On one hand, there are marvelous discourses in institutions of higher learning about the ways theology illuminates scientific ideas and, likewise, how science deepens faith. Theologians, philosophers, and scientists come together and talk, even if everyone is not a person of faith. On the other hand, the public presentation of faith and science, mostly on the internet, is a tale of incessant conflict because anyone can pose as an expert on religion or science, despite being nonreligious or never having worked as a scientist.

The following ten imperatives were originally written for a Christian audience to bridge this gap between public pessimism and optimism among scholars. I have replaced some text with commentary for atheist readers at Strange Notions. The original is at National Catholic Register.

1. Profess the Creed in confidence.

To Christians: If you pray “I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible,” then your faith comes first. For you, Christianity is not a hypothesis or a theory; it is everything, a pervasive worldview. We do not call some things intelligently designed and declare other things mere random chances of nature, as if nature were not the handiwork of God, but we see everything as a consistently interacting totality, a Creation, including every last particle and force governed by the laws of physics.

To atheists: Of course you do not pray the Creed, but hopefully you can appreciate the logical consistency of an all-or-none Christian worldview. Anything less falls short of a belief in a Creator of all things. If you point that deficiency out to Christians who make distinctions between “random, chance nature” and “intelligent design,” you have a valid point.

2. Know your faith, and let it guide your reasoning.

To Christians: “Dogmas are lights along the path of faith; they illuminate it and make it secure” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 89). You cannot navigate science in the light of faith if you do not have the lights on, so to speak. There are a number of sources for finding Church teaching. Besides the Catechism, Ludwig Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma and Heinrich Denzinger’s Sources of Catholic Dogma are trusted resources.

Be aware of the hierarchy of truths (CCC 90). Distinguish between infallible dogmas and theological opinions. Most of the discussion happens where theological opinions are proposed and science can increase comprehension. How do we talk about the emergence and evolution of life? How do we describe the unity of body and mind? How do we think about the human person compared to other creatures?

To atheists: The difference in dogma and doctrine is poorly understood. There are certain dogmas that Christians truly cannot deny, for that would logically lead to a denial of other doctrines. Everything derives from the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation. We do not hold true to the existence of the soul, the beginning of Creation, and the miracles of Christ blindly in faith, but rather as a reasoned assent in faith, not unlike the reasoned assent students make when they are taught about atoms.

For me, it came down to a moment of decision where I either chose to take the leap of faith and believe in Christ, or not. The experience has been much like the leap I took to become a scientist, albeit a much more significant one. I entered the laboratory of Catholic faith, so to speak, and tested the teachings of the Church in my life to see what I could learn. I learned to have stronger faith because I learned that the teachings are true, good, and beautiful. But it would not have made sense just watching from the outside. I had to “taste and see” for myself, to gather my empirical evidence to arrive at a sound conclusion. I understand that the lives of the faithful may seem strange to you, as strange as the work of a researcher may appear to a visitor peeking through the door to a busy laboratory.

3. Respect the experts.

To Christians: We are all encouraged to learn about the development of doctrine, but do not to play armchair theologian and promote your novel opinions as accepted teaching. Forego speculation, as that causes confusion. Instead, read the writings of theologians and communicate their work because the modern dialogue needs communicators.

Likewise, respect the scientists. I know; many scientists today are not people of faith, but if you have not designed experiments, agonized over the data, and placed your reputation behind conclusions, it is hard to appreciate what it takes to add new knowledge to scientific fields. Be confident in your faith and read scientific papers, so you will be able to figure out what to accept or reject for yourself. Strive to become an expert and lead others.

To atheists: Christians can learn a lot from atheists who are scientists. I think they should be heard and their points considered. We will not all agree. I hope you can show the same respect for theologians. A confident person can listen to other ideas without fear.

4. Do not be anxious until you find the one final answer.

To Christians: Think of the process of navigating science in the light of faith as a dive into complementary mysteries. Faith and science are two different manifestations of the same reality. When they seem to have conflicting conclusions, it is because our knowledge is not complete. There are many questions that will not have clear answers, which is why they are debated. How much were Neanderthals like humans? In what ways can brain chemistry influence our behavior? What do we make of quantum entanglement?

Just like doctrinal understanding develops, scientific models are provisional. A “provision” is something that supplies a temporary commodity. Scientific theories and models supply explanations until better ones are discovered with more research. As you enter the story of ongoing research, try to understand a variety of opinions. Do not articulate an opinion until you are ready. It is okay to say: “I don’t know. Could you explain what you think?”

To atheists: Ditto, but you probably only deal with the science side of things. Understand that Catholics deal with both reason and faith because we need both to continue our assent in faith, like eagles need both wings to fly.

5. Clarify the kind of proof science provides.

To Both: Inductive proofs widen from details to broad conclusions; they affirm. Scientific evidence can only provide inductive proofs of faith. For example, the Big Bang affirms a beginning in time; it does not absolutely prove the ultimate t=0. On the contrary, deductive proofs narrow from broad statements to conclusions; that is, they confirm. These are, in general, the proofs provided by philosophy and theology. One may argue metaphysically that past time is either finite or infinite. If it can be reasoned that infinite time is highly unlikely, then by default finite time is highly likely.

To Christians: Do not invoke science as any kind of absolute proof of a theological conclusion. The Big Bang, fine-tuning in nature, design in living things, and order in the periodic table are all inductive proofs of the opening lines of the Christian Creed, but only in the same way rainbows, sunsets, and yellow Labrador puppies are proofs of God. Science should inspire awe and wonder because we see it as the study of Creation.

To atheists: We realize that proofs can go both ways. You can invoke science as inductive proof to support a claim that there is no God. You can generate deductive proofs that say it is unlikely that God exists. Christians see those proofs as weak, obviously. People on both sides tend to forget that proofs are like glasses of water. You can set down all the water you want in the fanciest crystal, but you cannot force a person to drink it in. That is why I inject personal perception. Proofs helped me think things through, but granting assent to conclusions was the work of the intellect and the will.

6. Ponder Mars.

To Christians: St. Thomas Aquinas explains in the Summa Theologiæ that there is an order in nature of causes and effects (ST I.105.6). God creates everything and holds all things visible and invisible in existence; He is the first cause, the Creator, not subject to secondary causes such as change and motion in the physical realm. God’s law is the “supreme law.” If there were no other created being with any kind of will and intellect, then the material realm would follow, to the elementary unit, the laws of physics as God designed them—like on Mars.

Physical scientists think within this strictly physical realm. In his 1947 book Miracles, C.S. Lewis refers to nature as a “hostess” (94). If a tomato sauce is invaded with basil, for example, nature rushes to accommodate the newcomer. If the sauce is stirred, heated, or spread on a crust and topped with cheese, physical laws follow suit. If you (like me) prefer not to think of nature as a female serving up munchies, think of matter and energy as the physical medium in which we live. This medium, nature, accommodates the actions of our free will, which is why human life has rendered Earth vastly different than it would have been left to its own devices.

To atheists: You probably view Earth the same as Mars, all a physical reality, or you may think it is real because we think it is real in our minds, a trick of the brain.

7. Assert that humans are body and soul.

To Christians: Beyond the realm of physical matter is the realm of beings with wills, such as angels, humans, and possibly other animals. These beings are movers too. God can move particles, and if it is outside the order of nature known to us, we call it a miracle (ST I.105.7).

In his treatise on the angels in the Summa Theologiæ, St. Thomas Aquinas, referencing (Pseudo-) Dionysius, says that angels are purely intellectual beings or “heavenly minds” (ST I.58.3). Intellect for angels is perfect at once; they instantly know all they are created to know. The good angels choose to will good, so they always do God’s will (ST I.59.2).

We are body and soul. With free will, we can move matter in limited ways. We pursue knowledge by “discursive intellectual operation” by advancing from one thing to another rationally, as we do using the scientific method (ST I.58.3). Actually, the scientific method is a perfect example of how body and soul unite. We take in data with our senses. We process it abstractly with our intellects. We desire to learn more, so we design experiments for further observation.

To atheists: You do not believe in angels. You do not believe in the existence of the soul, so to you we are all bodies with consciousness arising from matter and energy.

8. Be assured that physics cannot explain free will.

To Christians: Determinism is a philosophical idea that all events are determined by strict laws of nature, such that every motion of every particle is preset by an initial state of matter. If you scratch your arm, so the argument goes, you did it because that was the next event your matter and energy were destined to do. If there were nothing except the created physical realm, like on Mars, strict physical determinism would apply. But as Christians we understand that the total system of reality includes both the natural and the supernatural.

To atheists: You are stuck with the problem of free will and how it would break the laws of physics to declare that they think they freely proclaim there is no free will. Christians accept the existence of the soul and, you could say, move on with life. We define free will as a spiritual power, and use our intellects to grow in the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love and the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance so that we may strive to reach our fullest potential as human persons. Undoubtedly you see the value in virtue too, even if you do not have the same language for it.

9. Fear not evolution.

To Both: Atoms constitute the matter that makes us up, and every atom in our bodies came from the Earth, whose particles seem to have come from supernovas, whose matter and energy probably came from the earliest moments after the Big Bang. Did you ever wonder what path the ever-fluctuating particles of your body traversed in the last 4.5 billion years on Earth and the 13.8 billion years in the universe? We evolved from the beginning.

Biologically, we see a single evolutionary step every time we see a baby. Evolution is the progression of a series of events by which living organisms accumulate changes over successive generations due to genetic inheritance and adaptive variation. Every child is genetically like its parents but also genetically unique as an individual. As such, every child responds to his or her environment in unique ways, however slight the differences may be. Environments change over time, further affecting genetic expression.

To Christians: Evolutionary science cannot identify a first man, first woman, or original sin committed in a moment, because evolution deals with populations over thousands and millions of years. Expecting evolution to find our first parents is like expecting a bulldozer to find the first two grains of sand on a beach. Not only is it the wrong tool, it is the wrong scientific concept. We do not think of beaches forming one grain of sand at a time. A Catholic can both explore what evolutionary science has to reveal and, simultaneously, believe in the reality of Adam and Eve. What a Catholic, or anyone else, cannot do is expect evolutionary science to find them any more than chemistry or physics can find the exact location of two electrons on your nose.

To atheists: Undoubtedly you do not accept any reality of Adam and Eve and the Do Not Touch Tree, and you have no way to even begin to verify such a story. We know. The fall and original sin are truths of faith that we do not deny, but speaking for myself, I realize that those dogmas are unprovable by empirical methods—unless you count all the mean and evil things people do to each other as empirical proof, in which case those dogmas have quite a lot of evidence.

10. Realize that science was born of Christianity.

To Christians: This is not a claim for bravado; it is meant to inspire a bigger view. The belief that the universe was created by God with an absolute beginning in time and a faithful order is an ancient Judeo-Christian belief forming an unbroken thread all the way back to Genesis. The Old Testament people held a belief in Creation in time. The early Christians defended that belief against the pantheistic ideas of ancient Greek philosophy, even to martyrdom. Today, we need to be absolutely clear about the limits of science. Nothing a scientist says should shake our faith. If a scientist claims we are nothing but atoms, have no free will, or the world is eternally cycling (as all the other ancient cultures did), then we simply do not agree.

If the biblical cultures and early Christianity are taken as the womb that nurtured and protected this fundamental belief about Creation, then the Christian West can be taken as the culture that gave birth to science—upon the works of scholars such as Adelard of Bath, Thierry of Chartres, Robert Grosseteste, William of Auvergne, St. Albert the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Siger of Brabant, Étienne Tempier, and Fr. Jean Buridan who postulated the impetus theory, which was the precursor to Newtonian mechanics.

The revelation of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ taught us the reality of the nature of God and the divinity of Christ. No other religion has ever come close to such a Trinitarian and Incarnational worldview. God is one God and three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christ is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Son who became man. Christ is the Word, the Logos, the reason. And science relies on order. Without faith in Christ, science does not make sense. The beginning of St. John’s gospel has a striking scientific significance: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.” (John 1:1-4)

To atheists: It would be wrong for Christians to use this claim to deny the contributions of other cultures and religions to the growth of science. The claim is complex, but for now, suffice it to say that “birth” does not happen in an instant removed from the rest of the world. Mothers do not say: “Boom! There is a baby. I did it by myself.” When I first read about this claim from the late Fr. Stanley L. Jaki’s books, I was not sure what to make of it. Rather than assuming, I tried to find out what he meant by “science” and “was born.” He had a theory that pantheism and a belief in eternal cycles stifled the development of science as the study of physical law and systems of laws. He searched for data and found it abundantly in the historical record. Historians can be biased, which is why Fr. Jaki wrote extensively on this topic and insisted on original sources as much as possible. Please do not argue against the claim until you understand it.

MIT physicist, Professor Jeremy England, has gotten quite a lot of media attention about his ideas in a 2013 paper in The Journal of Chemical Physics, “Statistical physics of self-replication.”

Quanta Magazine published an essay by Natalie Wolchover coining the work as “The New Physical Theory of Life,” which was republished by Scientific American and Business Insider. England was quoted:

“I am certainly not saying that Darwinian ideas are wrong. On the contrary, I am just saying that from the perspective of the physics, you might call Darwinian evolution a special case of a more general phenomenon.”

His theory explains how 1) groups of atoms in a dynamic environment, like the atmosphere or the ocean, 2) might arrange themselves over time to resonate with the sources of mechanical, electromagnetic, or chemical work from those environments, and 3) produce more entropy back into said environment. The theory seeks to understand the underlying physics of how adaptations evolve and potentially how life began.

The Quanta essay got the attention of Salon writer, Paul Rosenberg, who titled his piece “God is on the ropes: The brilliant new science that has creationists and the Christian right terrified.” Rosenberg sees this work as an “epochal scientific advance” but seems to revel in using it as a “rebuke to pseudo-scientific creationists, who have long mistakenly claimed that thermodynamics disproves evolution.” England’s work shows how the thermodynamically-driven emergence and evolution of life would follow the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

And so it came to pass that Rosenberg’s essay got the attention of his targets.

Creation Ministries International’s Jonathan Sarfati and Carl Wieland tied England’s work to atheism, claiming that atheists “must” believe life came from non-living chemicals. Since specialists are not even close to articulating an exact mechanism, according to them “every so often media headlines trumpet the latest and greatest solution” to protect the atheist theory of evolution. The authors noted that England “is a long way from showing a mechanism by which the huge jump [from chemicals to life] could take place. [Emphasis is theirs.] They see his work as “avoiding the real issue,” that issue being how chemicals became cells.

Casey Luskin from the Intelligent Design community commented at The Blaze in his essay, “Another Challenge from Materialists Who Can’t Explain Origin-of-Life With Science.” He also finds England’s theory to be a shortcoming. “The fundamental problem with England’s theories, and Rosenberg’s polemics, is that sunlight and other forms of energy do not generate new genetic information, nor do they produce new types of biological machines,” he wrote. He thinks the failure of “materialist science” to produce a complete model for the origin of life shows there is a missing insight. “In our experience, only one cause generates new language-based information or machine-like structures: intelligence.”

Most recently, Meghan Walsh of OZY, wrote an essay calling England “The Man Who May One-Up Darwin.” Her interview focused on him as a person more than on his work. Turns out, England is Jewish, prays three times a day, studies the Torah, and spends much of his days changing diapers and brainstorming atop a yoga ball with his infant son.

Of all these essays, I like the first and applaud the last. The other three leave me wincing. So I guess it is my turn. My area of interest is what some would call the intersection of faith and science, although I prefer to think of it as viewing science in the light of faith—thereby untangling myself from mingled disciplines.

Before we even get to the paper, let us dispense with a few things. For one, science cannot punch God out over “the ropes” because God is not made of particles. If you believe in God, you see nature as Creation and science as the study of it. If you do not believe in God, then you see nature as nature and science as the study of it. You say nature. I say Creation, and I view all of it as intelligently designed.

Regarding the Second Law of Thermodynamics, England’s theory is not needed to answer the objections of the Creationists. Rosenberg noted as much. The Second Law states that entropy in the entire universe as a closed system increases with time. Evolution holds that organisms become increasingly more complex, so Creationists see evolution as a contradiction of this law. However, the Second Law refers to the overall entropy in the entire universe, not just the entropy on the earth. The earth is not a closed system and gets energy from the sun to power the increase in biological complexity. England’s proposal adds to this concept by showing how increases in complexity may still be driven by overall increases in entropy output back into the environment.

As for atheists who “must” believe that “life came from non-living chemicals,” should not we all? If living organisms are made of particles, and particles are composed of elements on the periodic table, and the elements obey the laws of physics, then as far as the exact physical sciences are concerned, life can, and did, evolve from non-living particles. The idea that life began as a miracle is an idea that science cannot measure. The idea that God created matter with laws that led to the organization of living things is not a contradiction of faith in God the Creator.

Also, the lack of a complete model for the origin of life should never be wielded as a reason to discredit research into that question. It is well known and accepted that all those mechanisms are not yet defined and that some of them may never be. High school and college biology text books preface the discussion of the history of research into the question of primal abiogenesis by acknowledging that scientists know it is impossible to determine exactly how life arose on earth. There is nothing startling about that honest truth.

A physicist, chemist, or biologist does not ask whether different forms of life were miraculously created because science relies on order and predictability. Should a physical scientist ask a question about the origin of life, he would ask how life originated from particles and evolved as a collection of particles. Then he would devise experiments to test those theories.

Physics is indifferent to life. Physics studies the organization of matter that biology declares living and nonliving. Fundamental to all scientific studies about life is the view that living things differ from non-living things primarily in their degree of organization, which brings us back to the work of Jeremy England. This Jewish father and professor is not “trumpeting” his ideas as a defense of atheism or materialism, nor is he trying to find one single physical characteristic that is unique to the mechanism for the jump from non-life to life (he is explicit about that), and he certainly is not avoiding any real issues.

England is doing what scientists do, especially physicists. Living things replicate, sense, compute, anticipate, respond, and use energy from their environment, and those processes can be studied thermodynamically. So he is considering living organisms strictly as organized systems of particles in which the distance, time, amount, temperature, and energy can be quantified in Newtonian terms to see if thermodynamics adds further understanding of 1) the difference between living and nonliving things and 2) natural selection because Darwinian selection does not fully explain the diversity of life.

England’s work is not intended to show how sunlight and other forms of energy “generate new genetic information” or “biological machines,” as Luskin criticized. There are millions of details between a fundamental physical theory and all the specific mechanisms involved in biological machinery. England’s work, as far as I can tell, is intended to add to the story of how the emergence of complex organization might be possible, how agglomerates of particles might respond to work from the environment and how they might self-reorganize to output more entropy, all based on established laws of physics. Yes, in the long term this understanding could shed new light on mechanisms.

Specifically, England’s approach is to consider organisms as a collection of microstates (arbitrarily defined) forming a macrostate (the organism) in a thermal bath (the environment). If an oscillating external field is applied to the collection of particles (work), just like any collection of particles the system can use this input to break bonds and form new bonds when the chemical equilibrium is disrupted. Chemists describe reversibility and irreversibility in terms of reaction rates and activation energies. Organisms operate far from equilibrium, which must also be taken into consideration.

What is of interest to the question of life-descriptors (i.e. facts that describe what is observed thermodynamically in living things) is how external time-varying work affects the entropy output back into the environment. Organisms cannot un-grow, so the irreversibility of these reactions is of particular interest. Newtonian physics tell us that statistical irreversibility of reactions has a direct relationship to the entropy output. In Darwinian terms, that means organisms that grow well reproduce well. More offspring equals more entropy, but that is not the only factor. In Newtonian terms, the durability of the system and ability to dissipate energy into the environment are also factors.

The physical question is: Why are the particles in a living organism organized the way they are during self-replication? The more “fit” self-replicator would be more efficient at taking work from the environment and producing greater entropy back into the surroundings.

England has derived an equation for what he terms “Driven Stochastic Evolution” in terms of:

1. Order: All other things being equal, systems are under a tendency to disorder.
2. Durability: As the system experiences fluctuations, there are kinetic activation barriers to bond breakage and formation.
3. Dissipation and fluctuation: For irreversible systems (organisms) there needs to be reliably high dissipation of energy back into the environment.

Of course, in reality organisms live amid a constantly fluctuating environment of applied external fields, so they are continually responding.

In inanimate physical systems the tendency to become arranged by the external field is well known. This idea is at the core of nanotechnology, which seeks to harness the self-assembly of macromolecules to effect desired properties and functions. Rearrangement in response to environment is also common in proteins. One could say these processes are driven. Of all the ways organisms in populations can “self-replicate” (reproduce) there may be a driving force. An exciting aspect of England’s work is that it may show how organisms not only evolve, but physically anticipate future evolution by resonating with this driving force.

As test cases for study, England has proposed methods for studying self-replication in nucleotides and cell division in bacteria. There are experiments that can computationally model and test these ideas, so undoubtedly there is more to come not just from England’s group but from other groups interested in physical descriptors of living things.

England was quoted as saying, “You start with a random clump of atoms, and if you shine light on it for long enough, it should not be so surprising that you get a plant.” He is referring to long times, of course. As someone who has studied the almost life-like self-assembling capability of organic and inorganic molecules in an effort to artificially simulate just a few steps of the photosynthetic process, I understand what he means. Assuming plants did not miraculously appear in full maturity then yes, they emerged from organized inanimate matter on a planet illuminated by the sun. And it is exciting to ponder just how this amazing organization occurred! This research could add insight into the hierarchy of the natural world. Where is the hard line between life and non-life? What if there is not one? What if there is a more gradual hierarchy than we thought. Theologically speaking, it is noteworthy that the idea of hierarchies in the created realm is not foreign to Catholic thought.

While I am all for seeing science in the light of faith, I am not for polemics that confuse and accuse. This work shows that scientists indeed rely on the order and predictability of physical laws down to the particles that make up the bodies of living things.

The appropriate reaction to this paper is not jubilation at a perceived victory or accusation of terror in your opponent. Nor should this work be criticized for not detailing all mechanisms involved in biological machinery. Nor is it reasonable to suspect atheist agendas. Nor should anyone ever be criticized for being a methodical materialist when it comes to physical science. The appropriate reaction to this paper is curiosity, appreciation, and anticipation of the next paper.
 
 
(Image credit: Wikimedia)

I remember the first time I read St. Thomas Aquinas’ proofs of God’s existence. Although I was already a believer and although I found them a wonderful adventure in Catholic theology, I thought they were circular. Sure, I thought, if you believe in God and you expect the proofs to prove the existence of God, then the Unmoved Mover, the First Cause, the Argument from Contingency, the Argument from Degree, and the Argument from Design all convincingly follow from postulates to conclusion. But if you are not a believer, they might sound like constructs to support a predetermined conclusion.

The conclusion: “ . . . and this we call God.”

Well of course. Were the proofs supposed to surprisingly disprove God?

I have continued to study these proofs as well as the other arguments and writings of St. Aquinas. I still find them intellectually satisfying exercises that help me understand my faith. What I am about to say has nothing to do with the arguments, but with how they might be perceived:

To a non-believer, I can totally see how they seem like the reasoning begins with the conclusion in sight and is therefore contrived.

A circular argument is logically valid if the premises are true, so again, I am not referring to the integrity of the proofs but rather to their ability to persuade a non-believer. I want to be clear about that.

Maybe I am projecting my personal struggles. In that case, suffice it to say those arguments would have fallen flat on my faithless ears when I was not ready to believe. The language of St. Thomas, or any other densely theological discourse, would have sounded as strange to me as an unbeliever as a pretend language I had no desire to grasp. Even now, I feel a twinge of guilt in admitting that I remain somewhat diffident about these grand arguments as evangelization tools, especially when I see how enthusiastic other Catholics are about using them. But when I read comments from atheists who call these arguments circular, I feel a twinge of guilt too. I want to interject into the discussion and say, “Hey, Christian apologist, the atheist has a point. They can seem circular.”

Undoubtedly there are believers and converts who were compelled to faith by the force of persuasion in these arguments and proofs, and I do not discredit any of those pathways to faith. But if a non-believer tells an evangelizing believer that the arguments for the proofs of God’s existence sound circular, the point ought to be graciously conceded (or at least respectfully engaged). It is unreasonable to expect a non-believer to see arguments and proofs through a believer’s eyes, and I think such a dismissal on the non-believer’s part is a clue to move on rather than continue arguing.

I will always relate to the materialist because I remain an incurable reductionist. I cannot help it. I was trained to see the world as a meticulous sort of materialist. Chemistry taught me to see all matter as a symphony of interacting atoms and molecules carrying out their deterministically orchestrated routine. And let me tell you, it is magnificent! If you find that reading essays and friending friends on computer screens has enriched your life, you can thank materialism for the materials to do so. Same goes for liking your jeans and shirt.

My reductionism has consequences though. I struggle not to think of the human person as a soul driving the body-machine and meat-brain because I think of the body and brain as animated matter, but I cannot put my finger on what “animate” actually means since it is a concept that cannot be measured. I therefore relegate it to some metaphysical arena I am untrained to deal with and call it “life.” But that takes me no farther in comprehension, even as I sit on the porch with my coffee, watching my organic-inorganic multicomposite assemblies (aka my children) run laughing across the yard. I know the body and soul are united in the person. I just do not have the mental files to sort it out yet, but I am trying because this is the very foundation of our human dignity.

I also struggle with what to make of dogs. For all we know, they are automata governed by biological instinct, but I cannot reconcile such machinistic dog-existence with the way our hound, Rufus, held his head on his last day. Suffering and deteriorated from bone cancer though he was, that noble dog lay sprawled and waiting to die until the whole family was home. He took his last breath with his head still up ten minutes after my husband got home from work, and then he laid his head down and died. He never once whimpered. Our family witnessed superhuman loyalty in Rufus.

I also struggle to get my head around the afterlife. Every day is a march reeling toward the inescapable end of our life on earth, and I cannot even begin to imagine what it is like to die. Nothing in chemistry can confirm whether the soul actually does live on. I believe in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting completely in faith, “the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” My profession is my proof. When I profess what I believe, I am no longer afraid of death, even though I am utterly perplexed by the idea of a glorified body.

I also struggle with miracles. I accept they happen, but nevertheless I still think of them in material terms because whatever happens in the material world is still material, carrying out some orchestrated routine, even if it is the Hand of God overriding the whole created order for the sake of communicating His love to searching souls. This is a quibble, but St. Thomas thought that angels can do something which is outside the order of corporeal nature, yet they cannot do anything outside the whole created order. So if angels have a comprehension of matter beyond human comprehension (which means scientists ought to befriend them), how do we humans know whether something that appears to be a miracle is indeed a miracle and not an angel doing something outside the order of corporeal nature and beyond human comprehension? I have witnessed what might be considered miracles, but I have no idea how to talk about these experiences, which probably explains why I get hung up on quibbles.

And I struggle with how to evangelize. I did not convert because people preached to me. I thought to seek out the Catholic Church because the Catholics I had known during the span of my life all had something solid I admired. I also do not like debates as tools for evangelization because if any of the atheists I have encountered online were actually sitting in my kitchen, I would not want to talk about evidence and proofs. I would want to get to know them as people, cook something good for us to eat together, and if appropriate, pour us some of that heavenly substance that geniuses (or perhaps angels) produce from vineyards.

Because of my reductionist outlook rather than in spite of it, I do not think the hard logic of theological proofs of God could have sparked the flame of conversion in my heart. Perhaps that is why they do not resonate with me. People sometimes assume that a scientist convert must have been swayed by the logic, but honestly, I had enough logic. I needed something more. I needed faith, hope, and love. My metanoia had to be a desire to lead a different life, a holier life for the sake of my loved ones, a willingness to peer beyond the material world for the sake of understanding something bigger, an assent to the truths of faith and the fullness of the Divine Revelation, which I discovered are guarded by the Catholic Church. That discovery was when I truly appreciated the proofs of God's existence because they greatly aided me in grasping my faith, but my conversion was not a matter of sifting through logic puzzle pieces until I saw the picture. It was a reaching up to a light. I needed Christ.

It was a choice. I remember making the choice to accept that the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ, a most circular argument in my head, something like this: “I believe. This is what I believe. This is why I believe. And this I call the Body and Blood of Christ.”

Sure, at times I wondered if I was deluding myself. When I prayed the long and memorized prayers, I knew I was training my brain. I struggled, but only until I realized something about faith, something I knew as a child but had never realized.

When I learned chemistry, I had faith in the chemists and physicists who came before me and whose work filled my text books. I had faith in my instructors. I had faith in the data listed in the manuals. I had faith in the peer-reviewed journals I absorbed to remain current in my field and faith in the reviewers who granted me publication. I knew I could not do every experiment or procedure myself to prove to myself everything I read or learned. I accepted authority of my own volition. I learned what was to be taught. I memorized what was to be memorized. I repeated certain facts until I appropriated them. And my knowledge of chemistry became part of who I am, through circular logic.

Although I have never seen an electron, I believe they exist. I accepted that they exist before I learned what they are and what they do. My rationale went something like this: “I believe. This is what I believe. This is why I believe. And this I call an electron.” Every proof I find convincing is a proof I am willing to believe. Believing that the universe is orchestrated by God the Father, Creator of Heaven and Earth was probably the most satisfying intellectual assent I have ever made as a scientist. In the light of faith, I finally understood why I love science.

So, to the atheists, I am not really sure what to do except offer a blanket apology to all those I have interacted with in the past. Looking back, I admit that there were periods along my journey where I had the idea that—even though the proofs were not what convinced me—I needed to wield Aquinas to convince you to have faith because I thought that was how to effectively evangelize, and surely it is for some. But I am sorry for treating you the way I would not want to be treated.

I know what it feels like to take the leap of faith, and for me anyway, it was and still is terrifying. I did not know what faith would demand of me, and I still do not know what it will demand of me tomorrow. I had to face up to some horrible things about myself, and I had to make changes unsure of how they would affect me. I consented to becoming the mother of seven children, but the thought of seeing one of my children die fills me with so much dread I sometimes wonder if my life would have been objectively less painful without them, and then I banish that thought because I know it would have been painfully empty too, immeasurably so.

I did not and do not know if I could or can do what faith might demand, which sets me up for failure, which sets me up for fear, which plunges me into anxiety. But my faith continues to grow stronger. Do you want to know why? My faith grows stronger because I agree to accept the grace offered to me, almost as if I were placing my hand on a glass of water handed down by God Himself and drinking it in. (Alas, I need material props to envision grace.) When I drink the grace in, something happens that is like a charge running straight through my blood and neurons straight to my heart and mind, and I am infused with a courage I cannot describe, except to call it the purest, most brilliant lovelight. And it is thrilling.

Life does not get easier with faith. Mine got harder in a lot of ways, but I can soar above anxiety, suffering, and pain because I have a confidence, peace, and joy that lifts me.

Faith comes as a gift only when you are willing to accept it. Faith requires the courage to do something radical—to leap out of the entrapment of circularity. Faith is kind of like flinging yourself into an unknown abyss only to realize you can fly, which yeah, defies all logic.

Alexander Wissner-Gross, a physicist at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Cameron Freer, a mathematician at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, have developed an equation to describe intelligent or cognitive behaviors. They suggest that intelligent behavior can be explained as an impulse to control events in the environment.

The mathematics are rooted in the theory of thermodynamics. The model relies on entropy, the mathematically-defined thermodynamic quantity accounts for the flow of energy through a thermodynamic process. Entropy predicts that isolated systems spontaneously evolve towards thermodynamic equilibrium – the state of maximum entropy. The rotting of dead bodies is an thermodynamically driven process, for example.

The software simulates a physical process of “trying to capture as many future histories as possible” to analyze a complete set of possible future outcomes. “Causal entropic forces” are the motivation for intelligent behavior, they propose.

In simpler words, they are suggesting that living things try to keep as many options open as possible and that’s how intelligence evolved. Man learned to walk upright and use tools, for example, to allow himself more possibilities.

On a brief tangent, I reject that intelligence can ever be mathematically modeled. Why? Because of free will. The test of a mathematical model is its predictive ability. We model what happened so we can predict what will happen next. If the model has no predictive value, then it’s wrong because lack of predictive ability indicates the natural system was modeled incorrectly. Can models predict human behavior? Only in large generalities for isolated behaviors, but not absolutely. The stock market has made that abundantly clear. (So does raising a two-year-old.)

But all of that aside, here’s the line that concerns me in the popular Live Science magazine write up.

“Wissner-Gross suggested that the new findings fit well within an argument linking the origin of intelligence to natural selection and Darwinian evolution — that nothing besides the laws of nature are needed to explain intelligence.”

This fundamental, yet unproven, idea that intelligence is a function of atoms colliding should concern all of us. It means that man’s thoughts and choices are no more mental than marbles colliding as they fall off a table, and love is just chemicals in the brain. Nothing new really, but seriously de-humanizing. How can we really be held responsible for our choices if we are slaves to physics?

And this fundamental premise is self-defeating in a monumental way.

If a person argues that he can mathematically model intelligence because that intelligence came from atoms colliding with each other as the laws of nature dictates, then how does that person know that what he argues is true?

How does anyone know what is true? What is truth?

Such a proposal demolishes the idea of intelligence altogether and renders it something mechanical and meaningless.

I doubt that the people purporting this fundamental premise as possibly true would agree, but even if they were right and intelligence is a matter of preserving as many future histories as possible, wouldn’t declaring that man is just a genetic slave of his environment mean that the number of possibilities is already predetermined?
 
 
(Image credit: Tumisu via Pixabay)

A Stanford School of Engineering research team has developed a new mathematical model for how society becomes polarized, published in the March online edition Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. These models are similar to models that seek to predict the behavior of matter based on certain known modes of action, and they are always more difficult for human systems because humans are, inherently, unpredictable (that free will thing). However, they are not without benefit. Opinionaters, debaters, political pundits, anyone passionate about ideologies, can benefit from the insight.

As a Catholic trying to understand better ways to communicate with others, I see some ecumenical insights in this study. Catholicism is all about unity because our God is unity, three Divine Persons who are One God. But as we all know, people are divided. Ecumenism calls us all to engage with the world, whatever our belief, and move beyond our own spheres. Consider the models.

Model 1 – Homophily

The prevailing mathematical theory of social polarization goes like this: Like seeks like. People surround themselves with other people who share their opinions, thereby reinforcing those like opinions. Thus the name, homophily (loving the same).

The model also assumes that people within the polarized groups form opinions to minimize disagreement among like-minded peers, so that the opinions within the polarized group tend toward an averaging unity. People want to appear unified within their groups.

But does that hinder groups from uniting with outside groups? It would seem so.

The Stanford researchers, however, refute this model of homophily. Why? As one of the doctoral candidates and co-author of the paper put it, “You can’t create outliers by averaging.” Over a long enough time, they say, this model would predict that society as a whole, as more and more averaging occurs, would become unpolarized and united, monophilic. I don’t agree with this conclusion because mathematically or naturally, there’s no law that averaging within an outlier subgroup will ever be, or must ever be, extended to the entire population. Just because some molecules react with other ones, doesn’t mean the material world will someday be a mono-substance. But consider the other model anyway.

Model 2 – Biased Assimilation

The research team at Stanford uses another social science model called biased assimilation. This model assumes that what polarizes people is the way they form opinions. When presented with inconclusive evidence (for instance, studies about homosexual behavior, studies about contraception and abortion, studies about whether animals can think, etc.) people easily accept evidence that supports their already held opinion, and discredit anything that does not fit it. They, thus, tend to make more out of inconclusive evidence than they should. It seems counter-intuitive that two people could be presented with the same information, but become further divided in opinion, but the researchers say that is what happens.

Okay, I think we all can relate to that.

If you’ve debated online, you know how it happens. You provide a link to something that you just know will convince the opponent to have an epiphany, and it doesn’t work. Instead, you both talk past each other because you both are trying to further hold your opinions. Have I been guilty of this too? Probably, without even realizing it. At least being aware of the tendency will help to avoid it.

Biased assimilation shows us also why we need to be careful about media choices. Highly polarizing news sources intentionally seek out stories that will further polarize; it’s how they build their audience. Likewise, Internet targeting systems also place ads and news stories in our feeds based on computational preferences. It’s something to be aware of, especially the next time you read or hear a story that makes your blood boil. Try not to assimilate the information with bias, try to understand what the other person is saying.

Catholic Model – Four Concentric Circles

Here’s the thing. I generally find myself wondering after reading these studies why they needed math to figure this out. Isn’t this common sense? The Catholic Church has been pondering human nature for a long time, and rather than mathematical models, Pope Paul VI, for instance, uses an analogy in his 1964 encyclical on ecumenism, Ecclesiam Suam. He describes four concentric circles (96-115) that hold all mankind. Rather than viewing mankind as forming groups and subgroups that are either polarized or united, he describes mankind as one large circle, already united by God, one species.

The circle of mankind includes atheists, other religions, and other Christians — everyone. The next, smaller circle is that of all religions, united because they all seek God. The third inner circle is that of Christians, united because they believe in and love Christ. The fourth, innermost, smallest circle is that of Catholics. So instead of the seeing mankind as polarized by opinion into unmixable substances like oil and water, Catholics are asked to view mankind as one race already and to work from the inner unity we have as Catholics to reach out and draw others in.

So, there is some truth in the Homophily Model, and we ought to avoid seeing ourselves as isolated groups only uniting within. There is some truth in the Biased Assimilation Model, and we ought to be careful that our media sources do not cement extreme biases. However, no mathematical model can ever fully account for the inherent free will of humans. Any parent of a two-year-old or broker on Wall Street knows that. As much as we may benefit from the insight of the mathematical models, I still think the Catholic Church is ahead of the mathematicians on this issue. And I was careful not to assimilate them with bias.
 
 
Originally appeared at StacyTrasancos.com. Used with permission.
(Image credit: Free Math Worksheets)

Because the audience at Strange Notions is a combination of Catholics and atheists, I thought the comments in this interview between Brian Greene and Richard Dawkins would be a fun change of pace for a discussion.

Here's a summary of the interview. Dr. Nick Bostrom, a philsopher at the University of Oxford, proposed an argument that in the future we will have powerful supercomputers that can create universes 'in silico.' In these simulated universes, sentient beings will exist unaware they are in a simulation (think Matrix). Bostrom predicts that once humanity has the technology to create simulated universes, there will be more simulated universes than real universes because real universes are harder to create than computer universes. Therefore, in totality there are more simulated universes than real universes. "You come home at night. You flick it on. You create a universe, and sort of kick back and watch it happen."

Bostrom argues that based on statistics it's most likely we already do live in a simulated universe. According to both Bostrom and Greene, people find this the most compelling argument for the existence of a Creator. Why? Because it cannot be disproven and because this idea renders the Creator not some mysterious being but rather a human being. Greene envisions him as "some futuristic teenage kid with pimples in his garage who just created the universe."

In the interview, Greene wants to know what Dawkins thinks of that. Dawkins agrees, "I can't see how you could refute it; I can't see how you could actually be sure we're not." Dawkins also says that if a religion rose up in this simulated universe created by the pimply teenager and he were one of the sentient beings living in the universe, he would not worship the kid. Greene is impressed that there's actually a "logical sequence of words" that gives meaning to the argument there is a Creator of the universe. Dawkins is intrigued. He notes there also has to be a physics built into this simulated universe for it to operate, but that the "pimply youth" could also violate these physical laws during the simulation and suddenly make things happen, at will, that weren't supposed to happen. Here Dawkins seems to get confused.

"Um, it's got to be a pretty disciplined pimply youth that sees to it..." says Dawkins.
"...as a Creator of this world should be..." interjects Greene.

"Yeah, I would say, yes, but that...that we don't, we don't see that, well I suppose we don't, I mean maybe, maybe..."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that Dawkins, Greene, and Bostrom also find this argument for the existence of a god compelling. I am surprised this is the argument they cannot refuse. I am also surprised Dawkins started to say we don't see discipline in the physical laws of our universe. The scientific method depends on predictability.

My purpose, however, is not to deride or ridicule atheists who ponder our origins. We have that in common. These atheist scientists are bearing witness to the "permanence and universality of the question of origins." This inquiry, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, is distinctively human. And while the Pimply Teenager God of a Simulated Universe idea is just about as wildly mythical as the ancient religions who produced creation myths, it no less represents a search for explanation of some sort. It is at least less violent than the Babylonian creation myth whereby the mother goddess Tiamat spawned monster-serpents as children who revolted against her, planned evil, and dismembered her to form the world as they burst her belly and smashed her skull until she was angered like one possessed and lost her reason. Truly, that would be a world in which you could doubt the discipline of the Creator (or creator-monster-children-serpent-things).

Nonetheless, the Christian faith has always challenged arguments to our origins that are different from its own.

It rejects a Gnostic god, for instance, who would will people to shun the universe as evil while clinging to the spiritual realm. The Christian view is not based on blind faith, nor does it ask Christians to reject the material realm.

Christianity rejects a Deist god who would create the universe and leave it to run like a machine until he felt like tricking people by breaking the laws of physics, just as the Pimply Teenager god. Christians do not believe that God is a puppeteer determining every behavior and action in disconnected instances in time, creating scenarios as he goes. Such strict fideism assumes we cannot know with any certainty what the guiding hand will do next. This view denies that beings have intrinsic natures influencing their behavior, but the view is unbalanced; it over-emphasizes the freedom of God but denies his rationality. On the other hand, the Christian worldview is not strictly deterministic either, as if God created the world like he built a clock, wound it up, and ignored it to tick away time. That view is also unbalanced; it over-emphasizes the rationality of God but denies his freedom.

It is worth noting there could be no science in either of these scenarios, or in the Gnostic worldview. On this, I think we all can agree: Strict gnosticism, fideism, and determinism are inimical to science. The first denies the significance of physics, the second denies the predictability of physics, and the third denies the need for experimentation, for in a strictly determined world we would be able to deduce the entire physical system by pure thought. The Christian God demonstrates a fine line between rationality and freedom, a fine line we strive to emulate in our human endeavors.

Christianity also rejects a Pantheistic god, who would emanate the universe from himself or be one with the universe as the universe is created and destroyed in eternal cycles of good and evil. While this might make for some interesting simulations for the post-human basement dweller, it is not so good for us humans having a discussion right now. If the universe emanates from God and runs on an eternal cosmic ferris wheel, with all of us caught hopelessly in whatever part of the cycle we happen to have been born on, how could we have any desire for innovation or escape? We are either despairing at the bottom of the cycle or complacently soaring at the top, and we cannot have the motivation or the confidence to learn and dominate the physical laws of nature.

Finally, a Materialistic god could not exist, for it presents an internal contradiction. The word "god" typically refers to a supernatural being, or being itself, but a materialistic god would be within the natural world.

But a Pimply Teenage god of a simulated universe? I guess I'm wondering why atheist scientists think his existence is compelling enough not to refute, and how an atheist would describe this god should he be the atheist ideal.

With the exception of Materialism, anyone who holds these beliefs about the universe's origin could, as Greene did, claim they are a "logical sequence of words" giving meaning to the argument that there is a Creator of the universe. The Christian view of origins, however, is not just a logical sequence of words; it is reasoned from divine revelation. The Christian assumes the universe and our existence is real, that it is not simulated. The Christian God is not only monotheistic, but Trinitarian and Incarnational. I'm sure Catholics here can explain more about these dogmas if anyone wants to know more, but the key word is "wants". Faith cannot be imposed.

So yes, I suppose if we follow the line of thought from Greene, Bostrom, and Dawkins and ponder a post-human society someday when there will be a way to simulate universes, then yes, I suppose one could say, in the utmost simplistic of statistical statements, that there would be more simulated universes created with the flip of a switch than the one real universe. But that line of logic only begs the question, "Who created the computer and the computer god, and why did he have to flip a switch?"

Yet in the end, I think all of us, Catholics and atheists alike, can agree with Dawkins and Greene here—such a flippant clientele of supercomputer gods would not be worthy of our worship.
 
 
(Image credit: World Science Festival)

Professor David P. Barash recently wrote an opinion column in the New York Times titled “God, Darwin and My College Biology Class.” Professor Barash is in the psychology department at the University of Washington. He teaches courses on sociobiology. He explained in his essay why he gives undergraduate students “The Talk.” No, it’s not about sex. The Talk is about faith and science. He says:

"And that’s where The Talk comes in. It’s irresponsible to teach biology without evolution, and yet many students worry about reconciling their beliefs with evolutionary science. Just as many Americans don’t grasp the fact that evolution is not merely a “theory,” but the underpinning of all biological science, a substantial minority of my students are troubled to discover that their beliefs conflict with the course material.
 
Until recently, I had pretty much ignored such discomfort, assuming that it was their problem, not mine. Teaching biology without evolution would be like teaching chemistry without molecules, or physics without mass and energy. But instead of students’ growing more comfortable with the tension between evolution and religion over time, the opposite seems to have happened. Thus, The Talk."

While professor Barash’s essay may upset some people, it does not ruffle me much. I have no problem with the above statement. To the extent that the “tension between evolution and religion” is interfering with his biology classes, yes, the teacher needs to address that tension and avoid distractions. Long tangents about religion can distract from teaching the science. Besides, there is a vast array of opinions about how to interpret the two in light of each other.

Barash noted with chagrin that Stephen J. Gould’s NOMA (non-overlapping magisteria) is the “received wisdom in the scientific establishment.” NOMA basically holds that science and religion can coexist in their own separate spheres and minimally inform each other in the search for truth. Barash believes that the two cannot stay separate, and he feels that “accommodating” religion imposes some “challenging mental gymnastic routines.”

I agree that the two cannot stay separate, but I take exception to his solution. In “The Talk” he tells students that as evolutionary science has progressed, the “space” for faith has narrowed. He tells them that “no literally supernatural trait has ever been found in Homo sapiens,” and that we are all just animals. He tells them that “living things, including human beings, are produced by a natural, totally amoral process, with no indication of a benevolent, controlling creator.” He concludes by telling them that it is not the duty of science (or science professors) to do the mental gymnastics to reconcile faith and science.

But here’s the thing. Rather than bringing clarity to the classroom, Barash brings more confusion by imposing his own beliefs about religion. It is enough to say, “This is a science class, please do not distract the class with questions about religion.” But what does he do? He imposes his beliefs on the students by making the very statements about faith that he asks the students to avoid. He is the one bringing religion into his science class.

But what about those tensions? Where should they be discussed? They need to be discussed outside of science class and with the guidance of someone competent to instruct in the faith. A lot of believers add to the confusion too, particularly those who think everyone must agree with their scientific interpretations to have real faith. In my opinion, people on all sides of the evolution and religion debate get too worked up and too impatient trying to claim all the answers. By our very human nature, we do not know everything and never will. We advance in knowledge. We are discursive creatures. It’s perfectly acceptable, even laudable, to say, “I don’t know.” By defining what you do not know, you more effectively guide your discovery. The apparent conflicts or tensions between science and faith are not the result of God’s incomplete knowledge or poor planning; they are the result of our partial understanding. We explore into the mysteries to seek more understanding. Scientists know this intimately, though some of them will not admit it.

We don’t know exactly how humans or anything else evolved, just that it all did. Catholics don’t know exactly how God created the first man and woman, just that he did. Catholics don’t know exactly how God might have guided the evolutionary process, instituted physical laws, or granted free will and intellect to the human being. They just know that he did, he does, and he will. Our theories are explanatory; we try to find explanations by forming hypotheses and testing them. The work of science is to discover how the material world works. Regarding faith, Catholics have the divinely revealed deposit of truth, i.e. Scripture and Tradition upon which dogma is founded. The work of theology is to understand those truths and to interpret and communicate them. Science can indeed be guided by faith, and faith can indeed be enriched by science—but only if you have faith. Does it require challenging intellectual effort? Yes. But so what?

A believer needs only to state that he or she sees science as the study of the handiwork of God. Note, that is not an argument but a statement. Nothing about evolutionary theory can ever be a threat to faith because believers interpret scientific discovery in a fuller scope of reality. Where faith is certain, science—never forget this—is provisional. If you are so inclined, study evolutionary theory in confidence. It is fascinating and underpins biological sciences just as Barash says it does. And if your science teacher is not religious? You probably shouldn’t consider him an authority on faith.

Never forget this either. The non-religious worldview is ultimately incoherent because science only gets you so far. Science points to greater realities beyond it. Even the scientific method demands a Christian worldview. To do science, we all have to view the world as ordered, symmetrical, intelligible, and predictable, and we have to fundamentally believe that we are rational beings who can gain knowledge about our world.

If people do not understand what I have just said, then yes, evolutionary theory may seem to threaten the “space” for faith. I really don’t know how to address this problem except to say that it demonstrates precisely why religious education needs to precede science education in priority, consistent with the words of Christ, “For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?” The student who is confident in his or her faith should be free to study science and the professor free to teach it without invoking his own mental gymnastics routines to try to avoid mental gymnastics routines. This human endeavor we call science ought to unite us, plain and simple.
 
 
(Image credit: New York Times)

NOTE: Today we wrap up our weekly series of essays by Dr. Stacy Trasancos on the "stillbirths" of science. They're based on Fr. Stanley L. Jaki's research into the theological history of science in the ancient cultures of Egypt, China, India, Babylon, Greece, and Arabia. See past articles here.

 
The last culture to be examined is that of the Muslims. Although theirs was a monotheistic view, it was not a Christological or Trinitarian view, which left it vulnerable to a monotheism that approached pantheism. What happened in the Muslim world seems to be the result of a mixture of mindsets. The Arabian philosophers adopted the works of the Greeks, along with the organismic, eternal cosmic treadmill worldview. This meant that the philosophers’ worldview was in conflict with the Muslim religion since the Koran taught that God the Creator created the world and held it in existence. The stillbirth of Muslim science could be credited with a separation of science and religion that ought to have been reconciled, a point that would no doubt surprise many people today.

As Athens and Rome lost cultural significance around the early seventh century A.D., there was less communication between the two. Greek scholars moved toward the East and organized at Jundishapur in Southwest Persia. In 641 A.D., when Persia was conquered by the Muslims, the Middle East and North Africa came under one rule. By 711 A.D., the Arabs took Spain and twenty-one years later they stormed France. One hundred years after Muhammed’s death, a political unification of land that spanned three continents emerged. As the new religion codified in the Koran was imposed, a giant empire formed “steeped in the conviction that everything in life and in the cosmos depended on the sovereign will of a personal God, the Creator and Lord of all.” (Jaki, Science and Creation, p. 193)

The continual study of the Koran inspired intellectual curiosity among faithful Muslims, as did the meticulous scholarship of the Greek philosophical and scientific body of knowledge. So serious was the promotion of knowledge that “Houses of Wisdom” were erected, notably in Baghdad (813–833), Cairo (966), and Cordova (961–976). Cordova amassed over 300,000 volumes for the library and immediately attracted scholars from the Christian West, who were welcomed with hospitality.

A paper mill, learned from the Chinese art of paper-making, was constructed in Baghdad in 794, and extensive translation and reproduction of Greek literature flourished. The works of Galen, who was considered second only to Hippocrates in the medical hagiography of the Western World, were translated, some 130 of them, and dominated medical practice in the medieval East and the West well into the Renaissance. (Plinio, A History of Medicine: Roman Medicine, p. 315) The greatest figure of Arab medicine was produced from this school, al Razi (865–925), the author of A Treatise on the Small-Pox and Measles. His work has been reprinted more than forty times in the last four hundred years. Islamic medicine in general was outstanding, a field in which Islamic science demonstrated its most sustained vitality. The Muslims had a realistic sense for facts of observation.

The Islamic ophthalmologist, Ibn-Rushd (1126–1198), otherwise known as Averroes, provides a “priceless insight” into the ultimate failure of Islamic science. (Jaki, Science and Creation, p. 195) He was a resolute advocate and student of Aristotle’s philosophy and science, and as such broke new grounds with ophthalmology. The practice of medicine could flourish under Aristotelian teaching because it did not require any questioning of Aristotle’s view of the physics.

Likewise Ibn-Sina (980–1037), also known as Avicenna, the famed philosopher provides the same insight. His textbook served as the standard in Arab medical teaching, a fine collection of observation and systematic pathology. Muslim science made notable contributions in areas that had nothing to do with physical laws. When it came to a study of physical laws of the world, there was a certain inertia owed to the unwillingness to question the Aristotelian animistic worldview, which is why the study of biology advanced but without an underlying increase in the understanding of the physical world.

This lack of understanding of physics is evidenced by Arab alchemy, which came to stand for the study of materials and compounds. This field of investigation was a combination of mystical and astrological proclivities, fundamentally the result of mixing the organismic, eternal cycles of pantheism with the belief that a Creator created the universe. It was an attempt to reconcile the conflicting views of Aristotelian philosophy and Muslim theology.

The same paradox occurred in astrology. The astrologers, working with assumptions in conflict with their religion, gave credence to the pagan doctrine of the Great Year, even to the point of believing it could predict the succession of rulers, religions, reigns, and physical catastrophes. Yet devout Muslims could not accept these ideas that were in conflict with Muslim orthodoxy, which revealed that the universe had an absolute beginning with creation. As attempts were made to reconcile these beliefs, something ambiguous resulted, as evidenced in the writing of al-Biruni, a Muslim who refuted the contradictions among scholars and religious men in his famous work The Chronology of Ancient Nations:

"It is quite possible that the (celestial) bodies were scattered, not united at the time when the Creator designed and created them, they having these motions, by which–as calculation shows–they must meet each other in one point in such a time. It would be the same, as if we, e.g. supposed a circle, in different separate places of which we put living beings, of whom some move fast, others slowly, each of them, however, being carried on in equal motions–of its peculiar sort of motion–in equal times; further, suppose that we knew their distances and places at a certain time, and the measure of the distance over which each of them travels in one Nychthemoreon." (Athar-ul-Bakiya of Albiruni, The Chronology of Ancient Nations, p. 30)

He goes on in the work to give credit to the mathematical computations of the cycles to explain the appearances, an incongruity between mathematics and reality and a failure to go beyond the Aristotelian and Neoplatonian positions regarding the physical world. As far as the Muslim scholars advanced, they still did not provide the psychology that could give birth to modern science because they did not effectively refute the pantheism of the Greek scientific corpus (body).

That reconciliation would come from Christian scholars who, in adherence to the Christian Creed, rejected the teachings of the Greek scientific corpus which contradicted Christian dogma, particularly pantheism and the eternal cosmic cycle. Indeed, the birth of science can be credited as a successful reconciliation of the Christian religion and science.

"There had to come a birth, the birth of the only begotten Son of the Father as a man, to allow science to have its first viable birth." (Jaki, A Late Awakening, p.60)

This series of essays is adapted from the book Science Was Born of Christianity: The Teaching of Fr. Stanley L. Jaki (available on Amazon). In the book, this series is in the chapter "Was Born," which is preceded by an introduction to Fr. Jaki and a discussion about how he defined "science." This series is followed by a series of essays about "The Biblical Womb" and the attitudes towards Greek and Roman science in "Early Christianity." The birth of science in "The Christian West" is covered by a brief review of the following Christian scholars' contributions, in chronological order: Adelard of Bath, Thierry of Chartres, Robert Grosseteste, William of Auvergne, St. Albertus Magnus, St. Thomas Aquinas , Roger Bacon , Siger of Brabant , Étienne Tempier, and Jean Buridan.

Sources:

• Stanley L. Jaki, Science and Creation: From Eternal Cycles to an Oscillating Universe (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, Ltd, 1986), 192-200.
• Stanley L. Jaki, A Late Awakening and Other Essays (Port Huron, MI: Real View Books, 2004), 22-25.
• Prioresch Plinio, A History of Medicine: Roman Medicine (Omaha, NE: Horatius Press, 1998), 315.
• Athar-ul-Bakiya of Albiruni, The Chronology of Ancient Nations: An English Version of the Arabic Text “Vestiges of the Past,” translated by D. Edward Sachau (London: W. H. Allen & Co., 1879), 30.

 
 
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NOTE: Today we continue our weekly series of essays by Dr. Stacy Trasancos on the "stillbirths" of science. They're based on Fr. Stanley L. Jaki's research into the theological history of science in the ancient cultures of Egypt, China, India, Babylon, Greece, and Arabia. See past articles here.

 
Like other great civilizations, the contributions and skill of the ancient Greeks cannot be dismissed. Probably more has been written about Greek intellectual history than any other ancient culture. Many scholars have credited ancient Greece with the invention of science, and Jaki held that they came closer to a birth of science than any other culture. There is a long list of scholars who left behind writings that inspire intellectual endeavors to this day. Here is a brief list of some of them.

Thales of Miletus (c. 620–c. 546 B.C.) was a geometer and astronomer influenced by the Babylonians and Egyptians. He developed ideas about abstract geometry such as the idea that the diameter of a circle bisects the circle and that base angles of isosceles triangles are equal.¹ He is popularly credited as the “first scientist” even by those who admit that in the strict sense the recipient of this title is unknown because “science as a reliable method to knowledge, involving observation, hypothesis, experiment, and critique, would evolve.”² Centuries later, Aristotleof Stagira, who will be discussed shortly, called Thales the “founder” of the type of philosophy that investigates the nature of matter and original causes.³ Thales was the founder of the school of thought known as Ionian physics. He conceived of the world of nature as an organism, an animal, within which were lesser organisms.⁴ The earth was, according to the Ionians, one such organism in the greater organism and it served its own purpose.

Anaximander of Miletus (c. 611–c. 547 B.C.) described the origin of all things as the “Boundless” or the “Unlimited” principle and was a speculative astronomer who wrote about celestial bodies and why the Earth does not fall.⁵ An Ionian following in the thought of Thales, Anaximander considered time and space as a matrix of birth to successive worlds.⁶ He thought that innumerable worlds arose in this boundless medium like bubbles and that the earth is but one of those bubbles. Ionian physics presupposed that all natural things were made of a single substance. Anaximander proposed that the cosmos was less like a god-like organism and more like a divine substance.⁷

Pythagóras of Sámios (c. 570–c. 490 B.C.) was a famous mathematician for the theorem named after him, and although the most authoritative history of early Greek geometry assigns him no role in geometry at all, his discoveries were significant nonetheless.⁸

Leucippus (fifth century B.C.) is considered the founder of Atomism, along with Democritus (c. 460–c. 370 B.C.) The theory of Atomism held that there could be no motion without voids and that invisible and indivisible particles moved in the empty space. Democritus called these particles ἄτομος or atomos, a term which is still used today. The theory was a philosophical one, not based on observation or experiment, to explain how there might be change without something coming to be out of nothing.⁹

Hippocrates of Cos (c. 450–c. 380 B.C.), among others, is credited with providing detailed medical observations that made it possible to diagnose and treat illness, along with a code of ethics that still has influence today.¹⁰ The Greeks borrowed from the Babylonian intellectual treasures, but they also developed their own system of geometry, without which the Babylonian data would have been unbeneficial.¹¹ Modern geometers are still unable to reconstruct the demonstrations behind some propositions in the Fourteen Books of Euclid.¹² Euclid of Alexandria (c. 325–265 B.C.) built a logical and rigorous geometry with a solid foundation, and it was a primary source of geometric reasoning and methods that went practically unchanged for more than two thousand years.¹³

There was, of course, the great Aristotle of Stagira (384–322 B.C.), the major Greek philosopher and student of the great Plato, the teacher who founded the Lyceum in Athens. Aristotle wrote stupendous volumes on logic, politics, biology, taxonomy, physics, and cosmology.¹⁴ The most mature form of science achieved during Hellenic times in the biological sciences was that of Aristotle’s. He turned zoology into a scientific discipline in his History of Animals and laid the foundations for comparative anatomy in his On the Parts of Animals. His On the Generation of Animals remained, until modern times, the authority on embryology.¹⁵

Jaki wrote that the “extraordinary feats of Aristotle in biology were in a sense responsible for his failure in physics.”¹⁶ According to Jaki, Aristotle’s On the Heavens “set the fate and fortune of science, or rather tragic misfortunes, for seventeen hundred years” because a serious error was made and went unnoticed in Aristotle’s continuous resort to biological simile.¹⁷ In holding the belief that all things had a soul and therefore sought the final cause for which they were best suited (i.e. rocks desire to fall to the ground), for animals as well as for objects, a purpose was assumed for processes and phenomena of every kind.

Aristotle asserted that if two bodies were dropped from the same height at the same time, the one with twice the weight of the other one would fall twice as fast because it had twice the nature and twice the desire to do so.¹⁸ Even though simple observation would prove that false, the hold on the mind of the Greeks of this animistic orthodoxy would not allow it. The Greeks thought of motion as a function of the magnitude, a “striving,” in nature for objects living and non-living. Aristotle dismissed the idea of unresisted motion as unreal or over-abstract.¹⁹ This orthodoxy caused even a genius like Aristotle to be so wrong about the free fall of objects. It is perplexing that no one noticed this falsehood in daily life, not just among the ancient Greeks but, as will be discussed later, also among those who followed Aristotle’s orthodoxy into the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

These views were—as has been noted in the Egyptian, Chinese, Indian, and Babylonian cultures already—the result of pantheism. The Greeks were steeped in the perspective of eternal cycles of birth-life-death-rebirth for all things, a theme common to all the great religions and cultures that experienced a stillbirth of science. In keeping with the mindset of Babylonian and Egyptian cultures, the Greeks also put a strong emphasis on an eternal, cyclic universe and on the comparison of the cosmos to animals. Even the ones with a belief in a monotheistic deity believed that deity was the universe and that all existence was a cyclic “cosmic treadmill.”

With Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle, the sublunary world was like a huge animal breathing, growing, and decaying in cycles of birth, death, and rebirth for eternity.²⁰ The basis of this belief was that fundamentally all existence was viewed as cyclical and the cosmos either was a god-organism or a god-substance obeying unpredictable laws of its own volition and from which finite substances came into and out of existence. In subsequent centuries, even as new ideas about the nature of the cosmos were explored, the fundamental cyclical presumption remained. Philolaus, Alcmeon, Archytas, and Oenipodus were Pythagoreans who promoted a cyclical constitution of the universe.²¹ This belief was not irrational since human experience is based on cycles in life, in nature, and in the heavens.

Plato, in his many dialogues, told of a cosmic process that alternated between two phases, one of divine laws with a golden age and one of chaos and destruction. In Republic, Plato explains how he saw everything, including human and social phenomenon and the periodicity of human societies, under the organic cosmic law of cycles.²²

"A city which is thus constituted can hardly be shaken; but, seeing that everything which Hard in truth it is for a state thus constituted to be shaken and disturbed; but since for everything that has come into being destruction is appointed, not even such a fabric as this will abide for all time, but it shall surely be dissolved, and this is the manner of its dissolution. Not only for plants that grow from the earth but also for animals that live upon it there is a cycle of bearing and barrenness for soul and body as often as the revolutions of their orbs come full circle, in brief courses for the short-lived and oppositely for the opposite; but the laws of prosperous birth or infertility for your race, the men you have bred to be your rulers will not for all their wisdom ascertain by reasoning combined with sensation, but they will escape them, and there will be a time when they will beget children out of season."²³

This cycling between chaos and divine order came to be called the Great Year (sometimes Perfect Year), the time when all the stars and constellations of the sky came back to the position they were in a golden age of perfection, the period of one complete cycle of the equinoxes, although that date was figured differently by different philosophers and thus was ambiguous.²⁴ However, the general point is that the notion of a cyclical eternity was prevalent and persistent in Greek thought. In Timaeus, Plato describes this Great Year:

"Thus arose day and night, which are the periods of the most intelligent nature; a month is created by the revolution of the moon, a year by that of the sun. Other periods of wonderful length and complexity are not observed by men in general; there is moreover a cycle or perfect year at the completion of which they all meet and coincide . . . To this end the stars came into being, that the created heaven might imitate the eternal nature."²⁵

The gods, according to Plato and the Greeks, were themselves made in the form of a circle, the “most perfect figure and the figure of the universe.” According to Aristotle, time itself was, therefore, a circle.²⁶ If time is a circle and the cosmos eternal within this circle, emanating from the pantheistic God, the nature of the gods, un-aging, un-alterable, and un-modified, then all change, including human knowledge, is cyclical too. For the most brilliant scholar or the least accomplished servant, the Greeks believed the same thoughts are recurring over and over again, and Aristotle held that this was, in fact, what man experienced:

"The mere evidence of the senses is enough to convince us of this, at least with human certainty. For in the whole range of time past, so far as our inherited records reach, no change appears to have taken place either in the whole scheme of the outermost heaven or in any of its proper parts. The common name, too, which has been handed down from our distant ancestors even to our own day, seems to show that they conceived of it in the fashion which we have been expressing. The same ideas, one must believe, recur in men’s minds not once or twice but again and again."²⁷

Jaki described the psychological impact of this premise as complacency. Such a belief hardly inspired an intellectual curiosity or confidence to learn and dominate the physical laws of nature, even if one felt that he was living in a golden age.

"Clearly, if one is consciously merged into the treadmill of eternal recurrences, only two choices remain. One is that of hopelessness, the feeling that one is at the bottom. The other is complacency, the illusion that one is and remains on top, at least in the sense that the irreversible decline will begin to be felt only by one’s distant progeny. Both attitudes cry out for salvation, although the second may be the less receptive to it."²⁸

The psychological impact is inherently tied to the cyclic worldview and the Great Year. Even in times of great progress, such as the Greek civilizations experienced, there would have been a resignation that the human cannot escape whatever fate pantheism and animism held for him. In eras of despair, there would have been a resignation to wait it out, even beyond one’s lifetime.

Next week is the final week, Arabia.

 
 
(Image credit: Wikimedia)

NOTE: Today we continue our weekly series of essays by Dr. Stacy Trasancos on the "stillbirths" of science. They're based on Fr. Stanley L. Jaki's research into the theological history of science in the ancient cultures of Egypt, China, India, Babylon, Greece, and Arabia. See past articles here.

 
In The Savior of Science, Jaki mentioned the history of science among cultures that communicated and developed in succession–Babylon, Greece, and Arabia. Knowledge was transmitted to the Sumerians from the Egyptians and then on to Babylonians, Assyrians, and Persians (c. 2900 B.C.– mid 7^th century A.D.). From there knowledge was transmitted to the Greeks and then to the Arabs, and this history is recorded in detail. Just as in other ancient cultures, there was obvious skill.

Jaki devoted the first few pages of the chapter “The Omen of Ziggurats” in Science and Creation to those massive structures built by the Sumerians and Babylonians as an example of their technological ability. “The planning, building, and decorating of the ziggurats,” Jaki wrote, “implied craftsmanship and practical geometry and is application on a grand scale, especially if one considers the temple complex and city surrounding the ziggurat.” Towns were planned around these temples, with defense walls, palaces, and quarters of the cities. The temples were made of mud bricks laid in a herring-bone pattern with mud mortar overlaid with bitumen or lime plaster, which could be smoothed and polished to a high-quality finish, to waterproof them. (Crawford, Sumer and the Sumerians, 60-67)

According to Herodotus, an ancient Greek historian (c. 484–425 B.C.), the ziggurat of Babylon was exceeded by no other city:

“[Babylon] lies in a great plain, and is in shape a square, each side fifteen miles in length; thus sixty miles make the complete circuit of the city. Such is the size of the city of Babylon; and it was planned like no other city of which we know.” (The Histories, Book 1, Chapter 178, section 3)

Jaki credited the Babylonian discovery of “mathematical puzzles equivalent to second-degree equations, lists of hundreds of plants and chemical compounds, together with their astonishingly accurate medicinal properties, and even longer lists of planetary positions” as extraordinary items of learning. The lists of planetary positions were the factual proof that Hipparchus, a second-century B.C. Greek astronomer and mathematician who discovered the precession of the equinoxes, relied on Babylonian astronomical data to reach his conclusions, another “one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all times.” The Babylonians had the skills necessary to apply mathematics to nature, but they did not take this step.

It may seem contradictory for Jaki to have claimed that science was “born” of Christianity and “stillborn” in other cultures while he also credited those cultures with great scientific discoveries. This point is often missed, so it is useful to pause here to point out something in Jaki’s use of the word “stillbirth” of science. He acknowledged cultural wombs that were capable of developing science even to the point of viability as a sustained discipline. His choice of the word “birth” was to show that the final step from isolated dependence to universal independence was not taken in any culture before the Scientific Revolution in the Middle Ages.

Historians have argued that “all subsequent varieties of scientific astronomy, in the Hellenistic world, in India, in Islam, and in the West–if not indeed all subsequent endeavors in the exact sciences–depend upon Babylonian astronomy in decisive and fundamental ways.” (Aaboe, “Scientific Astronomy in Antiquity, 21-42) Jaki would not have agreed with this argument, and the reason has to do with how he defined “exact science” and how he considered the theological implications of ancient cultures as well. All subsequent varieties of science may have depended in some way on Babylonian astronomy, but not in decisive and fundamental ways.

The Babylonians may have mathematically modeled astronomical appearances, but their cosmology is evidence they believed a very different reality behind the appearances. The Enuma elish was a portrayal of personified forces engaged in bloody battles; the mother goddess, Tiamat, is dismembered to form the sky, earth, waters, and air. Jaki explained, “Such a cosmogony was certainly not a pointer toward that kind of understanding of the cosmos which amounts to science.”

The Babylonians observed celestial phenomenon as a service to a religious worldview steeped in magic, and the calculations were abstracted from physical objects. Jaki held that it was absolutely necessary for a true science, the “quantitative study of the quantitative aspects of physical objects in motion,” for calculations not to be abstracted from objects.

A viable birth of science could not have been made in such an environment where the mathematical formality was cut off from the physical reality. The failure was neither geophysical nor socio-economical, but rather an intellectual inertia that prevented a systematic investigation of the world and its lawfulness. There was no confidence in the reasonability of such an enterprise under the belief that people were part of a huge, animistic, cosmic struggle between chaos and order.

Next week, Greece.

Sources:

• Stanley L. Jaki, Science and Creation: From Eternal Cycles to an Oscillating Universe (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, Ltd, 1986), 85-99.
• Stanley L. Jaki, The Savior of Science (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000), 38-39.
• Harriet Crawford, Sumer and the Sumerians, Second Edition (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 60-67.
• Herodotus, The Histories, with an English translation by A.D. Godley (Cambridge, UK: Harvard University Press, 1920), Book 1, Chapter 178, section 3.
• A. Aaboe, “Scientific Astronomy in Antiquity,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, A. 276 (1974), 21-42.

Adapted from Science Was Born of Christianity: The Teaching of Fr. Stanley L. Jaki.
 
 
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