I have to agree with @GJDS on this point !
As in so many areas, what interests me most is why Christians (or in this case, any theists) should be uncomfortable with divine causation behind CFT. There has to be an important principle involved.
The atheist, of course, is offended by the very idea of creation - but the theist must take it as axiomatic, or cease to be a theist. In fact, traditional theism has taught divine causation is behind not only the very beginning, but all things. As Paul says in Acts: “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man… He Himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.”
So the problem can’t be the principle of creation, but something else like a principle of God’s hiddenness in creation - that God has so made things that it is impossible to see his role. It’s not obvious to me that that is a well-grounded principle, for it is certainly a recent one, depending entirely on a particularly modern division of things into “natural”, meaning autonomous of God at any level discernable to humans; and “supernatural”, meaning unrelated to any physical process.
The principle of divine hiddenness runs up against a brick wall once one apparently finds the universe to be past-time-limited: physical causes run out, leaving only creation as an explanation. So one either has to admit that the “hidden God” principle is erroneous and abandon it, or look for hidden physical causes in something like a multiverse. Trying to keep both principles in operation at the same time leads to impossible tensions (not to say incoherence).
I agree that an atheist may be offended if the idea of God as creator (or any other role) is forced on him - I cannot agree that a scientist should be permitted to force his atheism onto science.
Theists as I understand it, accept that particular aspects of science are consistent with their belief, but acknowledge that science cannot prove God, as this contradicts our understanding of God, and would place science above God.
I think you may be identifying what I label a “faith cringe” from some theists. By this I mean some seem so enamoured with science, and especially ToE, they seem hesitant to say God has created everything, unless they insert something scientific in their confession - eg., God works through evolution, so it is ok, or God works through laws of science, so now it is ok. Otherwise we may appear ignorant of science to atheist?!
My view is that understanding the attributes of God through Christ is a full time effort, and science can point to some things, but the rest comes from God and His revelation.
I cannot get my mind around the “autonomous”. “natural” and “supernatural” so I will not comment further.
Are any Christians uncomfortable with divine causation behind CFT? I see a distinction here between the ‘fine-tuning’ of the initial laws of the universe as we know it, which is what it is, and the ‘fine-tuning’ of the universe by divine tweaking during the course of time. It is the second, in my opinion, that some Christians are uncomfortable with, but not the first.
Not all atheists are offended by the very idea of creation. Most accept the creation ex nihilo at the Big Bang at face value, and are simply agnostic about its cause. (Similarly, I think it not axiomatic that a theist must believe in a moment or period of creation at some time in the past. An entity outside time could design a universe with no beginning or end, or a cyclic timescale that simply recurs. But that’s not relevant here, of course.)
The first CFT argument is not usually well expressed. That the initial conditions of the universe were such that we are here to ponder them is a truism, but it does not follow that other conditions were possible, or impossible, or that that they didn’t actually occur, or that they did. All we know about is this one, and it resulted in us. It itself, I don’t think this supports or refutes the idea that it was ‘specially designed’.
Psst - the secret is that these concepts have very little intellectual content at all. One accepts them on faith, through the emotions.
Jon,
Whose word should I take? Oh, now that I think about it, it comes through an immeasurable consensus amongst scientists! Just as I get comfort from this, some-one yells, but GJDS you are a scientist. Heck, it starts again!!!
Actually, Hugh, it’s very relevant, because it helps explain why some theists make such a distinction between CFT and what they call “tweaking” in the first place. It basically has to do with not fully realising their own metaphysical and philosophical presuppositions, and where they arose historically.
Most notably, it seems to entail the idea that since creation is subject to time, then God created it in time, that is at the instant we call the Big Bang - and only at that time. Hence it is OK to find God’s handiwork in the initial conditions, but not otherwise.
And yet if God creates in eternity, there is absolutely no reason to make t^0 any more privileged by his activity than the rest of history. That idea really goes back to the deists and their concept of a clockwork universe that is cleverest if it runs automatically “by a perpetual motion” (to quote Leibniz against Newton), that God merely set in motion. (Though nowadays, unlike the original deism, some kind of “sustaining” of creation is attributed to God, but it’s really just seen as a power cord that doesn’t influence the mechanism - the world is a mains-electric rather than a clockwork timepiece. But it’s still intrinsically deistic, because God is effectively transcendent, but not immanent, in the world.
The consideration of time as a created entity is why classical theologians always considered that what God creates through the eternal Son, by the Spirit (the present tense meaning “eternally”) is the Creation as it exists at all times, in all its states. He creates “the world”, not just “the beginning of the world,” for he is the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. So the concept of “tweaking” makes no sense except in the context of an automaton universe that is capable of doing what it does apart from the Creator’s governing will.
As soon as one uses a different analogy - for example, the universe as the instrument on which the Lord makes his music, or the household that he leads, or even “what God does outside himself”, then suggestions of “tweaking” are merely an insult to his artistry, his care or his sovereignty respectively. And the truth is, such metaphors are all much closer both to the Scriptures and historic theology than the “hands off and hidden” picture.
There are other such poorly-based assumptions involved, but I’ll mention just one: that there is some good reason to treat the activity of the Creator as a conclusion from scientific observation, rather than as the basis of scientific observation. Of course, in this case the negative claim is that “natural causes” (whatever they may be apart from God) are a sufficient explanation of the created order, so that the activity of the Creator can’t be concluded from it, with the possible exception of CFT, unless some future “natural causes” turn up to restore the default agnosticism.
This, as an idea, is soft scientism - the belief that the realm of science and the realm of creation coincide, which is simply untrue. Science looks to explain only repeatable or regular material events by abstracting principles (though it can collect data on the unrepeatable), and Creation consists of far, far more than that. Even the repeatable is only separable from God’s activity by some kind of prior faith-commitment to its autonomy from God.
I speak as to Christians, here. The atheist will (even if granting the Big Bang as a brute fact, which requires a rather uninquisitive mind, it seems to me) take some other causative principle as explaining effects within “nature” - “laws of nature” being the immediate, and “chance” being the only candidate for an underlying, cause. But this is no more basic, or scientific, a belief than a commitment to the triune God as Creator. Science has no legitimate brief to find or not find God, whilst his “special design” is axiomatic to theism, involving all things, and anathema to atheism.
The person who is a Christian, therefore, will not consider fine tuning as “evidence for God” apart from the limited field of apologetics, but simply as how God set the universe up when time began - given Creation, how could the Cosmos not be tuned? And events within creation (whether law-governed or contingent) will not be seen as evidence against God, nor as non-evidence for him, but merely as how he governs his Creation.
1 Like
Nullius in verba, nisi quod consensus.
*Take nobody’s word for it, except the consensus. Royal Society motto, updated.
This seems like an excessive generalization. I know atheists who wish they could believe in creation.
I echo Hugh’s question: are any Christians uncomfortable with divine causation behind CFT? I’m uncomfortable with the CFT argument for a creator, but that’s because I think it’s a bad argument, not because I’m uncomfortable with divine causation.
Ok - “offended” might be too strong to apply universally. However, at the point where an atheist believes in creation, they cease to be an atheist. If they wish they could believe in it, they’re an atheist with doubts. Presumably any combination is possible, including those Open Theists offended by creation on the grounds that God coerces things into existence.
Careless wording on my part - my point was that of not being comfortable associated fine tuning per se with divine causation, as if it might happen on its own. I did, after all, go on to say that accepting creation was axiomatic to the theist position. Hugh Farey points out the way some are happy to associate CFT with divine causation in a way they are less happy to allow for events within creation. Their reasons presumably differ from those who make no distinction between the two.
You know I love me some Pascal, so I gotta defend him a bit on the hiddenness of God. I think his reasoning is pretty sound, although it has often been misused, sometimes even by me. (Say it ain’t so, Joe!) Like you, I am dubious of the natural/supernatural distinction, but I don’t think Pascal’s argument relies on that. (I can’t speak for other conceptions of God’s hiddenness. I’m only familiar with Pascal on this point.)
At any rate, the first time Pascal brings up the subject of God’s hiddenness in Pensees (note 242 found here), he is responding to the skeptic’s question, “If God exists, why doesn’t he make it obvious?” Skeptics today are still making the same argument (like J. L. Schellenberg, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason), and it has nothing to do with origins or causation. As for Pascal, he does not begin by answering the skeptic directly. Instead, he starts by criticizing the weakness of the arguments from nature that Christian apologists offered to such skeptics. This is not much different than what @glipsnort just said. When Pascal finally returns to the subject, he does so in the context of man’s fallen nature. I hate to be quoting all the time, but here’s the substance of Pascal’s answer to the skeptic’s question:
(Hear God on the matter…) "It is in vain, O men, that you seek within yourselves the remedy for your ills. All your light can only reach the knowledge that not in yourselves will you find truth or good. The philosophers have promised you that, and have been unable to do it. …
“I do not mean that you should submit your belief to me without reason, and I do not aspire to overcome you by tyranny. In fact I do not claim to give you a reason for everything. And to reconcile these contradictions, I intend to make you see clearly, by convincing proofs, those divine signs in me, which may convince you of what I am, and may gain authority for me by wonders and proofs which you cannot reject; so that you may then believe … the things which I teach you, since you will find no other ground for rejecting them, except that you cannot know of yourselves if they are true or not.
“God has willed to redeem men, and to open salvation to those who seek it. But men render themselves so unworthy of it, that it is right that God should refuse to some, because of their obduracy, what He grants to others from a compassion which is not due to them. If He had willed to overcome the obstinacy of the most hardened, He could have done so by revealing Himself so manifestly to them that they could not have doubted of the truth of His essence; as it will appear at the last day, with such thunders and such a convulsion of nature, that the dead will rise again, and the blindest will see Him.
“It is not in this manner that He has willed to appear in His advent of mercy, because, as so many make themselves unworthy of His mercy, He has willed to leave them in the loss of the good which they do not want. It was not then right that He should appear in a manner manifestly divine, and completely capable of convincing all men; but it was also not right that He should come in so hidden a manner that He could not be known by those who should sincerely seek Him. He has willed to make Himself quite recognisable by those; and thus, willing to appear openly to those who seek Him with all their heart, and to be hidden from those who flee from Him with all their heart, He so regulates the knowledge of Himself that He has given signs of Himself, visible to those who seek Him, and not to those who seek Him not. There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition.”
So, Pascal did not entirely reject the idea of reasons or proofs of God. However, his own approach was totally Christ-centered:
"We know God only by Jesus Christ. Without this mediator all communion with God is taken away; through Jesus Christ we know God. All those who have claimed to know God, and to prove Him without Jesus Christ, have had only weak proofs. But in proof of Jesus Christ we have the prophecies, which are solid and palpable proofs. And these prophecies, being accomplished and proved true by the event, mark the certainty of these truths, and therefore the divinity of Christ. In Him then, and through Him, we know God. Apart from Him, and without the Scripture, without original sin, without a necessary Mediator promised and come, we cannot absolutely prove God, nor teach right doctrine and right morality. But through Jesus Christ, and in Jesus Christ, we prove God, and teach morality and doctrine. Jesus Christ is then the true God of men.
"But we know at the same time our wretchedness; for this God is none other than the Saviour of our wretchedness. So we can only know God well by knowing our iniquities. Therefore those who have known God, without knowing their wretchedness, have not glorified Him, but have glorified themselves. Quia … non cognovit per sapientiam … placuit Deo per stultitiam prædicationis salvos facere. (1 Cor. 1:21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.)
"Not only do we know God by Jesus Christ alone, but we know ourselves only by Jesus Christ. We know life and death only through Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves. Thus without the Scripture, which has Jesus Christ alone for its object, we know nothing, and see only darkness and confusion in the nature of God, and in our own nature.
Hi Jay
Well, I’m a big fan of Blaise Pascal, and certainly wasn’t criticizing him. In fact, thought, his argument seems to be against proving (the Christian) God from nature - much the same criticism as Steve gives, as you say.
My point is somewhat different - to say that Christ can’t be proved from nature is not the same as saying that God is hidden in nature. I return (as on previous occasions) to the fact that once upon a time - and notably when the Bible was written - there was simply no argument that “nature” (for which there was no equivalent term) was the domain in which gods and/or spirits acted. Thjeir actions were there for all to see whenever it rained, or the sun shone, or a significant dream occuured, or a comet appeared.
The only question was the identity of the god involved - and Israel claimed that Yahweh alone was responsible for the lot.
Now, my point is that the Chrisian already has a faith commitment to the proposition that “God in Chrost is responsible for the lot”, and that is as basic a commitment as the non-believer’s belief in chance, or brute fact, or unexplained law. And so that is the starting point for the believer to do science - the question of “whether” God is involved in any particular event is not a question. In that I don’t think I’m at odds with Pascal.
Of course, introducing the concept of “nature” as it tends to be understood creates a dichotomy between “God” and “not-God” which, at least, tends to distance God from his creation: he is somehow hiding behind or within nature. I contend that the default position is that God is doing nature.
2 Likes
These matters are doctrinal and cannot be considered the domain of science. I do not think that Christianity seeks to prove God through science, or through any argument derived from it. But this is very different from the position of those atheists who demand a default position for science as “there is no God” and science must avoid anything that may appear otherwise. It is also different from the position of some ECs who insist that science shows us how God goes about as Creator - this is also at odds with Orthodoxy (and to a certain extent from Pascal’s position) - it is established that “knowing anything about God” is derived from scripture and faith. If anyone claims to derive the “how” of God, they surely claim they know “what” of God as well.