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Sunday, September 26, 2010

Deism ... and Miracles

This post may be seen as a companion-post to an older post ('Science! and Miralces ... and Skepticism!'), which was about the incoherence (and self-mockery) of a certain sort of "scientific" opposition -- which is to say, an expression of scientism -- to the posibility of miracles. But here, the target is not modern atheistic scientism, but its older brother, the early-modern "Age of Reason" Deism.

Doug Benscoter has a small post on the distinction between 'deism' and 'theism' (Random Thought in the Theist/Deist Distinction); the content of this post is a comment I made there.

Ilíon: It seems to me that to say that "[t]he theist believes in miracles, whereas the deist rejects them" is to say that the deist believes or asserts God to be incapable of effecting miracles. And, it seems to me ultimately to mean that the deist believes or asserts "nature" to be superior to God.

Doug Benscoter: Or, as in the case of Spinoza, God and Nature are understood as synonymous (pantheism). The creation event (creatio ex nihilo) is already the greatest miracle of all, which is why I've never understood the deist's insistence that miracles are beyond God's purview or power.

Ilíon: As someone who writes computer programs ... and plays computer games ... the Deist position on miracles strikes me as analogous to someone asserting that I, as the author of a computer program, cannot write into the rules of the program a “back door” giving me an ability to modify the program’s data as it executes.

But, even that analogy is weaker than I mean … it’s just that I don’t expect most people to understand the analogy I really mean. But I’ll attempt to explain.

In my first job out of college, a long, long time ago, I coded in mainframe assembler (mostly maintaining code written ages prior) for a couple of small mainframe computers; one so ancient it didn’t even have harddrives. On the front of the ancient computer were a couple of panels of indicator lights with toggle switches beneath them.

These switches allowed one to set bits (and thus bytes) relevant to the computer’s memory, the lights indicating whether a particular bit was on or off. One panel was to set an address indicating a memory location, the other was to see - or change - the content of that memory location.

So, if a program was chugging along on the computer and encountered a fatal error condition everything stopped, and computer operator either purged the computer, and executed something else, or contacted me so that I might try to get around the problem at the moment and understand it so that I could resolve it for the future.

Now, as I said, one set of toggle switches allowed one to change the content of memory locations - I could change not only the data which at that moment had been being operated upon, but the actual loaded executable code of the program itself!

Now, of course, to make an extensive change on the fly like that would have taken more time and effort than simply to pull up the source code, make the appropriate changes and recompile, and then have the operator restart the execution from the beginning.

Mostly, what I did was change some data in the specific record then being processed, or changed the loaded executable code to have it skip over some problematic section of code/logic.

But, the point is, I *could in principle* have completely rewritten the program’s currently loaded executable on the fly.
It seems to me that the Deist denial of the posibility of miracles is analogous to asserting to me, "No, you can't!" (in principle completely rewrite, on the fly, the offending data or logic of the program).

Now, that's just an analogy, and while an analogy may illustrate a point, it is not an argument.

For argument, we turn to Mr Benscoter's observation: "The creation event (creatio ex nihilo) is already the greatest miracle of all, which is why I've never understood the deist's insistence that miracles are beyond God's purview or power." Understanding of which observation, of itself, is all we need in order to see that the Deist insistence on the impossibility miracles (or, at any rate, the popular understanding that there is such an insistence) is incoherent, and thus irrational.

Or, as Crude observes in a different form and context, with respect to Deism, once one has acknowledged the creation, and thus has acknowledged that there is a Creator, then one has no rational ground for asserting that The Creator *cannot* perform what people (even pagans) have always termed 'miracles.'

This is not to say that all, or even most, claims of miracles follow from a correct understanding of what occurred and why.

4 comments:

Crude said...

I don't know of any deists who insist that miracles are "beyond God's power". That would seem to be one tremendously difficult view to support.

I think part of the problem is that the definition of "Deism" is so damn mangled. There's Deism as a given basic definition, Deism as defined by the beliefs of these or those people historically, etc. Then inevitably these things get mixed up and suddenly Deist X's personal views on God are elevated to the definition of Deism such that all Deists are assumed to adhere to Deist X's personal views, even though that's obviously not the case.

The definition I use is this: Deism is the belief that there exists a creator of either or both our universe and/or nature itself, and this belief is arrived at through reasoning. Any additional claims - about whether or not the Creator acts in the world, about whether or not the Creator has concern for the world, etc - may or may not be compatible with this definition, but they aren't essential to it at all.

Ilíon said...

"I don't know of any deists who insist that miracles are "beyond God's power"."

You may notice that I made a point of speaking in the subjunctive, at any rate in my initial comment to Mr Benscoter. I quite understand that most of what I think I understand about Deism comes from public education (ha!), and that mostly in reference to Thomas Jefferson.

Yet, how is one to avoid the conclusion the Deism implies (or even postulates) that God is incapable of effecting miracles?

Deism rejects that "miracles" -- specific interventions by God in the "natural order" or "flow of history" at specific times and places -- *do* occur; we can agree to that, can we not? And, let's overlook that, according to "theism," every instant of the existence of the world utterly relies upon its upholding by God; which is to say that *every* instant is a miracle; in contrast to a view which sees the continuing existence of the world as being independent of God.

But (momentarily reifying the -ism), if we ask of Deism, "How do you know, or why do you reason, that God does not intervene in human affairs or in the world in general?" what possible response can the deist, of whatever stripe he is, give? It seems to me that the possibilities are (and I can't think of any others):
1) Because he just doesn't ... which is no answer (and no reasoning) at all.
2) Because he would not.
3) Because he cannot.

But, answer 2) is actually incoherent with respect to the postulates of Deism; and so, as a Deistic response to the question, it is incoherent.

The reason I say that this is incoherent with respect to the postulates of Deism, is that while it *might* be true that God would not intervene in his Creation after setting it in motion (*), this potential fact is not something that can be arrived at purely via reason nor by observation of "nature." Rather, for humans to possess the knowledge of this "fact," it would have to have been revealed by God to some human or other ... and Deism rejects Divine Revelation.

(*) "his Creation after setting it in motion" -- which phrasing reflects a typically Deistic way of seeing the world, both its beginning and continuance, does it not?


"The definition I use is this: Deism is the belief that there exists a creator of either or both our universe and/or nature itself, and this belief is arrived at through reasoning. ..."

I would call this "mere theism," rather than "deism" (and that's keeping in mind that I don't care for the term "theism;" I really ought to write a post on this).

====
Rather than opposition to miracles, it seems to me that a much worse thing about Deism is that it seems to reject that God cares about us.

Crude said...

Deism rejects that "miracles" -- specific interventions by God in the "natural order" or "flow of history" at specific times and places -- *do* occur; we can agree to that, can we not?

Well, I'd have to reject it given my base definition of theism. The way you're putting it, "mere deism" has more commitments involved than "mere theism" does. Which, I must admit, is one hell of a charge.

I will admit that many self-described or popularly noted Deists could be described as rejecting miracles. (Oddly, I'm pretty sure that makes Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin and others into something other than deists.)

Ilíon said...

Crude: "I don't know of any deists who insist that miracles are "beyond God's power"."

Ilíon: "Deism rejects that "miracles" -- specific interventions by God in the "natural order" or "flow of history" at specific times and places -- *do* occur; we can agree to that, can we not?"

Crude: "Well, I'd have to reject it given my base definition of theism. The way you're putting it, "mere deism" has more commitments involved than "mere theism" does. Which, I must admit, is one hell of a charge."

But Crude, "non-mere" Deism *does* reject that miracles *do* occur. The questions are then:
1) the rationale for the rejection;
2) whether Deism rejects the possibility, or merely the actuality, of miracles.

And I think I've shown that a Deistic rejection only of the actuality of miracles, while accepting (or admitting to) the possibility of miracles, is actually incoherent.


Crude: "The definition I use is this: Deism is the belief that there exists a creator of either or both our universe and/or nature itself, and this belief is arrived at through reasoning. ..."

Ilíon: "I would call this "mere theism," rather than "deism" ..."

Crude: "... The way you're putting it, "mere deism" has more commitments involved than "mere theism" does. Which, I must admit, is one hell of a charge."

I thought you were giving me your definition of Deism, not "mere deism." That's why I said I'd call that "mere theism" (*), as it seems quite inadequate as a definition for Deism.

(*) That and the fact that even though I strongly dislike calling Biblical religion "theism" (or "classical theism," as Feser uses), I had all along thought of that which can be known about God following my "First Question" approach as "mere theism;" because while it is not Biblical religion, much less is it Christianity, it is consistent with Christianity, it is consistent with what must be true if Christianity is true.