https://reformedlibertarians.com/019
Kerry:
This is episode NINETEEN.
In this episode we present the Neo-Calvinist view of what has been called “The Myth Of Religious Neutrality” through a reading of edited excerpts from the article “On The General Relation Of Religion, Metaphysics, and Science” by Dr Roy A. Clouser.
Roy Clouser is professor emeritus of Philosophy and Religion at the College of New Jersey, where he taught for 34 years. He is the author of several books and many articles, some of which we link to in the shownotes. Dr. Clouser is the leading expert on, and expositor of, the philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd in North America.
This article was originally published as a chapter in volume 2 of Facets Of Faith And Science from University Press of America in 1996. It summarizes a key argument from Clouser’s book The Myth Of Religious Neutrality: on the hidden role of religious belief in theories, published by University of Notre Dame Press, originally in 1991, with a revised edition in 2005. We’ve taken a few liberties in our edits to allow for a better flow in our selections from the article, and updated a few points, reflecting the revised edition of Myth.
In the following excerpts, the predominant Scholastic view of the general relation is summarized, followed by a summary of the Neo-Calvinist, or Reformational view. According to the Neo-Calvinist view, the way in which religious belief guides theories is then summarized, the view of religious belief is further explained, how religious belief within a given metaphysics affects science is further explained, and a prominent objection is answered.
Gregory:
We’ve mentioned in previous episodes (for example, in episodes 4 and 15) the myth of religious neutrality, or the universality of religious belief that inevitably influences one’s view of reality, and through such a view, so one’s view of culture, including one’s political views. This entire episode is given to a fuller explanation of that understanding. Some listeners might find what we’re presenting to be too technical, so we’ll also link to a less technical presentation, titled “Is There A Christian View Of Everything?”.
In a future episode, we hope to address more directly an objectionable version of a so-called “Two Kingdoms” view from the perspective of the Neo-Calvinist view explained in this episode. Not all versions of Two Kingdoms do this, but the version to which we have objections erroneously supposes that cultural activity is, or can be, religiously neutral. In the meantime, we also link in the shownotes to an article I wrote, published at our website, titled “Five Versions Of ‘Two Kingdoms’ and Foundations For Christian Cultural Activity.”
Kerry:
But, now, here are excerpts from:
“On the General Relation of Religion, Metaphysics, and Science”
by Roy A. Clouser
The following considers in overview the general relation between religious belief to theories in “metaphysics” (or philosophical ontology) and the “sciences” (or various specific academic fields). There are, of course, many other particular ways these may relate. Considered here are two basic models of the nature of their general relation.
Gregory:
1. THE SCHOLASTIC VIEW
Among some Christian scholars, while reason has been regarded as a gift of God to humanity and carrying an important authority, Scripture and faith have been viewed as an alternate source of authority and belief. The view of faith that came to prevail among many Christian thinkers was that faith designates a distinct function of the human mind or soul given by God to some. On this view, then, all humans have reason, but only those who have received God’s grace have faith. As a consequence, those who possess this superadded gift believe the contents of Scriptural revelation in addition to what they can know by perception and reasoning. This special gift is needed because (most of) the content of Scriptural revelation is seen as information about the realm of the supernatural which is not open to normal perception and is largely immune to discovery by reasoning. Thus those who have faith have access both to the natural by reason and to the supernatural by faith, whereas those without faith remain dangerously ignorant of important supernatural realities.
Kerry:
This general view of the relation may be called “scholasticism.” As to the relation between religious beliefs accepted on faith and theories of science or philosophy accepted by reasoning, scholasticism has a tidy-sounding prescription: any theory of philosophy or science is acceptable for the Christian theorist provided it is not incompatible with any doctrine of the Faith. Believing that God’s revelation in nature could not contradict his revelation in Scripture, scholasticism declares any theory about nature that is incompatible with revealed doctrine to be mistaken. In this way Scriptural revelation is seen as supplying guidance to theorizing: if a theory is incompatible with revealed truth, it is mistaken.
Gregory:
This view of the relation therefore sees the guidance religious belief supplies to theories as an external one, with the result that most theories will be [viewed as] compatible with the Faith by being [viewed as] neutral with respect to it. For it is only occasionally that a theory is flatly contradicted by a teaching of Scripture, and it is even rarer that any are entailed by Scripturally revealed doctrine. So the scholastic notion of the basic relation is one of external, logical compatibility: whenever an article of faith contradicts the content of a theory, either the article of faith has been misunderstood or the theory is (at least partly) false. Accordingly, scholasticism postulates that there can be no conflict between genuine philosophy or science and any article of the Faith correctly understood. Only false philosophy or science could be in opposition to Scripturally revealed truth.
Kerry:
But while this arrangement sounds tidy in the abstract, in practice it has created endless messy debates. The debates have concerned how to interpret the doctrines of the Faith so precisely as to tell whether they are or are not in conflict with a particular theory, as well as how to interpret hypotheses precisely enough to tell whether they conflict with particular doctrines. Debates have also concerned the precise sense of “incompatibility” needed to render a theory unacceptable. Clearly, formal contradiction or contrariety cannot be tolerated, but is that all? Is anything less than outright logical incompatibility acceptable? If not, what additional senses of incompatibility are relevant?
Gregory:
2. THE NEO-CALVINIST (or Reformational) VIEW
A less familiar answer to the question of the general relation of religious belief to theories was given by John Calvin in the sixteenth century. For example, Calvin rejected the idea that Scripturally revealed truth impacts theories only when the two are incompatible. In the introduction to his commentary on Genesis, Calvin wrote: “It is in vain for any to reason as philosophers on the workmanship of the world, except those who, having been first humbled by the preaching of the Gospel, have learned to submit the whole of their intellectual wisdom (as Paul expresses it) to the foolishness of the cross.”
Kerry:
In the late-19th and mid-20th centuries, this view was developed and defended by Calvinists such as Abraham Kuyper and Herman Dooyeweerd. I will defend this view, which may be called “Neo-Calvinist” or “Reformational,” because I see it as reflecting an important, though largely neglected, Scriptural teaching that is relevant to the relation of belief in God to theories. I also find that honoring this teaching produces a view of the relation that avoids more difficulties than any other, more popular, view. These last remarks may sound very surprising. Most Christian theologians, philosophers and scientists would be inclined, I think, to say that Scripture has no position on anything so abstract as how faith relates to theories. And there is one sense in which that is true; there are no statements in Scripture that explicitly mention specific theories. But there are quite a number that speak of the relation of belief in God to truth and to knowledge.
Gregory:
Since truth and knowledge are among the goals which theories aim to achieve, it seems clear that Scripture’s teaching on this subject applies to theories even if they are not explicitly mentioned. The Proverbs, for example 1:7 tells us that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” Colossians 2:3 says that “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ.” And Ephesians 5:9 tells us that the “fruit” (or consequence) of the “light” (of knowing God in Christ) “is found in all that is good and right and true.” These statements are not mere poetic hyperbole, nor do they merely mean that without faith in revealed truths about God we have no knowledge of God or of the supernatural dimension of reality. Instead, they entail that believing in the true God rather than a false one in some way impinges on every sort of truth. More specifically, they mean that religious belief impinges on knowledge in such a way that the understanding of everything else is in some sense falsified if one’s faith is in a God-substitute rather than the true God. That claim is not reflected by the scholastic view which leaves room for (most) theories to be religiously neutral.
Kerry:
This claim is not that if one does know God then one is guaranteed to arrive at all or only truth. Knowing God is never said to be a sufficient condition for coming to all other sorts of truth, but only a necessary one. And Scripture does not specifically say whether belief in a false god destroys knowledge in whole or in part. But since everywhere else it clearly regards unbelievers as knowing a great many things, I take its position to be that belief in a false god partially falsifies everything else. Colossians 2:8 warns against being taken captive by any philosophy that is not according to Christ. So it appears that Scripture does have a definite teaching about how religious belief impinges on theories. It teaches that religious belief relates to theory-making so that the latter depends on one’s religious belief. More specifically, it says that belief in God is capable of impinging on every sort of subject matter so as to make it possible for believers to avoid some (unspecified) type of partial falsification which is inevitable from the standpoint of belief in any God-substitute.
Gregory:
This last point is closely connected to another Scriptural teaching, namely, that everyone has a religious belief of some sort. In Romans 1 it says that in their sin, all people naturally suppress the truth, particularly about God. Although, ultimately having known God, fallen humanity does not thankfully acknowledge Him as God, and so their thinking became futile. Sinners exchanged the glory of God for idols; they exchanged the truth about God for a lie, taking some creature to be in the place of the Creator, rather than worshiping and serving God as the Creator.
Kerry:
Unlike the scholastic view, Scripture does not view the function of faith (or religious belief) as an addition to human nature, but as a natural, inevitable part of it. Scripture does not regard the exercise of faith itself as a special gift from God, but instead speaks of God’s gift as the restoration of the proper functioning of faith so that faith is invested in God rather than in some false God-substitute. Moreover, in Scripture, such faith is not contrasted to knowledge. Faith is never spoken of as though it is belief without or beyond evidence. Rather, both the existence of God and His salvation in Christ are always spoken of as things believers know. When such things are referred to as faith at all, the term always means the reliance or trust believers actually put in God and his promises.
Gregory:
3. RELIGIOUS BELIEF GUIDES THEORIES
A. Scientific theories guided by a basic view of reality
Taking this Scriptural teaching as a point of departure, I will now attempt to bring it to bear more precisely on theorizing. My construal of how this goes is that the most general impact of religious belief on theories is a two step affair. The first step is that the construction or adoption of scientific theories (or theories in some particular academic field) cannot fail to be regulated by some metaphysical (or more general philosophical) view of the essential nature of reality. This is because metaphysical views inevitably carry implications for how the domains of the various sciences are to be understood to relate to one another. More specifically, traditional metaphysical theories all postulate a candidate for the basic nature of reality by selecting it from among the basic kinds of properties and laws exhibited by the world given to pretheoretical (or, everyday concrete) experience.
Kerry:
These kinds comprise a list which includes such members as “mathematical,” “spatial,” “physical,” “biological,” “psychological,” “logical,” “historical,” “social,” “economical,” “ethical,” etc. (In the interest of linguistic economy, from now on I will refer to the kinds of properties and laws that comprise these domains as “aspects” of reality.) Metaphysical theories have traditionally identified the basic nature of reality with some one or two of such kinds. For example, the Pythagoreans said it was number, Parmenides said it was space, materialists say it is matter, Alfred North Whitehead said it is life, David Hume and other positivists held it to be sensation and feeling, and a host of thinkers have maintained it to be (at least partially) logical laws, sets or forms.
Gregory:
All such metaphysical theories defend their choice of the basic nature of reality by arguing that the aspect(s) it has identified with that nature exist independently of all the rest. That is, such an aspect is viewed to be metaphysically nondependent, which is to say “self-existent.” The other aspects are thereby reduced to the one or two selected as the basic nature of reality. For any of the non-selected aspects, reduction arguments either try to show them to be:
(1) eliminated altogether (as unreal), or
(2) metaphysically dependent on the one(s) selected by the theory.
In this way metaphysical views about the nature of reality limit and direct the sorts of hypotheses that will appear plausible within the sciences whose domains correspond to reduced aspects.
Kerry:
For example, the concepts and explanations deemed acceptable in the sciences devoted to nonphysical aspects of experience will be very different depending upon whether one accepts a materialist metaphysics. Similar differences will hold between those maintaining phenomenalist, vitalist, historicist or dualist views of reality. I have deliberately used the term “reductionist” here to describe any metaphysics which arrives at its candidate for the basic nature of reality by ascribing a metaphysical priority to any aspect(s) of creation. This is because either of the senses of priority that reductionism ascribes to an aspect reduces the status of the remaining aspects. In the first sense, the theory reduces the experienced multiplicity of aspects by requiring the elimination of all but the one it identifies as the exclusive nature of reality. In the second sense, a multiplicity of aspects is admitted, but all the others are viewed as totally dependent on the one(s) to which the theory accords priority.
Gregory:
B. A basic view of reality guided by a religious belief
The second step in the impact of religious belief on scientific theories is that the elaboration and defense of any metaphysical theory or view of the basic nature of reality (and thus of the relation between the rest of the aspects forming the domains of the sciences) cannot help being regulated by its belief about precisely what it is that is metaphysically nondependent or self-existent. But believing anything to be metaphysically basic or nondependent is, I contend, an essential characteristic of religious belief, and the only characteristic which all religious beliefs have in common.
Kerry:
This, then, is how I understand the biblical teachings summarized above: theories in the various sciences are regulated by some metaphysical view of the basic nature of reality, and such metaphysical views are in turn regulated by some (true or false) religious belief, that is, (even if unconsciously, or only implied) holding something as self-existent. In this way the contents of scientific theories vary with the content of the religious belief regulating them.
Gregory:
4. MORE ABOUT RELIGIOUS BELIEF
To avoid misunderstanding, I must now defend the view just mentioned as to what counts as a religious belief. In the ancient and medieval periods there was virtually universal agreement that an essential characteristic of religious belief is that it is a belief in something as divine, and that the essential feature of divinity is that of being utterly nondependent, or self-existent. Metaphysical nondependence is the only thing attributed to every candidate for divinity no matter how else it is conceived. So while the ideas about what else is true of the divine are not universally agreed on, every putative divinity is regarded as nondependent or “just there.” It’s important to say that not all supposed deities or gods have this status.
Kerry:
The distinction I am drawing here between putative divinities and the status of divinity is like that between two ways of answering the question, “Who is the President of the U.S.A.?” A proper answer could describe either the person who presently holds the office or the duties, powers and limits of the office itself. Just so, religious traditions have many ideas of what it is that holds the office of divinity: a transcendent being who created everything else ex nihilo, Being-itself which permeates and constitutes everything, an infinite inconceivable Nothingness, or forces in nature such as Kami, Numen, Mana or Wakan, and a host of other candidates. But no matter how varied the conception of these office holders may be, they are all taken as nondependent or self-existent and that upon which some or all of whatever is regarded as non-divine depends for existence.
Gregory:
So the definition of religious belief I defend is:
A belief is religious if and only if it holds something or other to be metaphysically nondependent, or self-existent (which is to accord it the status of divinity), or is a belief about how to stand in proper relation to the divine.
There have been two main obstacles which have prevented this view of the nature of religious belief from achieving the acceptance it deserves. One is the identification of religious belief with belief in God or in gods, and the other is the assumption that to be religious a belief must involve or result in worship and/or an ethical code. Both of these are common Western presumptions deeply entrenched in both popular and scholarly thought, and both are utterly false. It is understandable, however, why this view is so popular. After all, the three most influential religious traditions in the West are Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Generalizing from them gives the impression that religions all believe in a god and involve both worship and an ethical code. And the fact that when the biblical literature refers to false religious belief it often does so in terms of false gods only seems to confirm this impression.
Kerry:
Nevertheless, there is another way in which the writers of the Bible refer to false religion, namely, as idolatry. And their use of this term is not restricted to gods. For one example, Colossians 3:5 refers to covetousness as idolatry. Idolatry is committed if anything —no matter how it is conceived— is given a status that belongs only to the true God of Scripture. Thus anything that is regarded as nondependent or self-existent and as that on which all the rest of reality depends, is believed to be divine no matter how else it is conceived. This point is extremely instructive and important, for it opens the way to seeing that even a belief that does not issue in worship or involve an ethical code, which does not regard its object as a personal god, a savior, or even the guarantor of a destiny beyond death, could still be a (false) religious belief. For it shows that anything believed to have the status of the nondependent reality on which all else depends is a God-substitute with respect to Yahweh’s status as Creator. To hold such a belief is therefore to have an alternative religious belief to the one taught in Scripture.
Gregory:
Therefore, Theravada Buddhism is a religious belief despite its lack of worship; Shinto is a religious belief despite its lack of ethics; and the Epicurean belief in gods was religious despite the fact that it involved neither worship nor an ethical code. Theravada Buddhism follows Buddha himself in denying (or not caring whether) any gods exist. But the denial of the existence of gods is not the denial that anything whatsoever is divine. The same goes for many beliefs not associated with cultic [worship] religious traditions —materialism, for example. I have no reason to suspect that modern materialists sing hymns to quarks or pray to positrons when no one is around to see them do it. But their belief in the ontological nondependence, the self-existence, of the physical aspect of reality makes their belief just as religious as the Hindu’s belief in Brahman-Atman, Plato’s belief in the divinity of the Forms, or the Christian’s belief in God. Each of these is simply a different, and mutually exclusive, belief about what has divine status. Some beliefs, like that in the God of Scripture, make worship eminently appropriate, while others, like that of the Brahmin theology in Hinduism, the Buddhist’s Nothingness, or the materialist’s belief in matter/energy, make worship senseless.
Kerry:
The most common objection to this definition of religious belief is that it is too foreign to common usage and too inclusive, making many beliefs usually regarded as non-religious to be religious after all. But as we have already seen, this objection is narrowly culture-bound and almost willfully ignorant both of other religious traditions and of the Scriptural conception of idolatry. It is rooted in stubbornly clinging to the popular association of religious belief with worship and/or ethics despite the evidence that those are not found in all religions. As a result, the genuinely religious character of many so-called “secular” beliefs is disguised. This last point is also important for understanding Scripture’s view, mentioned earlier, that all people have some religious belief. For it makes clear why this view is not defeated by the fact that there are practicing atheists.
Gregory:
On the view I am defending, atheism stands to religious belief as vegetarianism does to eating. Not believing in any God or gods no more precludes having any religious belief than not eating meat precludes eating any food whatever. Of course, there are people who do not want to have any religious belief at all. But if belief in every Creator-substitute counts as a religious belief, and if it is possible to hold such beliefs unconsciously as well as consciously, then it is not clear how all religious belief can be avoided no matter how much someone may wish to. And as I will further argue, all theories unavoidably presuppose some such belief. I now proceed to the issue of how this view of religious belief figures in the Neo-Calvinist alternative to the Scholastic way of explaining the relation of such beliefs to theories.
Kerry:
5. HOW DOES THE RELIGIOUS BELIEF WITHIN METAPHYSICS AFFECT SCIENCE?
Earlier I argued that every metaphysical view of how the domains of the sciences relate is itself regulated by whatever it regards as metaphysically nondependent, or self-existent. According to my definition of religious belief, this means that every metaphysics (or view of the basic nature of reality) is regulated by a religious belief, since each has at its core a belief in some principle(s) to which it ascribes the status of divinity (namely, nondependence or self-existence).
Gregory:
Examples of such divinities in metaphysical theories have included (but are not limited to): Forms, substances, monads, matter/energy, space, sensations, logical laws, history and numbers. This means that at bottom philosophy and religion converge such that there is a religious belief at the core of any metaphysical view (or philosophical view of the basic nature of reality). This opens the way for seeing that the influence of religious beliefs on theories goes well beyond the obvious. The most obvious contacts between religious belief and scientific theories are the external ones so well recognized by scholasticism: a theory can assert something that contradicts some Scripturally revealed truth. However, in light of the biblical notion that all truth is tied to having the right God, that has to be too restrictive a notion of the relation.
Kerry:
It cannot be merely a matter of logical consistency between individual propositions of faith and theories judged piecemeal, since such a view would leave most of the hypotheses in most of the sciences religiously neutral. We need a view that accounts for how religious belief impinges on science more broadly, such that it makes sense of the Scriptural teaching that all knowledge depends on having the right God.
Gregory:
The next step to seeing what this broader relation might be, I believe, is to notice that Scripture teaches a stricter doctrine of creation than has been held by many theologians. This stricter reading is one that understands the doctrine to require that nothing whatever has nondependent existence but God. To many thinkers not versed in the intricacies of theological controversy, this point often sounds oddly unnecessary. But the fact is that a widely held view in Christian theology regards certain abstract entities, properties and laws found in creation to be as equally uncreated as God. The entities usually ascribed uncreated status by theologians and philosophers are mathematical laws, logical laws, propositions, states of affairs and any attribute of God which creatures share (though in a lesser degree).
Kerry:
A defense of such a view’s unacceptability is beyond the scope of this paper. I can only premise my defense here, and succinctly summarize its consequences as follows. If all things other than God have been called into existence out of nothing, and if that includes all the kinds of properties and laws true of creatures as well as the creatures themselves, then it follows that those kinds are one and all dependent on God so that none is the necessary and sufficient condition of the existence of any others. Thus, as Christians we should not be looking among these (dependent) aspects for the one or two that constitute the nature of metaphysical substance, since the standard definition of “substance” is precisely “that which can exist on its own.” This goes equally for how we understand the natures of entities we theoretically postulate as well as for those we experience.
Gregory:
Christians should not accept any theory which proposes the essential nature of creatures to be identified with any aspect for the reductionist reasons that it: (1) has metaphysical independence because it alone is real or (2) has metaphysical independence because all the rest depend on it. Even the weaker sense of reduction, in the second sense, is objectionable since it can be defended only by arguing that an aspect supposed to have such independence possesses it in virtue of being the necessary and sufficient condition of the existence of creatures and of any other aspects they are admitted to have. So whether the priority claim is defended in either sense, the priority given is an attribution of a status only God has to aspects of creation. In either case, such a metaphysics requires a reductionist view of the relations between the various sciences; that is, it requires the reduction of the remaining domains for the sciences to whichever domain(s) are defended as the exclusive or basic nature of reality.
Kerry:
The crucial importance of this point is that any reductionist view of the domains of the sciences requires correspondingly reductionist concepts and postulates within every science understood from its standpoint. The metaphysical overview of the general relation of the various aspects of creatures is a macrocosm that is reflected in the microcosm of each concept formed within any science investigating one of those aspects. This can be seen by considering what happens when a theorist regards, for example, the physical aspect of reality as “just there” either because reality is supposed to be exclusively physical or because all other aspects have the physical as their necessary and sufficient cause. Such positions require sharply different concepts of biological, sensory, logical, etc., data than would be the case if some nonphysical aspect were accorded that priority. And the differences in the conceptualization of experienced data in turn require very different concepts for entities being postulated within those sciences.
Gregory:
For example, consider how different the postulated entities have been in mathematical theories depending on whether they have been formed under the regulatory control of a metaphysics ascribing primacy to matter/energy, or sensory perception, or logical laws and sets, or to numbers themselves. I do not want this last point to be misunderstood as saying that scientific theories are always consciously derived from, or controlled by, a metaphysical theory. This has occasionally happened, but it is also true that many scientists do not study philosophy or metaphysics, or do not consciously try to guide their work by the metaphysics to which they adhere. That fact does not defeat the point, however.
Kerry:
The point is that there is always an influence of a metaphysical belief whether or not a scientist is conscious of it or has ever been exposed to its formal exposition in a theory. That is, concepts of either the data or postulates in a science that include a priority ascription (of the two types mentioned) presuppose a reductive metaphysics whether the scientist is aware of it or not. If this is correct, we have here a major advance for the project of discerning whether a theory is compatible or incompatible with the Christian Faith. And it is an advance which makes sense of the Scriptural teaching that belief in God impinges on all truth. We are no longer limited merely to seeing whether specific statements of theology are contradicted by specific statements of a theory, or whether there is any contradiction between entailments of each set of statements. Nor are we limited only to expanding the idea of compatibility to include whether a particular hypothesis gives aid and comfort to nontheists or seems antecedently less probable from a theistic point of view. Sometimes these simple strategies can uncover incompatibilities, to be sure. But for the vast majority of hypotheses, it is just not possible to establish their religious acceptability in these ways. Judged in those ways, most theories would turn out to be neutral since they omit examining the religious core of the theory’s assumed metaphysics.
Gregory:
By contrast, the view I am advocating sees the religious character of the core belief of every metaphysic as the crucial element missing from the prevailing views of how religious belief impacts scientific theory formation. It is this which is the most deeply pervasive feature of the religion-science relation, and the key to understanding the Scriptural teaching about all truth depending on having the right God. Thus the most important test for the compatibility of a scientific theory and belief in God is whether the theory presupposes a reductionist or nonreductionist metaphysics. Any theory giving a reductionist account of its subject matter or postulating entities with a reductionistically conceived nature will show itself to be incompatible with Christian faith at the level of its deepest (religious) presuppositions.
Kerry:
For example, suppose we ask whether atomic theory is religiously acceptable for a Christian. The question as to whether or not such a hypothesis is compatible with belief in the God of Scripture cannot be answered simply by finding no prima facie logical inconsistency between them, by noting that it has given aid and comfort to materialists, or by pondering whether it is antecedently more probable from a theistic point of view that God would have created the world that way. We must also ask whether any particular proposed concept of an atom is reductionist.
Gregory:
On the view I am defending here, a conflict with Christian faith does exist if the nature of an atom is taken to be that of an exclusively physical entity (as Albert Einstein held), a fiction useful for predicting exclusively sensory phenomena which alone are real (as Ernst Mach held), or to be physical energy formed by eternal mathematical laws (as Werner Heisenberg held). Why are these incompatible with belief in God? Because each of these concepts of an atom either explicitly asserts or can only be defended by arguing that certain aspects are to be taken as the essential nature of an atom because they are nondependent.
Kerry:
Einstein accepted a metaphysics that regarded all reality outside the human mind as solely physical and nondependent; Mach accepted a phenomenalist metaphysics of reality as exclusively sensory and all there is; and Heisenberg accepted a view of mathematical forms and laws which he explicitly admitted to be a piece of “Pythagorean religion” since it made those forms and laws nondependent and self-existent. This does not, of course, mean that Christians must reject atomic theory entirely; it does mean that only a nonreductionist version of that theory will be acceptable.
Gregory:
In summary, I am arguing here that there is a conflict between the biblical doctrine of creation and any metaphysical theory that ascribes, or any scientific theory that assumes, metaphysical primacy to any aspect of creation over any other. If everything other than God depends on God, then all reductionist views of reality are ruled out. Thus the compatibility of a scientific theory with Christian belief in the God of Scripture importantly depends on the theory’s metaphysical assumptions about the nature of the entities it both explains and postulates. In this way the very concepts a theory employs either reflect a belief in the dependence on God of everything other than God (so that reduction is ruled out), or they reflect a belief that some aspect of creation is what everything else reduces to and thus depends on. The second option, in the Christian view, amounts to a form of idolatry.
Kerry:
6. AN OBJECTION ANSWERED
There are many objections that can be raised to this interpretation of the general relation of religious belief to theories, but here I’ll answer a prominent one. It may be asked, if ascribing metaphysical nondependence or self-existence to any aspect of creation is unacceptable from a Christian position, why should ascribing metaphysical priority to any aspect(s) of creation be equally unacceptable? Why should a theory be ruled out if it holds that creatures are, say, essentially substantial forms, or form and matter? Is not such a theory a genuine Christian option so long as it adds that any kind(s) of properties and laws assigned metaphysical priority over other kinds still depend, in turn, on God?
Gregory:
First, the strategy of accepting a metaphysics which ascribes priority to one or two of the aspects of creation, with the proviso that those aspects in turn depend on God, cannot fail to result in a theory of reality for which belief in God makes no substantive difference at all. Belief in God is a fifth wheel so far as the content of any such theory is concerned, since the content is exactly the same for the believer and the atheist. In this way the content of the theory and its explanatory power are neutral with respect to the belief in God appended to it. Thus belief in God is rendered irrelevant to the theory in precisely the way we have noticed Scripture forbids.
Kerry:
For example: the form/matter metaphysics of Aquinas does not explain the nature of creatures or the relations of the sciences any differently for having appended belief in God to them. Certain concepts within the theories are, to be sure, tailored by those holding such a view so as to comport more closely with their theism. But that does not alter or increase the explanatory power of the theories they adapted, despite the fact that they sometimes try to introduce God into the theory as an explanatory principle. This turns out to be little more than claiming that some notorious problem the theory cannot explain —mind/body interaction, for example— is somehow due to God. But this merely makes God an asylum for ignorance, since it can then never explain just how God does whatever is supposed to solve the problem.
Gregory:
Second, such a metaphysics directly contradict the Scriptural teaching, for example in Colossians 1:15-17 and Hebrews 1:3 that all things are brought into existence, sustained and held together by Jesus Christ; all created reality directly depends on Him, and not on any creature.
Kerry:
So my answer follows from the conjunction of the Scriptural teachings of creation and that having the true God makes a difference for all truth and knowledge. Together they rule out theories that reduce creation to any of its aspects, since such reductions can be defended only either by outright replacing God by the aspect(s) ascribed priority, or by making the aspect(s) the real explainers in the theory such that the theory’s explanations are the same whether belief in God is appended to it or not.
Gregory:
The call here for scientific theories to be reinterpreted on the basis of a nonreductionist metaphysics is not a call in the abstract for a project yet to be begun. For although it remains largely unknown to the majority of theologians, philosophers, and scientists in North America, this project has been given a brilliant elaboration in the work of the Reformed, Neo-Calvinist philosopher, Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977). Dooyeweerd developed a completely nonreductionist metaphysics, and also elaborated in some detail the differences such a metaphysics makes for a number of natural and social sciences.
We end there for this episode. Give it some thought, and as always, we’d love to hear your comments or questions.
