I understand that much, Scott. What I'm worried about is that if we accept that science can have knowledge at the level of the cosmos, and that does seem to be the claim of scientific cosmoloy, then we have to accept that God's changes (increases? since 'input' is clearly wrong) in the system are at the very least so insignificant that they have no generally detectable impact on our ability to predict and model at a universal level. That doesn't exclude initial creation, but it does seem to me to entail that God's changes in the universe must be quite small, since if god were *generally* changing how things go then cosmology would have no uniform development to look at.

Last edited by iwpoe (8/18/2015 6:14 pm)

iwpoe wrote:

Well, if God is getting things done doesn't that ential an energy input into the system? If God brings it about that anything comes into the universe, moves, or changes isn't that an increase or decrease or energy in the system? Or am I thinking about that badly? I'm not used to thinking about God's actions *and* physics.

No, I don't think you're thinking about anything badly. William of Ockham struggled with problems like these[1]. He felt that if all causes necessarily brought about their effects, this would lock God out of the created order, and severely limit His freedom. The problem led Ockham to distinguish between potentia ordinata and potentia absoluta and posit that every cause brings about its effect only contingently[2].

As to the matter at hand, I think we can start by limiting the problem to certain kinds of change. For instance, transubstantiation involves a change of the substance of the bread, but not a physical change. Since transubstantiation doesn't bring about a physical change, it's hard to see how it would entail any addition of energy into the system. So it's only certain kinds of God-caused change that present even an apparent problem. 

In addition, insofar as God is the terminus of all per se causal series and has always conserved everything in existence, it's also possible any energy God's causings in per se series puts into the system would simply have always been in the system. 

But even this may concede too much. It may be good to draw a distinction between physical causation and causation simpliciter. For example, it may be true that every physical cause involves an increase or decrease in energy, but there's no prima facie reason to hold that every cause needs to involve transfers of energy. In fact, when God annihilates something He sustained in existence, He causes it to go out of existence without removing any energy from the system (and we all accept that some things go out of existence). 

I apologize in advance for any typos. I had to write quickly.  


[1]In fact, instead of the usual proto-Humean reading, I think Ockham is best read as someone trying to protect Divine Freedom, partly as a result of certain heresies during his time. I would say he was too successful (and the nominalism was unfortunate).
[2]This doesn't mean to imply that God has potencies or two separate powers. Rather, it means that God doing something is sometimes to be understood according to the laws ordained and instituted by God—potentia ordinata. But it can also be understood another way; that God can do anything that does not involve a contradiction, whether this is in accordance with the ordinary (usual) laws established by God or not. Ockham called this potentia absoluta. While the distinction is illustrative, I think Thomists can skip all this extra lingo and just talk about a difference between God acting through secondary causation and God acting directly through primary causation.
[3]It may also be worth asking whether universal conservation is indispensable (rather than merely useful) to our best scientific theories. If not, then there's no problem. I'll leave that for any physicists hanging around.

Last edited by John West (8/18/2015 7:20 pm)

iwpoe wrote:

If I'm a scientist, given that God *can* act to intervene, do I have any warrant to suppose before I go on any research program that God permits things to operate generally in a law-like manner[?]

Why do you need any? Start your research program and see whether you find any lawlike behavior.

iwpoe wrote:

Maybe I'm asking if there's something about God's nature that we can know which will warrant the belief that God will have the world operate in a law like manner.

Well, I've already mentioned that a lawlike world would be needed as "background" in order for miracles to have any probative force, and I'm sure we could adduce other considerations as well.

But let me instead ask why this sort of concern leaves us any worse off than the a- or non-theistic scientist. If scientific laws are strictly empirical generalizations, then an exception can turn up at any time, and we have (so it seems to me) a good deal less reason to expect that they won't than we do in an intelligible universe created and sustained by a single cosmic Intelligence.

Last edited by Scott (8/18/2015 6:52 pm)

iwpoe wrote:

Because they're supposed to have universal application, as I understand it.

Any law your research program discovers will have universal application if it's properly formulated. The conditions under which the law holds are part of the law. (If you don't know all the conditions, then you don't know the full law, that's all.) And if one of those conditions is the absence of divine intervention (as it surely is even on an a- or non-theistic worldview; on that view, the condition is just always realized), then divine intervention doesn't make the law not "apply," any more than not having a closed system makes a conservation law not "apply." The conservation law itself is logically of the form If a system is closed, then . . .

It's true that in a manner of speaking we can say something like The law doesn't apply in this case, but what we really mean is that the conditions of the law aren't realized or that the "law" isn't the genuine law at all, not that the real law itself is false in this instance. If it turned out that the gravitational "constant" in Newton's famous equation actually varied throughout the physical universe, then our ordinary "law" of gravitation would be a local approximation. We might say it didn't "apply" everywhere, but what we'd mean is that the approximation wasn't universally valid, not that the actual law wasn't.

iwpoe wrote:

One cannot possibly check that the laws are working everywhere in all places at all times, and, indeed, we use them to predict things about places we can't observe directly. That seems a hefty thing to ever do or believe particularly if you think, ahead of time, that it's really possible that laws not apply universally.

I still don't see why this is a special problem for theists. On what possible basis could a scientistic naturalist expect that no exceptions could ever be found to any proposed "law" (or, more precisely, that we'd discovered all the conditions necessary for a law, in the sense already discussed, to "apply," and that we knew where they obtained and where they didn't)?

iwpoe wrote:

I guess I'm fretting because I was always taught scientific laws by scientific people *as if* they weren't empirical generalizations and were, instead, necessary and universal. If you think *that* [it] does seem strange to also hold that they, at any time and place we know not why, go out of effect.

Well, your earlier concern, as I understood it, was whether you lose (e.g.) cosmology as genuine knowledge by arguing for classical theism. I think the answer is no, and in fact I think classical theism provides a better foundation for lawlike behavior than naturalism does.

The question to ask at this point is probably why, and in what sense, a scientistic naturalist thinks scientific laws are "necessary." ("Universal" we covered above.) The law of gravitation certainly doesn't seem to have the self-evidence of the principle of noncontradiction or the logical necessity of "2 + 2 = 4."

Last edited by Scott (8/18/2015 8:59 pm)

Alexander wrote:

And your attitude is precisely why many scientists dislike "superior" philosophers.

I was under the impression that truth mattered. Instead, it seems now that like and dislike matter more.

Alexander wrote:

When there is so much disagreement among philosophers about what the "certain" metaphysical results are, ...

When there's so little knowledge among scientists about what makes up the universe (4.9 percent by their own calculations) and even what the universe is...