“God Does Not Play Dice”
Posted by Sappho on February 18th, 2013 filed in Theology
“Yes, I know that miracles happen,” said “Demeter,” “because I lived one, when I got my daughter back.”
“That’s not a miracle,” a man in the Bible study objected.
“She’s not your daughter,” Demeter replied.
I mean my nature/nurture series to be more about science than theology, but there was one post I meant to slip in already that was more oriented toward theology and ethics than science, and, as it happens, a response to my Alexandria co-blogger Hector’s post about miracles will make a good segue to that post. So, for now, let me set aside my discussion of DNA for a brief discussion of miracles, faith, and science.
When Einstein made his famous remark that “God does not play dice with the Universe” (and Nils Bohr made his annoyed reply “Stop telling God what to do”), the “God” in question was not a literal personal God, but a metaphor for the order of the universe; Einstein expected more ultimate predictability to quantum mechanics than Bohr did. But I think the metaphor of God playing dice also fits the tug of war within Christianity between those more willing to accept a world with miracles, and those described by my co-blogger Hector as “the sort of well-meaning folks who will tell you that the real miracle of the loaves and fishes was that Jesus taught people to share, or that his exorcisms of the possessed were really early demonstrations of cognitive-behavioural therapy avant le lettre, or that his healing of the man born blind was a metaphor for spiritual enlightenment.”
Not all things that are miracles to people of faith are “miracles” in the Hume sense of being extraordinary events that require extraordinary explanations. Demeter’s daughter “Persephone,” taken by Demeter’s ex-husband to another state and hidden from her, could be recovered without violating any of the normal order of nature. The same applies to some more publicly acclaimed miracles. It was said that Elian Gonzales was rescued by dolphins, a miracle to many in the Cuban-American community in Florida, but also a not all that extraordinary behavior on the part of dolphins, who, like many other species of mammals, sometimes extend their mammalian caregiving impulses to the helpless of other species. Those who doubt these miracles doubt less that such things can occur than that they were guided by a personal God.
Not so the empty tomb. Hector addressed the question of whether Christianity can still be Christianity without accepting as actual miracles Jesus’ birth, resurrection, and miracle working during his lifetime. Is a Christianity that takes an “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night” interpretation of the resurrection still Christianity? Or is our faith, as Paul says, vain if Christ is not raised?
I want, though, to address a different question, the one of at what point you find a God who “plays dice” theologically troubling. For some, that point would come with any God who works miracles at all. A deist God, who sets up the laws of nature and lets them work, or a panentheistic God, whose ongoing activity consists of, let us say, being the breath that keeps the order of nature that we observe going, may be acceptable, but one who from time to time steps in and suspends a law here and there is unacceptably arbitrary.
For me, though, the point at which a God who plays dice becomes theologically unacceptable to me comes at the point where I think I’m being offered a God who plays dice so often that the whole universe has become one big casino. By this I mean that I draw the line at accepting any theology that requires me to reject science wholesale, in particular young Earth creationism. If young Earth creationism is true, then so much of science would have to be false that God must have created a world fundamentally incapable of being observed reliably by science, one designed to trick us, or so it seems to me. Given a choice between believing in that world and believing that an account that looks as if it uses the language of myth (what kind of tree is a tree of knowledge of good and evil?) is in fact myth, I’ll go with the Genesis account speaking as myth rather than as science.
A Jesus who was actually born of a virgin and who actually rose from the dead, on the other hand, whatever other challenges he may pose, does not require that God have made the whole world a casino. We can argue about whether Tertullian’s defense that no one would write the story thus if it were not true is persuasive, or whether, as a skeptic would have it, Leon Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory better fits the bill. But a world in which Christ is risen requires that one particular event that no one normally sees happening have happened at a particular time, not that whole fields of science be systematically wrong; it’s a world in which God, at least, is selective and constrained about that dice playing. I find it easier to trust such a God that one who has supplied me with a book of nature that can’t, in fact, be properly read.
February 19th, 2013 at 9:37 am
It’s interesting to me that you describe miracles as cases of God playing dice. Perhaps it’s because I’m a gamer, but to me a miracle is the opposite of casting dice. A roll of the dice is utterly unpredictable in any individual instance (whoops, rolled a 5, guess Jesus is going to stay in hell for eternity), but very regular in the aggregate (if we send enough messiahs, we can count on 35% rising from the dead on average). A miracle would seem to me to be a case of God *weighting* the dice, artificially and unfairly ensuring that the “right” outcome occurs when it had been uncertain (or perhaps even, say, slipping in a d12 instead of a d6 in order to be able to get outcomes that should have been impossible).
February 20th, 2013 at 6:52 am
You state, “But a world in which Christ is risen requires that one particular event that no one normally sees happening have happened at a particular time, not that whole fields of science be systematically wrong…”
However, science generally does not allow for one time events. A sound theory must be modified upon a single event in which that theory does not explain an event. If we are to accept these two events (immaculate conception and Christ’s revival from death) as having occurred, we must modify our concepts of impregnation of humans and reanimation of those found to be dead. Yes, I am aware of the potential for implanting an embryo into a virgin and of numerous cases of successful resuscitation of clinically dead individuals. Are Christians ready to see God as an incredibly capable physician?
February 20th, 2013 at 7:50 am
@Stentor: You have a point.
@Ed: In principle, Jesus could have been revived from the clinically dead after crucifixion without violating science; the problem is the part of the doctrine where Jesus is said, by rising, to have conquered death, never to have died after that, and to be a first fruit of what’s going to happen to the rest of us. There’s no way that accords with science as we know it; from the point of view of science, if that’s true at all, I suppose it would have to be some extremely advanced divine technology that we’re not currently aware of (maybe God is both an incredibly capable physician and a kind of Time Lord, who’s going to be able to go to the appropriate point in time and grab a version of us for revival).
On the other hand, purely spiritual survival of death (that still involves a conscious mind of some sort), absent a body, seems to me also at odds with known science (what evidence do we have for a consciousness that exists independent of a body?). A resurrection reconciled with science as we know it would have to be either a revival from the clinically dead followed by Jesus eventually dying (something similar was proposed in the book _The Passover Plot_) or a “Joe Hill” resurrection (and, of the two, the “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night” version is actually the more inspiring).
That said, I’m pretty easy on the details of how Jesus gets resurrected; any way I look at it, the body isn’t available for scientific observation, and we don’t have science that lets us verify just any event whatsoever from 2000 years ago (only the ones that left appropriate evidence behind for our labs). The gospels and Paul are adamant that Jesus did actually rise, but complicated on just what the risen Jesus was like.
On the other hand, if evolution is unacceptable disbelief, antibiotic resistance becomes very difficult to understand.
February 20th, 2013 at 5:49 pm
@Sappho,
Personally, I see little conflict between Christ’s teachings and science (specifically evolution science). Many current theologians see great conflict but that is another topic altogether.
Man’s religions over the millenia seem to have had a number of purposes. One of these was to explain how the universe in general and man in specific came to exist. Currently, cosmological science and physics is beginning to uncover how the universe came to be and the theories are continuing to evolve and be supported by observed data. Leonard Krauss makes the observation in his book, A Universe From Nothing, that “God is no longer necessary.” (paraphrased). The greatest difference between the sciences and theology is that the sciences do not require faith. Instead, they posit theories and then make experiments and observations that either support or destroy the theories. The theologians posit a story and deny observations that disagree with what is predicted by the story.
For my part, I believe the stories concerning Jesus’ birth and death were creative stories intended to explicate the theology that evolved during the first couple hundred years of the Christian church. Much as Aesop’s fables do not rely on actual events but use allegory to teach a lesson or support a tenet, these stories serve the purpose of being a foundation for the evolving theology of that time.
February 22nd, 2013 at 9:01 am
Science wasn’t particularly Christ’s favorite topic, it’s true.