Leland HarperORCID id and Leland R. HarperCorresponding author

A Deistic Discussion of Murphy and Tracy’s Accounts of God’s Limited Activity in the Natural World

Article
18/1 - Spring 2013, pages 93-107
Date of online publication: 10 décembre 2013
Date of publication: 10 décembre 2013

Abstract

Seemingly, in an attempt to appease both the micro-physicists and the classical theists, Nancey Murphy and Thomas Tracy have each developed accounts of God which allow for Him to act, in an otherwise causally closed natural world, through various micro-processes at the subatomic level. I argue that not only do each of these views skew the accounts of both micro-physics and theism just enough to preclude the appeasement of either group but that both accounts can aptly be classified as, what I term, epistemic deism. I go on to argue that epistemic deism is a weak brand of deism that ultimately provides us with little to no answers to any of serious questions discussed within the philosophy or religion.

Keywords

Cite this article

Harper, Leland R. "A Deistic Discussion of Murphy and Tracy’s Accounts of God’s Limited Activity in the Natural World." Forum Philosophicum 18, no. 1 (2013): 93–107. doi:10.35765/forphil.2013.1801.06.

Bibliography

Larmer, Robert, “Divine Agency and the Principle of the Conservation of Energy.” Zygon 44, no. 3 (2009): 543–557.

Murphy, Nancey. “Divine Action in the Natural Order: Buridan’s Ass and Schrödinger’s Cat.” In Chaos And Complexity: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, edited by Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy, and Arthur R. Peacocke, 325–357. Notre Dame: The University of Notre Dame Press, 1995.

Russell, Robert John, Nancey Murphy, and Arthur R. Peacocke, eds. Chaos and Complexity: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action. Notre Dame: The University of Notre Dame Press, 1995.

Tracy, Thomas F. “Particular Providence and the God of the Gaps.” In Chaos and Complexity: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, edited by Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy, and Arthur R. Peacocke, 289–325. Notre Dame: The University of Notre Dame Press, 1995.

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License