Science Can’t Reveal Everything, But Motion Doesn't Need God
Part 4 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: (this post) Science Can’t Reveal Everything, But Motion Doesn’t Need God
Some contemporaries of the Enlightenment questioned the idea that there is only one kind of truth and only one method of arriving at it. One of them was Gianbattista Vico (1668–1744), a professor of rhetoric at the University of Naples. On the one hand, the scientific method requires the observer to remain detached. An experiment must be replicable in every time and place, and not dependent on historical context. On the other hand, Vico observed that when we encounter people, societies, symbols, cultures, or behaviors that are distant or unfamiliar, we tend to project what we believe onto them, judging them according to our own culturally conditioned values and presuppositions.
Science is brilliant at dealing with material objects, but much less useful when applied to human societies, to the subjective conscious experiences of being human, or to the modes of expression by which we signify them. Science is not competent to assess religion or the arts—culturally mediated pursuits that when taken seriously are psychologically deep and quintessentially human. Karen Armstrong puts it this way in The Case for God:
Where science is concerned with facts, religious truth is symbolic and its symbols will vary according to context; they will change as society changes, and the reason for these changes must be understood. Like the arts, religion is transformative. Where the scientist is supposed to remain detached from the object of his investigation, a religious person must be changed by the encounter with the symbols of his or her faith.[1]
The Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer Jean-Jacque Rousseau (1712–78) viewed the scientific revolution critically, noting that most people were left behind, living as they were in a different intellectual world. He felt that a science-only view of reality obscures the human capacity for compassion and empathy, and people should be as educated in these through disciplined action as they are in the theoretical sciences. Rousseau thought young people should be taught to cultivate compassion, not dominate others, and be empty of self-love (amour propre), in a manner reminiscent of biblical kenosis, or Christlike self-emptying. People should learn to listen to the heart, not as representing emotion, but as a place of silent waiting, not unlike the Greek hesychía. This more timid, innate voice can correct the impulse toward reasoning away and over-controlling our emotions and our care for others and the world.
For more on the spirituality of hesychía see Christianity Was a Religion of Silent Meditation from the Start.
Rousseau was uninterested in the god of Christianity as he knew it. He sought that which transcends Christian doctrine, discovered through self-emptying, compassion, and wonder at the majesty of the universe. Perhaps what he sought was God, after all.
Enlightenment dissidents included the French philosopher, art critic, and writer Denis Diderot (1713–84). Diderot was very religious as a young man, having received a Jesuit education. Later, as a Deist, he sought rational evidence for God from Descartes and Newton to combat atheism. In the end, though he still claimed belief in God, he confessed that he saw no real use for God. Diderot is best known as the editor of the Encyclopédie, serially published between 1751 and 1772, a famous representation of Enlightenment thinking.
In 1770, with Diderot’s help, German-French philosopher Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d’Holbach (1723–89) anonymously published The System of Nature (Système de la Nature), which describes the universe in terms of philosophical materialism: the mind is produced by the brain, there is no consciousness without a living body, deterministic laws govern the world, free will is an illusion, there are no ultimate purposes, what happens must, and most notoriously, there is no God. For d’Holbach, the likes of Descartes, Newton, and Clarke, who had all tried to save God, were just atheists in disguise. Newton’s dominatio was a deified despot, anthropomorphized in the image of a powerful man.
For an explanation of Newton’s dominatio see Newton’s God as First Cause and Force Behind Nature.
The French Revolution of 1789–99 seemed to embody Enlightenment principles with its call for liberty, equality, and fraternity, and the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Of course, it also included the September Massacres, the Reign of Terror, and a general bloodbath over the suppression of dissidence. Of note concerning Christian history was the brief, unprecedented period in 1793–4 when Jacques Hébert established a state-sponsored atheistic religion known as the Cult of Reason, accompanied by the abolition of the Catholic mass and the ransacking of churches. After Hébert went to the guillotine, the Cult of Reason was superseded by the Deistically-oriented Cult of the Supreme Being established by Robespierre. In 1802, Napoleon officially abolished both.
Dissident thinkers during the Enlightenment intuited that the presence of motion in the universe does not necessitate a deity. On that point, they were right, of course. Gravitational and electromagnetic forces set large bodies in motion while the weak and strong nuclear forces ensure that the quantum world is constantly in motion.
Check out the ARCHIVE of Faith Shifter posts.
Unfortunately, some of these thinkers tended to support their ideas with incorrect notions about the innate dynamism, momentum, or even intelligence of matter. Among them were the first true atheists. Deists may have railed against them, but ironically, atheism is the logical conclusion of Deism when there is finally found to be no god mechanically setting the universe in motion.
The physical world turns out not to have been the true domain of God, after all. This suggests that Augustine and other ancients were onto something when they claimed that while the glory of God might be found in nature, God cannot be found there. Understanding God as metaphorically personifying the Unity of all Being, to include the physical universe as experienced by human beings—the I AM THAT I AM—can help lead us to the transcendent. The true realm of the I AM is the vast, inner cosmos of the human psyche where our sense of being resides (we are thus made in the image of God). This realm is both individual and collective, accessed individually through Paul’s ‘inner person’ by contemplative practice and prayer, and collectively through the liturgies, rituals, and forms of expression that we share.
In the gospels, Jesus goes aside to engage in an individual practice of prayer. His disciples wonder what he is doing and ask him to teach them. Jesus is at pains to explain his contemplative procedure. Its gospel description has long been turned into a lifeless model disconnected from ongoing individual practice, a liturgical touchpoint reciting a chain of anodyne supplications bookended by obsequious acknowledgments of God. For anyone disciplined by regular meditation practice, there is more there than meets the eye; the ‘Lord’s prayer’ is essentially a Christlike, self-emptying, kenotic relinquishment of one’s false sense of control.
Next week’s post—the fifth in this five-part series—looks at philosophers who finally argued that science is inadequate to tell us anything about God, and that empirical knowledge of God is impossible. It also notes how the empiricist theology of the Enlightenment was entering popular consciousness as intellectual elites began reacting to and turning away from the norms of the Enlightenment era.
[1] Armstrong, Karen. The Case for God. New York: Random House, 2009, p. 218.