The rise of modern science created a problem for Christian theology. If God is not scientifically needed to explain why water freezes at 32°F or why the stars come out at night, if the universe is just a self-powered machine that can be intelligibly apprehended as a nexus of causes and effects, then does that not mean that God is unnecessary? Perhaps the deistic deity of Voltaire, who creates the universe and sets everything in motion, is all that is required—and even he may seem superfluous.
Yet why did the practical atheism of modern science (i.e., the methodological exclusion of divinity from scientific hypothesis and investigation) generate such concern and upset? It’s almost as if the catholic doctrines of divine transcendence and creation got forgotten somewhere along the way. The Church should have taken the lead in telling the scientists of the world “Don’t treat Almighty God as a finite thing. He is not an inhabitant of the universe. He should not be invoked to scientifically explain regularly occurring phenomena. You are confusing uncreated being and created being, primary causality and secondary causality.” But it appears that the Church did not do so, and as a result Deism and eventually atheism were born. David Bentley Hart’s analysis of the emergence of Deism well states the problem:
The dissolution of the geocentric cosmos, with its shimmering meridians and radiant crystal vaults and imperishable splendors, may have been an imaginative bereavement for Western humanity, but it was a loss easily compensated for by the magnificence of the new picture of the heavens. Far more significant in the long run was the disappearance of this older, metaphysically richer, immeasurably more mysterious, and far more spiritually inviting understanding of transcendent reality. In the age of the mechanical philosophy, in which all of nature could be viewed as a boundless collection of brute events, God soon came to be seen as merely the largest brute event of all. Thus in the modern period the argument between theism and atheism largely became no more than a tension between two different effectively atheist visions of existence. As a struggle between those who believed in this god of the machine and those who did not, it was a struggle waged for possession of an already godless universe. The rise and fall of Deism was an episode not so much within religious or metaphysical thinking as within the history of modern cosmology; apart from a few of its ethical appurtenances, the entire movement was chiefly an exercise in defective physics. The god of Deist thought was not the fullness of being, of whom the world was a wholly dependent manifestation, but was merely part of a larger reality that included both him and his handiwork; and he was related to that handiwork only extrinsically, as one object to another. The cosmos did not live and move and have its being in him; he lived and moved and had his being in it, as a discrete entity among other entities, a separate and definite thing, a mere paltry Supreme being. And inasmuch as his role was only that of the first efficient cause within a continuous series of efficient causes, it required only the development of physical and cosmological theories that had no obvious need of “that hypothesis” (as Laplace put it) to conjure him away. (The Experience of God, pp. 61-62)
The problem lies in the confusion of ontology and cosmology, of not properly distinguishing between creatio ex nihilo and the beginning of the universe. This confusion may be found, for example, in Robert Jastrow’s interpretation of the Big Bang theory. According to the theory our present universe began approximately 13.798 billion years ago as an infinitely dense singularity, which then rapidly expanded and eventually became the universe that we know today. Jastrow boldly identifies the Big Bang moment with God’s divine act of creation. Acknowledging the inability of science to explain the original singularity and the reason for its expansion, Jastrow writes: “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason,” he writes, “the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries” (God and the Astronomers, p. 107).
Precisely at this point Jastrow blunders. The Big Bang theory addresses the beginning of the universe as it is presently ordered. It does not assume, as Diogenes Allen points out, “that there was nothing before that small, dense mass” (Christian Belief in a Postmodern World, p. 47). The cosmological theory simply takes us back in history as far as we can see. Perhaps our universe was preceded by a different universe that had collapsed into a black hole, thus providing the singularity from which our universe emerged. Perhaps it’s all explained by the theory of the multiverse. We do not know and perhaps can never know. But our ignorance does not authorize us to identify the Big Bang with the eternal event of God speaking the world into being (Gen 1). That would be to fall back into a God of the gaps. As Allen warns, “Whenever we are at the boundaries of scientific knowledge, there is the danger of turning God into a creature by inserting the Deity into a scientific account” (p. 47).
God is the transcendent, infinite, unconditioned, absolute source of all existence. He is not a demiurge. He is not an engineer who has brought all the parts together to form an autonomous self-powered machine. He is not an entity that we plug into the gaps in our knowledge of the world. He is the Creator.
(11 December 2013)
Eclectic Orthodoxy 
“God is the transcendent, infinite, unconditioned, absolute source of all existence. He is not a demiurge. He is not an engineer who has brought all the parts together to form an autonomous self-powered machine. He is not an entity that we plug into the gaps in our knowledge of the world. He is the Creator.”
True, and yet many Christians find it difficult to speak of science and faith; I can see where the atheist comes from, but what can the Christian Orthodox theologian say that adds to the above quote? The heavens declare the Glory, but is this drowned by the endless (seemingly) chatter of modern physical/evolutionary science?
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George,
For those who are not satisfied with the noise, for those who are inquiring about ontology and not mere cosmology, creatio ex nihilo constitutes a radical shift in perspective and understanding. The magnitude of this shift should never be underestimated, it is truly radical!
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Robert,
I have found Gregory of Nissa’s the making of man a terrific example of a theological discussion that considers the science of the day – would it be great if another Gregory were to trach us what it means to be human and include the contributions of the science of today?
I have done my scientific chatter and for those with sufficient patience and charity I offer this. The origins of the Universe are often discussed as the big-bang theory, although other speculations can be found. Generally, the theological view has been that God is the cause of causes, or the primal cause; since no-one witnessed the event, we cannot discuss this notion as a verifiable/testable theory. It is necessary, however, to believe that scientists are interested in obtaining a good understanding of the Universe. The scientific method requires theory to be tested – in this case, tests are performed using particle accelerators to obtain data on the particles that constitute the Universe. These tests rest on theory devised by physicists and are mathematical expressions that encapsulate the thinking of physicists and mathematicians. The limitations of language have been mentioned when considering the meaning ‘God’ and concluded that all godly attributes are singular and human language was insufficient to give full meaning. The Universe, however, is accessible to human sense, and it appears reasonable to assume that a language such as mathematics would be sufficient when examining the Universe. Difficulties are encountered however, in that the origin of the Universe cannot be quantified using the laws of physics; i.e. we contemplate notions in which the laws of physics may not apply. Indeed, notions such as “nothing existed before a beginning” are difficult ones for science to define per se.
Quantum physics generally commence with a mathematical equation to describe a system. A human being cannot be above the world, in a privileged position that transcends the Universe, and analyse beginnings and ends of the totality of what can be known. The scientific method does enable us however, to examine physical reality in the Universe and dispassionately draw conclusions from our observations. If physicists conclude the wave equation may be expressed as the sum of the forces in the Universe and these are measured in some way, then in theory such an activity conforms to the scientific method. If astronomers observe galaxies that provide light that has travelled for an enormous amount of time, and from this obtain an age for the Universe, this too is reasonable (it may be inferred that postulating such an age includes a beginning). However, if scientists perform mathematical calculations and conclude that these observations lead to errors that are so large that under ordinary circumstances such results would, according to the scientific method, (e.g. cannot account for most of the calculated Universe) must be considered speculative. Otherwise, we have the situation found so repugnant to scientists, in that irrational dogma replaces reason in the physical sciences. These scant remarks serve to indicate the limitations of the physical sciences and the laws of these sciences are relevant only to the physical reality accessible to the human intellect.
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Agreed on the limits. It’s been a while since I read “Light from the East” by Alexei Nesteruk, but I recall it was a decent read on the intersection between patristic theology and science.
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Nesteruk is one of the most difficult theologians to understand I’ve ever read. He seems to make almost every sentence unnecessarily verbose and technical. Some might argue that DBH does this, but whatever Hart writes is still incredibly engaging and you can clearly follow his thoughts.
I’m glad you’ve had better luck with Nesteruk. The stuff by Christopher Knight seems a lot better to me, though it’s unclear to me at times if he actually believes Jesus was physically raised from the dead or whether that’s just a mere metaphor. I think that’s because it’s still unclear to me what he means by “theistic naturalism.” But I guess I’m getting a little off track now.
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I have sought arguments from as many sources that I can find, and I am inclined to view all of these commencing from the following positions that are non-scientific:
(1) Belief that God is the Creator and science enables human intellect to explore the creation, or
(2) Absence of belief in God, and only scientific explanations are valid (even when the scientific method may not apply).
I think we can put to one side arguments such as god of the gaps. My view is that based on (1) we may seek harmony instead of conflict between science and the Faith.
Often conflict is sought, particularly by anti-theists, although some religious groups invite conflict by promoting anti-science positions.
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It does seem to me that a forgetting of primary vs secondary causation does lie behind a lot of the arguing about God’s activity (or inactivity) in nature. Interestingly, I’ve noticed that both intelligent design advocates and theistic evolutionsts accuse each other of being deists–it would perhaps be illuminating to examine the epithets and see why they do so, and how each side might understand deism and transcendence.
Georges Lemaitre would have agreed with your criticism of Jastrow. When Pope Pius XII declared the “primeval atom” was vindication for Catholicism, Lemaitre privately chastised him and asked that he not draw connections like that since the science of the theory was metaphysically neutral.
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What about, say, the Borde–Guth–Vilenkin theorem being used as a CONFIRMATION of a philosophical argument for an absolute beginning? That way, if the science changes, the philosophical argument would still stand.
I know there a lot of WLC haters here!, but if his Kalam argument is adjusted to fit with a B theory of time (which seems to fit much better with an Eastern view of time), I find the argument quite persuasive. His recent discussion of the argument with The Cosmic Skeptic is probably one of the most joyous discussions of philosophy I’ve seen in a long time. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eOfVBqGPwi0
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I’m certainly open to it, and I’ve always found the Kalam an intriguing argument. I’m just wary of putting too much stock in it since the “universe began to exist” premise is rather murky when one gets to the singularity. But you’re right, the Vilenkin theorem is a proof of it (though doesn’t that theorem also necessitate the multiverse? Or do I have the wrong one in mind?)
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As a confirmed WLC hater, may I note that the BGV theorem applies well enough to classical Newtonian-Einsteinian spacetime, but not to quantum reality. Yes, our universe understood as a classical physical entity is a closed thermodynamic system in a state of constant expansion. But underlying it is a reality of superposition and non-locality (both spatial and temporal, it appears), and there is no reason to suppose that its beginning or end is not enfolded in a more primordial physical system that does not break down “over time.” Even if time is in some sense “real” outside the boundary conditions of spacetime, it might best be understood as the reality of something like Sean Carroll’s quantum state eternally evolving within a Hilbert space of infinite dimensionality. And are we really prepared to imagine in the quantum age that we can say that, prior to the singularity, there was no physical system of any kind? By what warrant?
Hell, even Roger Penrose would agree that any spacetime is temporally bounded; but still, for him, universes spill out of one another’s boundary conditions with surprising ease (in that bouncy way they have).
Anyway, the Kalam argument is inapposite to physics as it stands today, and really something of a distraction. The argument from ontological contingency is the only one relevant to the issue of divine creation.
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The standard Copenhagen interpretation of modern physics (quantum mechanics) is entirely local (both spatial and temporal). See for example “An Introduction to QBism with an Application to the Locality of Quantum Mechanics” by Chris Fuchs et al (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1311.5253.pdf).
In addition, the fundamental primitive of quantum mechanics is a human being setting up and experiencing the result of an experiment. As Heisenberg said, “…The atomic physicist has had to resign himself to the fact that his science is but a link in the infinite chain of man’s argument with nature, and that it cannot simply speak of nature “in itself”. Science always presupposes the existence of man and, as Bohr has said, we must become conscious of the fact that we are not merely observers but also actors on the stage of life…” In other words modern physics does not even pretend to have an ontology. It takes existence as the starting point. Classical physics could, without inconsistency, say that physics can explain everything (seen and unseen) given enough knowledge and computing power. Modern physics says this is not possible. There is no God of the gaps in modern physics.
Here’s one of my favorite parts (among many) of “The Beauty of the Infinite” along with a favorite Heisenberg quote.
…No theologian evinces a keener sense of creation as pure surface than Gregory of Nyssa: creation for him is only as the answer of light to light: apart from this, there is no world to speak of at all. This is true even of “material” nature: Gregory, like Basil before him, in various places denies that the world even possesses any material substrate apart from the intelligible acts that constitute its perceptible qualities; the world of bodies is a confluence of “thoughts”, “bare concepts”, “words”, noetic “potentialities”, proceeding from the divine nature; its esse, one might almost say, is percepi; the phenomenal realm is not, says Gregory, formed from any underlying matter, for “the divine will is the matter and substance of created things…
David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite, pp. 258-259
…This character of the quantum theory already makes it difficult to follow wholly the program of materialistic philosophy and to describe the smallest particles of matter, the elementary particles, as the true reality. In the light of the quantum theory these elementary particles are no longer real in the same sense as the objects of daily life, trees or stones, but appear as abstractions derived from the real material of observation in the true sense. But if it becomes impossible to attribute to the elementary particles this existence in the truest sense, it becomes more difficult to consider matter as “the truly real”…
Werner Heisenberg, On Modern Physics, p.13.
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True. Or plausibly true (since, as you know, there are at least eight possible alternatives to the Copenhagen model. But one has to reassert that none of that makes the kalam argument solvent. It probably places both consciousness and the wave function outside the seamless continuum of spacetime. It leads to another, better argument than the kalam proposal.
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Oh, by the way, Qbism has all the explanatory power of a Rorschach blot. It makes it very hard to explain the predictive power of quantum mechanics, and it doesn’t really adequately explain the full ramifications of the experimental confirmation of Bell’s inequality. Strictly speaking, it doesn’t do away with non-locality. It eliminates the effective difference between locality and non-locality. I’m still undecided as to whether it has a solipsistic logic or not.
Which still doesn’t change the reality that the Kalam argument isn’t solvent when one considers the quantum realm.
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Which isn’t to say I don’t like it, by the way. If Qbism could be sublimed into a full-bore idealism or Barfieldian ontology, it would go down very well with me.
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I agree with David Hart that the parts of the kalam syllogism that depend on physics become very rickety in light of modern (quantum) physics. I also agree that ontological contingency is probably the only way to properly describe creation ex nihilo:
“…What was glimpsed in Aristotle is completed in Augustine and Aquinas in a Christian metaphysical style. This is why the principle of noncontradiction, in Augustine (and Aquinas), is expressive of creation ex nihilo where the ground ‘trembles above the nothing’ and shows that those standing upon it are themselves ‘nothing’…”
Philip Gonzales, Reimagining the Analogia Entis, p.183
“..This principle [noncontradiction] humbles thought by being a ‘negative reductive formality’ that prohibits thought from stepping out of the bounds of our creaturely suspended condition of in medias res. Thought can deny many things, but at the minimum, it reaches a place where ‘even if one denies everything one cannot deny “this”. This “this”…is precisely the unavoidable creaturely and analogically suspended condition of creaturely being…”
Philip Gonzales, Reimagining the Analogia Entis, p.176
Bell’s inequalities indicate that quantum events are non-local or that quantum events are associated with non-classical entities whose “existence” is analogically related to what we mean by “exist” in every day terms. Classical entities by definition have a real trajectory: they univocally exist along that trajectory even if no one is measuring them. Modern physics forces us to either abandon locality or realism. Abandoning locality would also force us to abandon relativity. The founders of modern physics (Heisenberg, Bohr, Born etc.) chose to abandon realism.
As to the explanatory power of Qbism (which is a variant of the Copenhagen interpretation)…who says physics has to do anything more than what Bohr said?
“…Physics is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given,
but as the development of methods for ordering and surveying human experience…”
— Niels Bohr
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https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0264-9381/20/3/311/pdf
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A Bohmian. I’m surprised. I would have guessed that the humility, the “apophaticism” and the “analogical interval” (not to mention the straightforward logic) of the Copenhagen/Qbist approach would resonate with you. I wonder if Gregory of Nyssa, based on what you wrote of his thoughts on matter, would be a devotee of Bohm or Bohr? My wave function of you had Bohr at 90% and Bohm at 10%. Now that the experiment has been done and my wave function of you has collapsed to “Bohm”, I’ll use my updated wave function for any future experiments.
All jesting aside, I have found your theological work immensely edifying. Thank you.
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I have no dog in the fight. Bohm’s realism without locality isn’t even really realism, is it?
I like to think that consciousness really is primary and does in fact induce the wave-function collapse, simply because I can’t otherwise understand the transition of the double-slit result from undular to corpuscular patterning when observation (quod est?) is applied, and I don’t think multiple world explanations actually address the problem logically (maybe not many mind theories either). So Bohr as distilled through Wigner. Qbism makes the double-slit phenomenon seem inexplicable to me as well. And I probably really don’t understand why the demonstration of Bell’s Inequality isn’t more of a problem for the Qbists. But, to be honest, I haven’t yet read deeply enough to know. The literature on Qbism is evolving more rapidly than I can keep up with.
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“…So Bohr as distilled through Wigner…” and “…Qbism makes the double-slit phenomenon seem inexplicable…”. Fuchs and colleagues have a recent paper that addresses both statements. It might be of interest. https://arxiv.org/2008.03572.pdf
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I messed up the link. Here it is.
https//arxiv.org/pdf/2008.03572.pdf
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Argh!!!
Here it is.
Click to access 2008.03572.pdf
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David, where would String Theory fit in all of this in terms of the Kalam argument?(compared to Newtonian-Einsteinian space time and Quantum Mechanics)or is String Theory still simply a mathematical model with no bearing here
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Again, it seems immune to the Kalam argument.
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Doctor Hart,
When you refer to a ‘Barfieldian’ ontology, could you clarify what you mean by that?
Many thanks
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David, I don’t see why the many-worlds thesis doesn’t resolve the problem logically. What is happening when the route of the photon is observed is a choice is being made that determines this world; counterparts in another observe a different route.
Interestingly, you can wait until after the photon has passed through the slits to decide whether to retroactively “observe” (measure) the photon, so that it is possible to “change” the past, or at least to determine what happened in the past after it has already, er, happened.
The Kalam argument seems to me to rest on a Dennett-sized error.
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Yes. The problems with the many worlds theory are numerous but too complex for a comment posting. But, as to the double slit result, including the retroactive collapse of the history of the particle’s course, the issue remains: why does observation collapse the probability wave, albeit now in the sense of multifurcating the world? The answer that the observer becomes entangled with the particle involved a very obscure definition of entanglement. In either case: why does observation dictate that a particle be observed?
I see why a many worlds or many minds model does away with certain obvious enigmas of entanglement. That’s not the issue.
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Are you asking why the particle should require observation in order to resolve upon a determinate path, or why should observation affect the particle one way or the other? If the issue is that the wave function exists in a sort of cloud of probability until it resolves into a particle (I know that’s not what literally happens), I don’t see what else it could do when observed, since to observe or measure a particle is simply to determine where it is or was. A wave function can’t be in a determinate location. But we know that particles behave like particles, so they must not be wave functions. As this torrent of tautology demonstrates, I must not be understanding yr question.
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Fr Aidan thank you for this!
I do not think of science as idle chatter. But the talk about science might be rightfully cast in that light. Due to my upbringing in a Native American culture within my home, to some degree I dodged the modernist bullet but not entirely.
IMO you’ve written a very good critique. Again thank you!
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Here’s the problem:
1. We have things that look like they are intelligently designed, such as the bacterial flagellum.
2. There are no apparent natural (non-intelligent) causes of these things.
3. Given 1 and 2, it is reasonable to believe or at least hypothesize that these things were in fact intelligently designed.
4. God would seem to be one of the agents who might have designed these things.
5. It is reasonable to believe or at least hypothesize that God did design them.
I realize there is much debate about premise 2. But if we grant its truth, at least for the sake of argument, the rest of the argument seems to follow.
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Julian,
I tend to agree with you if you accept the old school Neo-Darwinian understanding of evolution. But if you look at the work done by those in the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, especially Denis Noble and (yes, this is heretical) James Shapiro, it seems very plausible to me that God gifted creation to, in some ways, direct its own evolution. No gaps here.
Check out this abstract by Denis Noble:
The question whether evolution is blind is usually presented as a choice between no goals at all (‘the blind watchmaker’) and long-term goals which would be external to the organism, for example in the form of special creation or intelligent design. The arguments either way do not address the question whether there are short-term goals within rather than external to organisms. Organisms and their interacting populations have evolved mechanisms by which they can harness blind stochasticity and so generate rapid functional responses to environmental challenges. They can achieve this by re-organising their genomes and/or their regulatory networks. Epigenetic as well as DNA changes are involved. Evolution may have no foresight, but it is at least partially directed by organisms themselves and by the populations of which they form part. Similar arguments support partial direction in the evolution of behavior.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5745452/
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Yes, this is a challenge to the second premise, which I said there is much debate about. But until it is a settled matter, is it unreasonable for people to at least hypothesize that Intelligent Design (ID) is the correct answer?
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The real question is as to why there is something rather than nothing. Once that is explained one can proceed to design…
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The accusation of God-of-the-gaps thinking usually comes in at the level of explaining biological facts.
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4 doesn’t follow from 3, it contradicts it.
If 3 is true, then it would follow that bacteria are artificial, that is they are not a natural continuation or extension of the single, unitary and basic (and ongoing) act of creation of the universe itself by God, and part of the natural order of things, but instead attributable to the intervention of a fresh and distinct creative act by some other intervening third party, angel or devil or demiurge. “Intelligent design” postulates that life is not a natural part of the universe as created by God, but rather has been added to it by some unknown being as a separate intervention not part of the original plan.
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It’s not UNREASONBLE, but to me, I’d say it’s more implausible than not. There have been experiments done where genes have been deleted in the flagellum and in four days, the flagellum reorganized all of its DNA, and rebuilt those genes. There have also been experiments confirming symbiogenesis, where two different organisms have fought for long extended periods before essentially restructuring each other’s DNA to mutually benefit from each other, essentially becoming one organism. This isn’t neo-darwinian evolution, this is genetic engineering and epigenetics in action. If organisms can do this, it seems quite plausible to me that they also were able to assemble a flagellum without having to insert God into the process in a rather inelegant fashion.
I credit Perry Marshall with the examples I just gave.
Also, why are you equating natural with non-intelligent? Organisms themselves could be considered natural AND intelligent. I would certainly say that a flagellum would have to “intelligent” in some sense in order to reorganize its DNA in such a quick fashion. Neo-Darwinians might just call that “natural selection,” but clearly something more is going on here than that. And yet, it’s entirely natural.
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You wouldn’t happen to have any references handy to the deleted flagellum genes, would you?
I like Margulis’s symbiogenesis idea. But not many biologists think it can explain much.
I also like Shapiro’s genetic engineering. But again, not many biologists think it can explain much, either.
I agree that organisms having some kind of teleolgical ability to facilitate their own evolution should be considered a kind of intelligent design. So we should separate between intrinsic and extrinsic intelligent design. I suspect that extrinsic design has been at play as well as intrinsic.
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The problem I see with ID is that is posits God as explanation to scientific inquiries, a fatal category mistake. If there are things we do not yet understand scientifically, the answer is not to posit God as the answer, but rather to pursue further scientific inquiry. We can as believers of course aver that God explains this or that, but that will never rise to scientific knowledge – nor should the believer’s explanation be intended, or passed off, as such!
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Well…actually ID posits an intelligent designer as the explanation, not necessarily God.
But suppose the efficient causal explanation for the origin of the flagellum really is God. For example, let’s say he just caused the right nucleotides to be inserted into a bacterial genome, so that it could now produce a flagellum. Wouldn’t that be the correct scientific explanation?
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Nope, as according to scientific method and inquiry “he just caused” is nonsense (and rightly so). What may one expect “he just caused” to look like? A little hand holding a pipette with nucleotides? No of course not – one would expect that to look like a natural process… and thus we have a scientific explanation for which God is not needed.
Classic category mistake. God ain’t no process among processes, a thing among things, a power among powers, a maker among makers, a cause among causes, and so on.
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Yeah, Perry Marshall talks about all the stuff I mentioned on his website evo2.0.org. There are actual references in his book Evolution 2.0, but I’m too lazy to retrieve them at the moment.
I don’t think many scientists would appreciate being grouped in with ID theorists because they believe organisms can partially direct their own evolution.
This type of claim is still subject to scientific verification while Behe’s is not. He has said that we would not witness IC occurring in a lab. Under the other hypothesis, we would. Big difference there.
At the same time, I disagree with Fr Aidan that postulating God before an absolute beginning of the universe/multiverse is a “god of the gaps” argument. Suppose that science DOES say that there was an absolute beginning and there is no other interpretation of the BGV theorem. Suppose that scientists now recognize this to be as certain as gravity. Then postulating God as the ultimate explanation behind a finite past of the universe/multiverse is not “god of the gaps” since a scientists automatically enters the realm of philosophy once she asks what was before the beginning. This supposes that the BGV theorem gives us scientific proof of a beginning, which is even further than Craig takes the argument though.
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Mark, I suspect that I was not as clear as I should have been in this article, given that both you and Robert read me as saying that positing God as the origin of a multiverse is a “god of the gaps” argument. That was certainly not my intention back then, and I certainly would not say anything like that today. As I see it, the cosmological physicist and philosopher are asking two different questions, even though they use identical words, like “beginning” and “origin.” So even if physicists should one day “prove” the multiverse theory (is it provable?), the critical metaphysical question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” will remain.
Does that mean that you, Robert, and I are in agreement?
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I just removed you from my “is-definitely-a-heretic” list. 😉
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Thank goodness, Robert. I was definitely worried! 😜
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Physics constantly intrigues and perhaps mystifies; I cannot understand ‘string theory’ and discussions on gravity, but I am aware from reading semi-specialist stuff that some talk of ‘something’ and ‘nothing’ (size at Planck’s constant) and fields which do not need a spacetime and are capable of generating space time (these are called covariant quantum fields). From this the substance of universe is simplified, because now entities such as particles, light, energy, space and time, are all derived from this single type of entity. Covariant Quantum fields are considered as description of the primal substance of which everything is formed.
I have been intrigued by arguments that seek something fundamental, be it universal constants, a theory of everything and now fields and maths that speak of something and nothing. As a scientist I simply wonder how much of this is speculation and non-testable.
Quantum mechanics is subject to experimentation, but the results are dependent on the experiment and this in turn depends on the thinking of the experimentalist.
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True. But the point here is that, conceptually, the Kalam argument simply has no force.
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I view the Kalam argument as simply that, an argument that seeks support from the physical sciences, and such support is lacking. A beginning as time dependent cannot, if I understand it, be tested or falsified by science. I guess some may find comfort in an age derived from studies in support of the big bang, and inferences from universal constants may be made for the anthropic view, but that is all that may be said.
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George, the kalam argument is a philosophical argument and does not need to make ANY arguments from science. This is simply a mistake. This is why Al-Ghazali could make it back in his day without knowing anything of modern cosmology.
DBH,
What premise of the kalam do you reject?
1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its beginning.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its beginning.
Premise 2 is supported by a couple different philosophical arguments against the possibility of an actually infinite number of things existing.
What don’t you find persuasive about it?
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In my estimation it conflates temporal with logical priority. The universe may have always existed while yet not logically prior to its Cause. [sticking neck back in]
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I have already answered that question quite clearly. And the issue for WLC is not whether the universe has a cause; the issue is a transcendent cause ex nihilo; otherwise it’s a vacuous truism. (What physicist denies that the big bang has a physical “cause” in a general sense?)
And yes the Kalam argument does presume a very particular scientific argument. It presumes, principally, a classical Newtonian-Einsteinian spacetime as its sole context. If every closed thermodynamical totality is, say, simply an instance of quantum fluctuation within a quantum landscape that is not itself such a discrete totality, then the idea of a temporal beginning is irrelevant. The quantum landscape need not have a temporal beginning or end. It does not expand or decay. It is not a spatiotemporal economy. The Kalam argument is on the order of:
1) A wave of the ocean has a beginning.
2) Whatever has a beginning is caused.
3) There must be a cause of the wave.
4) God is the transcendent cause of the wave.
And don’t reply that the ocean must have a beginning. The ocean is just a metaphor for a constant physical state without temporal boundaries.
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Indeed – to the question of temporal beginning, I would respond with its utter irrelevance to the question of creation, more precisely ex nihilo creation. We claim, let us be reminded, that such an act of creation is extra temporal – no time is needed.
Of course, no originality can be claimed here – we are merely explicating the difference between the ontological vs. the cosmological question.
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I believe what we are seeing is WLC’s failure to account for the infinite analogical interval – as a consequence the ex nihilo divine creative act collapses (perhaps unwittingly) into the craftsman like act of an enormously powerful god.
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I am responding to any who may assume that there is support from the physical sciences. Philosophers would comment on the argument itself. The assumption appears to me that time is understood to be as we view it sensibly and once someone says anything that exists must have a beginning, than the argument may be made. What is known about the beginning of the universe? Theologically I can accept that in the beginning God created …
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DBH
Sorry to pester you, but I figured you’re more likely to see this direct response to you than my response to George, where I ask you a question. I am genuinely curious what your philosophical objections are to the Kalam argument.
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I have no philosophical objections apart from the obvious one: it does not support a theistic deduction. It does not prove what WLC thinks it does. In the quantum age, it’s a worthless argument for the reality of God.
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I have to say some of this is a bit over my head. I understand your point about the quantum vacuum not being a distinct totality, and even in Craig’s argumentation, his response to this point does tend to sound more like he’s simply defending the argument from contingency at that point. He and Jim Sinclair do have a more in-depth response to your objection (which also seems to be Velinkin’s) in their Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, but talk about being over my head…
I’ll have to give this some more thought.
Anyways, Justin Brierley should really have the two of you on to hash out your differences. Universalism, “theistic personalism,” this argument, etc.
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Dr. Hart,
I’m wondering if you could comment on, what seems TO ME (but I could be mixing up Aristotelian and Pythagorean terminology with modern day usage of words) to be the “kalam” argument in Maximus from Amb. 10.40 (1184d-1188c). The reason I would place it in a different category than Aquinas’s arguments from motion is because Maximus specifically mentions a beginning so many times, not just a “cause.” In his previous arguments, he argues that because each created thing is not without beginning, there was certainly a time when it did not exist, and that it was “brought into being at a particular time.” I’m curious if you would still argue that Maximus is only making an argument about motion and causes and we shouldn’t think of this as a “kalam” argument, or perhaps you would recognize this as a type of “kalam” argument, but also see it as being invalidated by modern quantum physics. Anyone else, feel free to chime in a well.
He argues that since every dyad is “said to be a dyad in terms of numbers,” it is therefore subject to motion (which I understand to be movement of potential to actual). The dyad is also subject to “potential difference,” and so cannot be infinite. He then goes on:
“Now if, as we have demonstrated, the dyad is not infinite, it is obvious that is not without beginning, for the beginning of every dyad is the monad. And if it is not without a beginning, neither can it lack motion, for it moves, in fact by means of numeration, beginning with the addition of individual monads, [which Maximus distinguishes from the “absolute monad”] and then back to these again, through a process of division, and so receives its being. And if it is not unmoved, neither is it the beginning of something else. For that which is moved is not a beginning, but from a beginning, that is, from whatever set it in motion. Only THE Monad is, properly speaking, without a movement, because it is neither number, nor numerable, nor numbered (for the Monad is neither part, nor whole, nor relation), and thus by definition it is without beginning, since there is nothing prior to it that could have set it in motion and given it its being as Monad.”
Maximus, perhaps aware of what goes on here at Eclectic Orthodoxy, goes on to address Robert’s fear that this make God out to be “a craftsman like act of an enormously powerful god” by saying the Monad “does not signify the blessed Godhead itself, in its own existence…but based on our faith in the Godhead, we furnish ourselves with a definition of it, which is accessible to us and within our reach.”
Maximus goes back to conclude his argument:
“He [Maximus’s “reasonable man”] will not conclude from this that any of these things has in any way existed together with God from eternity, for he knows that it is impossible for either of two eternally coexisting principles to be the cause of the other. Such a notion is logically invalid and inadmissable, and it would be rather ridiculous for anyone with intelligence in these matter to make one of two one of two identically existing beings the cause of the other. It must be accepted that the eternally existing God has created all things out of nothing, not partially and incompletely, but completely and wholly…”
Thoughts?
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Just wanna stop by and say it warms my heart to hear people in this comment thread (including DBH) rejecting WLC’s kalam argument. I’ve always found it to be irrelevant and silly, but people in my circle (both theists and atheists) repeat it as if it’s profound and decisive. I feel less crazy after seeing intelligent people who I respect dismiss it in this thread. thanks guys
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WLC/Kalam’s argument holds up….if univocal terms can be applied to primary and secondary causation. But we maintain, following 4th century developments, this is a fatal and fundamental theological mistake, for the difference (and similarity) between God and creature cannot be understood correctly by utilizing terms of predication univocally.
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“But we maintain …”
So say we all!
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billions of mind together…..
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