Volume 18, Issue 1, Spring 2013
Leland R. Harper
Pages 93-107
A Deistic Discussion of Murphy and Tracy’s Accounts of God’s Limited Activity in the Natural World
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.