Part Two
As further background to my forthcoming study of our topic, please consider also the following essay, written in response to an examination question during my 2011 sojourn at Biola University.
Dr. Cornelius George Hunter
Historical Perspectives
Thomas Alderman
Unit 4 Reading Response
Question #4
Word Count: 698
Question #4: Leibniz’s theology mandates a non-intervening creator, for god is all the greater if his world operates autonomously. How does this “greater god” theology support theological naturalism? What are the other three theological arguments, identified in pp. 19-33 of Science’s Blind Spot, that support theological naturalism? How do they support theological naturalism? Did Charles Darwin reason from theological naturalism in arguing for his theory of evolution? Historian Alan Charles Kors writes that 18th century French atheism arose from “within the deeply Christian learned culture.” Can this also be said of theological naturalism and Darwin’s theory of evolution? Is theological naturalism biblically orthodox? Most models of the relationship between Christianity and science treat Christianity with a broad brush, and do not substantially discern variations, and biblically orthodox versus unorthodox influences. Consequently, the unorthodox influences have typically been under appreciated or gone unnoticed. Do we need a new model that acknowledges unorthodox influences? Is it true that after the 17th century, theology no longer was influential in science?
Response: Scientific Naturalism
Naturalism is the view that nature is one interlocking system of physical (i.e., impersonal) causation. It comes in two forms: “strong” (atheistic) naturalism, which posits that only matter exists; and weak (deistic) naturalism, which holds that if God exists, his existence and activities are not scientifically detectable and therefore not the concern of science.
A majority of scientists today, especially in the field of biology, are naturalists; of those, the vast majority are deists, few of whom can guess the genealogy of the idea. It arose in the late Seventeenth Century with the supplanting of Aristotelian physics by atomistic mechanical philosophy. It became part of the anti-clerical agenda of the so-called Age of Reason of the Eighteenth Century, and for further spurious reasons became nearly synonymous with science.
Most, or nearly all, of the arguments for naturalism were theological (hence, “theological naturalism”). Certain assumptions were made concerning the nature of God which were inconsistent with His continuing involvement in nature. Many could be characterized as variations on the theme of God’s perfection: since God is perfect, He must have created a perfect universe.
Further assumptions were then made concerning what a perfect universe would look like. As Immanuel Kant (1754-1804) put it, God is wise; therefore, Creation should reflect that wisdom by being beautiful, perfect, and harmonious. As others put it, there is nobility and perfection in regularity and order; God’s immutability implies a natural order which operates autonomously; and ultimately, God would not create a universe which required any adjustment – by miracle, for instance.
In each case, naturalistic philosophers began with a conception of God. It was not the biblical God – in both the Old and New Testaments, God is revealed as acting in history in many ways, both by miracle and by providence. Prophecies have been fulfilled, and God’s fingerprints – or rather, His very signature – are everywhere in nature. Romans 1:20.
Indeed, God is perfect; however, He is not accountable to human reasoning: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.” Isaiah 55:8. The point, however, is not that the naturalists of the Seventeenth Century were not Christian; the point is that they were theists, and their naturalism was a consequence of their theology.
In any event, the God of the naturalists became undetectable to science; for if God is not involved with nature, there is no activity to detect. Neither can a spirit, or an immaterial God, be physically detected – or so it is assumed.
Science has no difficulty detecting the personal, however: human agency is identified routinely in archeology and forensic science. The criteria for identifying design – when the putative agent is a human person – are simple, straightforward, and metaphysically neutral. The same criteria, applied to “natural” phenomena, lead in the same way to the same kind of conclusion: natural phenomena result from the activity of an intelligent, or personal, agent. But science is not permitted to follow that evidence where it leads, because, so they say, to posit a divine person is not science at all. Why is it not science? Because science (again, so they say) has to do with the discovery of naturalistic – which is to say, mechanistic, impersonal – explanations for natural phenomena. Why is that? They do not say. And again, most of them do not know.
There was another notable argument against God’s direct involvement with nature, based on the need to explain how evil can exist in a world created by a loving, omnipotent God. It can exist, it was said, because nature is autonomous from God.
The autonomy of nature was central to Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. A naturalistic theory for life was necessary in order to exculpate God from natural evil. Said Darwin,
I cannot see . . . evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae [the parasitic wasp] with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars. . . .”
To Darwin it was impossible that God would make a world in which there was so much inefficiency and waste. By 1859 he found theological naturalism ready to hand, and he made the best use of it he could.
