Ward, Keith;
Pascal's Fire: Scientific Faith and Religious Understanding
Oneworld 2006, Viva 2007 270 pages
ISBN 1851684468
topics: | philosophy | religion | history | science
Keith Ward discusses some of the conflicts between religion (Christianity) and science (he teaches divinity at Gresham College London). Writing cogently and readably, he shows how many stalwarts of modern science were profoundly religious - his epynomous Pascal, and especially, Newton. Particularly illuminating is Newton's inability to explain certain anomalies and his recourse to God who at regular intervals would act to ensure that planets don't fall out of their orbits; this was because the complexity of the multi-body system that is the solar system was too complex to solve. This "God Hypothesis" was later rejected by Laplace, who felt he had resolved the analysis. The challenge to religion started with the outside world, but after Darwin, new challenges emerged re: the origins of man in the sphere of evolution. However, the attempt to re-cast religion in the light of present scientific theories raises questions about the fundamental validity of the God theory that has to be reformulated keeping some kind of a core notion intact while giving up on some of the contradictions. - AM
God was declared dead in 1883 by Friedrich Nietzsche. God may have been killed by many things, but a major suspect was science. 1 In many traditional relig views, human beings are the most important things in the universe, and the whole of nature is created to serve humans. After Galileo, that view was turned completely on its head. The legend has grown up that Galileo was the first and decisive battle between science and religion. Galileo certainly won the battle, so some popular histories of sci depict the story as the beginning of the death of God and the triumph of materialism. 8 Copernicus, Polish catholic: On the revelations of the heavenly spheres, 1543, the year of his death. dedicated to Pope Paul III, carrying an endorsement by the local cardinal. Little public reaction.
However, in 1616, [60 years later] consultants to the Congregation of the
Holy Office [the Inquisition] declared that the heliocentric hypothesis was
formally heretical.
When Galileo later re-affirmed the Copernican hypothesis in a very combative
way, an affronted scientific establishment took action. G was convicted in
1633 and placed under house arrest, where he remained till his death nine
years later.
The conflict however, was not so much between Christian faith and the
Copernican view that the earth circles the sun, as between established
Aristotelian science and the 'new science' of close observation and
experiment that was threatening the old scientific elite. 9
The Catholic Church assoc itself firmly with the authority of Aristotle, who
was taken to be mastere of all sci (except theology, where he needed to be
corrected by Thomas Aquinas, the 'angelic doctor'). Aristotle's concepts of
substance and accident, form and matter, act and potency had been used in
framing doctrines like that of transubstantiation and ideas of God. His
system of the four types of causality: material, formal, efficient, and
final, was accepted as the proper framework for natural science. 9
Note: Aristotle himself was a major revision of the Bible - Archbishop of
Paris prohibited Aristotle in the 13th c. 10
TRANSUBSTANTIATION: the Roman Catholic doctrine that the whole substance of
the bread and the wine changes into the substance of the body and
blood of Christ when consecrated in the Eucharist
see also: Douglas Adams on Gallileo and the Vatican
what the Vatican said to Gallileo was, “We don't dispute your
readings, we just dispute the explanation you put on
them. It's all very well for you to say that the planets sort
of do that as they go round and it is as if we were a planet
and those planets were all going round the sun; it's alright
to say it's as if that were happening, but you're not allowed
to say that's what is happening, because we have a total
lockhold on universal truth and also it simply strains our
personal credulity”.
One move to reconcile science is to say that statements in the Bible are not literal, but metaphorical. The Church has long been used to interpreting Biblical statements abt God metaphorically. God does not literally "trample on the nations" (Habakkuk 3:12). ... Saying that the universe was created in six days, for instance, had usually been taken metaphorically. 11 Cardinal Bellarmine, writing in 1616 to Galileo's friend Foscarini, saw this possibility: I say that if a real proof be found that the sun is fixed and does not revolve around the earth, but the earth around the sun, then it will be necessary, very carefully, to proceed to the explanation of passages of Scripture which appear to be contrary, and we should rather say that we have misunderstood these than pronounce that to be false which is demonstrated. 11
Aquinas: everything in creation ultimately existed 'for the sake of man' 13 Are we the only form of "intelligent life" in the universe? If so, Though phys not in centre, we may still be the most "advanced" species, so we still remain at the center of God's love. As the physicist Enrico Fermi asked, "Why aren't the aliens here?" Since some stars are billions of years old, some other intelligent forms may have evolved elsewhere long before us... 14 * Martin Rees: Our cosmic habitat, Princeton U Press, 2001 15 Far future: In a std picture of the very far future, the universe wd be a dilute and ever-diminishing soup of extremely low-energy photons, neutrinos, and gravitons moving virtually freely thru a slowly expanding space. 15 Modern sci seems to sugg that the existence of humans is a freakish accident. 17 But probab of humans, based on the God premise, is higher than that based on the sci premise. 18 Was it really worth billions of years of cosmic evolution just to produce Lalu Yadav? 19 [(orig.) was Tony Blair] Biggest objection to God: why "bad" things happen? This is why some scientists will accept the existence of a super-intelligence, but remain sceptical abt whether it is good or benevolent. 20
Newtonian revolution was to see nature as the intelligible product of one rational and elegant cosmic mind. This later gave rise to the idea of nature as an impersonal machine, whose laws are absolute, fixed, and all-explaining. For N however, the laws of nature demonstrate the presence and power of one supreme God of immense wisdom, intelligence, and spiritual purpose. For N, science is a spiritual enterprise, seeking greater understanding of the wisdom of God. 24
Influenced by Newton, believed that all events have a suff and determining cause, i.e., given its antecedent physical state and the laws of nature, each event happens by necessity; there is no alternative to it, and it has to be just what it is. [LAW OF PHYSICAL DETERMINISM] Then how can there be moral freedom / autonomy? Kant himself was forced into the desperate expedient of saying that I am morally free ion the noumenal world (the world of things as they really are, which I can never know by the senses or by obsvn), whereas I am wholly determined in the phenomenal world (the world of the senses and of physical science). 28 Many philosophers are, like Kant, 'compatibilists' -- they think we must believe in both physical determinism as well as freewill. 29 Ridley, Matt, Genome 1999: There is no such thing as evolutionary progress... The black-smoker bacterium [that inhabits sulphurous vents in the Atlantic seabed] is arguably more highly evolved than the bank clerk (p.25) Kant felt that to be morally responsible, I must be able to do what is right or not do it. Nothing must determine my choice between those alternative paths except my own decision. While my decision can be _influenced by many factors, I am free to do something not determined by any past event or law of nature. [RADICAL FREEDOM: action undetermined by any prior physical cause.] 29 Kant: people were responsible even for the places and circs in which they were born. Once born, they were determined by laws - but they had freely chosen the circs of their birth. 29
Newton himself did not believe in determinism. He believed that God would have to act in the universe at rare intervals to keep the planets in stable orbits around the sun. Otherwise, they would after a very long period of time fall out of their orbits into the sun. It is this hypothesis that Laplace referred to when he is alleged to have told Napoleon: I have no need of that hypothesis. Laplace had refined the Newtonian calculus so that more precisely formulated equations of motion could dispense with the need for divine intervention. Thereby he got rid of what the Cambridge mathematician A.C. Coulson called the "God of the gaps" [Coulson: Science and Christian Belief, 1958] It was partially Laplace's success in showing that such a God was not needed that gave impetus to the hypothesis of physical determinism. 30
The Perimeter of Ignorance : A boundary where scientists face a choice: invoke a deity or continue the quest for knowledge From Natural History magazine, Nov 2005 Newton's law of gravity enables you to calculate the force of attraction between any two objects. If you introduce a third object, then each one attracts the other two, and the orbits they trace become much harder to compute. Add another object, and another, and another, and soon you have the planets in our solar system. Earth and the Sun pull on each other, but Jupiter also pulls on Earth, Saturn pulls on Earth, Mars pulls on Earth, Jupiter pulls on Saturn, Saturn pulls on Mars, and on and on. Newton feared that all this pulling would render the orbits in the solar system unstable. His equations indicated that the planets should long ago have either fallen into the Sun or flown the coop—leaving the Sun, in either case, devoid of planets. Yet the solar system, as well as the larger cosmos, appeared to be the very model of order and durability. So Newton, in his greatest work, the Principia, concludes that God must occasionally step in and make things right: The six primary Planets are revolv'd about the Sun, in circles concentric with the Sun, and with motions directed towards the same parts, and almost in the same plane. . . . But it is not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions. . . . This most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets, and Comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. And lest the systems of the fixed Stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other mutually, he hath placed those Systems at immense distances from one another. [Principia, General Scholium, end of Book 3. p.1157 in Hawking, [hawking-2003-on-shoulders-of|Shoulder of Giants, also, wikisource.] In the Principia, Newton distinguishes between hypotheses and experimental philosophy, and declares, "Hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy." What he wants is data, "inferr'd from the phenomena." But in the absence of data, at the border between what he could explain and what he could only honor—the causes he could identify and those he could not—Newton rapturously invokes God: Eternal and Infinite, Omnipotent and Omniscient; . . . he governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done. . . . We know him only by his most wise and excellent contrivances of things, and final causes; we admire him for his perfections; but we reverence and adore him on account of his dominion. A century later, the French astronomer and mathematician Pierre-Simon de Laplace confronted Newton's dilemma of unstable orbits head-on. Rather than view the mysterious stability of the solar system as the unknowable work of God, Laplace declared it a scientific challenge. In his multipart masterpiece, Mecanique Celeste, the first volume of which appeared in 1798, Laplace demonstrates that the solar system is stable over periods of time longer than Newton could predict. To do so, Laplace pioneered a new kind of mathematics called perturbation theory, which enabled him to examine the cumulative effects of many small forces. According to an oft-repeated but probably embellished account, when Laplace gave a copy of Mecanique Celeste to his physics-literate friend Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon asked him what role God played in the construction and regulation of the heavens. "Sire," Laplace replied, "I have no need of that hypothesis."
God is still the author of the laws of nature, though even God is no longer allowed to act in ways that "break" the laws. Newton never accepted that the laws are absolute in this way. Though we can write eqns to descr these laws, in what sense do such laws "exist" even before physical objects exist? Or what makes these laws applicable to all objects in space, without exception? Newton's answer: The laws exist in the mind of God even before creation. God could compel planets to conform to such laws (or not, as God chose). But if God is removed, the laws of nature and the apparently necessary conformity of physical objects to them becomes highly improbable and inexplicable. 30 [IDEA: Same problem remains with any theory - if X is the ultimate explanation, we can always ask, "why X"? ] Newton found it difficult to comprehend the force of gravity, though he had virtually discovered it: That one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum without the mediation of anything else ... is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man, who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty for thinking, can ever fall into. [Principia Mathematica tr Cohen / Whitman p. 943] 31 Newton wrote extensively on Hermetic philosophy and alchemy, and a long and boring commentary on the prophecies in the Book of Daniel. 32 Westfall: Never at Rest: A biog of Isaac N 1980, Mordechai Feingold: The Newtonian moment (beautifully produced descripn of his cultural context).
25 parameters such that values must fall within some range for life to exist. [Hugh Ross, Creator and Cosmos, Navpress, 1993] p. 37 Biggest challenge from modern sci to religion is evolution. But evoln can with equal plausibility be seen as a supremely elegant process directed to goals of intrinsic value. 49 Evolutionary theory, with less sci evidence, existed well before Darwin - e.g. his grandfather Erasmus Darwin, 1801: All nature exists in a state of perpetual improvement ... the world may still be said to be in its infancy, and continue to improve for ever and ever'. [Zoonomia, Johnson, 1801, v.2, p. 318) 50 Common belief in many traditional religions: Age of innocence, without suffering or death - degraded into present corrupt state. Evolutionary theory reverses this judgment. 53 [Does it? What is "suffering" - has it reduced? Is the bacterium not a "happier" organism? ] Advances in morality in some societies : e.g. in attitudes to women, slaves, and animals. 53 [Are these advances?]
Pascal's Wager applies decision theory to the belief in God. The basic argument is that though the existence of God cannot be determined through reason, a person should "wager" as though God exists, because living thus, he has everything to gain, and should God not exist, he has not much to lose. Before Pascal's death at age 39, he was working on a text defending Christian beliefs. This was published later as Pensees (lit. "thoughts), and the wager appears as Article 233 in Pensees. Earlier, he laments man's uncertain position w.r.t. God: If I saw no signs of a divinity, I would fix myself in denial. If I saw everywhere the marks of a Creator, I would repose peacefully in faith. But seeing too much to deny Him, and too little to assure me, I am in a pitiful state, and I would wish a hundred times that if a God sustains nature it would reveal Him without ambiguity.[229] then he measures the outcomes of believing in the two sides of this uncertainty : Endeavour then to convince yourself, not by increase of proofs of God, but by the abatement of your passions. You would like to attain faith, and do not know the way; you would like to cure yourself of unbelief, and ask the remedy for it. Learn of those who have been bound like you, and who now stake all their possessions. These are people who know the way which you would follow, and who are cured of an ill of which you would be cured. Follow the way by which they began; by acting as if they believed, bless yourself with holy water, have Masses said, and so on; by a simple and natural process this will make you believe, and will dull you—will quiet your proudly critical intellect... Now, what harm will befall you in taking this side? You will be faithful, honest, humble, grateful, generous, a sincere friend, truthful. Certainly you will not have those poisonous pleasures, glory and luxury; but will you not have others? I will tell you that you will thereby gain in this life, and that, at each step you take on this road, you will see so great certainty of gain, so much nothingness in what you risk, that you will at last recognize that you have wagered for something certain and infinite, for which you have given nothing. [233] Variations of this argument may be found in other religious philosophies, such as Islam (al-Juwayni), and Hinduism (Vararuchi). Blaise Pascal, _Pensees_, 1660, tr W. F. Trotter