Over the last week, I have rolled through several chapters of Peacocke's book, "Theology for a Scientific Age," and I will not spend time going over the finer details of each discussion. I simply wish to note one of the issues that stood out most to me.
In a sort of continuous investigation, Peacocke looks at the nature of causality and its relation to the universe in which we live. Until the last century, it was generally assumed that causality was a one-way street, a sort of "top-down" movement with determinable and predicatable outcomes. What recent inquiry has revealed, especially in relation to quantum physics, however, is that causality is infinitely more complex than the old assumptions would leave one to believe. Because of the interconnectedness of the universe, the precise nexus of the "cause" of an "effect" becomes increasingly blurred as the lines between a "something" as cause and the same "something" as effect converge more closely upon one another.
So what does this mean? Far and away from the classic models of the universe which assumed that absolutely predicatability of naturalistic processes could be gained by a sufficient amount of data, this understanding of the interrelatedness of causality reveals that regardless of the data set with which the observer begins, the radomness which is built into the data will forever preclude the possibility of absolute predictability.
Theologically, such a consideration is interesting, especially in light of discussions of God's relationship to the created order (sovereignty). That is, if one is declare that God is sovereign, is it possible to also affirm an inherent measure of randomness in the universe? Or is the seeming randomness merely a symptom of human epistemological limitation, the solution for which God's omniscience holds the magic key? Many theists, of course, could not countenance the possibility that the randomness of the universe could be actual for God; after all, if randomness--and its corrolary myriad contingencies--exists, is this not something which lies outside of the sovereign power of God?
While I do not wish to traverse this path in this post, I will simply share an intriguing comment made by Peacocke. He notes that while a universe of absolute law provides no avenues for innovation, growth or creation, an equally random universe precludes the same as well. Therefore, Peacocke suggests that our universe is a mix of the own, claiming that "the interplay of chance and law is creative" (65). Could it be that God's creative power, rather than being trumped by the same, is actually revealed in its infinitely wonderful forms through the inherent randomness of the universe?
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Welcome to my blog. I am often asked what "Exist/Dissolve" means. Well, that is certainly a good question, and I am currently in the process of discovering the answer myself. Prima facie, it strikes me as encapsulating the existensial crisis that is our lives as finite, contingent beings. For a brief moment, we exist, and the next we dissolve into the nothingness of non-existence. From a theological perspective, it is, for me, a sort of ad hoc apologetic for resurrection - i.e., if to exist/dissolve is the human dilemma, there is nothing inherent to the person that guarantees existence, either now or "after" death. Therefore, resurrection is at the same time both the height of absurdity (for it is a notion entirely alien to the paradigm of existence to which we are naturally enculturated) and the only hope for the human to persevere beyond the pale of death.
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