Preface to My Response to Dawkins Arguments in Chapter 1
The power of modern science (and the engineering technologies derived from basic science) to explain, control, and manipulate the physical universe is undeniable. In the wake of the scientific revolution, we have reached a standard of living unknown and unimagined by the ancients. Our ability to understand the intricacies of the operation of the universe and our ability to explain the basic operations and processes of nature are unparalleled. The scientific method is indeed a very powerful tool.
I have no argument with Dawkins here. If you are looking for an understanding of the processes and operations of the physical universe, modern science provides this. I share Dawkins wonder at the lawful order of the universe. I am fascinated by the explanation and description of this order provided by science.
The question is not about the explanation of the order in the universe. The fundamental question is the fact that the order can be explained at all. Why is there such order? Why is the universe so intelligible? Why does anything exist at all?
The answer to such questions is beyond the ability of the empirical sciences. They lie outside the scope of science. Science can describe the order. Science can uncover the underlying laws and principles of the universe. But the reason for the order, the fact that anything exists at all cannot be described and cannot be uncovered empirically. I can experimentally, empirically discover and test the order, laws, and principles that govern the universe. But there is no experimental, empirical test that shows why the universe is as it is. There is no experimental, empirical test to answer “why” anything exists at all. Science can explain how things exist, how things change and become other things, how the universe has developed – but it is beyond the scope of science to explain why there is a universe at all.
This is an important point for in it is the crux of the whole “God question”. This point needs to be clear to the reader before we go on.
Let’s use Darwinian evolutionary theory as an example. In common language, evolution by natural selection explains “why” there is such diversity in species. However in this example, “why” has a different meaning from how I used it above. Evolution describes the process of how the species we experience now came to exist. Evolution describes how living organisms developed from simpler materials, changed over time through natural selection, and became the great variety of species we see today. Evolution answers the question of how life came to exist as it does now. Similarly, the child’s question of why it rains can be answered by the description of the processes of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation. And the question why there is a rainbow can be answered by the description of the refraction of light through water droplets. But none of these descriptions answers the fundamental question of why the universe operates in this way – why is the universe such as it is that evolution, evaporation, and refraction occur at all? Why is the universe such as it is that the human mind can discover, describe, and understand this order? Conceivably we can imagine or think about a universe that operates by different laws and principles – a universe ordered differently from the one we find ourselves in – but the point remains that it wouldn’t be the universe that is.
Empirical science cannot and does not explain why there is a universe that operates in the way it does. We can and have discovered many of these laws and principles – and I agree with Dawkins in that there are many things about the physical universe we currently do not understand or only have limited understanding of – and I agree that the natural sciences are our best hope in eventually describing the principles, laws, and processes that underlie them.
My contention is that Dawkins got the whole thing terribly wrong – not because of his disbelief in God – but because he missed this central point. The acceptance of the truth of evolution by natural selection, or its rejection, has no bearing on the essential “God Question”. Scientific explanations and theories simply cannot address the question of God’s existence.
The scientific enterprise does indeed yield truth about the physical universe. But as I have alluded, there are questions to which the truths of science offer no answer. This does not mean that such questions are unanswerable. It means that we must approach them from a different angle utilizing different tools. “Not every truth admits of the same mode of manifestation, and a well-educated man will expect exactness in every class of subject, according as the nature of the thing admits" (Summa contra gentiles, 1.3).
These fundamental questions about reality are the purview of philosophy which, according to Aristotle by way of Aquinas, is “the science of truth, not any and every truth but that truth that is the origin of all truth and appertains to the first principle of the being of all things; hence its truth is the principle of all truth, for things are in truth as they are in being” (Summa contra gentiles, 1.1). Wisdom is the consideration of this truth – truth that lies at the heart of all reality. Aquinas says, “Of all human pursuits, the pursuit of wisdom is the more perfect, the more sublime, the more useful, and the more agreeable” (Summa contra gentiles, 1.2). It is the intent of this blog to pursue that truth.
For some this may seem to be a matter of some abstrusity. Others may find my philosophical arguments as an exercise in splitting hairs. Some may just find the whole thing rather frivolous. To all of these folks, I ask your patient indulgence. Stick with me and we will get to our destination in due time. I also offer G. K. Chesterton’s definition of philosophy: “Philosophy is merely thought that has been thought out. It is often a great bore. But man has no alternative, except between being influenced by thought that has been thought out and being influenced by thought that has not been thought out”.
The problem with Dawkins is that he presents thoughts that haven't been thought out. A further problem is that he has presented them to a Western culture that just plain no longer thinks at all.
So let’s get thinking, shall we?
