Plantinga on Providence and Physics

Abstract

In Where the Conžict Really Lies, Alvin Plantinga argues that there is nothing more than a supercial conžict between contemporary science and traditional eistic belief. He goes on to argue that there is a deep conžict between contemporary science and atheistic naturalism. I will concern myself here with only one part of Plantinga’s argument for the rst thesis, i.e. that there is only supercial conžict between science and Christian eism. I will focus, in particular, on the argument from Chapters 3 and 4 to the ešect that there is no conžict at all — not even supercial conžict — between contemporary physics and the claim that God can, and does, on occasion interact in “special” ways with God’s creation. In the spirit of constructive criticism, I will raise four issues about Plantinga’s discussion of providence and physics. Each of these issues can be resolved, I would suggest, via a more thoroughgoing application of Plantinga’s “Reformed” epistemological outlook. First, Plantinga indicates that if God acts in history, then the laws of physics are not deterministic. But from the point of view of Reformed epistemology, the character of the laws of physics should be irrelevant to one’s warrant in believing that God has acted. Second, Plantinga argues that divine intervention is consistent with the laws of Newtonian mechanics, since these laws carry provisos. However, the provisos leave room only for intervention by other physical systems. ird, Plantinga proposes that God could cause events by exploiting “collapse” of the quantum wavefunction. However, this proposal only adds the sound of scientic respectability to theology; it doesn’t actually use the science in any substantive way to correct or enrich theology. Finally, Plantinga’s discussion presupposes that science aims to establish laws of nature, and that divinely caused events contravene the laws of nature (for closed systems). But “Reformed” considerations suggest eliminating any dichotomy between “law” and “miracle.”