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Friday, June 29, 2018

Molinism, Question-Begging, and Foreknowledge of Indeterminates

I'm going to make some comments on this defense of Molinism: John D. Laing "Molinism, Question-Begging, and Foreknowledge of Indeterminates," Perichoresis 16/2 (2018): 55–76.

Calvinism is ill-equipped to deal with genuine randomness, as should be abundantly clear. Ian Barbour rightly takes issue with William Pollard’s suggestion that God’s providence is located in his control (in a deterministic way) of subatomic and atomic structures/movements. He first objects to the total control afforded God in this model because it leads to predestination, a doctrine Barbour sees as denying human freedom and the reality of evil (Barbour 1990: 117). While Barbour’s interpretation of predestination is questionable, he is still correct that Pollard’s view is inconsistent with the reality of chance/indeterminacy. Barbour goes on to criticize the model for its lopsided view of providence as divine use of unlawful aspects of nature and for its implicit reductionism, but these are of little concern here. What is important is the removal of real indeterminacy under any deterministic model of providence, no matter how much the proponent wishes to engage modern physical theory.

The most important similarity between the two types of counterfactuals is that they both lack control from without. That is, both libertarianly free actions and random events, by definition, cannot have an external control directing their specific outcomes, but this is not to say that they cannot have true statements about how they will result. [I am loathe to suggest that creaturely freedom is random, thus adding weight to arguments of determinists who claim that libertarian freedom is incoherent and/or arbitrary. Nevertheless, there are some similarities between libertarianly free actions and random events that allow for an analogy.] Just as Molinism allows God to use counterfactuals of creaturely freedom to (weakly) actualize his desires by means of the free actions of his creatures, so also it allows him to establish order and determinateness at the macro-level while retaining genuine indeterminateness at the micro-level by means of counterfactuals of subatomic particle movement. That is, propositions such as If situation S were to obtain, particle P would randomly move to location L could be used by God to guide and/or govern subatomic particles without causally determining their movements by weakly actualizing situations like S so that the larger picture of the creation is characterized by orderliness. Of course, a few caveats must be noted. First, it could be the case that none of the true counterfactuals of random subatomic particle movement result in the particle being where God wants it (and so God’s options are limited by the true counterfactuals). 

i) It's fascinating to see an SBC theologian take the position that God lacks control over some purely natural, inanimate processes and events. That's a very radical restriction on divine providence. 

ii) In addition, there are deterministic as well as indeterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics. The many-worlds interpretation is deterministic. 

iii) Even if physical determinism is breaks down at the subatomic level, that doesn't mean there can't be immaterial determinants. To take a comparison, in substance dualism an immaterial mind can move the hand. Some material effects may have immaterial causes. Indeed, creation ex nihilo is premised on that distinction. So are miracles that bypass natural media. 

Elsewhere, I have argued that Molinism may prove fruitful in explaining how God could create by means of a process like neo-Darwinism that incorporates random processes (in this case random genetic mutations) by appeal to what I called counterfactuals of random genetic mutation. Truths about how random mutations would in fact result could be used by God to bring about the creatures he desires. At the same time, the limitations Molinism places upon God’s ability to determine the true counterfactuals (of freedom and of random genetic mutation) help explain features like vestigial organs which seem problematic for models of creation and intelligent design that use more deterministic assumptions. The argument relies upon analogies between counterfactuals of creaturely freedom and counterfactuals of random genetic mutation and between the free will defense and a similar defense of intelligent design by progressive creation or evolutionary creation. 

i) That equivocates over the definition of "randomness" in biology. To my knowledge, when evolutionists biologists say the process of evolution is "random", they don't mean it's indeterminate, but that evolutionary developments are independent of what's beneficial to the organism. Mutation may be, and often is, nonadaptive.

Laing is using "random" in a way that precluded guided evolution. Because evolution is (according to him) an indeterministic process, it can't be divinely directed.

Likewise, to my knowledge, vestigiality is defined as a characteristic that used to be functional, but has lost functionality, like blind cave fish. But that doesn't mean the process is indeterminate. 

ii) So Dembski was threatened with termination for espousing old-earth creationism (even though his position was well-known at the time of hiring), but it's permissible for Laing to promote theistic evolution as a SWBTS prof? In fact, he's a contributor to BioLogus, the flag ship of theistic evolution. Yet he teaches at SWBTS!

2 comments:

  1. I'd like to add to Steve Hays's fine post if I may:

    1. Randomness in evolutionary theories like neo-Darwinism could refer to several different concepts. Randomness could refer to disorderliness or chaos. Randonmess could refer to a state of disequilibrium. Randomness could refer to statistical chance (probability). Randonmess could refer to chance in the sense of denying final causality (cf. the Nobel laureate biologist and evolutionist Jacques Monod's Chance and Necessity). Randomness could refer to pattern-breaking (à la Dembski). And so on and so forth.

    2. I agree randomness in random genetic mutations doesn't refer to indeterminism. Rather, randomness typically refers to genetic (DNA, RNA) variations or errors which (it doesn't matter) could be beneficial, neutral, or harmful to an individual within a population. At least that's what a mainstream evolutionist like Richard Dawkins or Jerry Coyne would say. In this respect randomness is not so much about chance as it is about blindness.

    3. Yet it sounds like Laing is assuming randomness is equivalent to chance. If so, that reflects Laing's worldview rather than the empirical data. That's Laing's worldview coloring the scientific evidence rather than allowing the scientific evidence to speak for itself.

    Why should one frame "random genetic mutations" in terms of chance? For instance, what if random genetic mutations are more akin to pattern-breaking? As such, genetic patterns would precede their genetic mutations. As such, genetic mutations would be variations from predesigned patterns. Set from the outset. Predetermined.

    Otherwise, if there's no pattern, then would it even be meaningful to say genetic mutations are either random or nonrandom? Genetic mutations would simply be genetic mutations, not random or nonrandom genetic mutations.

    4. Moreover, I think there's a kind of inverse relation between scientific law and randomness in evolution. Neo-Darwinists typically argue evolution is not merely a "theory" but a fact or, indeed, a scientific law (or similar like at heart it is comprised of major scientific laws). However, if that's true, then that arguably makes less room for randomness. If neo-Darwinism is more like a physical or mathematical law, then it is arguably less random. At a minimum, the two are at odds or in some tension with one another.

    5. Much more could be said, but I've run out of time.

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  2. Steve when he says

    "Just as Molinism allows God to use counterfactuals of creaturely freedom to (weakly) actualize his desires by means of the free actions of his creatures, so also it allows him to establish order and determinateness at the macro-level while retaining genuine indeterminateness at the micro-level by means of counterfactuals of subatomic particle movement. That is, propositions such as If situation S were to obtain, particle P would randomly move to location L could be used by God to guide and/or govern subatomic particles without causally determining their movements by weakly actualizing situations like S so that the larger picture of the creation is characterized by orderliness. "

    Isn't he just denying proximate order and still affirming ultimate order. Not sure that is coherent but still that is ultimate order, he is just denying physical determinism, which Calvinism also doesn't affirm, so how is that a relevantly different position?

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