Rob Sheldon: If you want laws of nature, you must accept miracles

_{Denyse O'Leary

October 20, 2018

Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Philosophy, Religion, Science}

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Christ Healing the Blind, El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos) (Greek, IrÃ¡klion (Candia) 1540/41â 1614 Toledo), Oil on canvas — Christ healing the blind/El Greco, 1570

And Christianity too, says our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon. He explains:

Proposition: Miracles are violations of natural law.

1. What is natural law; Who invented it? Who enforces it? Who interprets it?

a) One argument is that natural law is merely inductive. The sun has risen daily for the past 5000 years of written history, therefore it is a law. But if it did not rise tomorrow, that would only be a 1/1,800,000 event. Are we saying that probabilities < 1:1,800,000 are always certain? Then certain rare forms of cancer should certainly never happen.

b) Another argument is that “Nature” operates by laws that we discover. But what is “Nature”? How do we meet “Nature”? If it is inductive, then see above. Or are laws of nature given by some authority; is “Nature” God? If so, then the whole idea of “miracle” is moot—everything is a miracle.

c) Another argument is that Laws of Nature are an intersection of math and symmetry, of logic and substance. For example, three-dimensional space permits the tying of knots, whereas 1, 2, and 4-dimensional space does not. Therefore knots are a consequence of math convolved with the geometry of the spacetime we live in; likewise laws of nature are similarly constructed. But if so, then miracles might simply be higher dimensions (your favorite string theorist’s compactified dimensions) impinging on our reality. This is the view, for example, that Edward Abbot and Hugh Ross popularize.

I conclude that there is no unique way to characterize laws of nature that eliminates the existence of miracles.

2. But we can argue the conclusion the other direction. Pick your favorite religion, be it atheism/materialism or deism or Islam or Hinduism/pantheism or Christianity. All but Christianity deny the existence of laws of Nature. Without laws of Nature, there cannot be miracles. So if you want Laws of Nature, you must also accept miracles. Here are some examples (following Stanley Jaki‘s argument):

a) Atheism/Materialism. Alvin Plantinga has done a nice job showing that the assumptions of materialism are inconsistent with the belief in materialism (ie. anti-miracles). Likewise, Hume has done a nice job showing that the assumptions of materialism are inconsistent with laws of nature. I believe Nancy Cartwright presents a modern argument for this.

b) Islam assumes a super-transcendent creator who is completely unlimited in power and authority. Therefore the Creator neither needs nor obeys laws of Nature. Accordingly, when something happens, God did it and doesn’t have to obey any other rule. Laws of nature would be a diminution of his power and therefore cannot exist.

c) Hinduism assumes an immanent creator who lives inside time just as we do. He cannot know the future, and therefore is just as much a victim of time and entropy as we are. Because there is nothing more permanent than the creator, laws of nature must change with time and vicissitudes of life. Because a changeable law is not the same as a scientific Law of Nature, so there can be no universal “rules” or mathematical laws of nature.

d) Deism assumes a super-transcendent creator who creates a machinery of laws to represent his will in the world. Thus we talk about the clockmaker and his clock. Because the “laws of nature” are a clock, they cannot be broken without breaking the will of the Creator and thus there are no miracles. But in such a deterministic world, we don’t have independence of thought, belief or consciousness, and we are right back to the materialist dilemma of a). Alternatively, we might think that the Deist creator can repair the clock, but then we still have the options b) or c) to deal with.

e) Christianity. Only in Christianity is there a possibility of a transcendent Creator who nonetheless submits to becoming a part of his creation. The incarnation without diminution of divinity is only possible in a Trinitarian framework. Only Christ can span the gulf between the transcendent and the immanent, which is precisely where science rests—midway between theory and experiment, between dogmatism and pragmatism, between logic and recipes. Therefore only in Christianity are there Laws of Nature. And just as necessary as Laws of Nature is the ability for God to intervene (or else we would be back to d), and therefore miracles are equally necessary (not just possible.)

Bottom line: If you want Laws of Nature, then you must also accept Christianity and miracles.

And that’s why these apologetic arguments make me dizzy.

—

Over to you, readers.

The Long Ascent: Genesis 1â 11 in Science & Myth, Volume 1 by [Sheldon, Robert] Rob Sheldon is author of Genesis: The Long Ascent

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See also: Rob Sheldon on why so many sciences seem to be devolving – not just social sciences

Comments

Per daveS at 7:
“IF YOU DON’T WANT GOD, YOU’D BETTER HAVE A MULTIVERSE” https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2008/11/a-universe-built-for-us/ Bernard Carr, cosmologist at Queen Mary University of London, told Discover, “If there is only one universe, you might have to have a fine-tuner. If you don’t want God, you’d better have a multiverse.”1 https://www.icr.org/article/4295/
bornagain77_{October 21, 2018
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nmdaveS_{October 21, 2018
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With concise, irrefutable logic, Rob Sheldon ends the debate forever and atheists everywhere give up and convert to Catholicism. Where has this guy been all these years? By his bizarre reasoning, absolutely no one could accept that nature had laws before Jesus walked the earth. This is about as useful as evolutionary psychology.OldAndrew_{October 21, 2018
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I agree with Dave's disclaimer. I also think that the idea of "complete randomness" meaning things out of the set of all possible things just popping into and out of existence all the time, with no connection to anything else, is a ludicrous and silly thing to even think about. Randomness is only meaningfully defined in respect to a set of possible outcomes within an ordered set of some kind. And where did Hume argue that "Mathematically speaking, we should expect everything to be random chaos and all observations of order to be accidental." That sentence doesn't make sense to me.jdk_{October 21, 2018
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EricMH,
Mathematically speaking, we should expect everything to be random chaos and all observations of order to be accidental, as Hume argued.
That argument is sometimes made here, but I have trouble even picturing what this random chaos would look like. I guess it would involve bits of matter flying erratically through space, with particles spontaneously appearing then vanishing? Perhaps someone could upload a video simulation. My first thought on witnessing such a thing would be "what is the source of all this complexity (in the Kolmogorov sense, I guess)?" Therefore I conclude that an undesigned universe is just as likely to be a boring, deterministic one that could be completely described by its state at a single point in time. Disclaimer: I don't find any of this reasoning about hypothetical universes to be very convincing, since we can't test it. It's highly speculative.daveS_{October 21, 2018
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I agree with daveS that atheists do not deny the existence of the laws of Nature. What daveS and other atheists refuse to accept is that physical processes in and of themselves cannot account for the laws of Nature.
There cannot be, in principle, a naturalistic bottom-up explanation for immutable physical laws — which are themselves an ‘expression’ of top-down causation. A bottom-up explanation, from the level of e.g. bosons, should be expected to give rise to innumerable different ever-changing laws. By analogy, particles give rise to innumerable different conglomerations. Moreover a bottom-up process from bosons to physical laws is in need of constraints (laws) in order to produce a limited set of universal laws. Paul Davies: “Physical processes, however violent or complex, are thought to have absolutely no effect on the laws. There is thus a curious asymmetry: physical processes depend on laws but the laws do not depend on physical processes. Although this statement cannot be proved, it is widely accepted.” Saying that laws do not depend on physical processes, is another way of saying that laws cannot be explained by physical processes. - Origenes https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/book-naturalism-and-its-alternatives-now-available-at-amazon/#comment-624496
More specifically, the randomness postulate, that lies at the foundational basis of atheistic naturalism, is completely antithetical to the existence of unchanging universal constants. Thus, if an atheist were ever to be truly honest in his thinking, (which would be a miracle in its own right), he would honestly admit that he a-priori expects variance in the universal laws and constants, like this following astronomer did:
Scientists Question Nature’s Fundamental Laws – Michael Schirber – 2006 Excerpt: “There is absolutely no reason these constants should be constant,” says astronomer Michael Murphy of the University of Cambridge. “These are famous numbers in physics, but we have no real reason for why they are what they are.” The observed differences are small-roughly a few parts in a million-but the implications are huge (if they hold up): The laws of physics would have to be rewritten, not to mention we might need to make room for six more spatial dimensions than the three that we are used to.”,,, The speed of light, for instance, might be measured one day with a ruler and a clock. If the next day the same measurement gave a different answer, no one could tell if the speed of light changed, the ruler length changed, or the clock ticking changed. http://www.space.com/2613-scientists-question-nature-fundamental-laws.html
Or like Einstein himself honestly did, i.e. "a priori one should expect a chaotic world which cannot be grasped by the mind in any way",,,
On the Rational Order of the World: a Letter to Maurice Solovine - Albert Einstein - 1952 Excerpt: “You find it strange that I consider the comprehensibility of the world (to the extent that we are authorized to speak of such a comprehensibility) as a miracle or as an eternal mystery. Well, a priori one should expect a chaotic world which cannot be grasped by the mind in any way. ,,, the kind of order created by Newton’s theory of gravitation, for instance, is wholly different. Even if the axioms of the theory are proposed by man, the success of such a project presupposes a high degree of ordering of the objective world, and this could not be expected a priori. That is the “miracle” which is being constantly reinforced as our knowledge expands. There lies the weakness of positivists and professional atheists who are elated because they feel that they have not only successfully rid the world of gods but “bared the miracles”. — Albert Einstein http://inters.org/Einstein-Letter-Solovine
Atheists simply have no way of accounting for why the universal constants should be constant. Yet, Christianity, contrary to what atheists would prefer to believe, is very nurturing, even necessary, to the presupposition of unchanging universal constants. As C. S. Lewis put it:
“Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator. In most modern scientists this belief has died: it will be interesting to see how long their confidence in uniformity survives it.” Lewis, C.S., Miracles: a preliminary study, Collins, London, p. 110, 1947.
And as Hugh Ross states in the following article, "Among the holy books that undergird the religions of the world, the Bible stands alone in proclaiming that the laws governing the universe are fixed, or constant."
Latest Test of Physical Constants Affirms Biblical Claim - Hugh Ross - September 2010 Excerpt: The team’s measurements on two quasars (Q0458- 020 and Q2337-011, at redshifts = 1.561 and 1.361, respectively) indicated that all three fundamental physical constants have varied by no more than two parts per quadrillion per year over the last ten billion years—a measurement fifteen times more precise, and thus more restrictive, than any previous determination. The team’s findings add to the list of fundamental forces in physics demonstrated to be exceptionally constant over the universe’s history. This confirmation testifies of the Bible’s capacity to predict accurately a future scientific discovery far in advance. Among the holy books that undergird the religions of the world, the Bible stands alone in proclaiming that the laws governing the universe are fixed, or constant. http://www.reasons.org/files/ezine/ezine-2010-03.pdf
At the 28:09 minute mark of the following video, Dr Hugh Ross speaks of 7 places in the bible that speak of unchanging universal constants.
Symposium 2015 : Scientific Evidence For God's Existence - Hugh Ross - video https://youtu.be/4mEKZRm1xXg?t=1689
Here is a particularly crystal clear example:
Psalm 119:89-91 Your eternal word, O Lord, stands firm in heaven. Your faithfulness extends to every generation, as enduring as the earth you created. Your regulations remain true to this day, for everything serves your plans.
Thus, the existence of the unchanging laws of nature is truly miraculous in its own right. Moreover, the belief that there should even be unchanging laws of nature is a belief that finds its origin in Christianity and in Christianity alone.bornagain77_{October 21, 2018
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Way too fancy. In the first place, most believers don't see miracles as violations of Natural Law. Miracles are EXAMPLES of Natural Law, operating in ways that we didn't expect. A miracle (if real) stirs us to expand our understanding of Natural Law.polistra_{October 21, 2018
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From The Man Who Was Thursday by GK Chesterton “It is you who are unpoetical,” replied the poet Syme. “If what you say of clerks is true, they can only be as prosaic as your poetry. The rare, strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious thing is to miss it. We feel it is epical when man with one wild arrow strikes a distant bird. Is it not also epical when man with one wild engine strikes a distant station? Chaos is dull; because in chaos the train might indeed go anywhere, to Baker Street or to Bagdad. But man is a magician, and his whole magic is in this, that he does say Victoria, and lo! it is Victoria. No, take your books of mere poetry and prose; let me read a time table, with tears of pride. Take your Byron, who commemorates the defeats of man; give me Bradshaw, who commemorates his victories. Give me Bradshaw, I say!” https://www.shu.edu/chesterton/upload/The-Man-Who-Was-Thursday.pdf Mathematically speaking, we should expect everything to be random chaos and all observations of order to be accidental, as Hume argued. The fact the world is not this way, i.e. the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics, is only possible if we assume miracles are possible. As Leonid Levin explained, "the physical world is not chosen mathematically."EricMH_{October 20, 2018
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And that’s why these apologetic arguments make me dizzy.
Is this post supposed to be satire?jdk_{October 20, 2018
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Hinduism assumes an immanent creator who lives inside time just as we do.
Really? I'd like to see a source for that.jdk_{October 20, 2018
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Atheists deny the existence of laws of nature? That's news to me. I would consider Newton's Laws of Motion, the Principle of Least Action, and E = mc^2 to be laws of nature. Does that imply I must accept Christianity? I don't see how (but perhaps I'm getting dizzy too).daveS_{October 20, 2018
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