Anne L. C. Runehov

Chaos, complexity, and God : divine action and scientism

In Christian theology, the belief that God is actively involved in earthly affairs is fundamental. Yet it is challenged by the contemporary scientific worldview. The author of this study argues that the current problems with divine action are a consequence of a culturally embedded and tacit scientism according to which science is authoritative in many areas of everyday life, including theology. This study focuses on theological models that use chaos theory (John Polkinghorne) and theories of self-organizing systems (Arthur Peacocke) to speak about divine action. These models are analyzed and critically assessed. The author concludes that they are problematic, since they do not take sufficiently into account that there is a difference between scientific and religious language. Speaking about divine action in scientific terms rests on a category mistake resulting from scientistic presuppositions. The author also points to alternative possibilities of talking about divine action that take serious the logic of religious language.

Credition and Justification

When it comes to subjective beliefs (including religious ones), we tend to be interested in or even skeptical about what others believe. We may ask, “what makes you believe this or that?” What we ask is “how did you come to believe this or that; can you justify your belief?” Differently it is with scientific beliefs, which are considered to be real due to the sensations external objects bring about are consistent. Hence, such beliefs do not need to be justified by the believing person. For example, the belief that particles are real is justified, because, in Henri Poincare’s words, regardless of there being scientific paradigm shifts or competitive theories, there is always some-thing essential that remained and will remain through time. It is assumed that subjective beliefs do not possess or seldom possess such consistency. Indeed, analytic philosophers have been concerned mostly with processes of knowing, “how do we know?”, which may include belief but only in the sense of “justified belief”. For instance, Rene Descartes (1596–650) (2008) and John Locke’s (1632–1704) (1836) aim was to provide a secure foundation for knowledge, which implied that since then we have tend to conceive knowledge and belief as two antithetic poles. Furthermore, a distinction was made between faith and belief in the sense that faith might include knowledge when it is based on empirical experiences. For example, take the postulation “having faith that the sun will rise tomorrow”, which is based on the experience that the sun actually rises every morning. Belief, on the other hand, has been seen as something that is personal, subjective, and in need of justification. One problem is that knowledge, faith and belief are nouns. Focusing on nouns has the consequence that important aspects of the mental status of belief are lost, for example, the aspect concerned with what happens when one believes, knows, has faith? In this chapter, the verbal brother of the noun belief, namely, to believe is studied. In other words, the processes of believing, or the processes’ character is put on a philosophical table of research. In order to do so, the problematic static notions such as belief and knowledge are avoided. Instead the focus lies on a novel understanding using the dynamic term coined by Hans-Ferdinand Angel, credition (the processes of believing) (Angel et al. 2006). The aim is to show that the argument given by Poincare can be challenged. This means, however, having to depart from the traditional epistemic way of thinking. This can be done because, when focusing on the processes of believing rather than on the noun “belief”, it could be argued that “there always will be something essential” in that process of believing that remains and probably will do so over time, even if the whole of the process of believing may and most probably will, include changes due to the different functions of the processes involved. This means that, regardless of the type of process of believing (credition), religious, secular or scientific, it might be justified, not on the basis of its epistemic value but on the basis of its process.

Introduction: What We Do Not Know About Believing – Approaching a New Scientific Hot Spot

The human propensity to believe is one of the most fascinating phenomena of mankind. Since antiquity, philosophers have spent time and energy trying to understand how and why humans are touched and influenced by their beliefs. Nevertheless “belief” remains a strange phenomenon; it is both wanted and unwanted. Knowledge-based societies as well as either secular or strict religious worldviews can cast belief in a very negative light. Also, from a scientific point of view belief can be considered overly complex and heavily interwoven with religion. This chapter argues against the underestimation of the relevance of belief. It highlights the predominant use of the noun “belief” as one of the basic problems in both everyday speech and scientific research. But an understanding of belief that reduces it to only a noun is not sufficient. Beliefs are expressions and results of activities. This means that believing does not exist only as a noun, but also as a verb. We are active when we do what we call “to believe.” The chapter explains that we are at the crossroads of a change in perspective from examining “belief” to examining “believing”. This change will foster our understanding of the more fundamental “process of believing” and enable us to analyze the process of how believing works in the human mind. Thus, the chapter provides an overview of the book, which starts with two introductory chapters and clusters the following chapters according to scientific disciplines (“neuroscience,” “philosophy,” “theology, religious studies, and anthropology,” “social sciences,” and “natural and computer sciences”) though many of them reflect an interdisciplinary approach.

Free Will, Responsibility and Moral Evil

While the previous chapter considered empathy and compassion, this chapter looks at some reasons for why empathy and compassion sometimes fail to prevail. What could be the reasons that some dismiss or even lack empathy? Furthermore, where does free will come in? Is there something like free will or is free will always relative to a specific factor? Is free will equal to being free? In my opinion having free will and being free is not entirely the same. For instance, a drug addict may have freely chosen to start taking drugs, but after some time it is the drug that chooses the addict who is no longer a free person. Take the following example. I am completely free to choose what I want to do today, I may choose to continue writing on my book or I may choose to do something entirely different. However, I am not free from my duty to submit the book in time. Then, of course, one could try to refrain from making a choice, thinking in terms of ‘what has to happen also happens’. However, that will not work, one will end up making a choice because “[w]e cannot think away our free will” (Searle 2007: 43). However, that we cannot think away our free will does not mean that we have absolute free will. In turn, this does not mean that free will is an illusion. As Searle expresses, “free will is a genuine feature of the world” (Searle 2007: 58). Therefore, it needs to have neurological correlations. The choices we make cannot be detached from our neurological set-up. This implies that human free will to do good or bad is at least partly hardwired in the brain.

God-Human-God Relationship

The question is how God or ultimate reality could be understood. Is it even possible to grasp or model God or ultimate reality? In Models of God and Alternative Ultimate Reality (Diller and Kasher 2013) Robert Cummings Neville hypothesizes that “ultimate reality is an ontological act of creation, the terminus of which is everything determinate, constituting and unfolding in spacetime” (2013: 19). Defined as such, he argues, ultimate reality cannot be modeled and anything that can be modeled cannot be ultimate reality. The question is, if we accept this definition, how could human beings and ultimate reality or God interact? Or, in the words of Philip Clayton and Arthur Peacocke (1924–2006), “[h]ow, in the light of the sciences, to conceive of God’s relation to the world as it is now perceived to be and to be becoming” (2004). Hence, in this chapter some models of God or ultimate reality will be presented and discussed; I will also explore how a relationship between humans and God or ultimate reality could be understood. Furthermore, philosophical problems such as the problem of time and of free will in relation to ultimate reality will be investigated.

The Human Experiencer

The aim of the previous chapter was to account for human being in terms of ens and in terms of esse. This definition let me dig somewhat deeper into the philosophical query of what we call the self or the ‘I’. I suggeted that the self or ‘I’ is threefold, consisting of a neurological, a subjective and a transcendent degree of this emergent self. This chapter searches to find an answer to the question whether there might be the sine qua non of human being (in terms of esse). This philosophical question is of course not new and several answers have already been given. Nevertheless, there seems to be space for yet another enquiry on the subject matter. Hence, let us look closer to what has been said and which possibilities are still open. The title of the present chapter reveals that its main topic is about experiencing and experiences; it is about human being as experiencer. I will suggest that experiencing is the sine qua non of human esse; that a human being cannot not experience.

Final Conclusions and Reflections

Reaching the end of the present piece of research, it is time for some final conclusions and reflections. It is also time to propose further research because it is obvious that there is a lot more to say about what it is to be a human being. I have tried to answer this big question by making several distinctions. The first distinction was between a (human) being – ens and (human) being – esse. However, this distinction does not imply any dualism, because ens and esse, it was argued, are intertwined in a most complex manner. They are part of a whole, which I coined the emergent threefold self. Where the ens (called the objective neural self) is mostly related to the neuro-physiological underpinnings of being (human), esse is twofold. On the one hand there is a part of esse (called the Subjective Neural Self, SNS) that is mostly related to the neuro-physiological underpinnings (which I called the Objective Neural Self, ONS) and it is this part of esse that correlates with neuro-physiological activity. In other words, I suggested, there is a direct mutual causation between ens (ONS) and this part of esse (SNS). However, there seems to be another part of esse (called the Subjective Transcendent Self, STS) that, while also being in some correlation with ens, also has some correlation with the subjective neural self; furthermore, this part of esse seems to embrace both the objective and subjective neural self. In other words, it transcends the two. What I chose to call the subjective transcendent self has been given a variety of names in the history of philosophy. Even up to the present day, it has not been possible to actually account for it or actually grasp it. Nevertheless, this feature or process of the self seems to be very real. Perhaps it is this process of the self that is responsible for the way humans unreflectively understand themselves as dualist.

How to Understand Time in Relation to Timeless Divine Action in a Time-Dependent World

In Time & Eternity: The Question of Time in Church, Science and Theology, Archbishop Antje Jackelen tackles the problem of time and eternity from the perspective of three disciplines: theology, physics and philosophy. Her aim on the one hand is to provide a different understanding of the role of time and eternity in both theological and physical discourses; and, on the other, to create a better dialogue between science and theology by way of concrete concepts. She understands time to be both circular and linear, and as such, time becomes relational in its core. She investigates three interpretations of time, quantitative, ontological and eschatological. Studying both the classical and quantum understandings of time, she concludes that there are similarities between the ways in which time is understood in quantum physics and in eschatology in that both proceed from a static understanding towards a relational understanding of the world. If there is a relationship between God and creation, she argues, it is more plausible to link chaotic dynamics to God rather than a static order. It is more plausible to call God the Highest Complexitas than the Highest Simplicitas. (Jackelen, Time and eternity. The question of time in church, science, and theology. Templeton Foundation Press, West Conshohocken, 2005).

A Two- and Threefold Self

Before beginning this chapter, one term has to be explained, namely, ‘being’. What is meant by being? Indeed, the English term being is confusing, which has led to the problem that it is difficult to know what exactly is meant by being, especially when it comes to scientific research. Clarifying a term is important when one’s research crosses the border of other disciplines or when one tries to make scientific finding understandable for non-scientists. Terms in need of clarification are, amongst others, experience, mind, consciousness, awareness, self, intelligence, affection and emotion, what is called the ego, the self and being.