Redeeming Science by Vern S. Poythress

Author:Vern S. Poythress
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Crossway
Published: 2016-01-06T16:00:00+00:00

CONTINGENCY

The rule of God over generalities implies that scientific laws come from him. The regularities that we see come from God’s word, which specifies the regu­larities. But we need also to consider the particularities. Does God simply wave his hand at the universe in general, with no involvement with the particulari­ties? The instance with the arrow that wounded Ahab shows otherwise. In fact, the verses listed above, together with many others, indicate that God con­trols details as well as generalities or regularities. He created Adam and Eve, not just “humanity.” He formed David in his mother’s womb and determined the number of his days (Ps. 139:13-16). God’s rule over the particularities is important, both as an expression of the magnitude of his sovereignty and as an expression of his care for individuals, not merely for a broad course of his­torical development of a whole civilization. “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered” (Matt. 10:29-30).

The particularities affect science. In the nineteenth century, people impressed with the regularities veered in the direction of complete mechani­cal determinism. Some (LaPlace being the most famous) claimed that the behavior of the entire universe could be exactly calculated if only one had enough information about the positions and velocities of all the individual particles.

But in the twentieth century quantum mechanics appears to many inter­preters to have put a permanent barrier in the way of physical determinism. Exact calculation is permanently impossible, not merely because of limita­tions in measurement, but because quantum mechanics seems to say that con­tingent events at the quantum level are intrinsically contingent, intrinsically probabilistic. There is no way even in principle to predict a single contingent event, but only the statistical averages of many events. These single events occur at a microscopic level. But small initial differences magnify in time, so that a butterfly flapping its wings in South America can make the difference between stormy weather and mild weather a month later in the Northern Hemisphere.5

The control of God over particularities, including contingencies, guar­antees that these contingencies themselves still belong to his plan. And that guarantees that contingent events in our lives and in the course of civilizations do not take him by surprise or frustrate him. What if the contingencies had turned out differently, and my mother’s parents had never met? What if a stray bullet or an infection had struck down George Washington in the early stages of the American War of Independence, and the war had consequently been lost?6 Possibilities like these abound, and God controls them all. There is no straying piece of dust or independent molecule in the universe.

God’s control also guarantees for the scientist that he can study the ratio­nality of patterns even within areas of the physical world where contingency appears to be ultimate. The contingency, we might say, is not contingent for God, inasmuch as he planned it. And

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