"How would the universe look like according to you if it was not created by God?” We address this question to a religious theist. His surprising reply leads to a very interesting train of thought.
A universe without God
According to its own colophon, ForumC is a Dutch Christian forum for religion, science and society, aiming at "connecting the Christian faith with the big questions that arise within science and society". One of its initiatives is the Dutch website Geloof en wetenschap (= ‘Religion and science’) [1], offering news, opinions, background information and personal stories about the relation between science and religion.
Some time ago, in a discussion following my opinion piece A Case for Naturalism on this Dutch internet forum [2], I raised the question: “How would the universe look like according to you if it was not created by God but originated in a completely natural way?” [3] The reply I received was very instructive as to the point I want to raise:
“Huh? Why do you think this question is actually answerable at all for a theist? If the universe would not have been created by God, then it wouldn’t exist. This question sounds like: “You are now listening to a splendid performance of Schubert. Now, just imagine that the singer you hear singing does not exist: in which way would this song you now hear be ‘different’? Such a question is grammatically correct, but utterly absurd.” [4]
Conflict between worldviews
Why is this reply so instructive? Because it is indicative for a crucial and irreconcilable divide in the ‘science and religion’ debate. What is a bona fide scientific hypothesis from the perspective of the atheist naturalist, is brushed aside by the religious theist as an illegitimate, ill-defined question – grammatically correct, but utterly senseless. This divide in perspective makes clear that what is at stake here is not a clash between science and religion, but between two mutually exclusive worldviews: philosophical naturalism and theism.
Philosophical naturalism
The philosophical naturalist does not a priori rule out the possibility of a supernatural Creator. When the philosophical naturalist rejects the hypothesis of a supernatural Creator as an explanation of reality in favour of a naturalist explanation, then this is solely because he or she a posteriori came to the conclusion that there is a complete lack of evidence for this hypothesis. From a scientific point of view, the naturalist argues, we cannot conclusively prove or disprove that the universe was created by an all powerful, supernatural god. But instead of simply complying with an agnostic conclusion (“We really don’t know”), the naturalist goes one step further and says: since we have no evidence whatsoever to believe that the universe was created by an all powerful, supernatural god, there is no reason to start advocating such a train of thought, not in the least because we now have much better naturalistic alternatives. On the other hand, the religious theist is not even willing to consider this train of thought, not because after careful consideration it has been found to carry not enough weight as a scientific hypothesis, but because the question itself does not make any sense whatsoever.
Beyond the stalemate
This seems to be an unbridgeable gap. However, there is a very interesting exception to the theist position outlined above: Guy Consolmagno (°1952), Jesuit, astronomer, former professor at MIT and Harvard, and since September 2015 the director of the Vatican Observatory. In his book God’s Mechanics, he seems to have no problem in recognising the validity and self-consistency of non-theistic and atheistic explanations of the universe. [5] According to Consolmagno, what distinguishes them from a theistic stance towards the universe is the addition of God as Creator as an axiom (which is, by definition, independent of other axioms). In other words, Guy Consolmagno sees no problem in “putting the rabbit in the hat”. On the contrary, he explicitly shows where and how he does it:
“Only when you assume a designer God in the first place does the evidence of design “proving” His existence leap out at you. Yes, the order in the universe can be seen as consistent with the assumption of an “intelligent designer”; it’s a fine consistency argument. But it proves nothing—atheists can also come up with their own self-consistent explanations with no place for a designer [...] in any event, choosing to believe or not believe in the God axiom comes first, before you even start to do the science.” [6]
An intriguing question
A very interesting train of thought that leads to an intriguing question: does Consolmagno’s approach - adding God as Creator explicitly as a separate axiom, not related to any observable feature of the universe - allow for treating theism and philosophical naturalism as two equivalent, self-consistent views of reality? Or is this a bridge too far?
Notes
This blog post was originally published on April 14, 2016 at:
[1] This Dutch internet forum www.geloofenwetenschap.nl on science and religion was made possible by a subsidy of the Templeton World Charity Foundation for the project ‘Strengthening the Science-Religion Dialogue in the Netherlands’. Nevertheless, ForumC states explicitly that the published opinions are the sole responsibility of the authors and that these opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Templeton World Charity Foundation nor those of ForumC.
[2] Dutch title: Een pleidooi voor naturalisme (24 August 2015),http://www.geloofenwetenschap.nl/index.php/component/k2/item/627 , originally published in English as a blog post A Case for Naturalism,https://blog.associatie.kuleuven.be/alexandervanbiezen/a-case-for-naturalism/
[3] See: Comment (9853) by Alexander van Biezen on 2 September 2015, 18h21 (original text in Dutch): “Hoe zou volgens jou het heelal er uitzien als dit niet door God was geschapen maar op een volledig natuurlijke manier was ontstaan?”
[4] My translation of comment (9881) on 3 September 2015, 08h47 (original text in Dutch):
“Huh? Waarom denk je dat die vraag überhaupt beantwoordbaar is voor een theïst? Als het heelal niet door God was geschapen, dan was het er niet. Deze vraag klinkt als: “Je zit nu te luisteren naar een prachtige uitvoering van Schubert. Stel je nu eens voor dat de zanger die je nu hoort zingen er niet was: op welke manier zou dit lied dat je nu hoort dan ‘anders’ zijn?”. Zo’n vraag is grammaticaal correct, maar volstrekt absurd.”
[5] See Consolmagno, G., God’s Mechanics. How Scientists and Engineers Make Sense of Religion, San Francisco, Wiley, Kindle Edition, 2008, p.13.
[6] Ibid., p.13-14. You can compare this with the role of axioms in geometry. When you choose to replace in geometry the so-called parallel postulate – Euclid’s fifth axiom – by another axiom, you will get non-Euclidean geometries which are internally just as consistent as Euclidean geometry.
