Below is an essay on the problem of divine action written by Kevin Sharpe. How God interacts with the universe in light of contemporary science is one of the key problems in theology today. Sharpe discusses the ideas of Arthur Peacocke, John Polkinghorne, and Roger Sperry.

Kevin Sharpe was born in New Zealand, lived in the United States for sixteen years, and now resides in Oxford, England. He is a professor in the Graduate College of Union Institute and University, Cincinnati, a non-traditional distant learning program, where he supervises and advises doctoral students. He is also a member of Harris Manchester University, Oxford University. His academic background includes two doctorates, one in mathematics (from La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia) and one in religious studies (from Boston University). Ecclesiastically, he is an Episcopal (or Anglican) priest. The chief area of his academic interest lies in the relationship between religion and science. Besides edited volumes, numerous articles and papers, he has published three books (Sleuthing the Divine: The Nexus of Science and Spirit, David Bohm's World: New Science and New Religion, and From Science to an Adequate Mythology), with five others awaiting publication (Love and Happiness, Natural Morality, Dreaming Time, Science of God, and In the Spirit of Happiness). Prehistoric archaeology (especially cave art) also interests him a great deal. Sharpe founded, edited, and published the magazine, Science & Spirit and its companion website. He also edits the Fortress Press book series "Theology and the Sciences."

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FROGS AND GOD By Kevin Sharpe kevin.sharpe@tui.eduhttp://www.ksharpe.com Copyright (c) 2003 by Kevin Sharpe. All rights reserved.

ABSTRACT: I seek a model for God, and how God can interact with events in the world, that involves downward action, God's obvious involvement in our lives, and doesn't create an energy problem whereby God has to intervene in our universe. I find a suggestive answer in the idea of nonlocality.

KEYWORDS: Downward action, energy, God-world relationship, holism, information, mind, nonlocality, Arthur Peacocke, John Polkinghorne, Roger Sperry.

Preparation for a school biology class sent me to catch frogs to dissect, down by the rifle range near the mouth of the Waiwhakaiho River where it forms a swamp.

I learned something. Not only that swamps are messy and frogs elusive, and that I don't want to go into medicine because the insides of frogs are also messy, but that nature is made up of levels. A 'frog' is the name we give to a whole organism. Inside that lies the level of its organs, its lungs and heart for instance. Inside that appears the level of its various tissues. Going deeper into any of these we reach the cells, and so on down through the levels.

Harold Schilling introduced me to the idea of levels, the image of the universe as hierarchies of levels (Schilling 1973). In the west, we would say that tissues determine what happens to the organs, and the organs what happens to the frog. The parts of something, we feel sure, decide how it behaves; lower levels control upwardly what upper ones do.

I want to develop this idea to understand how God acts in the universe.

The Universe and Downward Action

Ask if the frog can influence its heart and lungs or the lungs can affect their tissues. In other words, turn the upward scheme around. Think whether higher levels can act downward on lower levels, whether a whole can influence its parts.

A colleague of mine faced the surgical removal of a cancerous tumor in his neck. Besides conventional medicine, he sought the help of an eastern healer who taught him how to use meditation to control the blood flow in the area of the tumor. My friend practiced and practiced until the technique became second nature to him. The surgeons didn't need any of the six pints of blood they had waiting to transfuse. Popular story abounds in downward explanations like this 'mind over matter.'

Nobel Prize winner, neuroscientist Roger Sperry, develops an image of the downward action from the mind to the body (Sperry 1988). The cerebellum, the cerebral cortex, the hemispheres, the thalamus, the lobes, the neurons, the synapses, and so on, all constitute the brain that, as a whole entity, exceeds what all of its components can achieve. Sperry talks about this as the 'brain-as-a-whole,' the total state of the brain that surpasses all the components that comprise it. I call it the 'Brain' with a capital 'B.' Like the frog acting on its lungs, the Brain lies at a level that can control or influence what happens at the lower, neuron level of the brain. According to Sperry, the Brain acts downward - makes things happen - on the neurons.

Mental events (thoughts, feelings, decisions) have to do with the Brain, Sperry says. They describe total states of the brain. But they aren't events in a mind separate from the physical universe and that mysteriously interact with the physical brain, like a guardian angel. They refer to the physical Brain. I physically think I want a cup of tea and, in a downward way, this event in my Brain effects my brain's neurons and hence my bodily actions. I walk to the kitchen and put the kettle on.

Take Sperry's Brain model and use it to think about the universe. We already assume that what happens in higher levels of the universe depends on what goes on in lower ones. What I read on my computer screen depends on what's going on in the wizardry of the electronic bits and pieces in its insides. Now, what about the reverse, an upper level influencing those below it? Could what I read on the screen influence the electronic hardware of my computer, or could what happens at higher levels of the universe influence our levels?

First, think of the Brain again; it forms a whole (the brain-as-a-whole) that exceeds everything in the brain. It is the total state of the brain. Then, by analogy, imagine the 'Universe,' meaning the 'universe-as-a-whole,' or the total state of the universe. The Universe, considered as an entity, forms a whole that exceeds everything in it.

When I think to write 'the cow jumped over the moon,' a conscious process at the level of my Brain goes on. It causes the lower-level neurons in my brain to fire off frenetically with signals that go to my arms, hands, and fingers to type the words. The Brain acts on its parts in a downward way.

Take this as an analogy for the Universe with its series of levels, each of which has its specific entities and laws. It similarly interacts downward with each of its levels and parts. Imagine water flowing down through channels in a terraced garden. A single source at the top divides into several ducts and then divides and divides, passing through levels after levels of flowers, shrubs, and statues. So the Universe's interactions start at the top and flow down through its levels.

Pukeiti, a well thought-out and maintained azalea and rhododendron garden in the Pouakai mountain range near my childhood home, provides me peace and inspiration. Shrubs stand over me in glorious flower; others squat intricate and splendid. Paths to unknown dells wind over trimmed grass. I carry the garden's overall feeling to my appreciation of each plant. It's not the same tree as it would be growing on the curbside of a New York City freeway, even it had the same shape and flowers. The garden gives it something more: its serenity and excitement.

The Universe interacts in a similar downward way with its parts, and this helps build its wholeness. The wholeness and the downward action interrelate.

But can we be specific about how this might happen?

It's easy to say the world produces enough food for everyone to eat what they need. But it's hard to break through the politics, beliefs, and self-interests to share it all around. Similarly, it's easy to say the Universe acts downward, but it's difficult to describe a credible means by which the Universe could act this way. We need to specify the wholeness and the means for downward action, and thus say what makes the Universe different from the universe. Wholeness needs meaning or else it's just a pretty word - maybe inspiring - with no explanatory content.

The automatic transmission in my car is a complete mystery to me. It works, does a good job in fact. But I don't know how it works. Thank goodness someone does and I would take my car to my mechanic the moment the transmission had problems. It isn't just a pretty idea that works by magic. Similarly, someone needs to know how the Universe acts downward so we can ask them questions about it, so they can fix the idea if it has problems, and so they can at least say when the idea will work and when it won't.

Sperry's model says that the whole (the Brain) acts on its parts (the neurons, for instance), but it doesn't say how this happens, a serious flaw according to the psychologist Aviel Goodman (Goodman 1991). It seems a good approach, he says, because it brings together physical mechanisms and holistic activity, bridging the two worlds of science and the experiencing self. But it's only wishful thinking if it doesn't go further and say how the downward action works.

Divine Actions and Information

An important theory comes from Oxford biochemist and Christian cleric, Arthur Peacocke, and is frequently referred to when thinking about how God might interact with the universe. He thinks of God as beyond the Universe, interacting downward with it (Peacocke 1993). The Universe then interacts downward with its various levels.

We may ask how Peacocke's God works downward. What means does Peacocke's God use to interact with the Universe and the Universe with its parts?

Cambridge physicist and Christian cleric, John Polkinghorne, also wants to understand how the different levels relate to each other, but finds the difficulties 'mostly too hard for current knowledge' (Polkinghorne 1991: 222). Despite this, he has an answer that Peacocke also picks up on: information.

The information approach suggests that God can communicate with the Universe and it with us by encouraging thoughts and feelings in our minds. Thus, a message may flash into a person's consciousness to act suddenly and so avoid a danger. Or it might dawn on us that certain events in history have profound significance and provide meaning to existence. God uses information to influence events by communicating something to the Universe, which passes the message on to its parts like a repeater station. Information seeps from beyond the Universe down to it and then to its various levels. Information forms the pivot for Peacocke's image of the God-universe relationship; it creates his bridge between the levels.

How does the information proposal fare? One challenge especially needs addressing.

Information and Energy

The conservation law of physics that says the energy in a closed system stays the same over time. This poses a problem for divine action because, for something to happen in a system (such as you or me) requires the expenditure of energy and this has to come from somewhere. If the only thing to change in a closed system is from the action from God, where does the energy come from to create the change? The interventionist approach says, no problem, God breaks into the regular order of nature and we should expect energy to be created in a closed system from God's action. I reject the interventionist approach. I therefore need find out how God can interact in a way that doesn't create an energy problem for closed systems.

Water flowing down through a terraced garden is absorbed by the soil and plants, so that less reaches the bottom than left the top. It uses up water. Information isn't like water; its transfer doesn't use up energy, at least Polkinghorne thinks this way. He and Peacocke think they solve the problem of divine action and energy.

The passing of information from the words printed on the page to your eyes requires the same energy as the passing of no information from the page to the eyes of a blind person. Light moves between the page and the eyes the same in both cases. No more energy is required when information is read off the page than when it's not.

If God were to send information to a lower level - say to the Universe, the join in the chain of communication that Peacocke focuses on when he considers the energy problem - this requires no extra energy. The energy problem appears solved, Polkinghorne thinks.

I used to have a fax machine on my regular telephone line and it was supposed to switch between the fax and phone modes automatically. Because this switch frequently didn't work, I invested in a separate phone line and number for the fax machine. Not everyone knows about the change, so I sometimes pick up my phone to hear the screeching of a fax machine struggling to get through to mine. It tries in vain; without the machine, I can't receive, store, process, understand, let alone act on the printed information in the incoming noise.

Peacocke's information transfer model assumes the Universe has the means to receive, store, process, understand, and act on the data coming from God. But does the Universe have these abilities?

What if you tried to communicate with me by fax and I didn't have a phone line? You couldn't even get your machine to start to send it because you wouldn't have a number to dial. Similarly, God must transmit the information in a medium and in a mode that the Universe can pick up. In fact, it would have to be done in a physical medium for the Universe to receive, store, and so on, and not in some non-material medium outside the Universe.

Information transfer may not need energy, but it does need other things. If God sends messages in a physical medium so the Universe can pick them up, this requires energy. Polkinghorne and Peacocke haven't escaped the energy problem (though a footnote by Peacocke does start to recognize a problem with this explanation; Peacocke 1993: 207 n. 62). It would be great if my fax/modem didn't need energy from an electrical outlet or battery to send messages when I'm on the road, but it does. Similarly, God has to find physical energy to communicate information to physical entities such as the Universe. And where can this energy come from in a closed energy system such as the Universe?

Information flow between God and the Universe requires energy from somewhere other than the universe. Peacocke may wish to overlook this, but it throws his scheme into doubt. He bases his system of spiritual ideas on a troublesome notion that conflicts with science. It depends on an unhealthy dualism whereby God exists outside the Universe.

Not all downward models of God interacting in individual events work. It is as though the information model creates a sealed room and asks you or me to walk into it. We can't. The Universe is, energy-wise, sealed like the room. No divinity from beyond the Universe can enter it to interact with it or anything in it without raising an energy problem.

A way out is to assume that you and I have ethereal bodies and that we can walk through walls and override physics. I don't go in for sleights of hand to solve intellectual problems; I would rather try to work them out from within my secular and scientific experience. Peacocke would probably agree.

I want to work within the sealed room of the Universe and understand God and God's interactions with it in terms of the Universe.

Nonlocal Downward Action

Since the Brain image has no concrete content, that of the Universe can't borrow from it on this score. Similar with the idea of information. We need to look elsewhere.

While I like the transmission of my car, what I dislike most about it are the heater controls. New Hampshire, where I used to live, suffers very cold winters and I need all the warmth the car can muster directed on my feet. At the same time, though, I need lots of air rushing over the windshield to stop it fogging up. Be blowed if the heater controls won't let me have both at the same time. If I push the button for feet, the windshield button pops out. If I push the one for the windshield, the feet button disengages. If I push both at the same time, air goes in neither direction. Somewhere in that mechanism hides a gadget that makes one pop out if I push the other, and there's no way to override it. If the buttons were at the quantum level and instantaneous, I would say they relate nonlocally.

Nonlocality says that simultaneous events separated in space can correlate with each other at the very smallest quantum level, though no known connection exists between them to cause this to happen. Neither pulls the other's string or sends it a fax. In theory, nonlocality happens everywhere, to events at opposite sides of the universe as well as to those in neighboring back yards. Their history doesn't matter and, though it only affects quantum-level properties, it occurs at any scale from the quantum to the galactic. Experiments have confirmed its existence as predicted in theory: change the spin of a particle and observe what happens to a sibling particle: it alters its spin at exactly the same time (Sharpe 1993). Nonlocality is a means by which each part of the universe relates to every other. It is a means by which the universe-as-a-whole (the Universe) holds itself together holistically.

Nonlocality perks the imagination: how can we explain it? What causes the correlations? The mathematics of the physics just says they occur without explaining why, without giving any underlying reason.

A common explanation says that all things connect with each other at a basic level, like the heater controls connect somewhere inside the mechanism. These interconnections show up in certain circumstances, such as when the nonlocality of quantum physics appears. Menas Kafatos and Robert Nadeau follow this interpretation in their book The Conscious Universe (Kafatos and Nadeau 1990; see also Sharpe 1993; 2000). As each part of the universe connects nonlocally with all others, they say we can talk of universal nonlocality. The global interconnectedness of nonlocality helps make sense of the universe-as-a-whole; it helps us understand the downward acting 'glue' of wholeness. We can then focus on the total state of the universe, the Universe, and talk about what it is and how it uses nonlocality to interact downward with its parts.

Each part of the universe connects with every other part. We can't separate off any part of it and say it is completely independent of everything else. This means the universe is indivisible. Its wholeness is at root this interrelatedness of all its parts; its indivisibility. The capital-U Universe is the small-u universe thought of as interrelated through nonlocality. The Universe is a gigantic heater control where everything has a button that, when pushed, instantly alters the setting of every other one.

Nonlocality and God

I want to understand how God might act in the universe. The biggest step I take toward this is to claim that God forms the highest level of the universe; God is the Universe with a capital 'U.' Just as the Universe is a whole that interacts downward on the parts of the universe, so, we can say, does God.

To rewrite Kafatos and Nadeau's theory in theological language, we might say that God can interrelate or interact downward with every part of the universe through nonlocality. In particular, God can (nonlocally) interact with specific events. However, nonlocality is only one way to look at the wholeness, the special attribute of God, that exceeds what the parts of the universe have as a collection. God transcends the universe.

The engineers who designed the heater control in my car hopefully only intended it to control the heat, cold, and air flow in my car. But, because one button pops out when I push another, it infuriates a customer and takes on another life. The mechanism becomes more than just a heating control.

The Universe is the whole that is all the parts of the universe interrelated nonlocally. Like the heater, it brings to its parts something they wouldn't otherwise have. The Universe (God) takes on a separate life that to some extent directs the parts.

I propose that God is the Universe because I think this idea can tell us how God might interact with specific events in the universe. The idea of the Universe God also satisfies the conservation law of physics that says the energy in a closed system stays the same over time. God can interact in a way that doesn't create an energy problem for closed systems. No energy flows with nonlocal correlations. Any box drawn in space and time around any object will, energy-wise, ignore nonlocal correlations with objects not in it.

What are Divine Actions?

Many young adults graduate from college or university with a liberal arts degree and no idea of what vocation to plunge into. Society believes it has prepared them for life and provided them with the ability to adapt to a variety of paths. What they choose is yet to come.

What I've developed above is a means (via nonlocality) by which God can interact with individual events, but I have yet to discuss what God would do. What do the nonlocal connections of the Universe (and God) lead to in human experience? To make the question more specific, because we're interested in ourselves I should ask: What individual events in our lives happen as a result of divine action? What are specific nonlocal interactions that the Universe God plays a part in?

Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff (Penrose 1994) claim that happenings in the brain require nonlocal processing in neural structures called microtubules. Several other neuroscientists similarly associate brain activity with quantum physical processes, particularly nonlocal correlations. If the Penrose-Hameroff or a similar theory stands up to critical examination, conscious and nonconscious thought involves nonlocality.

Nonlocality automatically means, however, correlations with the Universe, with God; nonlocality is one way the Universe Divine works. So, strange though it may seem, thought and God interact; thinking is an example of an individual interaction between God and the universe.

You may feel short changed. You may be looking for miracles, something new and unexpected that God could do. You want a finger from the sky, for instance a lightning bolt that eradicates crime forever. Then you'll feel satisfied; then you'll believe. 'Thinking as God at work' isn't enough, you may think.

Another matter. We don't expect God to mess with the universe in a magical or capricious way. God wouldn't add energy at some places and not at others. A rescue here, a healing there; a miracle for me, a miracle for you; but no help for a baby run over by a crazy driver. This we can't understand. We expect God to interact consistently with the universe and to respect its integrity. It all has to make sense, somehow.

Does the nonlocality explanation of what God could do make sense of divine actions? To answer this, we have to know what we want to make sense of. Miracles haven't been my object. We don't experience the end of crime, no matter how much welfare the state pays out, how many police it deploys, how many prisons it builds, or how often lightning strikes. Nor do we expect it to disappear suddenly. I've been trying to unravel something about what is God and what are some of the interactions God thus pictured has with the universe and its parts. I want to understand what does happen, not to fantasize. Thus we should forget about miracles in the orthodox sense; they're outside the regular western belief system (though we might understand, using the nonlocality explanation, why they happen for those who believe in them). Forget about value judgments too. I'm not asking why God doesn't stop crime when many suffer under it, because the system of understanding I'm developing doesn't yet accept that God is interested in preventing suffering.

I want to make sense of the real events of our experience not explicable. Thought is an example, and I have shown how this is God at work in a noncapricious and nonmagical way.

Conclusions

I have equated God and the Universe and used nonlocality to say how God can interact individually with the parts of the universe so not to raise an energy problem. Other means may supplement or do a better job than nonlocality, but this suggests one way in which to understand the interaction. I also provided thinking as an example of what God might do in these individual interactions.

I now need to develop further this image of God, showing more of what the modern western belief system says about its divinity (see Sharpe 2000). To recycle an image I used previously, I feel like a college graduate who has secured my first meaningful job. The theory walks a first step, though. I now need to gain further skills and experience to develop my work potential and satisfaction through life. The image of God stands in the same shoes.

References

Goodman, Aviel. 1991. Organic Unity Theory: The Mind-body Problem Revisited. American Journal of Psychiatry 148:5, pp. 553-563.

Kafatos, Menas and Robert Nadeau. 1990. The Conscious Universe: Part and Whole in Modern Physical Theory. New York: Springer-Verlag.

Peacocke, Arthur R. 1993. Theology for a Scientific Age: Being and Becoming - Natural, Divine, and Human. Theology and the Sciences. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

Penrose, Roger. 1994. Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Polkinghorne, John C. 1991. The Nature of Physical Reality. Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 26 (June), pp. 221-236.

Schilling, Harold K. 1973. The New Consciousness in Science and Religion. Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press.

Sharpe, Kevin. 1993. David Bohm's World: New Physics and New Religion. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press.

_________. 2000. Sleuthing the Divine: The Nexus of Science and Spirit. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

Sperry, Roger W. 1988. Psychology's Mentalist Paradigm and the Religion/Science Tension. American Psychologist 43:8, pp. 607-613.

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Published   2003.08.27