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Miracles, physicalism, and the laws of nature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 May 2008

ROBERT A. LARMER
ROBERT A. LARMER
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, CanadaE3B 5A3
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Abstract

In his paper ‘Miracles: metaphysics, physics, and physicalism’,1 Kirk McDermid appears to have two primary goals. The first is to demonstrate that my account of how God might produce a miracle without violating any laws of nature is radically flawed. The second is to suggest two alternative accounts, one suitable for a deterministic world, one suitable for an indeterministic world, which allow for the occurrence of a miracle without violation of the laws of nature, yet do not suffer from the defects of what McDermid terms the ‘Larmerian’ model. I briefly describe my model, reply to McDermid's criticism of it, and evaluate his alternative accounts.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , June 2008 , pp. 149 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Cambridge University Press

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References

Notes

1. Kirk, McDermid ‘Miracles: metaphysics, physics, and physicalism’, Religious Studies, 44 (2008), 125–147Google Scholar. All in-text references are to this article.

2. Hume's use of the term ‘violation’ seems to have been influential in the adoption of this view. It is significant that almost all Hume's critics objected to his use of the term. See, for example, R. M. Burns The Great Debate on Miracles: From Joseph Glanvill to David Hume (London: Associated University Presses, 1981), 234–236.

3. See, for example, William, Alston ‘The place of the explanation of particular facts in science’, Philosophy of Science, 38 (1971), 17–24Google Scholar.

4. A possible objection that might be raised is that the experimental evidence that provides support for the claim that energy is conserved in an isolated system equally provides support for the claim that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. I discuss this objection at length elsewhere. In light of space considerations, I will confine myself in the present discussion to making the point that on this model accepting the occurrence of a miracle does not commit one to denying the vast body of experimental evidence supporting the conservation of energy in an isolated system.

5. McDermid adds the restriction that probability be given a frequentist, as opposed to propensity, interpretation; McDermid, ‘Miracles: metaphysics, physics, and physicalism’, 140.

6. John 6.1–26.

7. C. S. Lewis Miracles; A Preliminary Study (New York NY: Macmillan, 1947), 72.

8. Theists are generally agreed that such constant and unremitting intervention would be inconsistent with God's character and would undermine His achieving His purposes in creation.

9. More precisely, my point in the passage that McDermid references was that the claim that energy can neither be created nor destroyed amounts to asserting the truth of physicalism, which by definition rules out the possibility of miracles, since physicalism asserts that all causes are physical. Unless, therefore, good reasons are given for accepting this form of the principle of the conservation of energy, it begs the question to use it as an objection to belief in miracles.

10. McDermid suggests in an e-mail (15 June 2007) that, since God and his character are immanent in natural laws, that principles of divine restraint can be ‘translated’ into physical closure conditions. I resist such a ‘translation’ on the basis the God's purposes far exceed creating a causally closed physical universe.

11. The notion of a non-physical repository of matter seems a contradiction in terms. McDermid seems to reach the same conclusion when he writes that ‘by allowing conservation laws into the non-physical, one must first let in dynamical laws – and that appears to effectively make the formerly [presumed?] non-physical portion of the universe physical’. McDermid's mistake is his assumption that my model of miracle commits me to the existence of such a repository.

12. McDermid makes much of the fact that dynamical laws imply symmetries. This is true, but such symmetries are only implied in the absence of any intervening cause, that is to say in causally isolated systems.

13. I have discussed this issue at greater length in ‘Against “Against Miracles”’, in Robert Larmer (ed.) Questions of Miracle (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1996), 57–58.

14. Daniel Stoljar ‘Physicalism’, in Edward N. Zalta (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2005 edn), URL=http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2005/entries/physicalism/.

15. McDermid argues for this on the basis of his analogy that the difference between a well-shuffled deck of cards and one that is stacked is not readily apparent. The analogy is misleading. There is no causal connection between the numbering of the various cards, whereas there are causal connections between the various components of a physical microstate. Although the second law of thermodynamics is interpreted statistically, it would lead us to believe, to use McDermid's example, that even though we may not know the exact microstates of the Red Sea, that its parting is infinitesimally unlikely in the absence of some major intervening causal factor. It would thus seem that if that factor is taken to be physical it would be evident at the macroscopic level.

16. Jeffrey, Koperski, ‘God, chaos, and the quantum dice’, Zygon, 35 (2000), 557.Google Scholar

17. There are, as I have pointed out elsewhere, important connections between the mind–body problem and questions of how miracles might be conceived as occurring. See for example, my Water Into Wine? (Montreal: McGill-University Press, 1988), 24–25.

18. On Larmer's model, miracles can be seen as at least sometimes occurring in response to human's free choices. Thus, for example, before performing a miracle of healing Jesus asks a crippled man whether it is truly the man's desire to be made whole (John 5.5–9).

19. Lawrence Osborn ‘Theology and the new physics’, in Christopher Southgate (ed.) God, Humanity and the Cosmos (Harrisburg PA: Trinity Press International, 1999), 115.

20. John Polkinghorne Belief in God in an Age of Science (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 60.

21. Koperski ‘God, chaos, and the quantum dice’, 555–556.

22. Personal e-mail from McDermid to Larmer, 15 June 2007.