Calvinism and Science: Natural Enemies?
The more I meditate on God and science, the more I think it was no accident that not longer after I seriously started considering these issues I found myself increasingly dissatisfied with my Calvinistic leanings. Before that point, I was pretty convinced that a Reformed view was the only view that made sense intellectually. I thought it must be the case that God was in control of everything - the cosmos, life on planet earth, even my own will. Now I am convinced that view is theologically incoherent, for reasons I won't go into here. But what I didn't realize when my 'conversion' began was the strong role that my deeper understanding of science was playing in it.
One of the key ingredients in many aspects of the modern scientific understanding of reality is that true randomness plays a key role. In quantum mechanics, for instance, it is standardly thought that, even if all relevant factors are fully controlled for, absolute predictions about the behavior of quantum particles are still not possible. The best one can do is state how probable any possible outcome might be. A different kind of randomness is essential to evolutionary theory: genetic mutations (and perhaps even some aspects of selection) are essentially random. There is no way to predict what mutations will occur when.
Given this centrality of the concept of randomness - built into the very nature of reality and of the formation of new life forms - what are we to make of the extreme Calvinist conception of an omnicontrolling God? What are we to make of Calvinist author R.C. Sproul when he denies any chance in the cosmos, boldly stating that "a chance event would be totally outside the sovereign will of God...if there is one maverick molecule in the universe running around free of God's sovereignty, then there is no guarantee that any promise God has ever made will come to pass"? In order for Sproul to hold his position, he must deny any chance or randomness in the universe. He must not admit true randomness at the quantum level, denying the best science available to us. He also must not admit randomness in evolution (which he seems to deny more generally anyway).
My question is this: what makes Sproul and other Calvinists of his persuasion any different from Kens Ham and Hovind and their band of Youth Earth Creationists? Not much, I think. Both hold to a certain view of God that requires them to deny the best science in order to keep their beliefs in tact.
For these as well as many other reasons, I am becoming more and more convinced that taking science seriously as a Christian entails an open view of God. Science points us toward a God for whom randomness (or, to use a more philosophical term, contingency) is an essential ingredient in the process of creation.
posted by Lame and Blind @ 9:38 PM
11 comments
11 Comments:
This discussion reminds me a great deal of Umberto Eco's book "The Name of the Rose" where there is this mysterious thesis by Aristotle on humor which is guarded and suppressed. I have always thought the metaphor was apt--a 'fixed' theology with no wiggle room (we might call "wiggle room" humor or play or any number of similar terms)is not good theology at all.
As usual, on this particular topic I am a proponent of bad theology - that is, a stance which does not add up properly (but which I would insist must hold up somehow anyway if we're to take the claims of scripture seriously). I wouldn't bother sharing it except that you reminded me of the short story The Conversion of the Jews by Philip Roth, from his book Goodbye, Columbus, which always makes me happy and which may make you happy too.
In the story, Ozzie, a young Jewish boy attending Hebrew School, is quite upset by his rabbi's insistence that the notion that a baby could be made without intercourse is preposterous. Through a series of crazy events he ends up on the roof of his school and all are concerned Ozzie will jump. His argument to his teacher was that if God can do the incredibly hard thing of making light, wouldn't making a baby without intercourse be well within the realm of his abilities? The story ends with his coercing all present to say they believe in Jesus on threat of his plummeting to the street below.
I think about that story all the time when I think about this.
The problem with relying on the present state of the art is that it is always moving forward. *right now* we can only state probabilities for quantum events. There is nothing to say that this situation will remain forever.
A similar situation played out before Edwin Hubble discovered an expanding universe which was confirmed by measurements of cosmic background radiation decades later. At the time, many scientists refused to accept the idea of a big bang or non-static cosmos. It's almost taken for granted now.
The problem with using science this way is that it produces a "god of the gaps" approach to things - one which eventually has to patch things up every time a new discovery is made. This presents a problem for anyone arguing either side of the determinism/openness divide.
Ultimately, better suited tools than science are needed to answer such issues, though it may point at one thing or another as best it can. It is, after all, limited to the observable and testable.
Mike:
A God of the gaps is especially not what I am developing here. Randomness is a characteristic of reality; God is the author of reality; therefore, God is the author of randomness and we can legitimately ask how randomness reflects God's character.
Were I to claim that the randomness we observe is not really randomness, but that all apparent randomness is intimately controlled by God (with its true nature hidden from us), then that would be a god of the gaps.
Second, on the science question, the random nature of subatomic particles is very different from your Hubble example. The former is based upon experiments in which every known variable is tightly controlled for. It isn't a matter of more precise measurements. It is possible, in principle, that a new variable could be discovered that would allow precise predictions, but it would be a rather odd thing to happen since we have no idea what this variable might be (physics at this level involves unknowns, but they tend to be 'known unknowns.')
All that aside, it doesn't matter. Nothing I have said here depends upon true randomness existing at the quantum level (which is why this isn't a god of the gaps theory). The random nature of evolutionary meandering over the past couple of billion years is enough. Random mutation is not, mechanically speaking, truly random. There is a always a cause for it. But the fact that it varies so widely, so impersonally, and so purposelessly is enough to make us ask why a God who could have chose to design the world perfectly in six days chose to use evolution and over a billion years instead.
Brent, I think you miss the point here:
You accept randomness as a given. That's your gap. If it turns out that it's not really random at all, but determined by currently unknown variables, then your view of God changes radically with it. You admit yourself that evolution is not truly random but you appeal to aesthetics (impersonal and purposelessness) to state that it *is* random. At a quantum level this could play out in the development of a more complete model of matter which does away with uncertainty, though in a way we may not fathom currently.
Consider a chaotic system. The system is deterministic, yet *highly* dependent upon initial conditions. The outcomes may appear markedly different due to small variations of some control parameter and one may be tempted to call it random, but in fact, it's just chaotic and still deterministic.
In either event, basing your understanding of God on something as flighty as science is, I think, a mistake. Sure, understanding the Creator via the Creation is a very old idea and largely correct, in my opinion. The problem is that God is much bigger than to just be dropped into the either-or baskets of determinism vs. openness. (why accept to live in such a dichotomy in the first place?) Quantum physics and evolutionary theory are especially piss-poor tools to use for this. You've picked 2 ideas that in just a century have swung through major revisions of understanding and you're trying to base your understanding of an eternal Being on that? Forgive me if I think the endeavour is folly.
Regards,
Mike
Again, I'll point out that I am not 'basing' my understanding of God on science. I am basing it on the God revealed in the Bible and by Jesus. But I am considering how creation as revealed by science fits in with that picture.
And again, I am not hanging any hats on randomness here. Even if deterministic systems are devised for physics, the basic 'big picture' facts of physics and evolution do not change. It is still the case that evolution is an apparently random, incredibly wasteful and meandering way to grow and diversify life on the planet. It is still the case that reality appears to have a great deal of contingency and it is useful and edifying to consider how that fits in with the Christian view of God.
Forgive me if simply asserting God's bigness is not enough for me to abandon theological reflection and live with obviously conflicting ideas about who God is. IMHO, to fail to do such reflection would be irresponsible. And to be clear, I'm not trying to fit God into a small box called science. Rather, I am trying to fit our understand of the universe into the box called God.
Brent,
if you can't see that by saying that the 'big-picture' of things that doesn't change is that things are apparently random, that you have, indeed, accepted randomness, I'm not sure how this conversation can go forward.
Good luck in your musings,
Mike
If I didn't accept randomness (which, I reiterate, I think is undeniable in evolution) - that is, if I instead insisted that things were wholly deterministic and that every mutation and molecule was, contrary to what we observe, doing just as a divine being would have it do - would that not be a god of the gaps?
If your protest is simply that theories of science change and so we shouldn't think about their relation to theology, then, indeed, no conversation can go forward.
Brent, this is partially what I mean.
There is no fundamental difference between saying that God is deterministic/open because our current understanding is that evolution is chaotic(say)/random. Both claim to show an attribute of God based on a gap in human knowledge (i.e. God made randomness and allows it to work or God didn't make randomness and we don't know initial conditions sufficiently well). This is why both approaches fit a "god of the gaps" approach to the problem (i.e. He works in this region we don't understand which is what is meant by labeling something "random" in the physical sciences).
The problem with "random" is that there is the possibility that it doesn't exist and this is why science cannot say much about this question. There is no scientific method that can measure whether or not a jump in quanta is determined by some action by God or not. It would be bad science to claim science is measuring a non-physical quantity like this. It's no different than the ID folks trying to measure "complexity" or "design". Besides this philosophical difficulty, the history of science is replete with examples of "random processes" becoming determined and understood by later developments in the field. So there is another problem with laying so much stock in what evolutionary biologists "know" at any point in time.
Don't get me wrong. Like I said, science can be and is useful. I think, however, you put too much stock in its ability at present to say much about the openness/determinism question.
Best,
Mike
That is not 'god of the gaps,' properly speaking, but rather just reflecting on incomplete knowledge. This is not exceptional. It is in fact normal practice since our knowledge of any subject will likely never be fully complete. I still maintain it is useful and edifying to reflect on what we now know rather than waiting for some never to come day when we know everything there is to know. Again, since I am not directly basing claims about God's character on the science (but rather asking whether and how the science might line up with God's character), nothing crucial hinges on whether or not the science changes fifty years from now.
Overall, though, you are being unfair since you are making way too much out of what I have said here (and then claiming I am making too much out of it). All I said is that IF such randomness exists (and there is no reason to think it does not, currently), then those who hold to an omnicontrolling view of God must necessarily deny this randomness. In my view, any theology that gets itself into such a tight corner is highly speculate, as peter has pointed out above. Whatever the science turns out to be, it is always worth reflecting upon the IFs.
This topic of contingency in nature will come up frequently in future posts, so perhaps I'll better express myself then.
While I'm happy anytime someone wants to discredit Calvinism, the *ifs* you speak of are/were not as apparent in my reading. I will, however, leave it to you to properly interpret what you intended.
-Mike
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