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It would be appropriate in conclusion to this chapter, to say something about one special event which God might be expected to bring about, a particular intervention of himself into the world which he made, an incarnation. Suppose that the human race gets into a really bad mess. Suppose that men so abuse their freedom that they teach others evil and not good. They do not altogether know which actions are right and which are wrong, and they conceal from themselves even what they do know. They show little interest in where they came from (e.g. whether they have a creator to whom thanks and service are appropriate), nor in whether their existence has any point and their race any destiny. They do not care for their fellows, but live for self. Now the Christian view is roughly that such was the human condition at the outset of civilization; and that but for various, especially Christian, influences from without, it still is. Now whether the Christian view is right here is of course a matter for argument which will turn both on issues of history and psychology and on moral issues; and once again there is no space to pursue these issues. However, few in the last quarter of the twentieth century would deny that this view has a certain plausibility. Suppose that this Christian view of the human condition is correct. What does God have reason for doing about it? |
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Whichever way the argument goes as to whether such events are violations or quasi-violations, there is the further issue as to whether they are events such that God would have reason for bringing them about (or allowing them to occur). For, as we have seen, where e reports the occurrence of an event E, h is 'there is a God', and k is background knowledge of how the world works which we have considered in other chapters including the general operation of fairly deterministic natural laws, P(e/h.k) may exceed P(e/k) not because P(e/ ∼ h.k) and so P(e/k) are especially low (i.e. E is not to be expected given the operation of purely natural processes), but because P(e/h.k) is quite high. E may be such that its occurrence is more to be expected if there is a God than if there is not. I argued earlier that God must do whatever there is overriding reason for him to do, and cannot do whatever there is overriding reason for him not to do or anything which he has no reason for doing. We may—though corrigibly—know what he has reason or overriding reason for doing or not doing. In so far as he has reason for bringing about some event, he may bring it about either by intervening in natural processes—in which case it will be a violation or quasi-violation; or by making the laws of nature such as to bring about the event in question at the appropriate time. If P(e/h.k) exceeds P(e/k) because God has reason, by either of these routes, to bring E about rather than some events which would otherwise be equally likely with E to occur, then the occurrence of E confirms the existence of God. (Qualifications must be added in the way set out in Chapter 6 to deal with cases where God has reason to allow others to bring about the occurrence or non-occurrence of E.) That the world is a world such as we might expect God to make is evidence that he did make it. So it remains to consider of the various particular events which I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter whether a God would have reason or overriding reason to bring them about, or not to bring them about (or allow others to do so). |
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Let us concentrate, to begin with, on the first reason, and ask when is some particular historical event such that it is very improbable that it would occur through natural processes. It is not probable that natural processes will bring about E if our evidence makes it probable that physical objects do not have the power to bring about E. The powers of physical objects and their powers to exercise them are codified in natural laws (see pp. 41 f.). Hence it is not probable that natural processes will bring about an event E if the occurrence of E is incompatible with (or rendered highly improbable by) the universal operation of laws of nature, that is, if the only powers in the universe are those of physical objects codified in laws of nature. If the laws of nature in some field are universal laws, this will be because the odd event is contrary to the predictions of those laws and so what I shall call a 'violation' of them. If the laws of nature in some field are statistical, it will be because the odd event is very unlikely, given those laws and so is what I shall call a quasi-violation of them. |
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