If God Doesn’t Violate Any Laws of Physics, Why Couldn’t Physicists Hypothetically Derive Equations to Describe His Actions?
Kevin R. Henke
November 16, 2022
In Henke (2022fz), I asked the following question to Mr. Lundahl:
“If God does not violate any laws of physics when he does miracles as you groundlessly claim, why couldn’t a physicist hypothetically develop equations to explain miracles?”
I further expanded on this issue in Henke (2022x):
“If Mr. Lundahl doesn’t want God to violate the laws of nature in our Universe when he performs a miracle, then hypothetically we should be able to use physics with its forces and vectors to explain all of God’s actions on physical bodies. Either the actions of God can be explained by physics or they cannot. There’s no basis for “adding” anything to physics. If God’s actions in our Universe are not restricted to the laws of nature of our Universe, then God is not obeying the laws and God must be breaking them.” [my emphasis]
Lundahl (2022w) attempts to answer my question:
“For the exact same reason that he cannot even hypothetically develop equations for explaining the next letter in Mr. Henke's writing. It depends on grammar and what Mr. Henke is thinking, not on the physical conditions of Mr. Henke's keyboard or fingers. Indeed, any physical explanation involving keyboards or fingers would be likely to be the explanation of a breakdown in the communications.”
Here, Mr. Lundahl is confusing the ability of scientists to explain current phenomena with the laws of chemistry and physics and their inability to often predict what will happen next. All natural activities, including human activities, are described by the laws of chemistry and physics. However, natural processes, including human activities, interact with each other in such numerous and complex ways that scientists usually cannot predict what will happen next. For example, all of the processes in our atmosphere are described by the laws of chemistry and physics. However, because those processes interact with each other in so many numerous and complicated ways, meteorologists often have difficulty predicting the weather beyond two or three days in many places in the world. Similarly, there are too many keys on the keyboard for scientists to currently predict which one I will press next – at least not with current technologies and methodologies. Maybe someday scientists will be able to predict which key will be pushed by analyzing an individual’s brain activity with magnetic resonance imaging or other advanced technologies – who knows? Nevertheless, once I start acting, physicists can explain how my hand moves, the amount of force that is needed to press down the key, and what electronically happens in my computer to produce an image on my screen. Now, if God does not violate any natural law as Lundahl (2022a) claims, then I said in Henke (2022x): “…hypothetically we should be able to use physics with its forces and vectors to explain all of God’s actions on physical bodies.” Again, if God does not violate any natural law, then once God acts, hypothetically scientists should be able to explain the physics of God’s actions. If God presses the key in the same way that humans do and does not violate any laws of physics, then physicists can still use their knowledge of the electronics in the computer to explain how God made the letter appear on the screen. However, if God just magically makes a letter appear on the screen without pressing any keys and in the violation of the laws of physics, physicists would have trouble exactly explaining exactly how the image appeared on the screen.