In the End God Is Impossible to Know Empirically or Scientifically
Part 5 in a 5-part series on how the 17th- and 18th-century intellectual movement known as the ‘Enlightenment’ radically changed Christianity
Part 1: Discovering and Defining God Through the “Machine” of Nature
Part 2: Newton’s God as First Cause and Physical Force Behind Nature
Part 3: The Non-Interactive, Non-Intervening, Scientifically Provable God
Part 4: Science Can’t Reveal Everything, But Motion Doesn’t Need God
Part 5: (this post) In the End God Is Impossible to Know Empirically or Scientifically
Put in a general way, there was an alternate strand of thinking within the Enlightenment that cast doubt on the ability of the intellect to achieve any level of certainty. In such a view, it is pointless to try to deduce God’s existence from nature, because our knowledge of the universe is quite narrow and incomplete. We ultimately realize that we cannot understand the natural laws we think we are observing. In some ways, the seeming futility of seeking empirical evidence for the mathematical observations concerning quantum physics has borne this out.
Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–76) argued that we could never achieve true objectivity because the human mind imposes its own order on the chaotic mass of sensory data. Our knowledge is necessarily subjective because it is shaped and determined by the particular ways in which the human brain and senses operate in the context of the material world. Under these circumstances, the experiments and observations of science are certainly inadequate to tell us anything about God. Hume was not well received during his lifetime.
In his 1781 book Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft), German philosopher Emmanuel Kant (1724–1804) agrees with Hume that our understanding of the natural world is deeply conditioned by the structures of own minds, and that it is impossible to achieve any empirical knowledge of the reality we call God. He also agreed that it was natural for human beings to have thoughts exceeding the grasp of their minds. Kant himself had no time for the religious rituals and symbols that make faith viable.
But, more than a century after the fact, the empiricist theology of the Enlightenment was finally making its way from the small coterie of intellectual elites who had originally entertained it into the broader popular consciousness, untroubled by any reasoned critiques from the likes of Hume or Kant. English clergyman William Paley (1743–1805), Archdeacon of Carlisle (an archdeacon assists and is delegated responsibility by a bishop) wrote a book entitled Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity collected from the Appearances of Nature. Published in 1802, it argued in favor of deducing the existence of God from examining the natural world and was an instant success.
Natural Theology is perhaps best known for including the watchmaker analogy. Paley argued that if a pocket watch is found in a wasteland, it is most reasonable to assume that it had been made by a watchmaker, and not by natural forces; therefore, when observing the intricacies of nature, it is most reasonable to assume the necessity of a creator.
This is the same argument from design seen as irrefutable by creationists today, even though it represents the projection of human thinking and assumptions onto what is observed. For Paley, the universe was not merely analogous to a machine, it was a machine, one that had to have been contrived and built by an intelligent designer, with no change or development since. God created every species of plant and animal in its present form, just as described in Genesis. This view was accepted as normative by leading scientists for the next fifty years. But, by the time Natural Theology was released and was being consumed by the public, the intellectual class had already begun to rebel against Enlightenment rationalism.
Check out the ARCHIVE of Faith Shifter posts.
The Enlightenment: Over but Not Over
A new artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement originating in Europe is discernible toward the end of the eighteenth century. Later known as Romanticism, it was in part a reaction to the aristocratic social and political norms of the Enlightenment, to the scientific rationalization of nature, and to the depredations of an industrializing, urbanizing world. Romanticism emphasized intense emotions, especially those connected with solitary experiences of nature, powerful and untamed. These were seen as authentic human experiences and sources of artistic inspiration. Expression depended more on the inspiration and imagination of the artist than on adherence to preconceived classical forms. The Romantic era saw a revival of medievalism in elements of narrative, art, and architecture.
If reflection and expression concerning the divine had shifted from learned clergy to natural philosophers during the early part of the modern era, it shifted to poets during the Romantic period. William Blake endeavored to call people back to values lost during an age that sought to master and control all of reality, exemplified in a self-emptying, humanity-joining Jesus rather than the remote God of the oppressive aristocracy. William Wordsworth wrote of a Spirit in nature that could be received and experienced within a heart of passive watchfulness. Percy Bysshe Shelley expressed a sense of this spirit as a kind of power integral to nature itself. John Keats found poetic insight within the mysteries and uncertainties of unknowing. Without using religious language, these poets were reviving a mystical form of spirituality.
Lutheran theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) was greatly influenced by Romanticism. His notion of the human being as the ultimate object of religion unfortunately negates the quest for connection with something that transcends the individual self; however, his ideas do turn the focus of religion in the right direction. He argued that the journey toward God does not begin with an outward analysis of the cosmos, however glorious and majestic, but in the depths of the human psyche, ending with a dependence on life as something received as-is.
With the Romantic era, some more traditional attitudes that seemed embedded within human nature were reemerging. The idea of immanent Spirit would return to compete with that of the distant, Newtonian God. But even as the pendulum swung from hyper-rationalism back toward an emphasis on the sensual, spontaneous, emotional aspects of human nature for artists, writers, and thinkers, the effects of the Enlightenment still had yet to have their full impact on the thinking of ordinary people. Just as an Enlightenment worldview was originally the purview of a small group of elites, so too in its beginning was a Romantic one. And yet still to come was a return to the rationalism and classicist ideals of the Modern period to follow.
The developmental processes of the modern era have fundamentally changed every aspect of the human world. Elites of Western Europe adaptively altered their religion, their methods of education, their cultures, and the social, political, and economic structures of their societies. Religious movements yet to come would bring basic assumptions of the Enlightenment into the mainstream and make them essential to the dominant Western European / American outlook. Christianity would never be the same.