[Today’s run: nothing yet]
I remember seeing a cartoon of two scientists doing some great calculation on a chalkboard. The symbols are intricate and complex. At the far end is this note: “then, a miracle happens”
My world view includes the existence of God and the reality of His intervention in the course of human events. I also come from a cultural tradition that puts value on science and reason.
I am not a historian but I have my own historical story about the rise of reason and it goes something like this: From the start men have looked for cause and effect and the explanation of how the world works. At various times people have explained unexplainable events by personalizing the forces of change that they experienced. Since the Middle Ages in Europe, my “western culture” has moved toward the discovery of impersonal forces in action in the world around us. That period of discovery continues. But it is predicated on repeatability and universalism: that a given experiment will show the same outcome under the same conditions no matter who does it or where it is done.
Science has moved forward the development of the rules of explanation. I don’t know the limits of science, but I expect it will continue to develop those rules to encompass more and more of our experience, bringing it under the umbrella of determinism, cause and effect.
All of this is to explain and, even better, control our environment. If the river floods, maybe we should set up an idol to the river god and make sacrifices. Or, maybe we should build dams and dikes. Both are attempts to control. But both are thwarted in the end. Either the dams break or the sacrifice wasn’t accepted or global warming causes the rains upstream to increase, or whatever convoluted explanation you find most comforting. The bottom line seems to be that our ability to control is limited.
I enjoy the benefits of science. The modern world is literally built on the increasing understanding of the rules of reality. For hundreds of years people have experienced a continual stream of new discoveries and new engineering, living in amazement at the changes that go on in each lifetime, more ways to control our environment.
But I don’t think that existence is ultimately deterministic, or ultimately explainable by the rules of science. I think that Providential intervention is real. But I don’t know how much of that kind of thing happens.
The Bible seems to imply that all of reality is one big Providential intervention. God gets the credit for natural events “He sends the rain on the just and the unjust”.
Then the actual miracle is His maintenance of the system of order which science attempts to explain, in addition to His diversion from that system of order at times and points of His selection.