94 CONCEPTIONS OF ULTIMATE REALITYpersons then God created persons and If there are physical objects then
God created physical objects. The term “physical objects” here should be so
understood as to include not only artifacts (cars, chairs, pens) but also natural
objects (carrots, zebras, and galaxies). Monotheism typically adds that among
the things created, those most like God are persons – self-conscious agents
capable of acting rightly and wrongly, loving and hating, worshipping God
and rebelling against God. There are different views within monotheism
about even the broad details of how exactly to understand the relations
between God and the world, some of which will come up later – in particular,
those regarding determinism, freedom, and agency.
There are different views of what laws of nature are, and different
accounts of how laws of nature are related to God. Roughly, a physical theory
is a systematized attempt to explain observed physical phenomena. Such a
theory will assume that certain sorts of things – say, A-type things – exist
and behave^11 in certain ways, and that certain general statements (laws) are
true, and that one can then explain the existence and behavior of other
types of things given that there are A-type things and that the laws are
true. Suppose simply for convenience that all the other natural sciences
reduce to physics, and that somehow we have discovered the entirely correct
physics. Then what the entirely correct physics included as basic laws would
constitute the actual laws of nature. How should those laws be thought of?
On one account, they are abstract objects – propositions of some such
form as (L1) If A-type things exist and condition C obtains, then B-type
things will exist or (L2) If A-type things behave in way W1, and condition
C holds, then B-type things will behave in way W2. On this view, true
statements of forms (L1) and (L2) will be necessary truths. God’s role in
creation will not be deciding what laws are true, but rather of deciding
whether A-type and B-type things shall exist, and whether conditions C
and C will obtain. Thus if it is a law that Water freezes at 32 degrees^12
then, on the present account, If there is water then it freezes at 32 degrees
is a necessary truth, and what is up to God is whether There is water and It
is 32 degrees where water exists are ever true.
On what is sometimes thought of as another account, laws of nature are
truths about the dispositions of natural objects. If water is what this glass
contains, then – the idea is – it is an essential feature of the stuff in this
glass that it freezes at 32 degrees.^13 Natural laws reflect the essential
properties of natural objects and what happens to things with such properties
in various environments. But on this account too If there is water then it
freezes at 32 degrees is a necessary truth. If God creates water, God creates
something which freezes at 32 degrees.
On either account, there might be considerable choice of what universe,
if any, is created. The laws in question are expressed as conditionals or
statements of the form If A then C. What holds that A place is the antecedent