Category: Theology

Up until this point, Keith Ward has been arguing that the findings of modern science can point to, even if not demonstrably prove, the existince of an infinite mind that underlies and upholds the physical world in existence. But this is a far cry from what most of us mean when we talk about God. At least, the heart of many religious believers’ understanding of God has more to do with God’s relation to and purposes for people than with the kind of metaphysical and cosmological speculations Ward has been examining thus far.

In part three Ward seeks to bridge the gap somewhat between what he calls, echoing Pascal, the “God of the scientists” and the “God of religion.” He discusses what a scientifically-informed theistic worldview might say about such topics as God’s action in the universe, interactions between finite minds and God, and whether miracles are possible. This last one has never seemed to me a very vexing question. I’ve always thought it obvious that whatever we say about the “laws of nature,” surely the creator of the universe could override them if he wished. Or that the laws of nature hold other things being equal. “Miracles as not totally inexplicable; they are just not eplicable by known scientific laws. They are not irreproducible, but since only God can reproduce them, they are beyond the powers of science to reproduce” (p. 224). Ward also has a helpful discussion of David Hume’s argument against the rationality of ever believing the report of a miraculous event (see pp. 228-230).

In chapter 16 Ward surveys some recent speculations from physicists on a kind of immortal life that might be possible in this physical universe. These range from a subjective eternity experienced by finite minds as the universe grinds to a slow halt, to the existence of vast information-processing “clouds” of photons and gravitons. None of these speculations, Ward admits, come close to reflecting what many religious believers mean by eternal life. But, he says, if sciece has enabled us to imagine multiple universes existing parallel to one another, it may not be such a stretch to imagine that God could, if he wished, translate the consciousnesses and personalities of humans into to some other universe at death. Or perhaps “resurrect” us by creating new beings who share our memories, personality traits, etc. I have my doubts about whether such duplication would actually be the resurrection of the very same people, though.

In any event, if the Newtonian cosmology demolished the old “three storey” universe with heaven above us and hell below, more recent cosmology at least allows us to imagine how a “new heaven and a new earth” might be brought into existence. But, as Ward points out, endless personal existence does not exhaust, nor is it even the most important feature, of what many faiths mean by “eteral life.” Rather, it has always meant living in the presence of God himself, or the “beatific vision” as Catholic theology has traditionally referred to it.

Ward offers the speculation that, instead of trying to find immortality within this cosmos (or the “nearest convenient parallel dimension” to quote Dr. Ray Stantz) we might see the purpose of the cosmos to be giving rise to finite minds who are able to reflect and ultimately share in the divine life. This would entail transcending the physical cosmos and being translated to an entirely different kind of existence.

It seems quite possible that, just as some scientists think that a future intelligence could replicate human persons to live again within the far future cosmos, so the eternal intelligence of God could bring persons to live again in other realms beyond the physical confines of this cosmos. We might expect that a perfect eternal intelligence would be as concerned for every sentient being throughout the history of the cosmos as for any life-form that exists at its end. It may then seem fitting that all such sentient beings that have a sense of their own continuous existence can share in the mind of God, and find there an appropriate sort of fulfillment for what remained incomplete, and a transformation of experience of all that caused pain and suffering, in their cosmic lives. (p. 257)

I suspect some readers may have grown impatient with Ward at this point. Why resort to such far-flung speculations rather than drawing on religious revelaton? It’s common in these postmodern days to see each tradition as having its own internal logic and rationale and to cast aspersions on those who would seek to employ a deracinated reason to search the mysteries of God.

First of all, Ward does have positive things to say about revelation. He acknowledges that science and philosophy can only take us so far, and that if we are to enter into some kind of personal relationship with God, or if God is to reveal his purposes to us, it will be through the medium of some kind of revelation or religious tradition. He also notes that our decision to commit ourselves to a religious tradition will not be definitively determined by publicly observable evidence, but will also draw on personal experience, value judgments, and other more “subjective” factors. That is to say, different people with different life experiences may be justified in adhereing to different religious traditions, even if they both can’t be right.

Secondly, even though I don’t agree with everything Ward says, I think the task of examining our faith in the light of science is an important one. It’s ture that theology shouldn’t hitch its wagon to the latest scientific finding, which may be overturned tomorrow. But it’s also important to show how the tenets of faith are consistent with what modern science, at least in broad outlines, has told us about the universe. Augustine made a similar point in his Literal Commentary on Genesis:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men…. Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by these who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. (Source)

Theologians often seem hesitant to engage directly with science, partly, no doubt, because of the daunting task of familiarizing theselves with the latest findings in biology, cosmology, and physics and trying to speak intelligently about it. But it seems to me an indispensible task for the church, certainly as important as grappling with the latest trendy philosopher or social theorist. In that spirit, I think Ward has made a valuable contribution.

(I should also note that Ward has interesting things to say on a variety of subjects that I haven’t covered, including the mind-body problem, God’s relation to time, and whether human culture can be given a purely naturalistic explanation. I’d recommend the book to anyone looking for an accessible introduction to these issues.)

Previously we saw that a major difference between a strictly scientific or naturalistic worldview and a supernaturalistic or theistic one is whether or not personal existence is taken to be a derivative and ultimately reducible facet of non-personal existence. Another way of putting it might be to ask which is a more fundamental form of explanation: teleological or mechanistic? Are some events only explanable in terms of purposive goal-directed action, or are these only apparent and essentially the result of blind, efficient causation?

The same question can be posed at another frontier of scientific explanation, namely, the very existence of the universe itself. Or, as Leibniz asked, “why there should be any world rather than none,” or why the particular world we’ve got rather than some other? Is the ultimate explanation for the world to be sought in a personal or non-personal cause?

Ward thinks that a personal explanation, though beyond what science can tell us, is more satisfying for several reasons. First, even if there is only one consistent set of natural laws, such that only one world is physically possible, we still can ask why that set of laws was realized in an actual physical world. Without some kind of personal agency “there seems to be no way of ‘breathing fire into the equations,’ of accounting for the physical existence of a contingent cosmos from purely mathematical facts” (p. 130).

Second, it seems strange to think of the laws of nature, expressed in mathematical form, as just existing on their own. Better, he says, to think of them as existing in some fully actualized mind or consciousness:

We can then say that mathematical truths can exist even before the existence of the physical universe, if they exist as products of a supreme mind. So we can frame the idea of a consciousness in which all mathematical structures exist. That consciousness could select one axiomatic system and construct a physical universe that was patterned on that system. The hypothesis of such a consciousness exactly fits the bill for something that might be an ultimate explanation of the universe. (p. 131)

I’m not sure that Ward has given us sufficient reason here to think that the mathematical truths that make up or describe the deep structure of the universe must exist prior to the actual physical universe. Perhaps they simply describe the structure of the universe without existing independently in their own right. Of course, the question would remain why the universe exists at all and why it exhibits the particular structure that it does. So I’m not sure the business about mathematics is even a necessary step in the argument.

Ward goes on to hypothesize, a la Leibniz, that “this ultimate consciousness might be able to conceive of every possible state of affairs — every possible world — that could ever exist”:

We can posit that there necessarily exists a complete array of every possibility of any kind, something like the Platonic world of Forms. This array is necessary, for every possibility is exhaustively expressed within it. No other possibilities exist, and the possibilities that do exist are necessarily what they are. No question arises of why this consciousness is as it is, since it includes all possible worlds and states exhaustively. No reason needs to be given why one state exists rather than another, since all these states exist, though only as possibilities. But it is plausible to think that possibles can only exist if there is some actuality that sustains them in being. That actuality is mind, which conceives them, and is necessarily what it is, the actual being that is necessary to give these possible worlds real existence as unactualized possibilities. (p. 131)

The crucial premise here seems to be that “possibles can only exist if there is some actuality that sustains them in being,” but I’m not sure how to evaluate that claim. Couldn’t it be that possible states of affairs are simply logical extrapolations from what does exist? Why must they have a kind of shadowy existence in their own right? Or to be more precise, I’m perfectly happy to admit that all possible states of affairs are contained in the mind of God, but that’s because I already believe in God. I’m less sure that the need for them to exist somewhere can be used as a premise in an argument for God’s existence. At the very least, the ontology of possible worlds is sufficiently murky that I’d be hesitant to put too much weight on this premise.

But, leaving this aside, let’s suppose that there are many ways in which the world could’ve existed, regardless of the ontological status we might ascribe to these possible worlds. This seems a plausible supposition in light of what we think we know about the world. Ward is still right, then, to ask “why some possible states should be selected for actuality” (p. 133) or why does the world have the particular order it does.

Here he reintroduces the concept of value as the key to providing an explanation. Clearly we think some states of affairs are preferable to others:

Imagine God trying to decide between creating a universe in which all conscious beings suffer terrible pain and frustration for ever, and another universe in which all conscious beings are happy, wise and loving. It is obvious that the second universe is better, more desirable, than the first. (p. 134)

Obviously neither of those descriptions fits our universe. But it’s not unreasonable to suppose that a purposive intelligent agent might choose to create a world in which great goods were capable of realization, even if accompanied by certain evils. “Then we could say that the reason a universe exists is because it is a possible universe that God makes actual for the distinctive sorts of goodness it contains” (p. 134).

In short, Ward thinks that a personalistic explanation for the existence of this particular universe, rather than some other or none at all, is more satisfying on the whole than an alternative non-personal explanation. It seems to account for the beauty and intelligibility of the cosmos as well as why the universe appears fine-tuned to bring into being conscious agents capable of realizing great goods. This is not, I think, intended to be a demonstrative argument, but one that appeals to the desire for an explanation, even one that goes beyond what is strictly observable or verifiable. “[T]he existence of brute matter, which just happens to be the way it is for no reason and yet gives rise to such a fine-tuned, utterly improbable and beautiful universe, terminates the quest for understanding in a way that is repugnant to any scientist” (p. 130).

I would say that the existence and order of the universe at least should open the question of God to someone who might’ve previously dismissed it without necessarily compelling an answer in one direction or another. And these kinds of considerations may well contribute to a cumulative case for God’s existence, even if not dispositive in themselves.

In part one of Pascal’s Fire Keith Ward emphasized the ways in which the best contemporary science is consistent with, and maybe even suggestive of, belief in God. In part two he goes one step further to look at the ways in which science falls short of offering an exhaustive description and explanation of reality.

The success of science in providing precise and law-like explanations of phenomena, Ward says, owes a lot to the fact that it abstracts away aspects of reality that don’t fit its model of explanation. Things like subjective conscious experience, values, purposes, and meaning are all part of our everyday experience of the world, but they aren’t publicly observable, quantifiable, and measurable like the physical aspects of reality are. “Modern science begins with the ejection of purpose, value and significance from the universe. This is one main reason why the ‘scientific worldview’ fails to deal with all aspects of reality” (p. 116). To say that consciousness, value, purpose, and meaning elude scientific explanation is not to show that they aren’t real. At best science seems to offer us reductionistic accounts of these phenomena: consciousness is just brain function, values are subjective, purpose is an illusion, etc.

It’s possible to argue that we should take experimental science as the sole avenue to truth. This might seem to be the most economical approach to forming beliefs. But, Ward says, part “of a reasonable account is that it should cover all the different sorts of data there are in as coherent a way as possible” (p. 118). Our experience of consciousness, purpose, value, and meaning is in many ways more certain than any theory that would purport to explain them away, as reductionist accounts do. And by excluding that which isn’t publicly observable or able to be established by experimental methods, science doesn’t show that such things don’t exist, only that it’s incapable of accounting for them. If such things are real, they would of necessity not be reducible to more basic constituents that can be explained in a thoroughly physicalistic way.

There are personal experiences, known to all of us in a direct and natural way, that do not fall within the domain of the natural sciences. The scientific domain is that of publicly observable objects in shared public space. Since science does not deal with personal experiences, it cannot itself give an account of what they are or how they relate to objects in physical space. Science itself cannot provide a comprehensive worldview, because there are aspects of reality with which it does not deal. The most obvious aspects of this sort are personal experiences. It is precisely in such experiences that such notions as value and purpose have their home. (p. 123)

What’s going on here, it seems to me, is that we have a fundamental difference in worldviews. One takes personal reality and all that it encompasses to be in some way fundamental to the constitution of the universe. The other takes personal reality to be ultimately reducible to some non-personal reality. Since personal existence seems to involve features which elude quantification, measurement, prediction, and public observability, any worldview that takes science to provide the key to an exhaustive account of reality will have to offer a reductionistic account of personality. But this will only be as plausible as the initial decision to treat quantifiable, etc. aspects of reality as the really real aspects of the world. Science as such can’t show us that those things it is methodologically incapable of dealing with aren’t real.

But, if personal existence is a non-reducible aspect of reality, and given that humanity is a latecomer on the cosmic scene, this rasies the question of whether there is a personal reality that underlies the entire phenomenal world. Which is the subject of the next post…

David Bentley Hart’s The Doors of the Sea is, in large part, a sharp rejoinder to any “theodicy” that would seek to make evil – physical, natural, or moral – a necessary means to the acheivement of some good. As such, it provides a useful counterpoint to the kind of account offered by Keith Ward.

Hart’s view is that Christians should by no means reconcile themselves to the existence of evil, suffering, and death as somehow necessary parts of the order of nature. Ivan’s diatribe against a world redeemed at the cost of the suffering of innocents in Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, Hart says, refutes any variety of “metaphysical optimism” that might view the sufferings of the world as necessary concomitants of the process by which rational, finite, and free beings are brought into existence. But it also clears the space where we can glimpse a more authentically Christian view.

That view, he argues, is that “nature” as we know it is not to be identified with “creation.” The God of Christianity is a God of perfect self-giving love, and creation reflects its creator in being peaceful, harmonious, and beautiful. “Nature,” by contrast

is everywhere attended — and indeed preserved — by death. All life feeds on life, each creature must yield its place in time to another, and at the heart of nature is a perpetual struggle to survive and increase at the expense of other beings. It is as if the entire cosmos were somehow predatory, a single great organism nourishing itself upon the death of everything to which it gives birth, creating and devouring all things with a terrible and impressive majesty. Nature squanders us with such magnificent prodigality that it is hard not to think that something enduringly hideous and abysmal must abide in the depths of life. (p. 50)

Death, suffering, and predation are, for Hart, not necessary features of a natural process that will bring about some greater good. Rather they’re signs of a creation shattered by some primordial cataclysm. Hart takes the cosmology of the New Testament quite seriously on this score and says that creation is in bondage to “principalities and powers” who have marred the image of God’s good creation:

Perhaps no doctrine strikes non-Christians as more insufferably fabulous than the claim that we exist in the long melancholy aftermath of a primordial catastrophe: that this is a broken and wounded world, taht cosmic time is a phantom of true time, taht we live in an umbratile interval between creation in its fullness and the nothingness from which it was called, that the universe languishes in bondage to the “powers” and “principalities” of this age, which never cease in their enmity toward the Kingdom of God. (pp. 61-2)

Though Hart doesn’t go into specifics, he seems to have in mind a fall which isn’t strictly speaking historical, but in some way “preceded” historical time as we know it:

[C]osmic time as we know it, through all the immensity of its geological ages and historical epochs, is only a shadow of true time, and this world only a shadow of the fuller, richer, more substantial, more glorious creation that God intends; and [we are required] to believe also that all of nature is a shattered mirror of divine beauty, still full of light, but riven by darkness. (p. 102)

At this point I start to worry that Hart is getting a bit too cozy with Gnosticism, which he admits to having some sympathy for because of its affinity with the “qualified dualism” of the New Testament. It starts to look like the created world as we know it bears very little relation at all to the “real” creation. After all, if the natural world, in its most fundamental features, is compromised by death, struggle, predation, and suffering, in what way does it resemble the “real” world? For instance, all living creatures are products of that enduringly hideous and abysmal something that seems to lie at the heart of nature. In what way, then can they be said to be God’s good creations rather than the monstrous offspring of a creation gone badly wrong?

I agree with Hart that there’s something unsatisfying, from a Christian viewpoint, about affirming a world of predation, suffering, and death as “good,” but his view seems to risk denying that there’s much goodness at all in nature as we find it.

Pretty much everything I know about quantum theory I learned from reading Stephenen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, and I’ve always been wary of people who attempt to draw broad philosophical implications from it. To Keith Ward’s credit, though, he is pretty circumspect in his treatment of the topic.

Unlike earlier major scientific revolutions which seemed to threaten a religious view of the world, quantum theory, Ward says, actually calls into question the dogmatic materialism that gained ground in the 19th and early 20th centuries. If it tells us anything about the fundamental makeup of the universe, it’s that the old materialistic model of atoms bumping and shoving each other is not an accurate description of the constituents of the physical world. Quantum theory gives us a rather mysterious world of probability waves and particles that don’t even have a precise position and velocity until someone measures them. At its fundamental level, physical reality is literally unimaginable by us, and can only be precisely described in the language of mathematics.

While there’s no agreement on what metaphysical consequences (if any) should be drawn from this, at the very least it suggests a world in which consciousness plays a greater role in constructing the physcial world as it appears to us. Whether this takes the form of a radical Berkeleyan idealism or a more moderate Kantian idealism, it seems that there is a gap between the physical world as it appears to us and the physical world as it exists in itself.

An analogy is with perceived colour. Objects have no colour when they are not being observed, for colour arises when wave-lengths of light reflected from objects impinge on the eye and coded information is transmitted to the brain. Objects have properties that give rise to sensations of colour when observed, but colour is not an intrinsic property of objects. So in the unmeasured quantum world there are no particles with precise dynamic attributes, such as position and momentum. But on this interpretation of quantum theory, probability waves, whatever exactly they are, generate such particles when they are observed in a specific way, or when they are fixed in time by an experimental apparatus that will give a precise position or momentum when observed. (p. 86)

Some physicists, Ward says, go as far as to posit an intelligible world of mathematical “forms” as the ultimate basis of physical reality, a theory highly reminiscient of Plato. Of course, it’s difficult to see how such forms could give rise to the physical world since they aren’t really agents. Ward speculates that we might see these forms as existing in the mind of God who actualizes certain possibilities.

Such ‘perfect’ intelligible Forms, perhaps the basis of the ‘hidden’ world of quantum physics, might themselves be realities that exist in some form of consciousness. The reason for thinking this is that the intelligible world is a fundamentally mathematical or conceptual world. If we hold, with most mathematicians, that mathematics is in some sense a construct of minds, and if mathematical truths are objective, if they exist apart from any human mind, then the natural conclusion is that they are constructs of a non-human, objective mind, the mind of God. (pp. 87-88)

Ward recognizes that there are several interpretations of quantum physics and that God is by no means the only way for accounting for it. But, he contends, quantum physics does indicate that “old-style atomist materialism is dead” and “quantum physics opens up the possibility of understanding mind and consciousness as much more integrally involved in the basic structure of physical reality than anyone might previously have suspected” (p. 88).

This stuff is all way too slippery for me to feel much confidence in the argument. Perhaps the best that can be said of it is the same that can be said of any version of the cosmological argument: However we conceive the basis of physical reality, its contingency at least raises the question of whether there is a God who brings it into being. As Diogenes Allen argues in his book Christian Belief in a Postmodern World, questions like “Why does the universe (or the collection of finite beings) exist at all?” and “Why does nature have this order rather than some other possible order?” are meaningful questions which point to the possibility of God, even if they don’t admit of definitive answers.

Ward takes the theory of evolution as established, at least in its main outlines, but he does question some of the interpretations often given of evolution, especially by “evangelical atheists” like Richard Dawkins. While it’s possible to see evolution as simply an interplay of randomness and the pressures of survivial, it’s also possible, he thinks, to discern some kind of tendency toward greater complexity, toward consciousness and intelligence. For one thing, it’s now believed that if the values of ceratin fundamental constituents of the universe, such as the strong and weak nuclear forces, were even slightly different the emergence of life as we know it, much less intelligent life, would’ve probably been impossible. The universe starts to look like it was “fine-tuned” to allow for the emergence of beings very much like ourselves.

So likewise in the case of the evolution of life on Earth. Ward suggests that there are reasons for thinking that consciousness and intelligence describe an evolutionary “niche” that tendencies inherent in the structure of the universe will seek to fill. That is, “given suitable sorts of progressive genetic change, there will be some organisms that climb to fill the ecological space available for intelligent agents” (p. 65). If this is right, then it wouldn’t be such a vast leap of speculation to think that a supremely intelligent creator might intend the evolutionary process to create finite personal beings who can appreciate the intelligibility and beauty of the universe, and, perhaps, enter into relationships with the creator.

Of course, evolution presents its own set of problems. One is that the process of evolution, with its competitive, frequently bloody, struggle for survival is incompatible with the purposes of a benevolent or loving God. The other is that a slow evolutionary development of life and humankind in particular seems to contradict the Christian doctrine of the fall from a paradisical state. According to evolutionary doctrine, death and suffering long preceded the existence of humans and, in fact, are an inextricable part of the very process by which living things came to be. This doesn’t necessarily rule out a historical fall of human beings into sin, but it does seem to rule out the idea that death and suffering as such are consequences of humankind’s fall (barring backwards causation!).

Ward’s solution is to invoke a kind of Leibnizian account of the creation of the word. The basic idea here is that there is a multiplicity (perhaps an infinity) of “possible worlds” which exists in the divine mind. God chooses which world (or worlds) to actualize. But each world comes as a package deal, so to speak. For God to choose to create a world that contains creatures like us, for instance, would seem to entail choosing to create a world that contained the processes necessary to bring us into being, namely the evolutionary process in all its messiness. We may think we can imagine a world that contained creatures like us which didn’t contain a process that allowed for suffering and death, but Ward cautions that we should be skeptical about this. The various parts of the universe, as we’ve seen, are interconnected at a very fundamental level, and it’s far from clear that you can have one part without its concommitants. If God wants to create a universe which is relatively self-organizing and which gives rise to intelligent life from its own internal resources, then God may have no choice but to create a world with a ceratin amount of suffering. “[I]f God opts for a law-like universe, it is impossible for God to determine everything for the best” (p. 67).

But, it may be objected, is God not omnipotent? Can God not do absolutely anything God wants? I think that is far too antrhopomorphic a view of God. We imagine a being that can do absolutely anything – like creating a universe of conscious physical beings evolving by natural selection without any pain at all – and presume that such a being could really exist. But how could we know this? We have no idea what a supremely intelligent mind would be like and what constraints there might be on what it could do.

We can say that God is omnipotent, if we mean that there is no possible power greater than that of God, and all power derives from the being of God. Such a being would be the most powerful being there could ever be, and there could be no power that could oppose it or destroy it. What more could we want? Yet such omnipotence might not be able to change absolutely anything. It could not, for example, change its own essential nature, and in that nature are rooted all the interconnected possibilities of being that are necessarily what they are. (p. 73)

In other words, if God chooses to actualize a particular kind of world, then there may be certain attendant evils which are inextricable parts of that world. I think there are a few premises that it might help to identify in order to get a better look at Ward’s argument here:

(1) All possible worlds are necessarily what they are.

(2) At least some of the evils contained in some possible worlds are necessarily connected with certain goods contained in those worlds.

(3) God cannot, without constant miraculous intervention, actualize the goods of a possible world without actualizing its attendant evils.

(4) God has sufficient reasons for actualizing a world (or worlds) which generally follows law-like patterns without intervening constantly to counteract or prevent the evils it contains.

So, God would be justified in actualizing a world containing certain evils in order to actualize certain goods for which those evils are necessary preconditions.

(1) seems true, indeed necessarily so. (2) is plausible given what we know about evolution and the conditions which were necessary to give rise to creatures like us. (3) seems to follow given (1) and (2); if certain evils are necessary preconditions for the existence of certain goods, then the only way to acheive those goods in that particular world would be by miraculous intervention. (4) is more difficult to assess. I take it that a world which unfolded according to certain law-like patterns and contained its own immanent principles that allowed life to develop is a good thing, but it’s hard to know if it is such a great good that it outweighs the evils which could presumably have been prevented by miraculous intervention. Of course, this is a problem for any thestic view, not just an evolutionary one. All theists are faced with the question of why God doesn’t miraculously intervene to prevent evil. Of course, Christians believe God has done something to decisively deal with evil, but that this act doesn’t have the shape or character we would expect.

However, that doesn’t justify the existence of evil in the first place unless we allow that the good of a law-like, relatively autonomous universe which gives rise to intelligent conscious beings outweighs the evils associated with the process of evolution. The traditional Christian view had a ready response to this: the world as God originally created it was without suffering or death, but sin, either committed by humans or by fallen angelic beings, disrupted the harmony of the universe, causing suffering and death to enter into the world. Thus, evil isn’t God’s fault, but the fault of intelligent beings misuse of their freedom (See here for a related discussion).

Needless to say, this seems implausible to many people in light of what we think we know about the evolutionary process, as I mentioned. Physical evil certainly predates the existence of human beings, and unless we’re willing to posit angelic sin as the cause of suffering and death in the physical world, it seems like we’re forced to conclude that they are constituent parts of a universe that gives rise to beings like us. But this leaves unanswered the question why God would prefer a universe that acted according to law-like regularities which produced suffering and death instead of intervening.

One possible solution might be to say something like this: If God chose to actualize a particular world but then intervened miraculously to counteract every instance of evil contained in that world, then God wouldn’t, in fact, be choosing to actualize that world. God would be choosing to actualize some very different world. And if the causal powers of the beings in that world were routinely interfered with and not allowed to produce their natural consequences, they wouldn’t have existence in the fullest sense, but some kind of phantom existence. In choosing to create a world, God allows something to come into existence that has a relative autonomy, so maybe it would go against the nature of that act of creation to be constantly intervening to counteract its natural consequences.

Still, Christians may be uneasy with accepting natural evil as a fundamental aspect of created reality. Even if we don’t read the opening chapters of Genesis as a literal historical account of the creation of the world, many Christians want to affirm that creation as originally made was characterized by a primordial peace and that death and suffering are accidental, not essential, features of creation. To accept Ward’s account would require reinterpreting the creation account as, perhaps, indicating God’s intentions for what creation will be after a period of development and/or in its consummated state in the eschatological age, rather than a picture of what creation was once upon a time.

In Part One, “The Formation of the Scientific Worldview,” Ward examines four major advancements in scientific thinking whose impact extended well beyond the fields in which they originated. These are the heliocentric theory of the solar system, associated with Copernicus and Galileo, Newton’s laws of motion, Darwin’s theory of evolution, and the advent of quantum theory. Each of these theories have seemed, to both proponents and detractors, to upend a traditional religious understanding of the universe and have been high points in the familiar story of the conflict between “science” and “religion.”

Of course, as Ward points out, it was never this simple. Galileo and Newton were devoutly religious, and Darwin was probably a theist of some sort, even if he came to doubt the deity’s benevolence. But none thought that their theories entailed atheism. What they did, Ward argues, is prompt a rethinking of traditional notions of God and God’s relation to the cosmos.

In the case of the shift from a geocentric to a heliocentric solar system, the result was to deemphasize an anthropocentric view of the physical universe that placed human beings, literally, at the center. It became difficult to see humankind as that for the sake of which the physical universe existed. Instead, Ward argues, it teaches us to think of the universe as something which God delights in for its own sake and for which God may have purposes not directly related to human beings. The “cosmos is a product of the divine mind, so its creation can be compared to the work of a supreme artist, enjoyable and worthwhile for its own sake, without reference to possible finite persons at all” (p. 16)

The beauty and elegance of the universe were futher affirmed by Newton, who identifed mathematical laws governing the motion of bodies. To Newton this reflected a supremely rational God who created and sustains a universe which is intelligible and beautiful. Ward points out that Newton certainly didn’t think that physical laws provided an exhaustive account of reality; he saw the intelligibility and elegance of the physical world as manifestations of a supremely good and intelligent spiritual reality. “Newton believed that, for those who have eyes to see, that hidden reality even makes itself known in the mysterious operation of gravity and the movements and dispositions of the planets” (p. 33)

All of these discoveries were more or less compatible with a fully traditional religious worldview, even if they required a bit of tweaking. Christian tradition had always affirmed that creation was good independent of its usefulness to human beings, and that there were levels and aspects or reality far beyond those that we were directly acquainted with. What they highlighted was the idea of a universe that was rational and intelligible. But this wasn’t something entirely new either; certainly at least since the Scholastics the rationality of God and, by implication, God’s universe was a key belief.

However, Newton’s theory in particular gave rise to the metaphor of the universe as a machine which ran according to deterministic laws. Later philosophers and scientists ran with this metaphor and, perhaps inevitably, the role of God was minimized. But logically, Ward argues, there’s no reason this should be the case. “Perhaps the existence of laws of nature depends, after all, on the existence of God. If that is so, it is hardly possible to exclude just by definition God’s action in the universe, miraculous or not” (p. 31). A deterministic and physcialistic reductionism is not a logical consequence of Newtonian physics, however irresistible it may have seemed to some.

But Darwin’s theory of evolution has presented a challenge that, in some people’s minds, still hasn’t been adequately met, which brings us to the subject of the next post…