DIVINE ACTION AND QUANTUM MECHANICS: TOWARDS A PHILOSOPHICO-THEOLOGICAL SYNTHESIS
DIVINE ACTION AND QUANTUM MECHANICS: TOWARDS A PHILOSOPHICO-THEOLOGICAL SYNTHESIS

Summary/Abstract: Many people have previously claimed that divine intervention violates recognized physical laws, rendering any belief in separate divine intervention logically incoherent. Hence, theological and scientific components should, in principle, be not only cohesive but also mutually reinforcing in this manner. For this reason, theological consequences are restricted to theories that embrace the law-and-chance explanation of how reality is formed. Scholars have argued that conventional beliefs that God is active in the cosmos cannot be reconciled with scientific conceptions of the world as a rational natural order. Therefore, this paper examined the relationship between divine activity and science, particularly as it applies to quantum physics and other similar ideas. The purpose was to integrate a theology of divine intervention with scientific ideas in order to uncover potential places of interaction, concord, and tension, rather than to prove that God interacts with the world or to constrain divine activity to what is scientifically conceivable. The research showed how divine intervention may be achieved within the constraints of post-modern science while remaining coherent or nonsensical within philosophical and theological postulations. Based on what Nancey Murphy, John Polkinghome, Alvin Plantinga, and Bob Russell have written about divine action, the paper suggested a shared model of causation as a way to bring science and religion together.

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