Posted on 07/19/2004 11:35:57 AM PDT by betty boop
By Jean F. Drew
As Wolfhart Pannenberg observes in his Toward a Theology of Nature: Essays on Science and Faith (1993), the present-day intellectual mind-set assumes that there is no relation or connection between the God of the Christian faith and the understanding of the world in the natural sciences.
Ironically this separation of God from the world is commonly credited to Sir Isaac Newton, the father of classical mechanics, whose ground-breaking work on the laws of motion and thermodynamics seemed to posit a purely mechanistic, deterministic, “clockwork universe” that was not dependent on God either for its creation or its maintenance.
The irony consists in the fact that this was not Newton’s view at all. In fact, the very reverse is the truth of the matter: Newton was a deeply religious man who regarded his scientific efforts as exploits in the discovery of the laws that God uses in the natural world. Moreover, Newton believed that his laws of motion implied the generation of conditions of increasing disorder in the world, such that God would have to intervene periodically to rectify it in order to save it and keep it going:
In his Opticks, Newton emphasized … that the order of nature becomes needful, in the course of time, of a renewal by God because as a result of the inertia of matter its irregularities increase.” [ibid., p. 63]
“Newton confronted with deep distrust the mechanical worldview of Descartes, which derived all change in the world alone from the mechanical mutual effects of the bodies. The Cartesian model of the world, in which the mutual play of mechanical powers was to explain the development from chaos to the ordered cosmos, seemed to him all too self-contained and self-sufficient so that it would not need any divine assistance or would even admit such.” [ibid., p. 60]
Newton rightly recognized that this tendency of the mechanical explanation of nature would inevitably lead to “a world independent from God.” For Newton, such a view would be an utter falsification of natural and divine reality both.
In his own time, Newton’s view that God continuously acts in the world was controversial. Certain leading philosophers, including Kant and Leibnitz, were offended by this view on the grounds that it implied God bungled the original creation. They argued that a perfect Creator cannot have failed to create a perfect creation. And if it’s “perfect,” then there’s no need for God to intervene. (The corollary being: For him to do so would be an acknowledgement or confession of his own imperfection.)
This despite the fact that God in Genesis speaks, not of having made a “perfect” creation, but only a “good” one. The worldview of Leibnitz reflects an early strain of Deism; that of Kant, the Calvinist theological view of God as utterly transcendent majesty.
But Newton didn’t see it either way. For Newton, God was both transcendent and immanent in the world. God created a universe in which he would be “God with his creatures” and Lord of Life forever. The supernatural and the natural had an on-going synergistic relation, and this is what maintained the natural world as a going concern, sustaining it in its evolution toward God’s eschatological goal for man and nature.
In other words, Newton believed God is constantly active in the history of salvation (of souls and world), and evolutionary process is one of his prime tools for accomplishing the divine purpose implicit in the creation event itself.
Yet by what means could God be “present with his creatures?” Newton gave his answer in the Scholium Generale, an addendum to the second edition of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, his chief work on the mathematical principles of the philosophy of nature. The addendum endeavors to clarify the relationship of his doctrines of physics and his religious and philosophical views. Here Newton states that “God constitutes space and time through his eternity and omnipresence: ‘existendo semper et ubique, durationem et spatium constituit.’”
For Newton, God as immensitas constitutes absolute space – infinite and “empty” – and this absolute space is the sensorium Dei The great philosopher and mathematician Leibnitz strenuously objected to this conception, arguing that Newton’s divine sensorium effectively turned God into a “world soul,” and thus led to pantheism. Yet Newton had “explicitly emphasized … that God does not rule the universe as a world soul, but as the Lord of all things.” [ibid.]
What are we to make of this term, sensorium Dei – God’s sensorium? We probably should avoid the conclusion drawn by Leibnitz, who interpreted the term as indicating an organ of perception.
Newton might reply: God being eternally omniscient, he has absolutely no need of an organ of sense perception.
So what, then, did Newton mean by this term? Pannenberg writes that, for Newton, sensorium Dei refers “to the medium of the creation of things: just as the sensorium in our perception creates the pictures of things, God through space creates the things themselves.”
Thus Newton acknowledges a doctrine of creation understood as an on-going process, not just as a single start-up event – let alone a periodically recurring cycle of universal “booms” and “busts” as implied by the “eternal universe” model.
Newton] designates space as the effect of the presence of God with his creatures…. The expression sensorium … even when it is understood as the place of the production of its contents and not as the organ of their reception, cannot itself be a product of the perceiving individual,” whereas with God, space is at once a property and effect of the divine immensitas.
For Newton, the conception of infinite space is implicit in the idea of the omnipresence of God. But, as Pannenberg notes, “it is implicit in it in the way that it has no divisions: infinite space is indeed divisible but not divided, and the conception of division always presupposes space.”
At this point, it might occur to a scientifically-inclined Christian that sensorium Dei could well refer to an infinite, universal creative field, “originally empty” of all content, designed to be the matrix and carrier of all possibilities for our universe, and thus the locus where the “supernatural” [i.e., transcendent] and the “natural” [i.e., immanent] constantly meet.
One thinks of a primary universal vacuum field, whose characteristic associated particle is the photon – light -- which, having zero mass, is the “finest particle” yet known to man (noting that, on the Judeo-Christian view, God preeminently works with Light).
It has been speculated that, if an observer could stand outside of “normal” four-dimensional space-time and take a view from a fifth, “time-like” dimension, the singularity of the “big bang” would appear as a “shock wave” propagating in 4D space-time. If this were true, the shock wave would require a medium of propagation. Perhaps this medium is the universal vacuum field itself, the “ZPF” or zero-point field that extends throughout all of space, giving rise to all possibilities for our universe in every space direction and time dimension – which yet finds its source outside the space-time continuum that human beings commonly experience.
That is to say, the source is “extra-cosmic,” or transcendent. Its creative effect works within the empirical cosmos via the ZPF, which is hypothetically the sensorium Dei of the Immensitas….
Perhaps one day it will be shown that the intimate communication of divine and natural reality is facilitated by the primary universal vacuum field -- the intersection of time and the timeless, the creative source of our universe, the means of its sustenance and renewal over time, the source of the power of the human soul and mind to participate in divine reality, the paradigm of human genius, as well as the source of the continued physical existence of our planet and the universe.
It has been said that Life is the result of “successful communication.” Perhaps the ZPF, as suggested above, is the carrier of information (Logos, the singularity propagating in time); living creatures carry information also – DNA -- information that specifies what they are and how all their “parts” work together in synergy so as to give rise to and sustain their existence. It appears all living creatures have the capability of doing at least some kind of rudimentary information processing. That is, it seems they can “decode” and “read” instructions – perhaps via energy exchanges with the ZPF. When the creature is no longer able to access and process information, successful communication cannot take place, and so the creature dies.
By the way, I do not mean to suggest that information/energy exchanges with the primary universal vacuum field are necessarily consciously experienced events. Probably the reverse is the typical case. Yet we know that the human brain does most of its important work at unconscious levels: the governance of autonomic bodily functions, for instance, is a subconscious process.
Interestingly enough, it was Faraday who first articulated the field concept, and he apparently did so to refute Newton’s sensorium Dei. Apparently he wanted to get rid of the Immensitas altogether, and put Newton’s insight on a purely physical basis.
Yet in the end, it appears Faraday did not so much refute Newton, as lend credence to his basic insight.
Further, all cosmologies - whether big bang, multiworld, multiverse, ekpyrotic, cyclic, imaginary time - all of them - have a beginning of time and thus were preceded by null.
The fact of a beginning is the single most theological statement made by science this past century, i.e. a beginning from the state of null requires a Creator, God.
Sin, for some of the patristics, is the inclination to non-existence. St. Gregory went so far as to say evil is the objectification of non-existence.
No. Greek philosophers made many claims. Few of them stand up to modern physics.
When did the demonstration police excorcise claims?
exorcise : )
The same as apply to somethingness, only there's nothing there to reveal them.
Think of it this way: A vacuum jar. Do the physical laws stop at the boundary of the jar?
No, they still exist in the jar; there is just nothing there with which you can empircally determine that the laws exist. Introduce anything into the jar - that you can detect with your senses or instruments - and oilá, physical laws are evidenced.
Honestly, I’m more curious as to the point you are making…
Please let me know if I'm still not successful in communicating.
Thanks for your reply...
The fact of a beginning is the single most theological statement made by science this past century, i.e. a beginning from the state of null requires a Creator, God.
A-G, these words strike me as completely true. I swear Isaac Newton's absolute space -- limitless, empty, undivided -- comes about as close as you can come to the idea of "null."
And yet, it seems that God has chosen just that "null field" as the locus or site in which to plant a Universe.
He fills it with His Logos and Spirit, and a desert blooms....
Thank you so much for writing, A-G. Good night, dear friend.
Granted, djf, that like you, I understand that there is a virtually limitless number of things that I do not understand, some of them already known to me; but considering all there is to know, most of them not. We call this: the human condition. I share and have to live by the same rules as you and anybody else in this regard.
Still, we all have to get along as best we can in a state of contingency and partial knowledge.
And so I do not agree that there is but “one thing” that is known but is not understandable: Faith.
Faith is something that can definitely be understood, or “known” – by any human being willing to consider the foundation of his own ideas. And faith is not only eminently understandable, but necessary to the integration of human personality. Here I refer the reader back to the ideas of contingency and partial knowledge and suggest that these must and do affect the conduct of a rational, just, honorable human life. In the end, we all seem to need more than we can supply for ourselves. Then perhaps we might recognize that the needed “completion principle” comes from outside of ourselves. I like to think it is the special province of the Holy Spirit, “at large” and very active in the present world – as ever.
Perhaps Isaac Newton would agree with that “observation.”
Thank you so much for writing!
FWIW, I think it is a very good thing that Christian thinkers have been taking such a great interest in the progress of science lately.
Yet to the extent that the “scientific question” becomes how did God do the things he did, I think that is a false track. For certainly the how doesn’t matter as much as the why. And as Sir Isaac makes plain, God is Father and Lord of Life; he is our Father, we are His children – and that makes you and I brothers, in the love and peace of Christ, the Son, by virtue of His direct appeal and sacrifice, aided and abetted by the constant ministration and guidance of the Holy Spirit.…
Having said that, I do confess I am tempted to think that the ZPF is the “mechanism” or facilitator of the work of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity. But that is hardly a “scientific observation.”
We have to be careful where and how we cross the line between the two domains of human knowledge and experience: Faith and Reason….
And I’m prepared to admit that the “reduction of God” to conveniently understandable human categories amounts to a defacement, not only of natural reality, but also of God's reality.
I think Isaac Newton was highly sensitive to precisely this problem….
What do you think? Thanks so much for writing, LiteKeeper!
Thank you oh so much, A-G, for your kind words!
Yes, I think my choice of language – “medium of propagation” – may have set off alarm bells -- that I was trotting out that hoary old canard, the “ether,” one more time. But that wasn’t my intention or meaning. You’re correct that my argument is that I think the zero-point field might be the medium of the expansion of the “inflationary universe” evolving from itself, of which ZPF is carrier (and I imagine also conserver) of information within the universe.
But there is a difficulty here. It relates to Newton’s concept of absolute space -- infinite, undivided, empty space, which he further characterizes as sensorium Dei of divine Immensitas.
It seems the “inflationary universe” cannot fully be explained by the accustomed space-time description of 4D reality. It seems that your speculation is correct: “perhaps the ZPF is (or is like) the firmament – as a field, not a geometric location but everywhere, a separation between natural and supernatural, and the backdrop to quantum fields (like a canvas or chalk board).” I’ve read elsewhere in recent times that the ZPF has been described as “the mother of all fields.” It also seems that ZPF is not subject to known time conventions, especially if such are to be measured in terms of the velocity of light as currently defined.
One might think that a purely “inflationary expansion” taking its point of departure from the singularity of the “big bang” (holding out this theory for further test here) does not self-evidently seem to require either absolute space or absolute time. This may be the crux of the dispute that “theists” and “atheists” interminably have with each other.
Yet somewhat surprisingly, it does seem that, “stepped down” to the natural world, the two – space and time -- are mutually interdependent – whether contingent or absolute, they seem to be a “pair.” Which from the human standpoint immediately introduces the idea of contingency, not the idea of the absolute: Space and time within the 4D block are mutually contingent. That being the case, neither can be “everywhere” without the other. Yet theoretically, absolute space – in order to be absolute – would have to be “out of time,” or independent of time as we humans experience it in the 4D block.
And yet the concept of absolute space itself – even if set in its own separate dignity -- would seem all the more to confer a special privilege on absolute time – which, it seems to me, is but another name for eternity. For “absolute space” would seem to require an eternity of time to complete its mission….
Yikes but these seem to be the problems….
So in my fevered brain, I found your quote of an abstract from California Institute for Physics and Astrophysics both inspiring and weirdly comforting:
“Kaluza-Klein theory (which can be viewed as the low-energy limit of even higher D theories) produces not only a small cosmological constant associated with the vacuum, but also acceptable real matter in 4D from empty space in 5D.”
Thus it appears that at least certain scientists in our day are prepared to say, presumably on the basis of independent analysis and experiment, that 5D just might possibly be a “going concern,” judging by tangible, observable effects in the 4D natural world….
I take this as evidence tending to support the model of Newton’s absolute space…defined as sensorium Dei, in the sense of God active in creation by means of his “property” and “effect,” the Zero Point vacuum field.
Time for sleep. Good night, and God bless you, dear A-G – and to all visitors to this thread.
Sleep tight, all!
Let me explain a bit more about how something can be "known" but not "understandable".
Imagine that we send a ship into space with, say, 100 people on board. 100 people that have families back here on earth, sons and daughters, parents and friends.
Imagine the ship is out orbiting Saturn.
While it is on the far side of Saturn, something dreadful happens on earth, and the whole planet and all life is destroyed.
Now the ship is on the opposite side of saturn and has no communication with earth.
Would it be reasonable to think that everybody on the ship "knows" something bad has happened? Of course not.
But I would maintain it would be just as unreasonable to think that nobody on the ship "knows" something bad has happened.
And this "knowledge" can be described one way, as some type of "feeling".
And I would say this is something that is known, but not understandable. Some kind of connection that seems to transcend space and time.
Anyways, just my thoughts on the matter.
And I would say this is something that is known, but not understandable.
Feeling -- awareness -- seems to me to be a whole lot more powerful than simple "doctrinaire" recitation of memorized "facts." For feelings are forged in experience, and tried and tested in awareness.... Often they are entirely understandable -- if only in retrospect.
I do admire your turn of mind, my friend.
How many transcedences did Kant really have? If you draw up the limits of reason, and then transcendentalize it, where did he put the transcendent majesty?
Transcendence as Calvinist. Never heard of that before. From Pannenberg?
I stated the proposition the way I did because I was reminded of lyrics of the Rogers and Hammerstein song, "Something Good" from the "Sound of Music". Of course I cannot demonstrate a universal negative, in the way I phrased it, but the real issue is whether or not something can come out of absolute nothing, and the metaphysical intuition is that a negative answer seems obvious. Universal empirical observation indicates the same, as far as I know. If you were playing at the world championship of poker science and metaphysics, and you had to bet on it, which proposition would you bet is the more plausible truth?
I not sure to which physics theories you are referring, but I doubt whether they can validly contradict the causal principle. Alamo-Girl alluded to it. It can be expressed in the syllogism that
Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
The universe began to exist.
Therefore, the universe has a cause.
Cordially,
Something along those lines must have bothered Kant and he was smart enough to scramble and "transcendentalize" his starting point. Aristotle didn't play the hocus-pocus and was sensible enough to simply remind us that some first principles are not demonstrable.
If anything, a syllogism is a demonstration; certainly the Greeks demonstrated that something must be eternal. Although to get there, they had to assume something. In this we haven't changed a bit since then.
Your syllogism is valid but as neither premiss is necessarily true, the result isn't necessarily true. Secondly, for the syllogism to be valid, "universe" must be a subset of "whatever" otherwise your first statement is only paraphrase of the conclusion.
"Feelings" are subjective and different people do have different "feelings" about the same event, object, concept, etc. The postmoderndeconstructionist suggestion that any and all of these feelings are equally valid isn't a useful basis for scientific inquiry; it's more its antithesis. (Got both its and it's in the same sentence; they're both there in their correct spellings.)
Sounds like Leibniz.
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