Philosophy, Science and Divine Action.pdf

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Philosophy, Science and Divine Action


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Philosophical Studies in

Science and Religion

Edited by

F. LeRon Shults, University of Agder

VOLUME 1


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Philosophy, Science and

Divine Action

Edited by

F. LeRon Shults, Nancey Murphy andRobert John Russell

LEIDEN BOSON2009


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Tis book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Philosophy, science, and divine action / edited by F. LeRon Shults, Nancey Murphy,

and Robert John Russell.p. cm. (Philosophical studies in science and religion, ISSN 1877-8542 ; v. 1)Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-90-04-17787-1 (hardback : alk. paper)1. Providence and government of GodChristianity. 2. Philosophy and religion.

3. ChristianityPhilosophy. 4. Philosophical theology. 5. Religion and science.I. Shults, F. LeRon. II. Murphy, Nancey C. III. Russell, Robert J.

B135.P45 2009231.7dc22

2009026641

ISSN 1877-8542

ISBN 978 90 04 17787 1

Copyright 2009 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, Te Netherlands.Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing,IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated,stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permissionfrom the publisher.

Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted byKoninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly toTe Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910,Danvers, MA 01923, USA.Fees are subject to change.


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CONENS

A Philosophical Introduction to Divine Action ........................ 1 F. LeRon Shults

Chapter One Five Models of God and Evolution ..................... 17 Ian G. Barbour

Chapter wo Te Sound of Sheer Silence: How doesGod Communicate with Humanity? .......................................... 53

Arthur Peacocke

Chapter Tree Te Metaphysics of Divine Action .................... 97 John Polkinghorne

Chapter Four Describing Gods Action in the World inLight of Scientic Knowledge of Reality .................................. 111

William R. Stoeger

Chapter Five Evaluating the eleological Argument forDivine ActionWesley J. Wildman ......................................................................... 141

Chapter Six Constraint and Freedom in the Movementfrom Quantum Physics to Teology .......................................... 191

Philip Clayton

Chapter Seven Creation, Providence and Quantum Chance ..... 227 Tomas F. racy

Chapter Eight Divine Action in the Natural Order:Buridans Ass and Schrdingers Cat .......................................... 263

Nancey Murphy

Chapter Nine Ordinary and Extraordinary Divine Action:Te Nexus of Interaction .............................................................. 305

George F.R. Ellis


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Chapter en Divine Action and Quantum Mechanics:A Fresh Assessment .......................................................................... 351

Robert John Russell

Appendix: Overview of the CNS/VO Series .............................. 405About the Authors ............................................................................. 427Index .................................................................................................... 429


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A PHILOSOPHICAL INRODUCION O DIVINE ACION

F. LeRon Shults

Te slow process o the European construction o the spheres o sci-ence and religion and the hardening o the boundaries between themduring the 17th and 18th centuries created an intellectual milieu inwhich traditional Christian ways o interpreting religious experience

in the world increasingly came into competition with new scienticexplanations o the world. Te idea o divine action was relativelyunproblematic and generally presupposed within Western medieval cos-mology, with its philosophical mixture o Neo-platonic active principlesand Aristotelian nal causes, both o which were ultimately groundedin the divine (the Form o the Good, the Unmoved Mover).

However, as early modern science (especially classical mechanics)progressively lled the gaps in human knowledge about naturalcauseswithin a mechanical universe, the necessity (and plausibility) o appeal-ing to divine causation gradually diminished. Te rise o deism andprotest atheism in the 18th and 19th centuries was partially in responseto the growing philosophical challenges to the coherence o the notiono divine action, and its alleged incompatibility with human reedomand natural evil. All o this is well known. But where does the discus-sion stand in light o contemporaryscience and philosophy?

Philosophy, Science, and Divine Action

In our late modern philosophical context might there be new ways tomake sense o the claim that God can act in or interact with the world?Many scholars still nd such questions irrelevant (at best) and danger-ous (at worst). Some scientists believe that discourse about events inthe natural world ought to exclude reerences to theological hypotheses.Some theologians believe that discourse about the supernatural eventso divine revelation ought to be insulated rom scientic hypotheses.

Te voices at these polar extremes are ofen the loudest. In the last ewdecades, however, a growing number o scholars have been exploring


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new ways o constructing a discourse that teases the boundaries o theseacademic disciplines in order to pursue more holistic and integrated

interpretations o human lie in the cosmos.One exemplar o such interdisciplinary exploration that stands out or

its scholarly breadth and depth is the Scientic Perspectives on DivineAction(SPDA) project, co-sponsored by the Vatican Observatory (VO)and the Center or Teology and Natural Science (CNS). Tis multi-year collaboration involved over 50 authors meeting at ve internationalconerences, resulting in as many volumes: Quantum Cosmology andthe Laws of Nature (1993), Chaos and Complexity (1997),Evolution-ary and Molecular Biology (1998), Neuroscience and the Person (1999)

and Quantum Mechanics (2001). Each volume carried the subtitle:scientic perspectives on divine action. Te historical background,bibliographic details, unique interdisciplinary process and impact othe project and the series are described by Robert John Russell in theAppendix (below).

Tis allows me to ocus my attention in this Introductionon somegeneral observations about the unction(s) o philosophy within theSPDA project, which is the main rationale or showcasing these tenessays in the current book. Te 91 essays in the ve volumes o theCNS/VO series could be classiied and analyzed in a number oways. For example, we could group them theologically, exploring waysin which particular themes such as the doctrine o God, creation oranthropology are treated across the volumes. Or we could examinethe role played by developments or debates within specic scienticdisciplines, such as physics, evolutionary biology or neuroscience. Suchmining o the resources within these volumes has already begun in thecapstone volume to the project, Scientic Perspectives on Divine Action:

20 Years of Challenge and Progress(CNS/VO, 2008).Our task here, however, is to provide a more general overview o themajor philosophical themes and developments that played a more orless explicit role in the SPDA project. Te volumes in the series offeranalysis o specic philosophical concepts within both science andtheology (such as space, time, matter and causality), as well as engage-ment with broader philosophical systems that aim to incorporate bothscience and theology, such as neo-Tomism and process philosophy.As Russell notes in his overview o the series in the capstone volume:

Te overarching goal was to engage theology, philosophy, and natu-ral science in a process o constructive dialogue and creative mutualinteraction. He observes that 30 o the 91 essays in the series explicitly


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treated philosophical issues. I think it is also air to say that all o theessays involve philosophical engagement at least implicitly, insoar

as they utilize philosophical categories and attempt to contribute toour understanding o topics that have a long history o philosophicaldisputation.

Te chapters in the current volume were selected or inclusion rstand oremost because they demonstrate the value o explicitly attendingto the philosophical issues that shape the dialogue between science andChristian theology about the idea o divine action in the world. BelowI will provide a brie preview o each o these chapters. First, however,I want to back up and briey outline three o the classical themes in

philosophy (epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics) and three o theshifs in philosophical categories in late modernity (relation, kinesis,and difference), to which we can then make reerence as we previewthe chapters.

Classical Philosophical Temes and Late Modern rajectories

Many o the particular issues within the complex history o the develop-ment o philosophy that are relevant or understanding the role o theidea o divine action in the contemporary dialogue between scientistsand Christian theologians are outlined and analyzed in the context othe ten essays that comprise this book. For the purposes o this Introduc-tion, thereore, it suffi ces to note three o the general areas into whichphilosophical discourse is ofen divided: metaphysics, epistemology andethics. While treatments o these themes are clearly interconnected, orthe sake o analysis we can distinguish between the kinds o questions

that typically exercise philosophers: What is real? What is true? Whatis good? Broadly speaking, we are dealing here with the conditions orthe human experience o being, knowing and acting in the world. Scien-tists and theologians operate, more or less sel-consciously, within andacross these spheres o discourse. One o the main goals o this bookis highlighting the way in which philosophical themes and categoriesunction within the dialogue among the disciplines.

Like just about everything in philosophy, the meaning o the termmetaphysicsis highly contested. In general it has to do with discourse

about being, about the nature and structure o reality. Presuppositionsabout that which is inevitably impact both scientic and theologi-cal argumentation. Ones assumptions about the order o the world


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(cosmo-logy) constrain ones options or thinking about the relation othe divine to (or in) that world. On the other hand, theological ideas

about the nature o God (or ultimate reality) shape ones interpretationso experience within the cosmos. Moreover, concepts such as causal-ity mayprima facieappear to be simply neutral scientic notions, butthey are wrapped up within broader (or deeper) metaphysical notionsabout the order o things and their intelligibility. Tis is perhaps mosteasily seen in the unction o concepts such as space and time. Te shifrom a Newtonian to an Einsteinian understanding and use o theseconcepts was clearly o metaphysical import; the idea o matter itselwas reconstructed in a new vision o the dynamic structure o reality.

Such issues cannot be divorced rom epistemology. How do (or can)we know what we (think we) know about reality? Afer the demise oclassical oundationalism and the rise o post-positivist philosophy oscience, we have become acutely aware o the limits o human knowing.In the most popular interpretations o quantum theory, and in someinterpretations o chaos theory, particular kinds o processes and eventsare viewed as unpredictable in principle, which leads many physiciststo acknowledge an intrinsic limit to scientic knowledge. Awareness othe limitations o human knowing is intensied in theological discourse,which is distinguished by its attentiveness to the human experienceo being-limited, and the ultimate boundary conditions that groundthis experience. In neither discipline does the rejection o apodicticknowledge o the object o inquiry entail the denial o any knowledge o(or valuable engagement with) reality. As a middle way between naverealism and anti-realism, we nd an increasing number o scholars,including several included in this volume, embracing some orm ocritically realist epistemology.

I ethics has to do with acting then we might expect an inter-disciplinary project on divine action to have special bearing on thisarena o philosophical discourse. As we will see in the preview below,most o the philosophical energy o the project was devoted to issueso metaphysics and epistemology. However, it will also become clearthat questions about morality (divine or human) are almost alwaysin the background and quite ofen in the oreground in these discus-sions. Tis is particularly evident in the signicant attention given inthe project to two specic philosophical issues: theodicy and reedom.

First, there was widespread agreement among the participants thatany postulate o special divine action in the world exacerbates thetheodicy problem. In act, this is a primary reason that the next series


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sponsored by CNS/VO is ocusing on the issue o natural evil.1 Sec-ond, i events in the world (including human actions) are completely

(or even partially) determined by God (or the laws o nature), then inwhat sense can we speak plausibly o human reedom and responsibil-ity? Clearly metaphysical (and epistemological) claims about the rela-tion between necessity and chance in the world are relevant or moraldiscourse as well.

Attending to these three general areas o philosophical discourseprovides a synchronic overview o some o the most signicant issuesin the SPDA project. But we can also see the inuence o philosophyi we think diachronically, pointing out historical shifs in the meaning

and use o key categories. For most o its history Christian theologyhas been couched in the categories o Platonism and/or Aristotelian-ism, and has shared the resistance o both o these ancient philosophi-cal schools to Stoicism. Many early modern scientic developments,however, were motivated by renaissance retrievals o aspects o Stoicphilosophy, including some o its atomistic and deterministic elements.Tis contributed to an intellectual milieu that increasingly challengedPlatonic-Aristotelian categories, as well as the Christian doctrinal or-mulations that relied heavily upon them. Our purpose here is not torecount the diffi culties this caused or early modern theologians but topoint out three specic categorical shifs in late modern philosophy thathave shaped the conceptual space within the dialogue now occurs: thegrowing preerence or relation, kinesis and difference over substance,stasis and sameness.

Whence and whither these philosophical trajectories? In PlatosSophist the visitor convinces Teaetetus that there are ve generalkinds (genn): that which is or being (to on) rest, (stasis) change

(kinesis) the same (tauton) and the different (heteron). For the mostpart traditional Western philosophy (as well as science and theology)has ollowed Plato in starting with the category o being, which hasto do with the essence or substance (ousia) o things, as distinct romtheir relations (or accidental attributes). Plato also tended to value restover change (or motion) and sameness over difference, tendencies thatwere hardened in Neo-platonism and registered a proound effect on

1 Nancey Murphy, Robert John Russell and William R. Stoeger, S.J., eds, Physicsand Cosmology: Scientic Perspectives on the Problem of Natural Evil, vol. I(Berkeley:CNS/VO, 2007).


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Western thought. Although Aristotle challenged Platos division betweenthe realm o (unchanging) Forms and the realm o (changing) matter,

he stillperhaps even more than Platovalorized substance (ousia)over relation, rest over movement, and the same over the different. Forboth o these philosophers the categories o being, rest and identity weredominant in their metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.

In late modern philosophy, however, one can trace a growing dis-satisaction with this dominance and a struggle to reverse (or at leastbalance) these tendencies through an emphasis on the philosophicalsignicance o the categories o relationality, dynamism and difference.Tese trajectories have been motivated by scientic and theological as

well as philosophical concerns. In the turn rom substance to relation-ality, Immanuel Kant played an important role, explicitly reversingAristotle in his rst critique by making substance and accidents asub-category o Relation. Te shif is also evident in physics: romthe Cartesian-Newtonian concept o material substances to post-Ein-steinian concepts o relativity and eld theories. Although they are notincluded in this volume, several theologians who participated in theSPDA project (e.g., Moltmann, Edwards) also illustrate this trajectory,articulating ideas o God that begin not with abstract notions o unitarysubstance, but with robustly relational (trinitarian) categories.

We can also see a late modern trajectory toward a metaphysicalprivileging o kinesis (or motion) over stasis (or rest). Tis is connectedto the question o the relation between being and becoming, classi-cally illustrated in the extremes o Parmenides and Heraclitus, whomPlato tried to balance. In his theory o the two realms, however, thetemporal movement o material things is not the Ideal; or Plato trueknowledge is contemplation o the (static) Forms. Newtons laws o

inertia also presupposed a privileged realm o stasisthe unchangingthree-dimensional structure o Absolute Space. Here too Einstein isthe easy comparison. Te shif rom F=ma to E=mc2represents a newawareness that dynamic energykinesisis an essential and generativeeature o the cosmos. According to Einstein (contra Newton), mass,the inertial property o matter by which bodies resist change o motion,should be identied with the energy o that motion. Developments inthe elds o quantum mechanics and chaos theory have also conrmedand intensied this philosophical valuation o the dynamic over the

static. Tis has led to non-deterministic and non-linear conceptions otemporality and causality as well, which many believe can open up newways to imagine the action o God in relation to the world.


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One can also trace a third late modern philosophical trajectory inwhich alterity (as opposed to identity) is increasingly embraced as a

key generative category. Here we can point, or example, to EmmanuelLevinas emphasis on the primordial relation to the other, which alwaysresists the imperialism o the same, to Jacques Derridas notion o dif-fernceand his broader project o deconstruction, to Gilles Deleuzesportrayal o the arrival o the Disparate as the orce that generatesintensities o difference, and to Paul Ricoeurs reections on the ipse-ity o the sel as it emerges in relations to others. Each o these think-ers (and others) has been inuenced in various ways by Kierkegaardand Heidegger, both o whom privileged the category o difference in

their philosophical speculations and psychological analyses o humanrelationships. Already in the late 17th century attention to differencebegan to transorm the eld o mathematics, leading to a shif rom asubstantial to a unctional (relational) concept o number. Tis con-tributed to the emergence o differential calculus, which had a prooundinuence on physics and related sciences. However, the philosophicalturn to alterity (or difference) has not (yet) played as signicant a rolein the science and theology dialogue.

A Philosophical Preview

Te essays included in this volume are exemplary in several ways. Teyare all examples o state-o-the-art contributions to the debate overdivine action among scientists and Christian theologians. Tey alsorepresent the work o some o the most active participants in the SPDAproject, and the broader international theology and science dialogue.

Mostly importantly or the purposes o this book, they illustrate thecare with which and depth to which the project attended to the role ophilosophy in this dialogue. Te ollowing preview does not attempt tosummarize the complex arguments o each essay; rather, it alerts thereader to some o the key philosophical concerns and concepts that arerelevant or understanding and assessing the ongoing discussion.

Te rst three chapters included here were written by the threescholars who are widely acknowledged to be the leading gures othe contemporary resurgent interest in international dialogue among

scientists and Christian theologians, which picked up momentum in the1970s and has grown consistently to the present: Ian Barbour, ArthurPeacocke and John Polkinghorne. Te ourth chapter is by William


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R. Stoeger, S.J, one o the oremost Roman Catholic participants inand sponsors o the SPDA project. Wesley Wildmans contribution in

the fh chapter represents an important (but minority) voice withinthe project, a voice that challenges the idea o divine agency itsel. Teremaining ve chapters all deal with the more specic question o specialdivine action in relation to quantum theory. It makes sense or the bulko the book to ocus on this theme, because the desire to construct aplausible model o special (or objective) divine action was sharedby the majority o participants, and engaging theories o quantumphenomena was an important part o the majority o such attempts. Aswe will see this holds or our last ve authors as well: Philip Clayton,

Tomas racy, Nancey Murphy, George Ellis and Robert Russell.Tis volume begins with a chapter by Ian Barbour, whose inuential

taxonomy o Ways o Relating Science and Teology rst appearedin the precursor volume to the SPDA series, and was later developedin more detail in several places.2Te essay that is included here is thesecond o Barbours contributions to the project: Five Models o Godand Evolution. Because theologians cannot avoid using philosophicalcategories in the systematic elaboration o ideas, Barbour commends theexplicit and integrative use o philosophy in the engagement betweenscience and theology. In this context Barbour himsel illustrates this intwo ways. First, he explicitly demonstrates the way in which our par-ticular philosophical issues in contemporary biology (sel-organization,indeterminacy, top-down causality, and communication o inormation)play a role in various models o divine action in an evolving world.Second, Barbour attempts to show the illuminative power o processphilosophy, especially the categories developed by Alred North White-head and Charles Hartshorne. He argues that this philosophical system

is able both to integrate the valuable insights o the other views andto move beyond them by better accounting or the human experienceo interiority and novelty. Tis engagement with process philosophy,which explicitly challenges substance-accident dualism and begins withrelational and dynamic categories, also illustrates the way in which therst two late modern trajectories (outlined above) have impacted thescience and religion dialogue.

2

Barbour, Ways o Relating Science and Teology, in Russell, et al., eds., Physics,Philosophy and Teology: A Common Quest for Understanding (Vatican Observatory,1988), 2148. Te our ways are conict, independence, dialogue and integration. C.Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science(New York: HarperOne, 1990).


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Arthur Peacocke introduces his essay with a reerence to the ancientIsraelite prophet Elijah, who experienced the sound o sheer silence

in his encounter with the Lord (1 Kings 19). Tis story illustrates theway in which the idea o divine action in general, and personal com-munication in particular, play such an important role in interpretationso religious experience, especially in the Abrahamic traditions. Peacockewants to maintain this intuition, but to articulate it in such a way thatmakes sense in light o contemporary science. He argues that the mostadequate way (philosophically) to account or 20th century discover-ies in sciences such as physics and biology is emergentist monism,which provides a model o whole-part causation that challenges the

ontological dualism and epistemological reductionism o much earlymodern philosophy. Peacocke challenges interventionist conceptionso the God-world relation, which ofen presuppose a dualism betweenimmaterial and material substance, and offers a panentheistic modelin which the world is in some sense in God. Here too we see theinuence o the philosophical privileging o relationality and becom-ing on the dialogue between science and religion. Like most o theother participants in the project, Peacocke recognizes that his proposaldoes not solve the intractable problem o evil, but he believes it doesmitigate the conceptual problem o plausibly imaging the possibility o(personal and moral) divine action in the world.3

John Polkinghorne should also be counted as part o the trio oleading gures who have most signicantly contributed to the con-temporary resurgence o the dialogue between Christian theology andscience. Although the title o his contribution included here is TeMetaphysics o Divine Action, he makes it clear early in the essay thatquestions about being cannot be divorced rom questions about know-

ing. Polkinghorne avors a version o critical realism whose motto isepistemology models ontology. Like most physicists, he accepts theCopenhagen interpretation o quantum phenomena, which argues thatthe indeterminacy displayed in sub-atomic particle experiments is nota result only o the epistemological limits o human observers, but anindication o real openness in the natural world. Unlike many otherparticipants in the series, however, Polkinghorne wants to expand this

3 Peacockes engages these and other philosophical issues (including the epistemo-logical implications o critical realism) in more detail in Teology for a Scientic Age:Being and BecomingNatural, Divine and Human(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993).


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openness to chaos theory, which deals with macrophysical objects andevents. In the context o this particular essay, Polkinghorne ocuses on

ways in which metaphysical assumptions about the nature o time andepistemological assumptions about the knowability o the uture shapeour conceptions o divine action in (and divine knowledge o ) theworld. Te main point or our purposes here is that he too illustratesthe importance o explicitly attending to the philosophical mediationo the dialogue between science and religion.4

William Stoeger, S.J., was one o the leading organizers o the SPDAproject (representing the Vatican Observatory) and the most activeRoman Catholic contributor to the book series. In the essay included

here, Stoeger argues that the distinction between primary and secondarycausality, which was developed by Tomas Aquinas in his adaptation oAristotelian metaphysics, provides us with a useul philosophical toolor clariying the nature o divine action. Variations o this approach,which are ofen classied as neo-Tomistic, comprise one o the mostsignicant and widely shared strategies among contemporary RomanCatholic theologians in the science and religion dialogue. Stoeger sug-gests that these philosophical categories are more adequate to boththe scientic and the theological data, and lead to ewer diffi cultiesin explicating the essential differences between God and his/her cre-ation, and the ideas o divine immanence and transcendence. For thepurposes o the current volume, this essay provides a clear exampleo an attempt to maintain and regure a medieval set o categories indialogue with contemporary scientic discoveries such as inormationtheory and top-down causality.

Wesley Wildmans essay addresses one o the key issues that hasdominated the traditional dialogue between science and theology: the

role o teleology in arguments or divine action. Most medieval andearly modern Christian interpretations o Gods creative and providen-tial relation to the world appropriated (to some extent) the Aristoteliannotion o nal causality. Tis way o making sense o the apparentpurposiveness in nature was increasingly eclipsed by the emphasis inclassical mechanics on effi cient causality. Wildman demonstrateshow the problem o linking teleology and divine action was urthercomplicated not only by developments in evolutionary and molecular

4 For an overview o Polkinghornes approach to the dialogue, c. his Belief in Godin an Age of Science(New Haven: Yale, 2003).


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biology, but also by the undamental metaphysical ambiguity that char-acterizes philosophical discourse. Based on his analysis o the notion

o having an end throughout the philosophical tradition, Wildmanoffers several schemata or making sense o this complex conceptualdebate. For example, he distinguishes between our types o teleologi-cal views in biology, outlines three stages that must be included in anyteleological argument or divine action, and delineates the way in whichsix modes o divine action can be correlated with teleological loci innature. Wildmans essay illustrates both the material signicance ometaphysical questions and the methodological value o philosophicaldistinctions in the ongoing debate. He also represents the inclusion

within the project o a minority position among Christian theologiansin the dialogue. In light o the problem o evil and other conceptualissues, Wildman is willing to give up the idea that God acts (intention-ally, or in a way analogous to human agency) in the world, and preersto speak o God (or ultimate reality) as the ground o being.5

Te remaining ve chapters explicitly try to maintain the idea ointentional or special divine action in the world, and do so in a varietyo ways, all o which heavily engage quantum theory. We begin with anessay by Philip Clayton: racing the Lines: Constraint and Freedom inthe Movement rom Quantum Physics to Teology. Like most o theother contributors to this volume, Clayton argues that the Copenhageninterpretation o quantum indeterminacy opens up new possibilities ormaking sense o divine action. However, he emphasizes the importanceo balancing metaphysical courage with epistemic humility as we explorethese possibilities. Clayton suggests that instead o thinking o physicsand metaphysics in dichotomous terms, we should imagine them asalling at different points on a continuum o abstraction. Questions

about divine action require us to move urther along the continuumtoward abstraction, but should nevertheless be connected to (and insome sense constrained by) questions about the concrete nature othe physical world. On the other hand, Clayton also acknowledges theinsight o post-positivist philosophy o science that metaphysical deci-sions are not simply determined by the data o physical theories. LikePeacocke and others, Clayton commends a panentheistic metaphysics as

5 In his contribution to the capstone volume, Wildman makes this argument moreextensively in the context o his classication o the projects participants. C. Wildman,Te Divine Action Project, Scientic Perspectives on Divine Action, 176.


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offering the best current option or tracing the lines between quantumphysics and theology.6

In his essay Creation, Providence and Quantum Chance, Tomasracy also (like William Stoeger) utilizes the philosophical distinctionbetween primary and secondary causality. On the one hand, God pri-marily and directly causes the (continual) existence o all nite things.On the other hand, God can also act through secondary causes,producing results indirectly through the operation o nite things.racy suggests that quantum theory has led to a philosophical chal-lenge to exceptionless causal determinism, long accepted by scientistsand theologians, which opens up a new way to think o Gods special

(and objective) action in the world. Te kind o divine action in historythat is central or the aith o the Abrahamic religions, argues racy,requires that there be gaps (o the right sort) in the causal structureso nature. Tese gaps appear to him to be provided in the indetermi-nacy o quantum events. For racy, such gaps are not created ad hocin the world by Gods special acts o intervention but are built intostructure o the world created by God ex nihilo. Like most o the othercontributors who engage quantum theory, racy also explicitly makesthe connection between metaphysical decisions (about compatibilismand incompatibilism or example) and issues that bear on ethics, suchas the plausibility o the idea o human ree will and responsibility.

Nancey Murphy was another one o the most active o the par-ticipants in the project, serving as co-editor or three o the volumesin the series as well as the capstone volume. In the paper includedhere, Divine Action in the Natural Order, she outlines a theoryo causation that attempts to account or both scientic phenomenaand religious experience. Murphy stresses that the problem o divine

action is, at base, a metaphysical problem. Nothing short o a revisiono current metaphysical notions regarding the nature o matter andcausation is likely to solve the problem o divine action. Murphysessay also demonstrates the importance o the rst two late modernphilosophical trajectories outlined above. For example, in her treatmento the metaphysical considerations that shape the dialogue, she tracesthe role o concepts such as matter, substance, change, and motion in

6 In his chapter in the capstone volume, oward a Teory o Divine Action that hasraction, Clayton commends emergence theory as a valuable and viable metaphysicor incorporating both scientic and theological concerns.


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the shif rom Aristotelian to Newtonian cosmology. In Murphys ownproposal or understanding divine action in dialogue with contempo-

rary science, chaos theory and top-down causation play a subsidiaryrole; God acts at the quantum level, activating one or another o theinnate powers o a quantum entity, rom the bottom-up withoutchanging the laws o nature. As she makes clear throughout, Murphysphilosophical efforts are also motivated in part by a theological desireto avoid exacerbating the problem o evil while making sense o theexperience o ree-will.7

George Elliss chapter is, as he notes, intended largely as a responseto Murphys, with which he basically agrees. Elliss concern is to clariy

and make use o the distinction between Ordinary and ExtraordinaryDivine Action. For the purposes o this introduction, two points abouthis essay are particularly salient. First, Elliss overview o the relevantscientic developments, such as chaos theory and emergent order, showsthe signicant impact o the late modern philosophical shifs towardprivileging relationality and dynamism over substance and stasis. Sec-ond, Ellis provides a more detailed treatment o the role o the problemo evil in reections on divine action. He acknowledges that theories oextraordinary divine action are susceptible to the charge o capricious-ness. I God can, and occasionally does act, why does God not act tostop Hitler (or example), or to alleviate contemporary experiences opain and suffering? Elliss own view is that God acts (extraordinarily)only to give revelatory, spiritual or moral insight, not to alter a physi-cal outcome rom what it would have otherwise been. Tis proposaloffers a clear example o the way in which moral concerns can play animportant role in the treatment o metaphysical and epistemologicalissues within the science and theology dialogue.8

Te nal chapter included in this book is by Robert John Russell,director o CNS, and the main organizer o the project. He was theleading editor o each volume in the CNS/VO series, and arguably theperson most amiliar with the general contours o the ongoing debateamong the participants during the process as a whole. Divine Actionand Quantum Mechanics: A Fresh Assessment was the last chapter

7 Nancey Murphys chapter in the capstone volume explored Emergence, Downward

Causation and Divine Action, outlining several key philosophical issues and evaluatinga variety o approaches to these themes.8 C. George Ellis and Nancey Murphy, On the Moral Nature of the Universe(Min-

neapolis: Fortress, 1996).


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in the fh and nal volume o the series, and it offers a summary othe key issues in the eld, outlines a constructive proposal and sug-

gests directions or uture research. Troughout the essay, Russell paysspecial attention to philosophical aspects o the dialogue, including themetaphysical and epistemological questions that shape the interpretationo quantum mechanics. His own proposal involves the appropriationo theologians like Jurgen Moltmann and Wolart Pannenberg, orwhom trinitarian reection plays a central role in articulating the rela-tion between God and the world. Russell also explicitly addresses thetwo main ethical (or moral) questions that shape Christian discourseon divine action: the problem o human reedom and the challenge o

theodicy.9

Conclusion

Although showcasing these inuential essays rom the SPDA projectwould be suffi cient warrant or the production o the current book, itsinclusion in the Brill series Philosophical Studies in Science and Reli-gion suggests that another motivation lies behind their compilation.Both individually and as a group these chapters illustrate the signicantrole o philosophy in the dialogue between science and Christian theol-ogy over the question o divine action. Tis is so amply demonstratedin the various essays that I have limited mysel in this Introductionto alerting the reader to some o the major philosophical themes andshifs that shape the general context o the dialogue and the particularmaterial and methodological argumentation o each contribution.

Te project was not intended to offer a nal anwer on the question

o divine action but to press the dialogue between Christian theologyand natural science urther in light o the signicant scientic (andphilosophical) developments o the last century. No single project canaccomplish everything, and the organizers sel-consciously ocusedtheir interdisciplinary exploration by limiting themselves to dealingwith those scientic elds that appeared most promising or openingup new opportunities or reconstructing Christian interpretations o theexperience o Gods action in the world. Although they welcomed and

9 For a more detailed treatment o these and related issues, c. Russell, Cosmol-ogyFrom Alpha to Omega(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008).


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encouraged discussion o the ethical issues raised by the problems ohuman reedom and theodicy, most o the philosophical analysis ocused

on metaphyical and epistemological issues. As indicated above, a newseries that explicitly treats the problem o natural evil has now beenlaunched, demonstrating that its participants are well aware o the needor ongoing interdisciplinary dialogue about the various and complexquestions that must be aced in discussions o divine action.

As this dialogue continues to widen, geographically and conceptually,it will be necessary to complement the insights gained and progressmade by the CNS/VO series on divine action by examining the topicrom other perspectives and continuing to welcome new voices into

the conversation. Tis will open up new opportunities or criticallyengaging the deeper philosophical presuppositions that shape the veryidea o divine agency in Christian theology. o what extent might earlymodern metaphysical assumptions about the dyads natural vs. super-natural and immanence vs. transcendence constrain our options orinterpreting encounters with ultimate reality? o what extent mightwestern epistemological assumptions about the capacity o reason andthe unction o analogy in theological language constrain our optionsor conceptualizing the relation between human and divine intentional-ity? o what extent might individualistic ethical assumptions about thepowerul role o desire or uture goods in nite agency constrain ourimaginative articulation o the relation o God to time? Our explora-tion o these and other challenging questions will be enhanced as weincreasingly engage the resources o the late modern philosophical turnto alterity and o other (especially non-western) religious traditions.


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CHAPER ONE

FIVE MODELS OF GOD AND EVOLUION

Ian G. Barbour

Is evolutionary theory compatible with the idea that God acts in nature?Trough most o Western history it had been assumed that all creatures

were designed and created by God in their present orms, but Darwinclaimed that they are the product o a long process o natural selection.His theory o evolution not only undermined the traditional versiono the argument rom design; it also explained the history o nature byscientic laws that seemed to offer no opportunity or Gods providen-tial guidance. However several themes in the biological sciences offerpromising new ways o conceiving o divine action in evolutionaryhistory without intervention or violation o the laws o nature.

Te rst section o this essay traces the development o evolutionary

theory rom Darwin himsel to molecular biology and recent hypothesesabout complexity. Te second explores our themes in recent writingabout biological processes: sel-organization, indeterminacy, top-downcausality, and communication o inormation. Subsequent sectionsexamine theological models o Gods action in nature based on analo-gies with each o these our characteristics o organic lie. I will suggestthat a fh model rom process theology avoids some o the problemsarising in other models o Gods relation to nature.

1. Darwinism Evolving

Evolutionary theory has undergone signicant reinterpretation andmodication since Darwin. First, the growth o population geneticsand molecular biology is briey described. Ten the expansion oDarwinism is discussed, particularly the recognition that other actorsin addition to natural selection inuence the direction o evolutionary

change. Finally, recent theories o complexity and sel-organizationare considered.


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1.1.From Darwin to DNA

In Darwins day, Newtonian mechanics was looked on as the orm oscience which other sciences should emulate. Te Newtonian view-point was atomistic, deterministic and reductionistic. It was believedthat the behavior o all systems is determined by a ew simple lawsgoverning the behavior o their smallest components. Change wasthought to be the result o external orces, such as gravity, acting onbodies which are themselves essentially passive. Darwin agreed with thephilosophers o science who held that Newtonian physics representedan ideal or all the sciences, and his theory o evolution shared many

o its assumptions.1

Darwin held that evolutionary change is caused by natural selec-tion acting on variations among individual members o a species.Under competitive conditions, those individuals with a slight adaptiveadvantage will survive better to reproduce and pass on that advantageto their offspring. His viewpoint was atomistic in assuming thatselection acts on separate traits in individual organisms. For him, asor Newton, change was the result o external orces; he held that thedirection o change is determined by natural selection, not by the efforts

o organisms themselves as Lamark had believed. Te assumptionswhich Darwin shared with Newton are explored in detail in a recent

volume by Depew and Weber.2

By the end o the nineteenth century, probabilitywas an importantconcept in several areas o physics. Maxwell and Boltzmann showedthat the probability o different congurations o gas molecules can becalculated even when the motions o individual molecules are too com-plicated to describe mathematically. Statistical averages can be used topredict the relationship between large-scale variables such as pressure,

volume, temperature, heat ow, and entropy. In statistical mechanicsand classical thermodynamics, equilibrium macrostates can be calcu-lated without knowing the initial distribution o molecules.

Probabilistic reasoning was also important in the merging opopula-tion geneticsand evolutionary theory early in the twentieth century inthe theories o Fisher, Wright, and Dobzhansky. Fisher acknowledged

1

Michael Ruse, Philosophy o Biology oday (Albany, N.Y.: State University o NewYork Press, 1988), 6; idem, Te Darwinian Paradigm (New York: Routledge, 1989).2 David P. Depew and Bruce H. Weber, Darwinism Evolving (Cambridge: MI

Press, 1995), Part I.


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the inuence o nineteenth-century physics on his ideas about calculat-ing gene probabilities in individual organisms and gene requencies in

populations. Temodern synthesis in which Julian Huxley, G.G. Simp-son and Ernst Mayr were prominent, continued the Darwinian beliethat the evolution o species was the result o a gradual accumulation osmall changes. I some members o a population are geographically orreproductively isolated rom other members, accumulated changes mayresult in a new species that can no longer interbreed with the originalpopulation. In a very small isolated population, gene requencies maydiffer, purely by chance, rom those in the larger population; the direc-tion o evolutionary change (genetic drif) would then be the result

o chance rather than natural selection. But natural selection was stillviewed as the principal agent o evolutionary change.3

Te discovery o the structure o DNAin 1953 led to the identicationo the molecular components o the genes which population geneticshad postulated. Te central dogma o molecular biology asserted thatinormation is transerred in one direction only, rom the sequences obases in DNA to the sequences o amino acids assembled by the DNAto orm proteins. It was claimed that the environment has no directeffect on genes except to eliminate or perpetuate them through selec-tive pressures on the organisms that carried them. Molecular biologyhas been immensely ruitul in illuminating almost every aspect oevolutionary history, but some o the assumptions initially associatedwith it have more recently been questioned.

1.2.Te Expansion o Darwinism

Most o the challenges to the modern synthesis in recent decades should

be seen as part o an expanded Darwinism (or neo-Darwinism), ratherthan as a rejection o earlier insights. For example, it has been claimedthat selection occursat many levels, and not just on the level o organ-isms in populations. Dawkins speaks o selection at the level o genes; he

views organisms as mechanisms by which genes perpetuate themselves.E.O. Wilson speaks o kin selection and others deend group selection.Both philosophers and biologists have argued that selection occurs alsoat the species level. Whereas an organism produces other organismsby reproduction, and it perishes by death, a species produces other

3 Ibid., Part II.


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species by speciation, and it perishes by extinction. Te speciation rateo a species may be as important in the long run as the reproduction

rate o individual organisms. Variation and selection occur at severallevels at once, and o course changes at one level will inuence thoseat other levels.4Darwin himsel stressed the struggle and competitionor survival, but more recent interpretations point to a larger role orcooperation and symbiosis.

Te idea opunctuated equilibriumdeended by Gould and Eldredgechallenged the earlier assumption that macroevolution is the result othe gradual accumulation o many small changes. Tey point to ossilrecords that show millions o years with very little change, interspersed

with bursts o rapid speciation in relatively short periods, especially inthe early Cambrian period when all the known phyla and basic bodyplans appeared in a very short period. Tey postulate that alterationsin developmental sequences produced major structural changes. Teir

view is holisticin directing attention to polygenic traits, the genome asa system, and the role o regulatory programs in development, ratherthan to small changes due to mutations in single genes governing sepa-rate traits that might be subject to selection. Te directions o changeare determined by the possibilities o developmental reorganization aswell as by selective orces acting on organisms.5

Gould and Lewontin hold that evolutionary change arises rom manydiffering causes, and they criticize explanation by natural selection alone(panadaptationism). Tey point out that one can always postulatea possible selective advantage or any trait by making up a just-sostory o how it might be adaptive, even in the absence o independentevidence or such an advantage.6But most biologists probably ollowStebbins and Ayala in claiming that all the known data are consistent

with an expanded and enriched version o neo-Darwinism in whichvariation and natural selection are still the main actors in evolutionary

4 R.N. Brandon and R.M. Burian, eds., Genes, Organisms, Populations: Controversiesover the Units o Selection (Cambridge: MI Press, 1984); Niles Eldredge and StanleySalthe, Hierarchy and Evolution, in Oxord Surveys o Evolutionary Biology (Oxord:Oxord University Press, 1985).

5 Stephen Jay Gould, Darwinism and the Expansion o Evolutionary Teory, Science216 (1982), 38087; S.J. Gould and Niles Eldredge, Punctuated Equilibrium Comes

o Age, Nature366 (1993), 22327.6 S.J. Gould and Richard C. Lewontin, Te Spandrels o San Marco and the Pan-glossian Paradigm: A Critique o the Adaptionist Programme, Proc. o Royal Societyo LondonB205 (1979), 58198.


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change.7Te communication o inormation rom DNA to proteins isindeed crucial, as the central dogma asserted, but other sources o

inormation are signicant in determining how genes are expressed inliving organisms. Some o this inormation is in the cytoplasm outsidethe cell nucleus, and some comes rom elsewhere in the organism orwider environment. A complex eedback and regulatory system turnsparticular genetic programs on and off. Outside inuences can alsoaffect the transposition o genes.8

Some biologists have noted that the internal drivesand novel actionso organisms can initiate evolutionary changes. Te environment selectsindividuals, but individuals also select environments, and in a new niche

a different set o genes may contribute to survival. Some pioneeringsh ventured onto land and were the ancestors o amphibians andmammals; some mammals later returned to the water and were theancestors o dolphins and whales; some orest woodpeckers began tohunt in the mountains. In each case organisms themselves took newinitiatives; genetic and then anatomic changes ollowed rom theiractions through genetic assimilation (the Baldwin effect). Te changeswere not initiated by genetic variations. Lamark was evidently right thatthe purposeul actions o organisms can eventually lead to physiologicalchanges, though he was wrong in assuming that physiological changesoccurring during an organisms lietime can be inherited directly byits offspring.9

Finally, some biologists, including Mayr, Gould, and Lewontin, con-sider themselves exponents o an expanded Darwinism but insist onthe autonomy o biologyrom physics. Tey say that even the probabi-listic physics o classical thermodynamics cannot serve as a model orevolutionary biology because chance and contingent historical contexts

play such crucial roles. We can describe evolution through a uniquehistorical narrative but we cannot deduce its path rom predictive laws.Tese authors also deend the distinctiveness o biological concepts

7 G. Ledyard Stebbins and Francisco Ayala, Is a New Evolutionary Synthesis Neces-sary? Science213 (1981), 96771.

8 John Campbell, An Organizational Interpretation o Evolution, in Evolution atthe Crossroads, David P. Depew and Bruce H. Weber, eds. (Cambridge: MI Press,

1985).9 C.H. Waddington, Te Strategy o the Genes (New York: Macmillan, 1957); RobertJ. Richards, Darwin and the Emergence o Evolutionary Teories o Mind and Behavior(Chicago: University o Chicago Press, 1987), chap. 10.


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and their irreducibility to the concepts o physics and chemistry, as Iwill note later.10

1.3. Beyond Darwinism?

Darwins theory shared many o the assumptions o Newtonian phys-ics; the modern synthesis was inuenced by the probabilistic reason-ing o statistical mechanics. Future understanding o evolution maybe enhanced by recent work on chaos and complexity in the physicalsciences. Whereas the linear systems o classical thermodynamics areinsensitive to small initial differences and attain predictable equilibrium

states, nonlinear thermodynamic systems ar rom equilibrium areextremely sensitive to very small initial differences and are thereoreunpredictable. Prigogine and others have described the emergence onew types o order in dissipative systems ar rom equilibrium. Aninnitesimal difference in initial conditions will lead to alternative end-states and new levels o order described by system-wide relationshipsrather than by interactions at the molecular level.11

Stuart Kauffman draws rom theories o complexity in arguing thatevolution is the product o sel-organizationas well as chance and selec-tion. He looks at the common properties o diverse systems, or examplethose in embryonic development, neural networks and computernetworks. As we will see in the next section, he argues that dynamicalsystems can achieve new ordered states without any external selectivepressures.12 Jeffrey Wicken has insisted that we cannot understandevolutionary history without looking at the entropy, order, and owo energy in the wider ecosystems within which organisms co-evolve.Moreover, he says, structural and thermodynamic constraints drasti-

cally limit the stable combinations when amino acids are randomlyassembled to orm proteins. Tese authors adopt a holistic approach

10 Ernst Mayr, Te Growth o Biological Tought (Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress, 1982); idem, How Biology Differs rom the Physical Sciences, in Evolution atthe Crossroads, Depew and Weber, eds.

11 Ilya Prigogine and Irene Stengers, Order Out o Chaos(New York: Bantam Books,1984).

12

Stuart Kauffman, Te Origins o Order: Sel-Organization and Selection in Evolu-tion (New York: Oxord University Press, 1993); idem, At Home in the Universe: TeSearch or Laws o Sel-Organization and Complexity (New York: Oxord UniversityPress, 1995).


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that attempts analysis at a variety o levels, avoiding the reductionismevident in much o evolutionary theory.

Tey claim that natural selection works on a eld o already sel-organized systems.13 In the past, the phenomena o embryology anddevelopmental biology have been poorly understood and have beendiffi cult to incorporate into neo-Darwinism. How do cells differentiateso that the right organs are ormed at the right place in the growingorganism? Some biologists postulated a morphogenic eld whichimposes a pre-existing plan that guides cells in their differentiation. Oth-ers postulated developmental pathways which direct growth towardspecic anatomical orms. Tese hypotheses appear increasingly dubious

in the light o recent research on genetic and molecular mechanismsin embryological development. Regulatory genes produce proteins thatact as switches to turn on secondary genes, which in turn controlthe tertiary genes responsible or protein assembly in cells, tissues, andorgans. In recent experiments, the master control gene that initiates theprogram or the development o an eye in the ruit y was introducedinto cells on its wings, legs, and antennae, and complete eyes developedat these sites. I the control gene or eye development in a mouse isinserted in cells o a ys wing, a ys eyewill develop, suggesting thatthe control genes or eyes in the two species are virtually unchangedsince a common evolutionary ancestor, even though the eye structureso insects and mammals evolved in radically different directions.14Ourunderstanding o such processes is still very limited, but research onthe molecular basis o development holds great promise or broadeningour understanding o evolutionary history. For example, the Cambrianexplosion o new phyla may well have been caused by changes in thegenetic networks that regulate very early development.

Even afer recognizing the power o molecular explanations, however,one can argue that developmental patterns are constrained by principleso hierarchical organization and the possible orms o physiologicalstructures. Te variability o phenotypes is limited by the architectureand dynamics o developmental systems. Goodwin, Ho, and Saun-ders have deended a structuralism in which a relatively autonomous

13 Jeffrey Wicken, Evolution, Termodynamics, and Inormation: Extending the

Darwinian Program(New York: Oxord University Press, 1987).14 George Halder, Patrick Callaerts, and Walter Gehring, Induction o EctopicEyes by argeted Expression o the Eyeless Gene in Drosophila, Science267 (1995),178892.


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developmental dynamic is the main source o macroevolution.15Teirideas are controversial and outside the mainstream o current biological

thought, but should not be dismissed i they might be able to account orobserved phenomena more adequately than neo-Darwinist theory.

hese authors see themselves as having moved beyond even anexpanded Darwinism. I these ideas prove ruitul they may lead towhat Kuhn would call aparadigm shif,in which the basic assumptionso Newtonian and nineteenth-century physics will be replaced by analternative set o assumptions. Or perhaps we could say, in Lakatosterms, that the core o Darwinism (the importance o variation andnatural selection) will have been preserved by abandoning some o

its auxiliary hypotheses (such as gradualism and the exclusive role oselection as a directive orce). We could also ollow the philosopherso science who hold that in studying complex phenomena we shouldseek limited models applicable to particular domains, rather thanuniversally applicable predictive laws. Natural selection may be moreimportant in some contexts than in others. As a minimum we can saythat we should consider other actors in addition to variation and naturalselection, and that we should look at what is going on at a variety olevels. In the discussion that ollows, I will be drawing primarily romthe advocates o the expansion o Darwinism, but I will reer to thework o Kauffman, who considers himsel beyond Darwinism.

2. Philosophical Issues in Biology

Four concepts in recent biological thought require more careul analysis:sel-organization, indeterminacy, top-down causality, and communi-

cation o inormation. Each o these concepts is crucial in one o thetheological interpretations explored in the subsequent section.

15 Mae-Won Ho and Peter Saunders, eds., Beyond Neo-Darwinism (New York:

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984); Brian Goodwin and Peter Saunders, eds., Teo-retical Biology: Epigenetic and Evolutionary Order rom Complex Systems(Edinburgh:Edinburgh University Press, 1989); see also Robert Wesson, Beyond Natural Selection(Cambridge: MI Press, 1991).


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2.1. Sel-organization

Evolutionary history does indeed show a directionality, a trend towardgreater complexity and consciousness. Tere has been an increase inthe genetic inormation in DNA, and a steady advance in the ability oorganisms to gather and process inormation about the environment andrespond to it. Te emergence o lie, consciousness, and human cultureare especially signicant transitions within a gradual and continuousprocess. But evolution does not display any straight-line progressivedevelopment. For the majority o species, opportunistic adaptationsled to dead ends and extinction when conditions changed. Te pattern

o evolution does not resemble a uniormly growing tree so much as asprawling bush whose tangled branches grow in many directions andofen die off. Nevertheless, there is an overall trend. Who can doubtthat a human being represents an astonishing advance over an amoebaor a worm?

Some authors have argued that i the amino acids in primeval oceanshad assembled themselves by chance to orm protein chains, the prob-ability o being assembled in the right order to orm a particular proteinwould be antastically small. It would be highly unlikely to occur even

in spans o time many times longer than the history o the universe.16Te argument is dubious because amino acids do not combine bychance with equal probability, or there are built-in affi nities and bond-ing preerences and structural possibilities. Some combinations ormstable units which persist, and these units combine to orm larger units.Organic molecules have a capacity or sel-organization and complexitybecause o structural constraints and potentialities.

Other authors have used hierarchy theory to indicate how advancesto a higher level o organizational complexity are preserved. Imagine

a watchmaker whose work is disrupted occasionally. I he has to startover again each time, he would never nish his task. But i he assemblesgroups o parts into stable sub-assemblies, which are then combined,he will nish the task more rapidly. Living organisms have many stablesub-assemblies at differing levels which are ofen preserved intact andonly loosely coupled to each other. Te higher level o stability ofenarises rom unctions that are relatively independent o variations in themicroscopic details. Evolution exhibits both chance and directionality

16 Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution rom Space (London: Dent,1981).


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because higher levels embody new types o order and stability that aremaintained and passed on.17

Let us examine Kauffmans thesis that evolution is a product o sel-organizationas well as o random variation and natural selection. Hends similar patterns in the behavior o complex systems that appear

very differentor example, in molecules, cells, neural networks, eco-systems, and technological and economic systems. In each case eed-back mechanisms and nonlinear interactions make cooperative activitypossible in larger wholes. Te systems show similar emergent systemicproperties not present in their components. Kauffman gives particularattention to the behavior o networks. For example, an array o 100,000

light bulbs, each o which goes on or off as an adjustable unction oinput rom its our neighbors, will cycle through only 327 states romamong the astronomical number o possible states. Genes are also con-nected in networks; in the simplest case, gene A represses gene B and

vice versa, so only one o them is turned on. Kauffman notes that thereare only 256 cell types in mammals, and suggests that this may be theresult o system principles and not merely an historical accident.18

Many o Kauffmans ideas are speculative and exploratory, but theyreect a new way o looking at evolution. He nds that order emergesspontaneously in complex systems, especially on the border betweenorder and chaos. oo much order makes change impossible; too muchchaos makes continuity impossible. We should see ourselves not as ahighly improbable historical accident, but as an expected ullmento the natural order. In his book,At Home in the Universe, Kauffmancalls or awe and respect or a process in which such sel-organizationoccurs.

2.2. Indeterminacy

Many eatures o evolutionary history are the product o unpredictableevents. Te particular pair o organisms that mate and the particularcombination o genes that are inherited by their offspring cannot bepredicted; genetic laws can only be expressed probabilistically or indi-

viduals in large populations. Many mutations and replication errors

17 Stanley Salthe, Evolving Hierarchical Systems (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1985).

18 Kauffman,At Home in the Universe, chap. 4.


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seem to occur at random. A ew individuals may orm a small isolatedpopulation which happens to differ genetically rom the average o

the larger population, leading to genetic drif. Such unpredictabilityis compounded when co-evolving species interact competitively orcooperatively in historically contingent ecosystems and environments.An asteroid collision at the end o the Permian period may havedrastically altered Earths climate and its evolutionary history. We canonly describe evolution by a historical narrative; we could not havepredicted its course.

Many o these chance events seem to represent the unpredictableintersection o separate causal chains. wo causal chains may each be

determinate, but i they are completely independent o each other, nolawul regularity describes their intersection in time and space. Te ideao a causal chain is o course an abstraction. When we speak o thecause o an event we are selecting rom among the many necessary and

jointly suffi cient conditions the one to which we want to direct attentionin a particular context o inquiry. But our ignorance o the immenselycomplicated and ramiying web o causal inuences in evolutionaryhistory does not in itsel imply that it is not determined.

But an indeterminacy in nature itsel seems to be present at the quan-tum level.In quantum theory, predictions o individual events amongatoms and subatomic particles give only probabilities and not exact

values. A particular radioactive atom might decay in the next second ora thousand years rom now, and the theory does not tell us which willoccur. Some physicists think that this unpredictability is attributableto the limitations o current theory; they hope that a uture theory willdisclose hidden variables that will allow exact calculations. But mostphysicists hold that indeterminacy is a property o the atomic world

itsel. Electrons and subatomic particles apparently do not have a preciselocation in space and time; they are spread-out waves representing arange o possibilities until they are observed.19

Among large groups o atoms in everyday objects, indeterminacyat the atomic level averages out statistically to give predictable large-scale behavior. However, in some biological systems, especially in thegenetic and nervous systems, changes in a small number o atoms canhave large-scale effects.A mutation could arise rom a quantum event

19 Ian G. Barbour, Religion in an Age o Science (San Francisco: Harper Collins,1990), 96104.


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in which a single molecular bond in a gene is ormed or broken, andthe effects would be amplied in the phenotype o the growing organ-

ism, and might be perpetuated by natural selection. Such evolutionaryunpredictability would reect indeterminacy in nature and not merelythe limitation o human knowledge.20

In chaos theory and nonlinear thermodynamic systems ar romequilibrium, an innitesimally small uncertainty concerning initialconditions can have enormous consequences. In chaotic systems, a verysmall change may be amplied exponentially. Tis has been called thebuttery effect because a buttery in Brazil might alter the weather amonth later in New York. Te effect o moving an electron on a distant

galaxy might be amplied over a long period o time to alter eventson Earth.21Deterministic laws can be applied only to closed systems;they are an approximation to reality because actual systems that areextremely sensitive to initial conditions can never be totally isolatedrom outside inuences.

According to Stephen Kellert, the unpredictability o chaoticsystemsis not merely a reection o temporary human ignorance. Predictionover a long time period would require more inormation than couldbe stored on all the electrons o our galaxy, and the calculations wouldtake longer than the phenomena we were trying to predict. Moreoverchaotic systems would ampliy the quantum indeterminacies that setlimits to the accurate specication o initial conditions in both theoryand practice. Kellert also notes that in classical physics the behavioro a larger whole is deduced rom predictive causal laws governinginteractions o its constituent parts. Chaos theory, by contrast, studiesthe qualitative orm o large-scale patterns that may be similar evenwhen the constituents are very different. Chaos theory examines holistic

geometrical relationships and systemic properties rather than seekingmicroreduction to detailed causal mechanisms. Order is a broader

20 On the topic o quantum indeterminacy and its possible role in mutations, seeEllis, Murphy, racy, and Russell in Chaos and Complexity: Scientic Perspectives onDivine Action, Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy, and Arthur R. Peacocke, eds.(Rome: Vatican Observatory, and Berkeley, CA: Center or Teology and the Natural

Sciences, 1995).21 James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science(New York: Penguin Books, 1987);John Holte, ed., Chaos: Te New Science (Lanham, MD: University Press o America,1993).


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concept than law because it includes ormal, holistic, historical, andprobabilistic patterns.22

2.3. op-down Causality

Living organisms exhibit a many-leveled hierarchy o systems and sub-systems. A level identies a unit which is relatively integrated, stable,and sel-regulating, even though it interacts with other units at thesame level and at higher and lower levels. One such hierarchy is iden-tied structurally: particle, atom, molecule, macromolecule, organelle,cell, organ, organism, and ecosystem. Other hierarchies are identied

unctionally: the reproductive hierarchy (gene, genome, organism, andpopulation), or the neural hierarchy (molecule, synapse, neuron, neuralnetwork, and the brain with its changing patterns o interconnections).Human beings also participate in all the social and cultural interactionsstudied by the social sciences and humanities. A particular discipline oreld o inquiry ocuses attention on a particular level and its relationto adjacent levels.

We can distinguish three kinds o reduction between levels.

a. Methodological reduction is a research strategy that studies lowerlevels in order to better understand relationships at higher levels.Analysis o molecular interactions has been a spectacularly success-ul strategy in biology, but it is not incompatible with multi-levelanalysis and the study o larger systems.

b. Epistemological reductionclaims that laws and theories at one levelo analysis can be derived rom laws and theories at lower levels. Ihave argued that biological concepts are distinctive and cannot be

dened in physical and chemical terms. Distinctive kinds o expla-nation are valid at differing levels. But inter-level theories may con-nect adjacent levels, even i they are not derivable rom the theoriesapplicable to either level alone. A series o overlapping theories andmodels unies the sciences without implying that one level is moreundamental or real than another.23

22 Stephen Kellert, In the Wake o Chaos: Unpredictable Order in Dynamical Systems

(Chicago: University o Chicago Press, 1993).23 For analyses o reduction, see Ian G. Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966), 32437 and Religion in an Age o Science,16569; Francisco Ayala, Reduction in Biology in Evolution at the Crossroads, Depew


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c. Ontological reductionis a claim about the kinds o reality or the kindso causality that exist in the world. It is sometimes asserted that an

organism is nothing but organized molecules, or that only physicalorces are causally effective. I have deended ontological pluralism,a multi-leveled view o reality in which differing (epistemological)levels o analysis are taken to reer to differing (ontological) levelso events and processes in the world, as claimed by critical realism.In evolutionary history, novel orms o order emerged which notonly could not have been predicted rom laws and theories govern-ing previously existing orms, but which also gave rise to genuinelynew kinds o behavior and activity in nature. We can acknowledge

the distinctive characteristics o living organisms without assumingthat lie is a separate substance or a vital orce added to matter,as the vitalists postulated.

Bottom-up causationoccurs when many sub-systems inuence a system.op-down causationis the inuence o a system on many sub-systems.Higher-level events inuence chemical and physical processes at lowerlevels without violating lower-level laws.24 Microproperties are notreerred to in the specication o the macrostate o the system. Net-work properties may be realized through a great variety o particularconnections. Correlation o behaviors at one level does not requiredetailed knowledge o all its components. Te rules o chess limit thepossible moves but leave open an immense number o possibilities thatare consistent with but not determined by those rules. So, too, the lawso chemistry limit the combinations o molecules which are ound inDNA, but do not determine them. Te meaning o the message con-

veyed by DNA is not given by the laws o chemistry.Te holisticand

anti-reductionisticcharacter o chaos theory has been described by oneo its best-known exponents, James Gleick:

and Weber, eds.; Arthur Peacocke, God and the New Biology (London: J.M. Dent &Sons, 1986), chaps. 1 and 2.

24 On top-down causation, see Donald Campbell, Downward Causation in Hierar-chically Ordered Biological Systems in Te Problems o Reduction,Francisco Ayala and

Teodosius Dobzhansky, eds. (Berkeley: University o Caliornia Press, 1974); MichaelPolanyi, Lies Irreducible Structures, Science 160 (1968), 130812; Elizabeth Vrba,Patterns in the Fossil Record and Evolutionary Processes in Beyond Neo-Darwinism,Ho and Saunders, eds.


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Chaos is anti-reductionist. Tis new science makes a strong claim aboutthe world, namely, that when it comes to the most interesting questions,questions about order and disorder, decay and creativity, pattern orma-tion, and lie itsel, the whole cannot be explained in terms o the parts.Tere are undamental laws about complex systems, but they are newkinds o law. Tey are laws o structure and organization and scale, andthey simply vanish when you ocus on the individual constituents o acomplex systemjust as the psychology o a lynch mob vanishes whenyou interview individual participants.25

We know little about how memories are preserved in the brain, butcomputer simulations o neural nets suggest that memory may bestored in distributed patternsrather than at discrete locations. In somecomputer networks with parallel distributed processing, the nodes in aseries o layers can be connected by links whose strength can be varied.In one experiment, the inputs are groups o letters, and the outputsare random sounds in a voice synthesizer. Every time the correlationbetween an input and the correct output is improved, the strongest linksare strengthened, so the network gradually improves its perormance.Te network can be taught to pronounce written words. Te connectivepatterns involve the whole network and they are learned by experience

rather than by being directly programed. Patterns develop in the wholewithout prior specication o the parts; the readjustment o the partscan be considered a orm o top-down causation.26We should also notethat the brain o a baby is not nished or hard-wired at birth. Teneural pathways are developed in interaction with the environmentand are altered by the babys experiences.

O all the sciences, ecology is the most holistic in its outlook. Nopart o an ecosystem can be considered in isolation because changesin one component ofen have ar-reaching ramications elsewhere in

the system. Te participants in an ecosystem are linked by multipleconnections and cycles. Te oxygen inhaled by animals is exhaled ascarbon dioxide which is in turn taken in by plants and converted backto oxygen. Te ood chain connects various lie orms. Predator andprey are dependent on each other in maintaining stable populations.A holistic approach is also used in the eld o systems analysis which

25 James Gleick, address at 1990 Nobel Conerence, Gustavus Adolphus College,

quoted in Steven Weinberg, Dreams o a Final Teory (New York, N.Y.: PantheonBook, 1992), 60.26 C. Rosenberg and . Sejnowski, Parallel Networks Tat Learn to Pronounce

English ext, Complex Systems 1 (1987), 14568.


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studies the dynamics o urban, industrial, and electronic systems. In allthese cases, there are o course lawul relations among the parts, but

their behavior is analyzed in relation to a larger whole.Holism is both a rejection o ontological reductionism and a claim

that the whole inuences the parts. Attention is directed to the parts oa particular whole, even though it is in turn a part o a larger whole. Tewhole/part distinction is usually structural and spatial (or example, alargerwhole). op-down causalityis a very similar concept, but it drawsattention to a hierarchy o many levels characterized by qualitativedifferences in organization and activity (or example, a higher level).Levels are dened by unctional and dynamic relationships. Patterns

in time are emphasized, though o course they are inseparable rompatterns in space.

2.4. Te Communication o Inormation

Inormation has been an important term in many elds o science. In thethermodynamics o gases, systems o lowentropyare highly improbablemolecular congurations, which tend to degrade into the more prob-able congurations o uniorm equilibrium states. Tis entails a loss oorder and pattern that is also a loss o inormation. Inormation theorywas rst developed in World War II in studies o the communicationo messages by radio. Communication is more reliable i the signal-to-noise ratio is high and i a coded message contains regularities andredundancies which allow the detection o errors. With the advent ocomputers, instructions could be encoded in a binary representation(0/1 or off/on) and quantied asbits o inormation. Te computerresponds to the instructions in the program which speciy the connec-

tions in its electrical circuits. It manipulates the electrical representationso the symbols ed into it (inormation processing) and then activatessome orm o output. Te letters on a printed page are o course theclassical case o the communication o inormation to a reader.27

Inormation is an ordered pattern (o alphabetical letters, auditorysounds, binary digits, DNA bases, or any other combinable elements)which is one among many possible sequences or states o a system.Inormation is communicated when another system (reader, listener,

27 Jeremy Campbell, Grammatical Man: Inormation, Entropy, Language, and Lie(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982).


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computer, living cell, etc.) responds selectivelythat is, when inorma-tion is coded, transmitted, and decoded. Te meaning o the message

is dependent on a wider context o interpretation. It must be vieweddynamically and relationally rather than in purely static terms as i themessage were contained in the pattern itsel.

Te inormation in DNA sequences in genes is signicant preciselybecause o its context in a larger organic system. In the growth o anembryo, a system o time delays, spatial differentiation, and chemicaleed-back signals communicates the inormation needed so that theright proteins, cells, and organs are assembled at the right locationand time. Complicated developmental pathways, with inormation

owing in both directions, connect genes with molecular activities andphysiological structures. A genome contains an immense number opossible developmental scenarios, o which only a ew are realized. InTe Ontogeny o Inormation, Susan Oyama argues that the meaningand inormational signicance o genetic instructions depend on whatcells and tissues are already present, and on the actual unctioning othe developmental system. In place o a one-way ow o inormationwe must imagine interactive construction in a particular context.28

An enzyme speeds the interaction o two molecules by recognizingthem (by shape and chemical affi nity) and holding them at adjacentsites where they can react with each other. Molecules o the immunesystem recognize an invading virus, which is like a key that ts a lock,and they are activated to release a specic antibody. Te communica-tion between molecules is dependent on properties o both the senderand the receiver. A receptor is part o an embodied action system thatimplements a response to signals.

Stored in the DNA is a wealth o historically acquired inormation

including programs or coping with the world. For example, a bird oranimal uses specic visual or auditory clues to recognize and respondto a dangerous predator which it has not previously encountered. Indi-

viduals in some species are programed to communicate warning signalsto alert other members o the species. Higher primates are capable osymbolic communication o inormation, and human beings can usewords to express abstract concepts. Human inormation can be trans-mitted between generations not only by genes and by parental example,

28 Susan Oyama, Te Ontogeny o Inormation: Developmental Systems and Evolution(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).


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but also in speech, literature, art, music and other cultural orms. Testorage and communication o inormation is thus an important eature

o biological processes at many levels and it must always be understooddynamically and relationally rather than in purely static and ormalterms. Even at low levels, reality consists not simply o matter andenergy, but o matter, energy, and inormation.

3. Models o Gods Action in Nature

What models o Gods relation to nature are compatible with the central

affi rmations o the Christian tradition and also with a world which ischaracterized by sel-organization, indeterminacy, top-down causality,and communication o inormation? I will examine theological propos-als that draw rom each o these our characteristics.

All our models reject the idea o divine intervention that violatesthe laws o nature. In none o them is God invoked to ll particulargaps in the scientic account (the God o the gaps who is vulnerableto the advance o science). Gods role is different rom that o naturalcauses. In each case, a eature o current scientic theory is taken asa model (that is, a systematically developed analogy) o Gods actionin nature.29Some authors in the rst group below do propose a new

version o natural theology in which evidence rom science is used asan argument in support o theism, even i it does not offer a proo oGods existence. Te other authors are proposing ways in which a Godwho is accepted on other grounds (such as religious experience in ahistorical interpretive community) might be reconceived as acting innature. I have called such an approach a theology o nature rather than

a natural theology.30

29 Barbour,Myths, Models, and Paradigms (New York: Harper and Row, 1974).30 Barbour, Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues (San Francisco:

Harper Collins, 1997), chap. 4.


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3.1. God as Designer o a Sel-organizing Process

Until the nineteenth century, the intricate organization and effectiveunctioning o living creatures were taken as evidence o an intelligentdesigner. Afer Darwin, the argument was reormulated: God did notcreate things in their present orms, but designed an evolutionary pro-cess through which all living orms came into being. oday we knowthat lie is possible only under a very narrow range o physical andchemical conditions. We have seen also that in the sel-organization omolecules leading to lie there seems to have been considerable built-in design in biochemical affi nities, molecular structures, and potential

or complexity and hierarchical order. Te world o molecules seemsto have an inherent tendency to move toward emergent complexity,lie, and consciousness.

I design is understood as a detailed pre-existing plan in the mind oGod, chanceis the antithesis o design. But i design is identied withthe general direction o growth toward complexity, lie, and conscious-ness, then both law and chance can be part o the design. Disorder issometimes a condition or the emergence o new orms o order, asin thermodynamic systems ar rom equilibrium, or in the mutations

o evolutionary history. We can no longer accept the clockmaker Godwho designed every detail o a determinate mechanism. But one optiontoday is a revised deism in which God designed the world as a many-leveled creative process o law and chance. Paul Davies is an exponento this position.31

A patient God could endow matter with diverse potentialities andlet the world create itsel. We can say that God respects the integrityo the world and allows it to be itsel, without interering with it, justas God respects human reedom and allows us to be ourselves. Moral

responsibility requires that the world have some openness, which takesthe orm o chance at lower levels and choice at the human level. Butresponsible choice also requires enough lawulness that we have someidea o the probable consequences o our decisions.

An attractive eature o this option is that it provides at least partialanswers to the problems o suffering and death which were such a

31

Paul Davies, Te Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries in Natures Creative Abilityto Order the Universe(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988); idem, Te Mind o God:Te Scientic Basis or a Rational World(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992); idem,eleology witho

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