Gary A.Stilwell
Snippets on determinism, fate, predestination, election, open theology, etc. in support of and contradiction to the Block Universe. From two of my books:
Where Was God: Evil Theodicy, and Modern Science (2009) – WWG and Christianity: 5000 Years of History and Development (2004)
You can have more detail and the big picture in the presentation The Problem of Evil
Plato’s Idealism (WWG p 72-77)
Plato’s, as opposed to some other subsequent philosophies, was not materialistic. He needed something to refute the epistemological relativism and skepticism of the earlier Sophists and Skeptics. The latter had denied the possibility of objective knowledge, and Plato believed that if all was material and subject to the human senses, that they might be correct. However, he claimed that objective knowledge was possible because all true and real knowledge is based on non-material, pre-existing, immutable and eternal models – the Ideas (or Forms), which are other-worldly archetypes of the material objects that we perceive in our world of the natural senses (Republic, 506d–521).
Calling on Pythagorean and Orphic traditions, he used their concepts of metempsychosis, immortality, and recollection to explain how we are able to know reality. The body is the tomb of the soul and the soul’s real home is in the celestial realm where it knows the Ideal Forms. Periodically, it leaves its celestial home to inhabit an earthly body. Unfortunately, it forgets the Ideas and only a few philosophers are able to re-acquire them through hard work. All die and the soul is released only to complete the cycle again and again until such time as philosophical works free it from the bondage of the material world (Republic, 614a – 621d).
The material world of Becoming is opposed to the unchanging Ideal world of Being in an irreconcilable dualism. The pure soul once freed from the corporeal world ―goes away to a place that is . . . unseen world . . . into the presence of the good and wise “God” (Phaedo, 80d). Plato’s worldview is ambiguous, as is his view of the god(s). He holds to the geocentric cosmology, but the place of the afterlife varies from the earth’s surface of Er to the ―true Hades” of the world of Ideas. Plato’s gods exist, sometimes as the God of the Phaedo (67a), sometimes as the Demiurge of the Timaeus and sometimes as the gods of the popular religion.
Plato’s later influence
When Christianity needed a philosophical basis for its Hebraic thinking in a Hellenistic world, it would turn to Plato. It would be Plato’s eschatology that reigned supreme for over a thousand years, displacing or modifying original Christian concepts, such as the millennial Kingdom, in which all of the righteous resurrected dead would participate on the earth.
Stoics and Epicureans (ca. 310 BCE)
The Fates were the personification of one’s inevitable destiny in the Homeric religion, and even Zeus’ son could not escape his fated death. The Greek tragedians built their stories on the fact that one’s destiny was foreordained. Being possessed of virtue (arête) and heroism would not divert Oedipus from his fate, regardless of his attempts to outguess the predictions of the gods.
The Mysteries were to give one a way out of his fate with an appeal to gods who were greater than the controllers of fate. However, the Mysteries appealed only to a minority and the incipient scientific explanations of the universe produced a need for less magical methods.
In the scientific philosophies, fate (also called determinism) had to be explained rationally. Two such philosophies attempted to do just that — coming down on opposite sides of the solution.
Whereas the Homeric religion taught that one’s fate was predetermined (fatalism), the Stoics were exemplars of theistic determinism; that is, all events happen by necessity according to a grand plan. Built on the atomism of Democritus, their cosmos was fated to repeat cyclically. Since one’s fate was determined, the Stoics prized the attributes of indifference (things are neither good nor bad in themselves) and apathy (reason dominates emotion). Therefore, one must “go with the flow”.(52 This non-academic phrase exemplifies Stoic thought – as does Star Trek’s Vulcans). These attributes would also be prized by the early Church Fathers, until Platonic philosophy came to dominate Christian thinking and free choice trumped fate.
Their concept of the Logos(53 Heraclitus (ca. 500 BCE) originally used the term Logos to express parallelism of structure between the actual cosmos and our own thinking about it. The cosmos is the divine’s spoken word. The belief that the world was rationally ordered gives credence to the idea that it is not accidental and must, therefore, be designed by a maker.(the overall plan of all things and events as contained in the divine mind – the pattern for all creation and history) would greatly influence later Gospel of John, neo-Platonism and the Christian Fathers.
The Epicureans took the other side and claimed that fatalism or theistic determinism did not exist. Therefore, they denied the Stoics claim of fate and exemplified the concept of indeterminism.
The Stoics and Epicureans versus Plato
In the seventeenth century CE, Sir Isaac Newton formulated the theory of gravity, and set the stage for a mechanistic view of the universe. With John Dalton’s rediscovery of the atom in the nineteenth century, the Universe was now seen to be a swarm of moving particles whose trajectories could theoretically be calculated. Indeed, if it were not for the fact of there being so many of these material objects, one would be able to predict, from any given starting point, their positions into the indefinite future, making all future events knowable and, thus, already determined. The nineteenth century universe was seen to be totally materialistic and determinate.
With these discoveries, the world-view of the ancient Stoics was revived and was thought to have been proven by modern science.
In what turns out to be quite ironic, Stoicism claimed to be a counter to the misguided philosophy of the Epicurean’s world-view of luck and chance. For the Epicureans, the world consisted of an earth surrounded by the heavenly spheres. And, all was composed of Democritus’ atoms. There were innumerable worlds since there was an infinity of atoms, in a void, that existed for all eternity (letter to Herodotus 41; and Pythocles 89). The Epicureans realized that, if indeed, all things were composed of atoms moving on their own calculatable trajectories, then there could be no such thing as human free will. Since there did appear to be free will, they needed a means to allow for indetermination. It was for this purpose that they imparted a “swerve” to the atoms. This swerve allowed for chance collisions and, therefore, a possibility for choice and free will.
For the Epicureans, choice and free will were doctrines that, combined with their ideas of the complete non-involvement of the gods in the affairs of humans, gave humans the complete freedom to live as they might. All was material, all was chance, and nothing was directly controlled by the gods – the human soul was a combination of atoms that disintegrated upon death, so there was no fear of punishment in an after-life (Epicurus’ letters to Herodotus and to Menoeceous).
Nevertheless, the gods do exist, as they have been perceived through dreams; but they do not directly interfere in the lives of humans, rather they are “left free from duties and in perfect blessedness” (Epicurus’ letter to Pythocles).
How then could an individual be happy? Only by attaining the highest good in life; that is, the absence of pain and the maximum of pleasure.
As suggested above, the Stoics opposed the Epicureans and said that God exists, does care for human things, and was indeed responsible for the creation of the world; and that his divine spark of fire caused the seminal reason (logos spermaticos) to be born. Humans arise from this same divine action and, therefore, partake of this same logos. But, God initiated the world and determined that it would follow his pre-ordained path for the duration of this current world and all the world’s cycles to come (Meditations II: 11–14, XII: 26). This eliminated the possibility of chance or free will.
Thus the Stoics banished the Epicurean “swerve.” The only hope for the individual was to play his apportioned part in the cosmos. This meant recognizing that all are essentially of one divine essence and that the virtue of following the divine will, and doing one’s pre-ordained duty, in this best of all possible worlds, was the only way to happiness. The Stoic philosophy was to influence the Christian religion for many centuries, while the philosophy of Epicurus would be condemned.
Interestingly, in the early part of the twentieth century, the “swerve” was rediscovered. It appears that the trajectories of the atoms might not be pre-ordained after all. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics rests on two pillars of scientific observation: Niels Bohr’s Principle of Complementarity exemplified by the wave/particle dualism of light; and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle that the position and momentum of bodies can be physically traded off (as can energy/time and other complementary dualisms).54 Thus, any object (including Democritus’ atoms) can instantaneously alter their positions of their own volition – the Epicurean “swerve.’
So it seems, at least by our current stage of modern science, that the Epicurean’s view on chance and free will has won out after over 2000 years of being denied first by the Stoics, then by others — among them the sixteenth and seventeenth century versions of both religion and science.
The cosmologies of both schools were materialist, but the implications for the afterlife were very different. The Epicurean allowed for no continuation after death of the body; the soul being made of material atoms simply disintegrated. The soul of the Stoics, however, was reunited after death with Providence or their Principle that controls everything, the Logos. “Re-absorption” may be the more appropriate description for the reunion of the human soul with the pantheistic God, allowing it to reappear in subsequent world cycles of fiery destruction and re-birth.
Neither of these schools of philosophy allowed for a personal continuation of life after death. That option had already been put forward by their predecessors, the Orphics, Pythagoras and, most of all, Plato.
The materialism of Epicurus and Zeno the Stoic was destined to be extinguished for centuries, while the idealism of Plato was to live on in the great philosophies and religions of the West.
Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle 54
For those who would question this oversimplification, I offer this more detailed explanation: Heisenberg actually claimed that the position and the momentum of an object cannot be exactly determined (still, but less so, an oversimplification). The more exact you get one attribute; the less exact is the other. This is not just a measurement problem; the indeterminacy actually exists in nature. The reality of our universe is that there are complementary attributes of material objects that can be traded off in the manner suggested by measuring position and momentum. Time and energy are also complementary attributes in that time can be exchanged for energy. This allows for the existence of virtual particles that spontaneously appear; essentially borrowing mass/energy from time; allowing energy to be created from nothing if only for an infinitesimally short time. Such a spontaneous creation is responsible for the evaporation of black holes and, quite possibly, for the very existence of our observable universe. See also, the later section on quantum physics for additional information.
Enlightenment, materialism revived only to be partially extinguished again by the scientific revolution of the twentieth century.
A summary of three Greek philosophies
For Plato, the world was a dualism of the material and the Ideal Forms; the god(s) exist both as the highest Good and in the world of human beings; the afterlife contains reward, punishment, and rebirth for the masses.
For Epicurus, the world was all eternal material atoms in the void; the gods were aloof from humans and dwelt blissfully between the worlds; the afterlife was not possible since all souls disintegrated at death, so the threats of post-mortem punishments were false.
For the Stoics, the world was a monistic living organism made of matter that cyclically was destroyed and re-created. The one God (although there were lesser others) was responsible for strictly determining the fate of all, which was repeated identically in all cycles; the afterlife was non-personal with the soul reabsorbed into the Logos to be reborn in subsequent world cycles.
Christianity, especially the early Fathers, would embrace much of Stoicism’s imminent and providential God, its rationally created order, and its anthropology and ethics, but would reject the philosophy of Epicurus. Plato is so important for the understanding of the development of later religions that, in following chapters, we will examine the impact of Platonism on all subsequent religious thought.
Christianity: 5000 Years . . . p 289-292
John Calvin (1509–64)
In 1510, Luther was in Rome, as a delegate of his Augustinian order, when John Calvin was celebrating his first birthday. It was while he was in Rome that he tried desperately to rid himself of his feeling of total worthlessness. On bended knees, he ascended the 28 steps of the famous Scala Santa in order to receive the indulgence attached to this ascetic performance. He felt no better for the task and went back to Wittenberg, where he developed his idea of “justification by faith alone.”
If Luther had tried to reform from within, the next significant reformer did not. He would read the works of Luther and leave the Church to become the founder of the second great branch of Protestantism.
301 The first was Lutheran. Calvin‘s was Reformed from which developed: Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Baptist, United Church of Christ, and others. A third early branch was the Anabaptists: Brethern, Amish, Mennonite, etc. A forth early branch was the Anglican: Methodist, Episcopal, Pentecostal, Quaker, etc.
St. Paul had taught a doctrine of predestination in Romans 8 and 9 and in Ephesians 1:
8:29 For those God foreknew he also predestined . . . And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
9:14 What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! 15 For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” 9:16 It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.
1:4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.
How is this predestination to be understood? One possibility is that since God is omniscient, he has foreknowledge of how people will behave in the future and, thus, has predestined them to eternal life, or not based on that foreknown behavior. But, this possibility leaves the decision to be saved in the hands of human beings and would seem to take away God‘s sovereignty.
St. Augustine, in his battles with the Pelagian heresy, had come to the conclusion: since humans are corrupt and incapable of gaining salvation on their own, that God alone must have decided whom to save. And, since God is the same for all eternity, he would have made his decision in eternity, before time began. God also had to decide whom to pass by – the mass of perdition – and allow to be damned (see his Enchiridon).
St. Augustine, following Paul, says:
“Because whom He did before foreknow, He also predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren. Moreover, whom He did predestinate, them He also called,” to wit, according to His purpose; “and whom He called, them He also justified; and whom He justified, them He also glorified.” (Rom. 8:29). All those things are already done: He foreknew, He predestinated, He called, He justified; because both all are already foreknown and predestinated, and many are already called and justified; but that which he placed at the end, “them He also glorified”, . . . this is not yet accomplished. Although, also, those two things-that is, He called, and He justified-have not been effected in all of whom they are said,-for still, even until the end of the world, there remain many to be called and justified,-nevertheless, He used verbs of the past tense, even concerning things future, as if God had already arranged from eternity that they should come to pass.
. . . .
Whosoever, therefore, in God’s most providential ordering, are foreknown, predestinated, called, justified, glorified,-I say not, even although not yet born again, but even although not yet born at all, are already children of God, and absolutely cannot perish. . . . From Him, therefore, is given also perseverance in good even to the end; for it is not given save to those who shall not perish, since they who do not persevere shall perish.”
St. Augustine, On Rebuke and Grace, chap 23
During the Reformation, Calvin revived the doctrine that St. Augustine had promulgated over a thousand years earlier. Calvin now also concluded that since God was totally sovereign and his will never changed, it was the logical conclusion that God must have decided one‘s fate from all eternity; he necessarily predestined who was saved and who was damned. This notion harkens back to that of the Stoics where everything was fated to occur, and the only thing you could do was go along. The added element beyond the Stoic philosophy, which made this a much bleaker outlook, was that now a person was immortal and lack of salvation lasted for eternity.
Predestination
The Church, for reasons of its own effective continuation and in spite of its admiration for Augustine, could not allow that doctrine of ―double predestination” to stand, and it was declared invalid at the Council of Orange in 529 CE. Now, with Calvin, it was back and the elect of God would be saved and the rest of the mass of damnation would not.
Election was a gift of God and no one could know if they were among the saved, nor could they do anything about it. The best one could do is believe that if they had been led into the right Christian way of life that this might show evidence of election. An upright life, church membership, worldly success, and experience of being “born again” would provide some indication that you were one gifted with election.
The Reformed church of Calvin codified the doctrine of unconditional predestination, in chapter three of the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647):
God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.
By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death.
These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite, that it cannot be either increased or diminished.
Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according to his eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of His will, hath chosen in Christ unto everlasting glory, out of his mere free grace and love, without any foresight of faith or good works, or perseverance in either of them, or anything in the creature, as conditions, or causes moving him thereunto; and all to the praise of his glorious grace.
Westminster Confession of Faith
It would seem that St. Paul, St. Augustine, and Calvin had reached an unimpeachable conclusion as to God‘s sovereignty, unchangeable will, and the inability of fallen humanity to contribute anything to its own salvation. But, as the Church had done earlier with Augustine, other Reformers would now do to Calvin and the Reformed Church; that is, find a way around this doctrine.
Jacobus Arminius (1560–1609) was a Reformed minister from Holland, who was in the vanguard of those who objected to this harsh doctrine; and in 1610, his disciples produced a document called the Remonstrance. This document, also called The Five Arminian Articles, was aimed at what they considered the most egregious articles of Calvinism.
WWG p 154-157
THE ENLIGHTENMENT
NEWTONIAN SCIENCE AND DETERMINISM
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there appeared an intellectual movement in Europe that came to be known as the Age of the Enlightenment. In the 1780’s, Immanuel Kant will look upon his preceding century, and see that emancipation from superstition and ignorance was the essence of the Enlightenment.
The monolithic Church had been assaulted in turn by Humanism, the Renaissance, and the Protestant Reformation. The resurgence of classical rational thought, the experimental sciences, and the doubts caused by the breakdown of religious tradition allowed new modes of examining the world.
For almost 2000 years the cosmology of Aristotle (384 – 322 BCE), along with the slight modifications of Ptolemy (fl. 127-151 CE) reigned supreme. It was a scientific model of the universe that was based on the best evidence of the times.139
Ptolemy, Aristotle, and others had conceived of the universe as a series of concentric spheres with the Earth at the center, with the planets, moon and sun orbiting it; and finally surrounded by the outermost fixed sphere of the stars. Of course, over the centuries, the model had to be modified in order to accommodate observed motions in the heavens (e.g., epicycles, equants, etc.) and to make the model “work;” that is, predict events.
Even with these alterations in the model, the spheres were maintained, and the Christian Church accepted Ptolemy’s world view. In fact, this view was incorporated into the Christian faith as part of its teachings, giving to God the Realm beyond the outermost sphere. For centuries the harmony of the spheres existed in complete accord with the Christian notions of the afterlife, with its heaven, hell, and purgatory. In order for that physical system to work with the religious system, the earth had to be at the very center of the universe with hell under the earth, and outside the outermost sphere was the abode of God in the highest heaven. The sphere of the moon marked the dividing line between the divine realm and the realm of matter and flesh.
This placed the “scientific” explanation of reality into Church teaching with the full force of authority. Significant changes to, or abandonment of, the geo-centric sphere model would eliminate the Realm of God by destroying its doctrinal foundation and undermine the authority of the Church; therefore, there could be no change. Therefore, the scientific idea of Copernicus and Galileo was condemned as foolish and absurd and heretical since it contradicts Scriptural doctrine.
Many people who realized the need for a more accurate view of reality demanded change, and the Church burned them at the stake for their effort. One would think that the eventual victory of the new model of reality (in the face of dogmatic “truth”) would have destroyed the keepers of that dogma. One would have to think again.
What actually happened was that progress in knowledge and understanding of reality was thwarted for centuries, and the betterment of mankind was retarded. This kind of drag on the improvements to man’s lot almost certainly has been responsible for the continued ignorance that resulted in the plagues and famines that have killed or made life miserable for millions. And, it continues…
When the scientific world-view changed, conflict arose. Religion would be advised to stay out of the scientific business of “how” the world works.
Mechanistic World View
Now, the pendulum swung the other way. Copernicus (1473-1543) had seen a flaw in the Ptolemaic model and sought to replace it using better observations. His system was not accepted by the Church, but neither was it immediately accepted by science. It worked and solved the growing list of problems that had accumulated over the centuries, but, originally, it did not predict events as well as the older model. Obviously, it was still incomplete.
Eventually, with improvements, it became the new model of how the universe operates and had to be accepted by both religion and science.
However, in this acceptance, a terrible thing happened. The earth was no longer at the center of the universe and the exalted status of humankind was thereby diminished. Still, the idea that the sub-lunar world was controlled by imperfect matter was intact, while the super-lunar world of the planets and stars remained the realm of perfection and the domain of God.
Then, in the 17th century, came Isaac Newton (1642–1727) the originator of classical physics. Newton wondered why things were attracted to the earth, why does an apple fall downward instead of flying off into space from the spinning earth? One of the most powerful insights ever had by man was the idea of gravitation. Newton realized that the same force that attracted the apple also kept the revolving earth itself, along with the other planets, from flying away from the sun. The two attractions were the same force! The last refuge of perfection was thus banished with the realization that there were no sub- and super-lunar realms of imperfection and perfection. There was only the universal law that operated on the earth and the heavens. Now, the domain of God was taken from us as well.
The laws of the universe discovered by Isaac Newton showed the world to be a giant deterministic mechanism that could be understood by human reason and without resort to the religious concept of a personal God managing everything behind the scenes. Indeed, a clockwork universe eliminated the need for anything but an initiator to get things started, and then leave the mechanism to its own devices.
Many intellectuals of the Enlightenment either rejected God altogether or, at least, relegated Him to retirement. It appeared obvious that a clockwork universe in which all future events were already determined would not have a need for, indeed contradict, the God of theology. Therefore, many accepted God as the creator that got the universe started, then rested while it ran itself. These were the Deists, many of whom were the Founders of the United States of America.
Many others claimed that nature was perfectly capable of starting itself and thus eliminated God from scientific inquiry altogether. One such person was the Marquis de Laplace (1749-1827), who presented an edition of his scientific work, Mecanique celeste (which showed how the solar system might have arisen without divine intervention) to Napoleon aboard ship in the Mediterranean during the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt in 1798. He famously responded to the Emperor’s question of how God fitted into his scheme, “Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis”. Laplace was simply saying that science deals with natural law and that God must be removed if the laws are to be useful. In other words, there is no place for miraculous interventions if we are to make scientific predictions. In the 21st century, we might do well to understand this.
Laplace may have just eliminated God from his equations, but others would use this opportunity to eliminate the need for God altogether, making the world truly deterministic, mechanistic, and materialistic.
With the advent and development of classical physics, many intelligent people, including scientists and philosophers, believed that if we but knew the positions and velocities of all material bodies, we could determine what would happen into the infinite future. Since this was thought to be theoretically (not practically) possible, all that the universe needed was an initial start; and all events were pre-determined from then on. This classical mechanistic view of the universe lulled us into believing that all physical things were knowable; since they were determinate.
The eighteenth century mechanistic universe was believed to have eliminated the need for traditional religion, and this belief is still around. It shouldn’t be, because the mechanistic and materialistic universe worldview, as we shall see, has been utterly supplanted by the new physics.
So, the classical world has been shattered by a new way of thinking about the universe and nothing is so certain anymore.
WWG p 186-188
THE NEW PHYSICS AND INDETERMINISM
We’ve already briefly referred to the sciences of classical physics, geology, and biology in earlier chapters. Additionally, via the Interlude stories, we’ve also been introduced to some of the modern physical sciences (bold type in Fig. 12).
Fig. 12 Purpose of the Interlude Stories
Now, we’ll more fully deal with the physical sciences that developed during the 20th century. For many readers, this science may be dealt with more fully than you feel necessary for the
understanding of how modern science is related to the Problem of Evil. Therefore, some of this material may be skimmed or passed over.
Quantum physics, chaos theory, and general relativity are the most important sciences for our topic but the others: atomic and nuclear physics, the structure of matter and forces, and special relativity provide helpful, perhaps necessary, background to their deeper understanding. First, a review of:
The Materialistic Worldview of Post-Newtonian Reality
For Newton and his successors up to the 20th century, Time and Space are absolute and separate entities. Atoms are the smallest, indivisible basic building blocks of everything there is.
The whole Universe is made of atoms, and it functions like a giant clockwork mechanism. If I know the positions and velocities of all the parts, I can completely know the future – it is already determined!
The evolution of physics
By the end of the 20th century, not one of the above statements was true. The old classical physics of an earlier age was dethroned and relegated to a subset of modern physics primarily by the two towering achievements of the early part of the century – Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.
These shifts in the scientific paradigm destroyed the deterministic universe! And set the stage for indeterminism.
Atomic Theory
What are atoms? Later, in the section on general relativity, we will discuss black holes. At the center of a black hole matter is squeezed into zero volume. So, just what is this matter155that can be so squeezed in a black hole?
The easy answer is that entity that was postulated by the Greek philosopher, Democritus (ca. 420 BCE) so long ago: atomos. This matter is atoms; the un-cutable thing that remains after some material object has been cut the ultimate time.
By convention sweet, by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention color, but in reality nothing exists but atoms and the void (Democritus).
What we perceive by the senses is not reality! Democritus claimed that sizes and shapes of the atoms are what determine a material’s properties.
By inferring the existence of atoms from purely rational thinking, he was able to provide the answer to the Heraclitus and Parmenides impasse concerning whether things change
(Becoming) or things are static (Being).
Heraclitus (ca. 490 BCE) had claimed that all things were in a state of flux, where nothing stays the same, and famously said: “you can’t step into the same river twice.” This, of course, is a clever way of saying that the river will have changed between the first and second steps. All things are Becoming.
Parmenides (ca. 450 BCE), on the other hand, countered with proofs that nothing really changes at all. He said that “what is” cannot transition through “what is not” to become something else. That is, all things are in a static state of Being.
It would seem that an impasse existed and that both cannot be right. So it would appear until Democritus came up with a way for both to be true. His tiny building blocks of the material world are, indeed, static in their composition; they cannot change. However, as they constantly move and join together to create the items we perceive, they form a larger world of constantly shifting flux. Democritus had provided a synthesis of his two predecessor’s philosophies where permanence and flux are reconciled.
Unfortunately for science, Plato156 also provided a synthesis of Heraclitus and Parmenides, and had done so without resorting to Democritus’ atoms. Plato won and we had to wait twenty two centuries for the scientifically correct answer to resurface.
WWG p 207-208, 212
Quantum mechanics, Bell’s theorem and holism
The essence of (Niels Bohr’s Principle of Complementarity) is that, even though the wave and particle descriptions [of light] seem to be mutually exclusive, we are never
forced to choose between them because they cannot be simultaneously revealed. The two descriptions —wave and particle — are complementary.163
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle states that it is not possible to simultaneously measure both the exact momentum of a particle and its exact position.
The “momentum versus position” uncertainty is not simply a problem of measurement precision. It actually exists, as do other uncertainties, such as “time versus energy` which allows the creation of matter/energy out of nothing, if it is observed within the quantum fluctuation time allowed by uncertainty. One might say that the universe will trade a little time for a little matter, and that “may-fly” of the sub-nuclear world, the virtual particle, is, thereby, allowed its bit of existence.
The complementarity and uncertainty concepts taken together became —
The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
The essence of the Copenhagen interpretation is that the world must be observed to be objective. It makes no sense to claim that quantum entities possess attributes (such as momentum, spin, etc) until an actual measurement has taken place. This interpretation “works”, but at the expense of determinism and of the objective reality of the world.
Bohr vs. Einstein
Einstein believed in realism — that an objective world exists independently of any observation process and, therefore, claimed, “I still believe in the possibility of giving a model of reality which shall represent events themselves and not merely the possibility of their occurrence” (qtd. in Resnick 224). He claimed that quantum theory is incomplete.
Einstein was upset with the indeterminism and lack of objective reality, but finally admitted defeat and agreed that the Copenhagen interpretation was, indeed, consistent and “worked.” But, not to give up, he claimed that the quantum theory was an incomplete theory because it violated local causality — that events far away cannot instantaneously influence objects here. The great debate, over the reality of the world implied by quantum theory (between Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein) began in 1927 and continued for years. At one point in the debate, in order to defeat quantum theory, Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen proposed a thought experiment (the famous EPR paradox).
…
Quantum wholeness and non-locality (summary)
Einstein and Bohr – Einstein did not like the uncertainty (indeterminism) of QT – ‘God doesn’t play dice.” Einstein argued for determinism against Bohr.
Devised EPR experiment to refute ‘spooky-actions-at-a-distance” and Uncertainty.
Bell (1964) showed mathematically that quantum theory predicts different measurements than classical physics would on the EPR – type experiments. The EPR Experiment – Tried to disprove Uncertainty.
Bell’s Theorem – shows that something must be faster than light?
Aspect (1982) confirmed quantum indeterminacy and non-locality by experiment.
It has been shown that there is a quantum connectedness between two particles in an EPR-type experiment; particles in different places can be entangled such that a local
description of each is impossible.
Aspect’s Experiment – shows that all is One Spooky action at a distance is a fact!
WWG p 219
We know that black holes, thanks to our understanding of quantum theory and general relativity, can totally eliminate any last vestige of determinism. Remember Laplace and his absolute determinism, where by knowing the initial state of any system you could predict its final state. In other words, if I know the precise position and momentum of everything in the present universe, I could theatrically calculate the future position and momentum of everything at any point in the future. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle reduced that ability, but one could still use the quantum wave function to calculate probabilities of system states now or at any time in the future – what happens in the present does still have some correspondence with what happens in the future.
We lose even that with black holes. What falls into a black hole loses all of its properties except mass, so if at any time in the future the black hole radiates,72 its mass away to nothing, what comes out has zero correspondence with what went in. Information is totally lost to our universe. This loss of information would result in the ultimate loss of predictability and therefore, of determinism.
It can’t get any more indeterministic than this! However, for the sake of completeness, here is one more result of modern science that reduces the ability to predict the future, thus leaving it open to becoming.
WWG p 236-242
Whitehead’s Process Theology
Alfred North Whitehead (1861 – 1947) would have been famous even if he had stopped working after producing, in collaboration with Bertrand Russell, his magnum opus, Principia Mathematica in which he showed that mathematics can be reduced to logic. That work took place between 1910 – 1913, after which he moved to the United States and became a philosopher. It was during this time that he produced a comparably great work on metaphysics, Process and Reality in 1929. This metaphysics provides a radically different foundation for a new theodicy.
The discerning Christian may have noticed the extreme dichotomy between the God of the Hebrew Bible and the God of Greek philosophy-based orthodox Christianity. In the former, God is a person who interacts with and is affected by His creatures. In the latter, God is unchangeable, impassible, possesses aseity, and is far beyond the reach of His creatures. This is the age-old problem of immanence versus transcendence, which is solved only with a strained theology. Just what is the nature of ultimate reality?
Process theology has developed from the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, as modified by Charles Hartshorne and others. It has become quite influential in liberal Protestantism, Unitarian Universalism and non-Orthodox Judaism.
Traditionally, the fundamental reality is Being. In the world, being is made up of matter consisting of particles and composites of particles (i.e., atoms and molecules). Matter is inert until acted upon by some outside force which may move or change it. What if, instead of Being, the fundamental reality is Becoming where the primal things are not particles but rather events, occurrences, or processes? What if reality consists of instances of change and to be actual is to be a process? The basic units of reality in Whitehead’s world he calls actual occasions.
For Process philosophy, fundamental reality is basically an evolving process. Reality is not a collection of static particles, rather it is made up of building blocks called actual entities or actual occasions – consider them “beings” that are in the process of development. The building blocks possess some freedom to develop according to some organizing principle that is capable of creating order out of chaos. In this philosophy that principle is called God, who is unlike other entities in that He is imperishable and is the root of causation. God essentially creates order out of chaos and not ex nihilo as many Church Fathers had claimed. This idea of creation matches that of Plato and some early Church Fathers, in that evil is possible due to the limitations of the imperfect material God had to work with. Since all entities are free, God can organize by persuasive love only; never coercion. All activities of any actual occasion (entity) affects all others, thus God not only influences and affects other entities, but is influenced and affected by them.
Instead of a lot of atoms acted upon by forces, the world is a lot of happenings or processes acting of their own volition. In the beginning was God and an uncreated chaos of actual occasions. God was powerful in that He set about to influence the actual occasions to evolve into the creaturely reality we see about us. God was not all powerful since the actual occasions have an inherent primal creativity and power which allows it to choose to actualize one of the potential ways it can become.
In summary, God in Process Theology is not the omnipotent impassible God of later Greek philosophy and cannot impose His will on human beings; therefore God is limited allowing Him to comply with the decisions made by humans. Neither is God omniscient, since the future is not yet actualized and therefore unknown.
Process thought is completely compatible with the theory of evolution. Remember that Darwin was appalled by the process of evolution with its excessive waste, struggles, millions of year’s time frame, and the dependence on chance. Darwin realized that something of the traditional God of western theology would have to go if this process were to be explained in a way that did not make God the author of such sustained evil. So too we, in order to understand the apparent evils of evolution, one must rethink the traditional notion of God.
It maybe asked if this view of God leaving the universe open, unfinished, and awaiting the decisions of the various levels of beings might diminish the belief in the creativity of God. The Process theologian says absolutely not. God is still the ground of all Being and all existence and change depend ultimately upon Him. They claim that a God who micro-manages the evolution of the universe actually demotes God to the level of other natural processes.
As proposed in the Kabbalah and other mystical systems, God must intentionally limit Himself, thus evil is a consequence of God’s self-imposed retreat from the world of His creation; sometimes called the hiddenness of God (deus absconditus). This would allow the development of the universe to remain open and autonomous, thus maximizing Man’s freedom and free will. In this interpretation of the Kabbalah, God is seen as deliberately creating an imperfect world, although, being omnipotent, He could have created it perfect. Other interpretations have it that this is the best that God could do; He is not omnipotent.
Thus God’s power is persuasive rather than coercive and He lures His creatures towards the best possibilities. Since they are free-willed, they can thwart God’s intentions and thus keep Him from seeing the contingent future. If God can be thwarted, His consequent nature is always changing so that all of the experiences of all creatures are assimilated and become part of God’s conscious life. This is more in line with the God of the Hebrew Bible who interacted with His creatures and was affected by them.
In Process Thought there are two values that come about through moments of experience: harmony and intensity. The lack of these two values leads to evil; lack of harmony leads to discord and lack of intensity leads to needless triviality. These two values are in conflict and both cannot be simultaneously maximized, thus allowing evil into the process.
This reconciles God with the state of the world by not even attempting to argue for God’s omnipotence. God is already doing everything in His power to persuade His creatures to do good and prevent evil; therefore He is not responsible for the evil that does actually occur. The problem with this philosophy is that it wipes out thousands of years of established classical theology and is supported only by the fact that it solves the Problem of Evil.
God is capable of acting in the world, but only through persuasion and not by force. He is manifest in the world via inspiration and the creation of possibilities, but never through miracles or other violations of the laws of nature. God lacks the attribute of omnipotence, but humanity is guaranteed absolute freedom of will.
This formulation of God’s limitations being the source of evil was made popular by the work of Rabbi Harold Kushner in his widely read When Bad Things Happen to Good People.
Let me suggest that the author of the Book of Job takes the position which neither Job nor his friends take. He believes in God’s goodness and in Job’s goodness, and is prepared to give up his belief in proposition (A): that God is all-powerful. Bad things do happen to good people in this world, but it is not God who wills it. . . Forced to choose between a good God who is not totally powerful, or a powerful God who is not totally good, the author of the Book of Job chooses to believe in God’s goodness. . . .
Having created the orderly world from chaos, perhaps God isn’t quite finished and bad events take place. “These events do not reflect God’s choices. They happen at random, and randomness is another name for chaos, in those corners of the universe where God’s creative light has not yet penetrated. And chaos is evil; not wrong, not malevolent, but evil nonetheless, because by causing tragedies at random, it prevents people from believing in God’s goodness.
. . .
God does not cause our misfortunes. Some are caused by bad luck, some are caused by bad people, and some are simply an inevitable consequence of our being human and being mortal, living in a world of inflexible natural laws. The painful things. . . not punishments for our misbehavior, nor. . . part of some grand design on God’s part… tragedy is not God’s will.
Open Theism
Many in the Protestant Evangelical community have sought to reconcile the fact of evil by acknowledging that God is limited in His Omniscience, therefore unable to see the future until it is actualized by our free-will choices. God knows all of the past and present but not the conditional future. This theodicy is known as Open Theism or, also, Free Will Theism.
It is claimed to have Biblical support where God makes mistakes, is surprised, changes His mind and adapts to humanity’s free will choices:
Genesis 22:12. He said, ‘Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.’
Exodus 32:14. And the LORD changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.
This posting is complemented by: Theodicy Revisited
Man & Time J B Priestley 