The Heavens Declare the Glory of God
/John Brungardt’s review of Cosmology Without God? The Problematic Theology Inherent in Modern Cosmology by David Alcade, with foreword by Michael Hanby (Veritas 35. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers), 2019.
In his monograph, Cosmology Without God? The Problematic Theology Inherent in Modern Cosmology—a revised version of his doctoral dissertation written under Michael Hanby at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at the Catholic University of America—Fr. David Alcalde pronounces a harsh sentence on the cogency of much contemporary science-religion dialogue, in particular in the domain of theological claims made in virtue of the hypotheses, theories, or conclusions of modern cosmology. This negative critique is, in large part, deserved, since “the underlying religious interpretation of reality is taken no longer as universally valid but as a matter of private preference, if not as superstition” (Alcalde 2019, p. 5, fn. 10, quoting Wolfhart Pannenberg).
This secularization of the method and content of the modern sciences has been noted before, in various ways and to varying degrees. For instance, Richard Hassing describes a particular aspect of the broader problem of the secularization of the sciences. Instead of the philosophical zealotry of the Platonists and their mathematical substances, or Descartes’ hypostatized physical geometry, Hassing notes that Newton’s mathematical physics advocates metaphysical neutrality: “Newton represents a new position: let us set aside these philosophical disputes, and assume that any difference between mathematical objects and physical objects makes no difference for the conduct of our mathematical physics. Henceforth, one can have one’s private beliefs about the modes of being of mathematical and physical objects, such as central forces, but no scientific attention will be paid to the question. It will suffice to focus on the mathematical principles of natural philosophy; other principles (and causes) need not be discussed” (“Modern Turns in Mathematics and Physics,” 170, in The Modern Turn).
This physico-mathematical secularism, it seems, could be generalized, even if this must be done with care. That is, just as questions of ultimate value are sequestered into the sphere of private opinion in modern secular-liberal politics, so too can questions of foundational ontology be limited to one’s private philosophical views, leaving the publicly available and verifiable practice of modern science alone. However, just as the political version’s claim to procedural neutrality in the public sphere, so as to permit public pluralism about answers to ultimate questions, is a suspect neutrality, so too this scientific secularism’s neutrality is suspect. Or so Alcalde, both astrophysicist and theologian, argues on the grand scale of investigating the purportedly metaphysically and theologically neutral inquiry of modern cosmology.
Now, mathematics does not demonstrate through appeal to final causes because the mathematical mode of thought abstracts from sensible matter, and thus it abstracts from the potentialities of substances qua teleologically ordered to optimal, natural actualities. A mathematical method applied to physical objects, therefore, is at least a merely borrowed neutrality. That is, mathematics might indeed be neutral of itself to questions of the full range of the being and goodness of things, but this neutrality does not transfer in virtue of itself to the physical objects to which mechanics or astrophysics applies it. To borrow Eddington’s colorful example of a physics student working out an exam problem involving an elephant slipping down a grassy hillside (The Nature of the Physical World, p. 251), the student’s consideration of the elephant’s momentum vector is coldly indifferent to the biological fate of the beast once it reaches the bottom of the hill. It is therefore a naturally pressing question exactly how these two modes or degrees of abstraction in our consideration of things are or are not related, and what difference this makes for our speculation or theoria about nature.
Fr. Alcalde’s book consists of three main parts. The first chapter, “The Problem of Theological Extrinsicism in Modern Science,” considers what this “extrinsicism” itself is. Alcalde claims that it is generally present in modern science due to its theological, metaphysical, and methodological priors. This extrinsicism is theological, that is, it is “the deficient theological understanding that conceives of God as an external agent who is in competition with natural processes and of creation as a worldly mechanism” (Alcalde 2019, p. 9). Thus, it is an element of “extrinsicism” in general, an idea that Alcalde takes from Michael Hanby: “Modern science claims that ‘science, metaphysics, and theology are essentially ‘outside’ of each other, where their relationship and their respective claims can be adjudicated from the neutral standpoint afforded by the empirical and experimental methods of science.’” (Alcalde 2019, 9–10, quoting Hanby, No God, No Science? p. 3).
Having established the nature of this extrinsicism, in the second chapter, “The Doctrine of Creatio ex Nihilo,” Alcalde details a philosophical-theological basis for critiquing such extrinsicism in modern science in general, and modern cosmology in particular. This chapter draws heavily on a generally Thomistic account of creation ex nihilo and both its philosophical underpinnings and theological and Trinitarian ideas. The final chapter, “The Theological Extrinsicism of Modern Cosmology,” carries out the planned critique, looking at claims about the divine made on the basis of modern cosmology, both in regard to the beginning of the universe in the Big Bang model and the fine-tuning of the universe. In short, because of the purported extrinsicism between science, metaphysics, and theology, we find scientists and theologians making unfounded claims for and against God on the basis of modern cosmology.
When extrinsicist thinkers, both scientists and theologians, deny or affirm God and creation, they are rejecting or denying the same defective and extrinsic ideas of God and creation, and they do not completely engage the substance of the issues they consider. (Alcalde 2019, 106)
Unfortunately, both supporters and opponents of fine-tuning identify creation (natural objects) with design (human artifacts). That identification entails a conception of God as divine designer that suffers from an extrinsic theology. On the one hand, the fine-tuning is taken by extrinsicist theologians and scientists as evidence for the existence of a divine designer. On the other hand, atheistic cosmologists, having in mind that divine designer, strive to offer an alternative to him from the scientific point of view. (Ibid., 108)
That is, both those claiming to demonstrate God’s existence or argue against it based upon an indicated temporal beginning of the universe or fine-tuning of natural constants would be to conclude to a deficient, false view of God. The list of names is a veritable “Who’s Who?” of contemporary cosmologists and philosophers, and includes Stephen Hawking, William Lane Craig, Robert Spitzer, Andre Linde, Max Tegmark, Alexander Vilenkin, Paul Steinhardt, Neil Turok, among others. All told, Alcalde’s three chapters leave nearly no household name unscrutinized.
In general, the text is dense with a host of points and topics to reflect upon. At times, the prose is a bit too dense with quotations from sources that nearly fill entire pages and thus tend to create in places an ipse dixit atmosphere. Nonetheless, the content of Alcalde’s claims is important and worthwhile, and he offers the reader an array of insights. In what follows, I would like to examine in a bit more detail a select few of those proposed insights, and their possible strengths and weaknesses.
As Michael Hanby notes in his foreword to the book, the general importance of Alcalde’s discussion is to apply to cosmology in particular a critique based upon the consequences of scientism. Scientism, which is perhaps an overall effect of the extrinsicism Alcalde attacks, is “designed to insulate the scientific method from its metaphysical foundations and thus to shield the sciences from just the sort of deep philosophical criticism that Alcalde advocates” (Alcalde 2019, xi). That is, if extrinsicism is the “division and methods” of human knowledge proposed, then scientism is the resulting ethical stance towards human speculative thinking. The possible fruits, then, of Alcalde’s project are clear. It would help to recover an idea of the inner unity of speculative thinking as a whole, the inner relationship between the specific natural sciences, metaphysics, and theology.
This means that the existence of the “intrinsic” relationship between cosmology and metaphysics (or sacred theology) must be carefully examined. Thus, I will focus on two key sections of Chapter 1. What sort of relationship exists between these disciplines, and why characterize it as “intrinsic” rather than “extrinsic”? Is it true that the scientific method is not “methodologically neutral” (Alcalde 2019, 40) in the sense that its method shields it from having to worry about ontology or theology? How are we to understand such terms as “inherent in” as opposed to “extrinsic from,” and why is the latter preferable?
First, let us consider the notion of an “intrinsic relationship,” which bears upon the “inherent” in Alcalde’s title. Much in line with the problems one finds in the analogous realm of political liberalism and secularism (as indicated above by way of Hassing’s proposal), Alcalde contends that modern science cannot escape metaphysics and theology. As one example, he points to the Newtonian postulate of absolute space. He then closely follows Michael Hanby to describe the three equally fundamental and interrelated claims that explicate this intrinsic and constitutive relationship (see ibid., 36–39). The claims are theological, philosophical, and historical. Theologically, because science studies created being, which being itself is constituted by a relationship of being created, science itself is related to theology; philosophically, because science presupposes some notion of being qua being, this requires that it is related to theology via metaphysical postulates; finally, historically, science in point of fact has never been proposed without requiring of its grounds judgments of a philosophical and theological character (ibid., 37). Alcalde hastens to add that this does not mean that theology can do the work of science: “It is not, then, the business of theology to dictate to science how to do its job” (ibid., 37).
Second, let us consider Alcalde’s critique of the supposed methodological neutrality of modern science. This neutrality claims to be able to separate method from substance. Its mistake, Alcalde claims, is to think that to conduct a natural science as if God does not exist is to undermine one’s own project. One cannot be a naturalist in method (methodological naturalism) even if one is not a naturalist in substance (ontological naturalism). That is, a methodological naturalist would hold that scientists need not and should not appeal to causes above nature when proposing scientific explanations, but should focus only on natural causes; an ontological naturalist would go further and deny the existence of causes above nature (ibid., 41). Alcalde maintains that this is a distinction that cannot avoid collapsing. One cannot methodologically bracket claims of metaphysical or theological substance because
the very assumption that theological presuppositions can be excluded from the description of nature entails concrete ideas about God and nature. More specifically, nature is assumed to be indifferent to God, and thus God has no bearing on the intelligibility of nature or what it means to think. That is, thinking itself is not determined by the exigencies of being a creature. Thinking is just another brute fact. As explained earlier, these extrinsic notions of God and nature are deficient. Methodological naturalism could only succeed in its self-understanding if being related to God had no bearing on and made no difference to the intelligibility of the world. Given that the opposite is true—that being is constitutively and inexorably related to God—methodological naturalism is, accordingly, untenable. (Ibid., 42)
Now, the intrinsic and/or constitutive nature of the relationship between cosmology and theology is, it seems to me, still left a bit too unclear by the above treatment. Is the relationship intrinsic because the sciences are not self-sufficing, but require first principles that they do not give themselves? This aspect would emphasize the side of the postulate or fundamental notions required by a science (e.g., Alcalde’s example of absolute space). Or is the relationship intrinsic because the object of knowledge is itself studied by another discipline (metaphysics, or theology)? This is emphasized in Alcalde’s use of Hanby’s three claims. Yet the relationship is not so intrinsic that cosmology loses its independence from theology, the way that, for instance, a later portion of the science of geometry is intrinsically related to and not independent from earlier theorems.
It seems to me that a pair of Aristotelian and Thomistic distinctions would be helpful here. The first distinction is between the principles of a science and the subject of a science. A science can borrow its principles from another science, and thus be “intrinsically” related to that science, while nevertheless the borrowing science has a subject which is, in some way or other, independent of the lending science. For example, music borrows first principles concerning number and proportion from arithmetic, but music’s subject matter adds something outside of arithmetic, namely musical tone or notes, harmony and melody, etc. Thus, Alcalde is clearly correct in his emphasis upon how particular natural sciences take principles which only philosophy could defend (e.g., see ibid., 19 and fn. 41).
The second distinction has to do with the formal object of a science. (While this term appears in a footnote in Alcalde’s text—43, fn. 167—it is in a quotation from another author; it is unclear to me that it carries with it the following Thomistic sense, or that Alcalde’s argument sufficiently utilizes this idea.) That is, there is a difference between what a science studies (its material object) and how it studies that object. This formal character is expressed in the precise way in which a science or discipline proposes definitions (Aquinas calls this the “mode of definition” and it has to do with the degree to which one abstracts more or less from material reality). Cajetan likened the formal object of a science to the light in which someone sees a visible object. To modernize this analogy, an object only visible under a black light is invisible in ordinary daylight. So, one science can “see” an object that another discipline cannot. Thus, Alcalde’s statement that “By dealing with an aspect of reality, the sciences deal with the whole because of the unity of creation” (ibid., 42) is true according to a science’s material object, but it is false when considering the science’s formal object. However, this undermines the supposed collapse of methodological naturalism into ontological naturalism.
This will perhaps appear to be a critique based on too fine a point. However, we can see why Alcalde makes the connections that he does, and this is due to the precise definition of “extrinsicism.”
Because of the inexorable relationship between science, metaphysics, and theology, “science cannot determine for itself its relation to theology [and metaphysics] . . . without effectively doing theology [and metaphysics], without saying, explicitly or implicitly where to draw the line, or how to characterize the difference between God and the world.” Let us remember extrinsicism holds that “science, metaphysics, and theology are essentially ‘outside’ of each other, where their relationship and their respective claims can be adjudicated from the neutral standpoint afforded by the empirical and experimental methods of science.” Extrinsicism, defended by modern science, is self-contradictory due to the intrinsic relationship between science, theology, and metaphysics. Indeed, the affirmation of a neutral science does not dispense with metaphysics and theology. The very act of affirming a metaphysically and theologically free science entails, at least implicitly, metaphysical and theological assumptions that are deficient and go unnoticed. (Ibid, 39; the quotations are from Hanby, No God, No Science?)
That is, Alcalde sees something self-contradictory about extrinsicism. Namely, the performative self-contradiction arises when modern science claims that the respective claims of science, metaphysics, and theology could be adjudicated by the methods of science. This is, however, to make a philosophical claim, not a scientific one. That is, it is clearly not drawn from the principles, subject matter, and formal object of one or other of the natural sciences.
However, because the sciences are independent as to their proper work from metaphysics or theology (as Alcalde admits: “It is not, then, the business of theology to dictate to science how to do its job” ibid., 37), Alcalde’s critique of the self-contradictory nature of extrinsicism does not apply to one of the sciences but rather to the scientist. For it is not qua science that this self-contradiction happens, for otherwise a science would be no more independent of theology or metaphysics than Book VI of Euclid’s Elements is from Book I. It would be sleight-of-hand to call out what science is doing here, because that would be to criticize what it formally distinct based upon a material commonality. It is instead the scientist qua philosopher who makes the self-contradictory claim, not as scientist or according to his habit of science.
Another way to see this is to note how the neutrality at issue is ambiguous. If one consideration proceeds in neutrality with respect to some other topic, it is true that we are currently “not caring about” that other topic. We abstract from or ignore it. However, there is a difference here. We could simply “not be attending to” that other topic, or we could “not being attentive enough to” that other topic. The theoretical indifference could be a legitimate abstraction or a type of carelessness. Thus, it is not necessarily true that “the defense of a neutral method implies unrecognized theological and metaphysical presuppositions that are defective” (ibid., 40). It is true that a scientist qua knower might be carelessly inattentive to them, but a science in itself, formally speaking, cannot so attend. It abstracts from them; it does not have the light by which to see such objects.
Given this proposed nuance, we should briefly examine whether or not it affects claims that Alcalde makes in Chapter 2 and 3. These chapters are rich in their consideration of the nature of creation, and the nuances of metaphysical arguments thinkers attempt to draw from the data, theory, and best guesses of modern cosmology. It seems to me that by adjusting the notion of “extrinsicism” from a formal relation to a relationship among the habits of knowledge of a person, we retain the insights of these chapters. We should focus instead upon the scientism that Alcalde is rightly critiquing, which is an effect of the inattentive type of neutrality one attempts to hold in one’s soul, thus producing scientism as an effect, an effect that is an ethical characterization, affecting one’s theoretical bearing and disposition. That is, while the precise formal characterization of extrinsicism is not entirely cogent, extrinsicism in the concrete context of a knower as a person striving to know the world does make sense.
Consider the following examples. Chapter 1 explores the mechanistic conception of nature that philosophically informed much of early modern science, along with its positivistic idea of being (existence as mere “facticity”) that arose from this foundation (ibid., 21–34). For instance, this approach treats matter as mere quantity, and mechanism is “unable to describe reality in its fullness” (ibid., 34). However, formally speaking, it is not possible for Newtonian mechanics (for instance) to give such an explanation. Its mathematical principles are applicable but not adequate to reality (to borrow a phrase from Richard Hassing). Taken as adequate, its laws would be lies—or would at least engage in mental reservation. Thus, the goal of scientists who were also materialists or determinists is revealed for what it always was—a philosophical dream.
Similarly, at one point in its exposition of the philosophical and theological details of creation ex nihilo, Chapter 2 critiques modern science for its deficient Trinitarian theology. Alcalde claims that “creation is only intelligible from a trinitarian understanding of God” and that “only a trinitarian doctrine of God is able to give a positive account of creaturely difference” (ibid., 88, 89). First, these statements are, of course, true, if one intends by them that considering creation in light of the Trinity is required for a complete or ultimate understanding of creation formally speaking. Alcalde refers to Gilles Emery’s exposition of Aquinas (ibid., 88), drawing on the Thomistic doctrine of the Trinitarian processions as the origin, principle, and exemplar of creation. However, even Emery notes that “This analysis does not pick out any one particular divine person and exclusively or properly ascribe creation to him. God is creator in virtue of the divine nature common to the three persons: the three persons are ‘one single Creator’” (The Trinitarian Theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas, 344; see also ST Ia, q. 45, a. 6). Consequently, one could come to know that God is a creator according to a metaphysical formality, even if there remains more to say according to the light of sacra doctrina, because of its more illuminating formality of divine revelation.
However, and second, Alcalde seems to place too much emphasis upon this “only”. He concludes
that creation can be properly understood only from a trinitarian perspective. Because modern scientists do not apprehend what creation truly is, they are unable to have an adequate image of God; what they ultimately have is a falsified and un-trinitarian concept of God. This deficient image of God will be obvious when I deal with cosmologists in the third chapter. (Alcalde 2019, 94)
Now, taken formally, such a charge against scientists or the sciences seems entirely unfair. Were it fair, one would also have to make such a charge against Aristotle, Plato, Plotinus, or even St. Thomas qua philosopher. Formally speaking, it is not the job of science to provide such an image or concept of God, and scientists would conclude to such an erroneous conception only qua philosophical naturalists. This undue emphasis would also threaten philosophical approaches to God—for instance, arguments such as the Five Ways. Formally speaking, they all conclude to “a deficient image of God,” in the above sense.
Likewise, in the third chapter—where his prior training in science is used to great effect—, Alcalde’s substantive considerations of the deficiencies in the positive or negative use of modern cosmology as a metaphysical or theological springboard becomes clearer if we read his critiques of various philosophers, theologians, and scientists in the sense that the concrete context of their intellectual habits tout court act as a stumbling block. Indeed, it is precisely the lack of attention to such formal distinctions among what one or another habitus of theoretical knowledge can provide that leads to some of the errors and mistakes that Alcalde describes (e.g., creation is not a physical process; God is not a mere designer or fine-tuner of nature’s dials, etc.).
However, Alcalde continues to take materially what certain authors surely meant formally. For instance, he quotes Fr. Robert Spitzer as saying that “God is not an object or phenomenon or regularity within the physical universe; so science cannot say anything about God” (Ibid., 129; from Spitzer’s New Proofs for the Existence of God, 22). In context, however, it seems to be a more charitable, if not a clearer, reading to say that Spitzer is speaking formally. Such a distinction would also help to rescue Spitzer’s descriptions of God as a “creative power” or “causative force,” descriptions which Alcalde claims deny the analogia entis insofar as they use the physical terms “power” and “force.” (While one might contest his characterization of it, Spitzer clearly does not deny such a doctrine; see New Proofs, 227–28.)
In fact, it is by attending to the precisions of these formal differences among the disciplines and their methods that one becomes more acutely aware of the fact that what one inquiry lacks, another inquiry can supply. Thus, proposals from cosmology concerning the contingencies of natural constants or the thermodynamic limitations of energy might indeed indicate or suggest creation, even if this can only be seen in the light of a higher science. In this way, Alcalde is right to clearly emphasize and describe the various ways that the science of cosmology is wrongly transformed by cosmologists and even philosophers and theologians into a scientism of cosmology. They confound cosmology with cosmologia, to use George Ellis’ distinction (The Philosophy of Cosmology, 4).
Perhaps I have misread Alcalde. Perhaps in various passages he is simply employing a façon de parler about “science” and “scientists.” However, at certain key places, his words do not bear this reading. It seems useful, therefore, to bring out this formal distinction more strongly, so as to support the contributions of cosmology, philosophy, and theology, three of the habits of speculative inquiry by which we can “see” and “hear” that “the heavens shew forth the glory of God, and the firmament declareth the work of his hands.” (Psalm [19]:1) Alcalde’s book, as a whole, is of substantive assistance in this endeavor.