Divining the divine

VINNY SAID:

If we must allow for the possibility of personal agents who are not limited by natural laws, then we are no longer justified in drawing inferences based on the natural processes we observe. We think that fingerprints on a gun might be evidence of who committed a murder because we understand the natural processes by which the patterns on the human finger can appear on other objects and we understand that those processes act consistently. If we believed that those patterns appeared on objects randomly or by divine fiat, we couldn't say that fingerprints on a gun were evidence of anything at all.

Sometimes fingerprints are “naturally” left on the gun by the hand of the killer.

However, sometimes fingerprints are artificially impressed on the gun. The killer staged the murder to look like a suicide. The killer wore latex gloves, shot the victim, then placed the gun in the victim’s hand to make it seem as though the victim shot himself. The fingerprints that appear on the gun are the prints of the victim, not the killer.

Therefore, is a homicide detective no longer justified in drawing inferences about a murder? No. For more than one piece of evidence is relevant.

I don't know whether I would call that "artificial." The appearance of the pattern on the gun is still the result of the natural secretions on the friction ridges of the finger being transferred to the object. The question of whether someone other than the murderer handled the gun after the fatal shot was fired is always a possibility that needs to be eliminated, but it is a possibility that is governed by the natural processes.

i) Well, if the killer is ever apprehended, he can explain to the police that the murder victim died of "natural causes." That should let him off the hook.

ii) You talk about agents who are "subject to," "bound by," or bound by "natural laws" or the "regularities of nature"–as if the only evidence we have for personal agency is that of agents "constrained by" such "laws."

However, there are serious paranormal researchers like Michael Sudduth, Stephen Braude, and Rupert Sheldrake who deal apparent types of agency that aren't reducible to physical laws or natural process–at least not as standardly defined. Same thing with Christian exorcists. And if the definition is broadened, then you can't rule out miracles.

iii) Miracles can also employ natural processes. For instance, there can be miracles of timing. What are called "coincidence" miracles.

iv) You also create a false dichotomy. You overlook the possibility that natural laws can express personal agency. The expression of divine intent.

My computer keyboard exhibits a fixed correlation between the key I press and the letter that appears on the screen. Yet this law-like correlation is the expression of design. The keyboard was engineered by a personal agent to exhibit that law-like correlation. The regularity is purposeful. Regularity by design.

Motive is something we understand from observing the kind of personal agents who are bound by natural law as they pursue their wants and needs and desires. I don’t know how I can make any intelligent assumptions about what motives might drive a personal agent who is not subject to natural law.

You have a very wooden view of how to analyze issues. However, philosophers frequently entertain thought-experiments that are far removed from mundane experience.

Or take the stock horror theme of the avenging ghost. Say a guy murders a coed. She comes back as a ghost and begins to wreak havoc in his life with all manner of ominous, uncanny happenings.

Hypothetically speaking, it wouldn't be hard to infer the vindictive motives of the ghost–even though this spectral agent isn't subject to the "laws" of nature. She is out to exact revenge on her killer. Her motives are clearly punitive.