God's place in science

Hmm. I've just been forwarded (via the IAFA mailing list) an interesting New York Times article regarding ongoing efforts by the Templeton Foundation to reconcile science and faith:

By financing programs like "Science, Theology and the Ontological Quest" and "The Origin of the Laws of Nature and the Existence of God," Templeton almost single-handedly sustains the modern movement to reconcile science and religion - or, as some see it, he is keeping it alive on its death bed with extraordinary means of support.

This is not about intelligent design. While the foundation assumes the existence of a deity, it rejects biblical literalism as much as it does New Age fuzziness; no "crystals and faeries," it admonishes grant seekers.

And then, later on in the article, the fun stuff begins:

This is not the God of deism, who cranked up the universe and let it run. In drafting the principles of physics he left trapdoors - what Dr. Polkinghorne calls "causal joints" - through which to intervene, placing the earth in a hospitable orbit or unleashing the cascade of mutations needed for a microbe to evolve into a man. The trick is to do this without appearing to violate his own laws.

Some theologians speculate that this happens on the subatomic level, when a particle appears to dart probabilistically, with a roll of the quantum dice. Maybe it is God doing the shuffling, and what appears to mortals as quantum indeterminacy is divine intervention in disguise.

While I generally trend toward deism, simply because I don't believe a Creator that could put forth all the effort involved in creating an entire universe would need to stoop to micro-management, nor blatantly violate the laws of creation that He specifically established, quantum indeterminacy is actually an arguement I could consider. Of course, it still preserves that unproveable ambiguity that has been the bone of contention between science and religion lo these many years (which, assuming there is a Creator, I find particularly elegant and also speaks to the Creator having a delightfully subtle sense of humor).

Given my recent preoccupation with that very issue here in recent days (as well as recent months and years) I think the article apropos.

Now Playing: Wyndnwyre About Tyme