Causal theory, God and chance in an age of quantum theory

 

Koot van Wyk (DLitt et Phil; Thd)

 

The Word of God is the revelation of God in the Old and New Testaments. It is not just a human product but a divine-human product meaning that humans wrote it with their infirmities and slips of all kind, but the Holy Spirit was the Editor that judged that what they wrote is sufficient, efficient for salvation and gives an accurate state of affairs of God’s dealing with this world. This is an axiom from which any scientist should work from. Any denial of that is a listing in John Hurst book in 1864, The History of Rationalism. It took many forms: pantheism, deism, atheism, agnosticism and in all of these kinds of points of departure, the endresult was that they want to think from human’s position about God and decide how and what He should or should not do for this world. Francis Schaeffer called it Reason over Faith approach.

The second ingredient in a proper understanding of God’s involvement with this world, is the word dualism. This world is not just a monistic single power involvement but a dualism (albeit one a final looser but left alone by the Strong One for a temporal period). The Rebellion in Heaven History created from Lucifer Satan and that evil was cast out with a third of his followers out of heaven to this earth. He was the most beautiful creature ever made. LGBTQH adherents should remember this when they get excited about the beauty of any man or woman. The most beautiful human is an evil demon called Satan. Beauty does not equate necessarily innocence. Roaming this world and aiming to destroy it, Satan is held back by God’s powers and four angels on the corners of the wind-directions so that tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, fires, droughts, winds, waves, insects, pests, plaques cannot eliminate humanity in a short period.

             Causal theory must involve God as creator of everything and Satan as origin of everything evil. Without these two components of causal theory, the understanding of the cause of things or events cannot be properly described.

             The modern narrative about the cause of everything or every event went through swings in understanding: from God involved in everything (almost pantheistically) to God starting and then leaving the world to run by itself (Deism or absentee God) to absolute determinism, to anti-determinism [from God to chance e.g. Peirce] to relational-causal theory to a-causal theory (due to quantum theories).

“A a-casual theology is not about a God who exercises no influence. Influencing induces change, and that needs to be emphasised. So the point is the way God is manifested in events that affect people profoundly and how he influences them to cope with these. A a-casual theology has no ready-made blueprints or determinism; its hallmarks are freedom and an open encounter between God and human beings. One could call it a consequential theology, a theology of the moment.” (C. Du Toit, Cul-de-sac of causal thinking: challenge to build a a-casual theology).

Cornel du Toit tried to answer the causal theory by going through history showing how the deterministic theory of God-causes-everything was the traditional theory and that this mechanistic deterministic theory was challenged by the Enlightenment philosophers and later rejected like Peirce. The randomness in science caused them to conclude that God did not order everything with laws but that consistency only come after random chance actions. This led to Du Toit taking God out of any action on earth but only make Him emerging or enter the moments.

Said Du Toit: “Thus a a-casual theology operates with the concept of emergence. ‘The term ‘emergence’ connotes the image of something coming out of hiding, coming into view for the first time−something without precedent and perhaps a bit surprising’ (Deacon 2008:121). The causality at issue is again determined by lower order processes, but not by any form of predetermined law. ‘These phenomena are often called self-organizing, because their regularities are not externally imposed but generated by iterative interaction processes, occurring in the media that comprise them’ (Deacon 2008:123).”

In the discussion on the causal nature of God in events on earth or any event one has to accept the biblical position that nothing happens without God knowing about it. God cannot work together with evil to bring evil outcomes. The chain of events that results in destruction is all by Satan. God can intervene. God can stop Satan. Miracles do happen and God’s intervention to set aside or use the laws of nature, whether they are random or orderly, whether they give the impression that they happen by chance, yet nothing can stop God from finding His own method: a-quantum theory method to creation ex nihilo. To do miracles. To stop the storm on the waves of Galilee instantly. He speaks and it is. How that happens and the quantum theory involved in this is unfortunately an area that no creature can enter into knowing. Describing our findings of Nano-theory or Quantum theory cannot be superimposed over God and He then placed in a frame of possibilities and even be so arrogant to cancel His involvement in events like creation or a literal six day creation, just because science does not point to such a possibility.

Bartholomew asked in 2008: “...if God is the cause of everything, how can he cause something which, by definition, appears to have no cause?” (Bartholomew 2008: 218-219). Du Toit mentions radioactivity saying “in the case of radioactive decay, which is an example of pure chance. It is wholly unpredictable when the next emission from a radioactive source will occur.”

Du Toit indicated that with Newton was “the advent of a mechanical, law-governed universe.” The way Du Toit and many other scholars of Darwin’s evolutionistic systems discusses the history of science or knowledge or faith and science is to indicate that the canonical view of science through the Bible of the Middle Ages was a view that caused Copernicus, Galileo and others to suffer, even to the point of martyrship. They want to show how the church was wrong and scientist right and that Galileo saw the earth as round and the sun circling the earth rather than the earth the sun. Then what they do is to cite Leibnitz or Hume or Rousseau or Voltare or Darwin or Peirce or Kuhn or any modern scientist to use as a prooftext why the literal creation is to be rejected, the Bible minimized in matters of science and faith adjusted to fit modern science.

First of all about Galileo: he was not the first to say that the earth is round. The Greeks did so already in the third and second centuries before Christ. The earth was not on pillars in the Bible view as modern scientists are trying to indicate, Moses who wrote Job in 1460 BCE in Midian already knew about the earth hanging on nothing [in the sky].

Secondly, David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau were too intimate friends when they left France for England and the comments about each other were studied carefully by scholars. In 1762 Rousseau fled to Paris and was then escorted by Hume to England. Odd friends. When Hume died, his friend James Boswell visited him “On Sunday, July 7, 1776, Boswell visited the bedside of his dying friend Hume” wrote Amy Cools in 2017. About his death and Boswell reaction about viewing him, Amy Cools wrote: “Boswell, ‘too late for church’ anyway, stopped by to see if Hume, notorious for his religious skepticism, ‘persisted in disbelieving a future state even when he had death before his eyes.’ Boswell, habitual bacchanalist in wine and women, was nevertheless very religious and had a superstitious terror of hell. He was dismayed and shocked to find that his old friend did not only persist in his disbelief but was at ease, even happy, and showed no discernable fear of his impending annihilation. Boswell was left ‘disturbed… for some time.’” Keep in mind, this is the celebrated source for many scientists to use as example why the Bible should be shifted aside and give reason and true science a chance. Hume is cited and his ideas. About the trouble Boswell brought between these two friends, she reported: “The unraveling situation was not helped when Hume’s friend Boswell, charged with escorting Rousseau’s beloved mistress Thérèse Le Vasseur to join him in England, had an affair with her along the way. Rousseau believed that Hume had helped orchestrate this betrayal as well. Aware of Boswell’s notoriously insatiable sexual appetite, Hume certainly showed very poor judgment in trusting Boswell with this task. Before long, Hume and Rousseau became bitter enemies.”

About the conscience Rousseau wrote: ““Conscience! Conscience! Divine instinct, immortal voice from heaven; sure guide for a creature ignorant and finite indeed; yet intelligent and free; infallible judge of good and evil, making man like to God! In these consists the excellence of man’s nature and the morality of his actions;…I find nothing in myself … but the sad privilege of wandering from one error to another, by the help of an unbridled understanding and a reason which knows no principle.” (Rousseau p. 692)

Scholars are citing the friends of Hume like Voltaire, Adam Smith as if they are of higher rank than the Word of God. Their lifestyles were notorious for A to Z. Ontology or the way a person is living influences the epistemology or the way a person is thinking and that ultimately influence a person’s methodology and finally the end-product.

About Hume Tourneux wrote in 1877: “And yet, in his philosophical writings M. Hume is as bold as any philosopher of France. What is even more amusing is that all the beautiful women fought over him, and the portly Scottish philosopher amused himself in their company. David Hume is an excellent man; he is serene by nature, his intelligence is subtle, and though speaking little what he says is pointed. But he is heavy; he has neither warmth nor grace nor a pleasing wit, nor anything that would attract those charming little machines we call beautiful women.” The king of Prussia wrote to Rousseau saying: “You have made yourself often talked about because of eccentricities inappropriate to a truly great man. Show your enemies that you can at times have common sense: that will anger them without doing you any wrong.”

M. Walpole was present [in 1766] when Voltaire received the writing of Rousseau about him Voltaire: “He was present in Ferney the day M. de Voltaire received the “Lettres de la Montagne,” and read in it the statement regarding him. His gaze enflamed and his eyes burned with fury, his body trembled and he shouted with a terrifying voice: “Oh the wretch! The monster! I must knock him out. Yes, I'll have him knocked out in the mountains between the knees of his governess.” “Calm down,” our man said. “I know that Rousseau has proposed a visit to your home and that he will soon be coming to Ferney.” “Let him come,” answered M. de Voltaire. “But how will you receive him?” “How will I receive him? I'll give him supper, I'll put him in my bed, and I'll say to him: “You had a good supper. This bed is the best in the house. Do me the pleasure of accepting them both and being happy in my home.” (cited from Tourneaux 1877).

Suard wrote about the 1766 fight between Hume and Rousseau and said about Rousseau: “It’s quite acceptable that one be mad, but I insist that one always be an honest man, even in accesses of madness. What is more, M. Rousseau is the sole friend I have lost without having to regret his death. He has quarreled with almost all his former friends, nearly all of whom we had in common, and dismissed them one after the other.” (cited from Tourneaux 1877). Suard the publisher of Rousseau’s work said: “I also believe he has things to reproach himself for in regard to several of his former friends, but I don’t count myself in their number.”

When Hume brought Rousseau over to England in 1766 the summary of this event is given by David Edmond and John Eidinow: “However, Rousseau was now dependent on Hume for survival in a country where he knew no one and could not speak the language. He had left behind, in Switzerland, Thérèse Le Vasseur, the former scullery maid who was his steadfast companion, acting as his gouvernante, or housekeeper, for over thirty years. Rousseau was immensely fond of her, needing her by his side and longing for her when they were separated. Sultan, at least, was with him. Rousseau's emotions about Sultan were sufficiently intense to amaze onlookers.” After arriving on the harbor, the authors had this to say about the two: “The boat docked at Dover at midday on January 11. Setting foot on English soil, Rousseau leaped on Hume's neck, embraced him, not uttering a word, and covered Hume's face with kisses and tears. Just after the travelers arrived in London, Hume wrote to his brother, "I think I could live with [Rousseau] all my life in mutual friendship and esteem." Blithely, the letter continued: "I believe that one great source of our concord is, that neither he nor I are disputatious." There is also somewhere a letter I saw in which Rousseau describe the “beauty of the face of Hume”. It appears to be a case of LGBTQH gone sour here? This is the sources that scholars of our modern times wish to cite for their “progressive” thinking in science, and in the subject of God and Cause.

John Hurst in his 1864 book on the History of Rationalism did us the favor of going into the lives of many of these socalled great lights to indicate their notoriousness, their subversive lifestyles, their rejection of God.

Charles Darwin should not be left out of the picture here since scientists feel that emergence and evolution are distant brothers and they can rely on Darwin for light. There is an article by a modern professor emeritus in Psycho-pathology  who studied Darwin and his change to Evolution from Creation. It happened because his daughter was terminally ill in a sanitorium of a spiritualist who had spiritualistic books in the library there in the hospital and Darwin sitting at the bedside of his dying daughter, started to blame God for the suffering. Reading the demon-books his mind twisted to almost “punish” God to let his daughter die. A great article. A must for all. Darwin is not what he seems to most.

About the article I summarized before online in a blog at http://www.egw.org the following on Darwin: “In a very good research by Dennis Klass, a professor emeritus in Psychology, he demonstrated that bereavement over his daughter Annie’s death caused Darwin to denounce God as Creator. While taking care of her in a sanitorium, he read the book by F. Newman on how to become an agnostic from evangelical fundamentalism. The seeds were sown in his doubting heart and the death of his daughter Annie made him reject God and become public about it. The Origin of Species was born. Rather than just describing dr. Klasses’ essay, it is better to give it in full. The sanitorium of James Gully was where Annie was taken to. Gully was tapped into spiritualism, mesmerism and the calling up of mediums. “Like many of his educated contemporaries both in the UK, and in the USA Gully showed an interest in several popular movements of the day, such as women's suffrage, mesmerism and diagnostic clairvoyance. In later life he came to believe in spiritualism, being friend and protector to the medium Daniel Dunglas Home was present at some of the manifestations of ‘Katie King’ with Sir William Crookes and was President of the British Spiritualist Association in 1874.” (source: Wikipaedia).

The transformation of F. Newman to an agnostic is not the kind of book that Darwin would have gotten from dr. John Harvey Kellogg at the Battle Creek Sanitorium and his historical course would have been different.”

Keep in mind when Darwin heard John Colenso, the missionary of Kwazulu Natal spoke after his visit to A. Kuenen in Holland, about the higher-critical ideas surrounding the Bible and doubts that Moses wrote it, Darwin spoke very positively about Colenso. “Birds of a feather ….” The Trojan Horse of Liberalism is just pushed from generation to generation to pick up more adherents and our modern days had them included on a simple subject like “God and Causation”. They wish to cut God out of the picture. And if they want to bring him in, like Du Toit is scrambling to rely on predestination according to the Marxist definition of Otto Weber, it wants to show that God emerge as an “afterthought” and not as a planner of events or its happenings. Du Toit then want to make God the sufferer with us on events here and then to choose whether He wants to be involved or not.

The best we science can do is to admit that Fibunacci and his spirals in nature is the “Fingerprints” of the almighty. That is why pantheism originated with the Indians as back in pre-Christian times, also through Buddhism since the 3rd century BC. There is something in nature out there that shows an order mathematically precise and that is not to be ignored. The heaven proclaim the glory of God … says the Psalmist.

God does not need quantum-theory or Newton Mechanistic determinism laws or any scholar’s view of causality to “cause events” or move something on earth or change circumstances. Already in Elijah’s time he was saying that God is not in the Wind. But God can be if He choose to be so. He can determine. He does’nt have to determine everything. He can emerge and He does’nt have to in order for something to happen. He just spoke and it was. He creates ex nihilo but also make things from what already exists like the bone of Adam to make Eve.

God can choose randomness to make order or He can take shortcuts that even overrides the randomness and makes it quicker to happen. Chance does not bind God’s hands or intentions. He is not frustrated by the laws of nature or the absence thereof. He is not blind to tragedies and suffering. Satan is the R&D of this.

Unfortunately, modern scientists sits with their cigarette in the left hand and a beer in the right over the Word of God and struggle to see God’s Cause of things in a proper way. Their minds darkened by their lifestyle. Epistemology locked and hunting for favorite similar birds of the same feather, they cite Hume, Voltaire, Leibniz, Darwin, Hegel, even Marx and Weber and the list just goes on to see who climbs out of the Trojan Horse of Liberalism, rejecting a literal six-day Creation week, rejecting the literal words of the Word of God, rejecting miracles, rejecting Christ’s virgin birth, rejecting the Trinity, rejecting the Sabbath as the seventh-day in the week chosen by God to celebrate His creating actions as the first Cause for this earth.  

 

 

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