Evidence of God by Hawkes Nick

Author:Hawkes, Nick [Hawkes, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General, Religion
ISBN: 9781630875350
Publisher: Wipf & Stock Publishers
Published: 2012-03-23T07:00:00+00:00

This immense sensitivity to initial conditions has given rise to what is known as the “butterfly effect,” a name which came about as a result of the proposition that a butterfly stirring its wings over Hong Kong could initiate a chain of events that could affect the course of a tornado in Texas.52 However, “chaos theory”53 is really a misnomer because mathematics has discovered that some outcomes occur more often than others in chaotic systems. These favored outcomes have been dubbed “strange attractors.” Polkinghorne puts forward the idea that “strange attractors” might be the sites God acts on to bring about his desired outcome.54 This, says Polkinghorne, would allow both genuine novelty and unpredictable changes, yet also load the odds in favor of particular new developments.

How valid is Polkinghorne’s idea? Theologically, most Christians would want to say that God is a God of more than chaos theory. God, almost by definition, must be able to act at every level of creation. There is nothing outside of God’s lordship. Sub-atomic particles through to human beings are subject to God, otherwise God is not truly God at all. To look for a single causal joint that God acts on in creation may therefore be unwise. Further, to look for physical causal joints will be futile if the causal joint is not physical but spiritual.

Whilst we should not give up searching for causal joints on which God may act we must (if we are to avoid the trap of lazily ascribing to God those things we do not understand) be mindful that God is likely to be acting at all physical levels, and, quite possibly, at a spiritual level we have yet to understand. The risk one takes by viewing God only through a scientific lens is that God will be reduced to being little more than the intelligence behind the laws of physics. For example, the author and scientific historian Steven Dick is one who wants to consider God as being a “natural” God, the intelligence behind the laws of physics, rather than a “supernatural” Christian God who is also beyond physics.55

It is evident that although process theology is a bold attempt to make sense of both the order and disorder we see in the universe, it has very real shortcomings. One of the features of process theology is its claim that even though there is one aspect of God that is perfect and never changes, there is another aspect of God that does change, and that is God’s experience. Creativity enriches all life, including the Divine Life itself. In this way, God is dependent on, and changes with, the temporal process. God and creation cannot be divorced, as Whitehead explains: “It is as true to say that God transcends the World, as that the World transcends God. It is as true to say that God creates the World, as that the World creates God.”56 Process theologians therefore believe that God is “becoming” as God journeys with humanity through evolutionary history. God

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