmation or falsification.

An important point is that 'evidence' only means something if we know how to interpret it, and that requires some prior theory to get us started. So I think there is lots of evidence for theism, but, because of our previous theories, we do not recognize that evidence. This kind of ambiguity means that it is not 'direct evidence' and certainly not 'proof', but that is never obtained in science anyway.

For example, I show in my book that theism, if that theory is understood as I recommend, leads to predictions that we have minds. And minds with desires and thoughts. Minds with all sorts of interesting internal structures and functions.

I suppose you never considered that the mere fact of having a mind was evidence for anything. That is because your theory never predicted it! So I certainly do not believe that God and evidence for God is necessarily hidden. We just have to look in the right way. "He who has eyes, ...".

Theism mostly operates by giving capacities and dispositions to physical, mental and spiritual things that would never be expected on the basis of the plain constituents of those things and their properties. These are the predictions that I try to show in detail.

When it comes to testing more detailed predictions, therefore, we have to test the behavior of things, to see if their response can be entirely explained in terms of the constituent parts. This is a kind of 'emergence' theory, but on a proper ontological basis with new capacities and powers. It is not just trying to see the collection of parts under a new description of the whole.
Trying to see the direct actions of God in the world is extraordinarily difficult. Not impossible, but not easy. That is because very many of his actions are delegated to intermediate spiritual, mental and physical levels as I try to explain. Of course, the very capacities of those levels depends on God, but the evidence for those capacities is then one more step removed from God. The direct evidence is primarily the existence of those levels in the first place.

I agree that this requires us to somewhat rework the 'scientific framework', but that is not impossible. It has happened before. Whether the existing practitioners will allow us to change slightly the rules of the game is what we will find out. What I'm doing is to at least make a definite theory which could be taken scientifically.

How can we distinguish between divine and human actions in the world?

Let me give a short answer presupposing the ontological framework of theistic science described in my book: it does not stand alone. I will also try to answer the question without using the word 'good' (though, if I could, the answer would be a little simpler). I will take the question as referring mainly to our own actions: trying to separate what is from ourselves from what comes from God.


There are 4 kinds of actions that should be distinguished here:

1. actions by God directly, such as creating, visiting, etc
2. actions done by God, by means of us.
3. actions done by us, with concurrence by God.
4. actions done by us, with permission from God but not initiation.

One purpose of my book is to show how the kind 4 can exist: we can redirect loves and dispositions from God to our own purposes quite distinct from his.
The challenge is to distinguish kinds 2 and 3. In general we only begin to distinguish them after the fact. That is because, during their operation, we tend to interfere if we see what is really happening.


The kind 2 requires no interference: we have to be almost distracted or looking the other way; at least with no self-consciousness. We still feel the delights soon afterwards, though. If we interpose our own ego, then actions get contaminated to some extent. For this kind, we will have to have previously 'cleaned the inside of the cup' by avoiding temptations and the later the desire for what was tempting.


Kind 3 is when our egos are still partially involved. That is the case for most of us on the path. In this case we ask for grace, and try to make way for it when it arrives. The actions will still be ego-connected, but, we pray, not too much.


This is necessarily a very brief summary of some different kinds of spiritual development, as we learn to turn away from selfishness. Some people, of course, would deny the very existence of these things. That is why my book deals mostly with ontology--what exists--rather than what we should be doing. In practice, of course, there are in us many desires pointing in various directions, and many partial insights that inform us of some of these directions. When it comes to actions by other people, it is more difficult again to tell.


As we all realize, distinguishing these aspects should be part of ongoing reflection about our own lives. For both theoretical and practical reasons.