Divine intervention

Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) established that some diseases are caused by microorganisms and not, as was thought to be the case at the time, by miasmas, evil spirits or divine intervention. Despite the scepticism of physicians, as illustrated above, Pasteur s work inspired a British surgeon, Joseph Lister, to introduce antiseptic methods into surgery in order to prevent wound infection. In March 1865, he operated for the first time using an antiseptic, carbolic acid (phenol). There were no infections after the surgery - a rare occurrence at that time. 

Let us start with the concept that is perhaps most important for lay people it may at first sight appear that once divine intervention is eliminated from the picture, nothing remains except molecules and their interactions to arrive at life. Of course, evolution and interactions with the environment are very important factors, and they can take the fancy form of self-organization and emergence. However, all these factors appear to be based on, or caused by, molecular interactions. In other words, at first sight the acceptance of the view expressed in Figure 1.1 is tantamount to stating that life consists only of molecules and of their interactions. 

Al-Razi (Rhazes, 854-925) was a Persian who studied in Baghdad. Al-Razi wrote extensively on medicine, philosophy, astronomy, and alchemy, but he was primarily a physician. Al-Razi was less mystical than his contemporary alchemists and classified chemicals by their origin. According to Al-Razi, chemicals came from either animals, plants, and minerals or were derived from other chemicals. Al-Razi wrote The Comprehensive Book, which was an enormous medical encyclopedia that synthesized medical practices of ancient Greeks, Syrians, Arabs, and Persians. Al-Razi was the first person known to describe the disease smallpox. Most of his alchemical writings have been lost, but Al-Razi believed in the atomic nature of matter. Al-Razi took a systematic approach to science and rejected the idea of divine intervention. His rational methods and descriptions were more consistent with modern science than most individuals of his time. Ali al Husayn ibn Sina (Avicenna, 980-1037) was another Persian physician whose voluminous works, including The... 

It may be argued that Owen leaned toward reasserting God s continual creative power, but the transmutation post-Lamarckian movement was equally beset by ulterior motives of a political nature. On the other hand, Owen s observations (dinosaurs were discovered and named by him) were real and can still be confirmed today The fossil record must be recognized as reality and so it is in this book. For explanations, however, chemistry and chemical determinism will be called upon to replace Darwin s emulsion of luck and biology and Owens divine intervention. 

Westerners tend to maintain a distinction between peyote as a vision-producer and peyote as a medicine. Among Indians, these qualities are regarded as being much the same peyote is thought to put them in contact with the spirit world from which illness is derived. From their point of view, Western medicine is based on human intervention. Peyote visions, being a kind of divine intervention, are thus more powerful and provide a surer means by which to leam how to cure ailments. 

The matter of secondary causality was taken up in later years by Voetius, the most important interpreter of strict Calvinism in the Low Countries. According to Van Ruler Voetius opposed the mechanical philosophy of Descartes, who had argued that God s act of keeping the world as it is, is identical to the act by which he created it. Descartes believed nature is guided by a divine concurrence, to operate as it normally does, an opinion which, according to Voetius did not leave much space for divine intervention and... 

The neuroscientists, without such divine intervention as Ezekiel had access to, simply were not able to show decisively how connections of the nervous system could produce even simple psychology, much less... 

Ancient gnostic concepts of disease and treatment are incommensurable with their modern, materialist counterparts, in the gnostic view, both disease and treatment are the results of divine intervention—the former, punishment for sinning, the latter, reward for repentance, in the materialist view, both disease and treatment are natural processes—the former having many possible causes, often microbes, the latter typically cured by chemicals, often available by prescription only. 

Described in Mein Kampf. Hider is said to have ascribed the recovery of his sight after being blinded by mustard gas to divine intervention — a supernatural sign which made him determined to become a politician. 

Some spiritual writers have suggested that we humans are not able to forgive, that we need God to open our hearts to the possibility of forgiveness or letting go. I personally wouldn t argue with that perspective. But even if the final step in forgiveness is divine intervention, we are the only ones who can create the inner conditions to welcome this intervention and permit the divine to do its work. 

The development in celestial mechanics after Newton was largely in the hands of the French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827). The stability of the solar system was the major unsolved problem. Neither Kepler s laws nor Newton s mechanics could be applied successfully to more than a single orbit at a time. The imiversal law of gravitation must clearly apply to any pair of celestial bodies and with several planets and moons circling the sun it is inevitable that mutual perturbations of the predicted perfect elliptical orbits should occur. Newton himself could never precisely model not even the lunar motion and concluded that divine intervention was periodically necessary to maintain the equilibrium of the solar system. 

Many attempts have been made to defuse the A problem. A common strategy is by vague reference to unexplored, but likely, effects of otherwise well-known ideas, such as divine intervention, quantum uncertainty, many-worlds theory, wormholes or the anthropic principle, to account for any apparent theoretical inadequacies. It requires little more than some reassurance on the future vindication of a viable theory that may now appear flawed. We read (Schwarzschild, 1989) ... 

It has been a major objective of standard cosmology to explain the fine-structure constant as dictated by the anthropic principle (Barrow Tipler, 1988) p. 288-310, or even divine intervention. An award-winning theorist (Feynman, 1990) writes ... 

This model never matured into a coherent cosmology, stumbling upon the instability of an infinite static universe, without divine intervention. 

The evolution of the human in caring for others is reflected in the development of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Superstition, divine intervention, and, finally, science have contributed to the development of a technique which may allow any person to save another s life. Fully 50% of the first presentation of coronary artery disease is sudden death, typically in (western) men [ 1 ]. However, achieving a clear understanding of why CPR saves some lives remains shrouded in mist mist made even thicker by contradictory reports, different schools of thought, and persistently low-survival rates. 

Of interest for his religious philosophy as well as his alchemical pursuits, al-Razi chose a rational source for morality, and he rejected divine intervention entirely. He found no value in traditional religious beliefs he said that these beliefs were the sole cause of war. That he... 

How much of Daphnis and Chloe was literary invention and how much reflected reality Some ancient historians have rejected as evidence of widespread abandonment both this pastoral romance and the plots of several earlier Greek and Roman new comedies but for a literary work such as Daphnis and Chloe to have had any impact, at the least readers would have had to accept the plausibility of infant exposiue for the reasons stated by both fathers." That the babies were nursed by animals, were soon found by humans, were subsequently adopted by caring peasant families, and eventually were reunited with their true parents of high status required divine intervention, but the initial abandonment represented a harsh fact of contemporary reahty. 

Don t worry. Zip," I replied. "Man proposes, but God disposes." And suddenly divine intervention came to our rescue in the form of Ron Stover. Ron had returned from the storehouse with a pair of insulated gloves, a screwdriver, and a handful of brass wood screws. Ron climbed up to the leak, stuck an appropriately sized screw into the blowing hole, and twisted the screw in. The leak stopped ... 

Cf. Tate, Psalms 50-100,249, for whom the signs are signs of divine intervention to change the situation the absence of a prophet meant that there was no one capable of explaining such signs even if they were granted. 

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