Stephen Barr on connecting God and the world

In my previous posts here and here, I discussed the position of catholic physicist Stephen Barr, starting from his article at First Things. He was advocating a view in which the influence of God on the world was confined to the 'deep principles' of physics.

The (unfortunate) consequences of this position for biology and evolution are now the subject of vigorous discussion at the blog Uncommon Descent, first here and now here. Barr wants to claim that scientific theories cannot confirm or deny the existence of purpose, and that any scientific theories (including materialism) which e.g. appear to deny purpose have to be reinterpreted. The trouble, then, is that the materialists would not even recognize their own theories any more.

In theistic science, by contrast, we explicitly make purpose an integral part of the operation of the universe. A universe, that is, which is not just material, but has also mental, spiritual and divine operations. According to theistic science, the grand claims of materialism are simply false. And hence also the exclusivity of natural selection in the production of biological creatures by means of (non-Darwinian) evolution. Only then can we have a proper causal account of how we have evolved. Being a causal account, we go further than activities investigating intelligent design, which deliberately refrain from examining the causes of design.

We are connected with God, but we are not characters in God's novel

Continuing the previous discussion about how we have viewed, and should view, the relation between God and the world:

One view is that we are related to God as are the characters in a book to the Writer of the book.  Edward Feser, a new Aristotelean-Thomist philosopher, encourages us to use this metaphor:

On the classical theist conception of God, God is not one causal factor in the universe among others, not even an especially grand and powerful causal factor. He is not a “first” cause in the sense of being followed in a temporal series by a second cause, a third cause, a fourth cause, etc. Rather, He is “first” or primary in the sense of being the fundamental cause, the necessary precondition of there being any causality within the universe at all, just as the author of a story is the “first cause” of what happens in the story, not in the sense of generating effects in the way the characters and processes described in the story do, but rather in the sense of being the necessary precondition of there being any characters or processes in the story at all.

The same metaphor was developed at some length in the talk by physicist Stephen Barr at the 2012 Science and Faith Conference: "Can Science Inform Our Understanding of God?", the video for his talk being available on youtube. This metaphor of a Writer and his book characters has the virtue of emphasizing some of the great philosophical / ontological differences between us humans and God. God is (thereby) not just another person among us persons, or another object among the world's objects, but can be the necessary precondition for the existence of any of us persons or objects.

This Writer metaphor, however, has a serious defect, and one which I believe is fatal. This is that a writer can never love his characters in any manner which respects their freedom. And the characters can never love return love to God-as-writer in any way which gives delight to God. The ontological chasm between God and creation, having been made great, is now in fact too great to be bridged, even by love. Even God (who is love) cannot now make anyconjunction which should be of love.*

I wonder whether Thomas Aquinas has something to do with this separation. Was there something in his views which emphasizes separation rather than conjunction? I read more about Aquinas in an article by Elizabeth Johnson, for example:

One of the strengths of Aquinas's vision is the autonomy he grants to created existence through its participation in divine being. He is so convinced of the transcendent mystery of God (esse ipsum subsistens) and so clear about the sui generis way God continuously creates the world into being that he sees no threat to divinity in allowing creatures the fullest measure of agency according to their own nature. In fact, it is a measure of the creative power of God to raise up creatures who participate in divine being to such a degree that they are also creative and sustaining in their own right. A view to the contrary would diminish not only creatures but also their Creator: "to detract from the perfection of creatures is to detract from the perfection of divine power.'' (SCG 3.69.15) This is a genuinely noncompetitive view of God and the world. According to its dynamism, nearness to God and genuine creaturely autonomy grow in direct rather than inverse proportion. That is, God is not glorified by the diminishment of the creature but by the creature's flourishing in the fullness of its powers. The nature of created participation in divine being is such that it grants creatures their own integrity, without reserve.  

This participatory relationship has strong implications for the question of agency. The power of creaturely forces and agents to act and cause change in the world is a created participation in the uncreated power of the One who is pure act. Conversely, God's generous goodness and wisdom are seen especially in the creation of a world with its own innate agency.  

Admittedly her article comes from part of a polemic by the American Association for the Advancement of Science in their 'perspectives' about evolution, but I still believe what she says about Aquinas.

If so, then Aquinas has a serious problem in his theory. He wants to be "allowing creatures the fullest measure of agency according to their own nature". However, our agency requires us to have things which only God has: we need being, we need love, we need wisdom -- we need life in general. And God, in theism, is being itself, love itself, wisdom itself, and life itself. Aquinas does indeed recognize this about God: he acknowledges the 'aseity of God'. The word 'aseity' come from 'a se - ity', where 'a se' is latin for 'in itself'. But he does not acknowledge that we have to receive love, receive wisdom, receive life from God. This cannot be done arbitrarily 'at a distance', but must be done by the actions of God. And the actions of God require the presence of God. So it is certainly not the case that "nearness to God and genuine creaturely autonomy grow in direct rather than inverse proportion."

Aquinas seems to follow the traditional view of God creating the world, that is by fiat, taking literally the commands 'fiat lux: let there be light,' and so on. He, and other theologians since, have usually separated the question of how God sustains the existence of things from the question of their dynamical properties. These properties are taken to give rise to secondary causation, which is assumed to be independent of whatever primary causation there is from God.

The creation of substantial objects nevertheless involves God giving them their being (since he is being itself). There can be no power without substance nor without some kind of presence. It is impossible that God sustains merely the existences of things while at the same time remaining completely absent. In the theism of my book, the immanence of God, by which all things are sustained, is less an abstract  metaphysical principle and much more the immediate and mediate re-generation of life by continual influx from God. The sustaining of being by re-generation does allow this, as long as the beginning of the chain is in the presence of God.

The fact that God sustains all beings by such 'influx' can be the meaning of Matthew 5:45: "He ...  sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." Alternative imagery in the same verse refers to light rather than liquid flow: "He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good."

For more discussion of these things, and the broader picture, see www.beginningtheisticscience.com.

God does not support the world only by physical laws

It is generally agreed that, according to theism, God has not only created the world, but also sustains it in its day-to-day operation. If God stopped sustaining the universe, then everything in it would immediately cease to exist. Such a view can be contrasted with deism, whereby God was only the creator of the world, and has no further part or role in its existence or operation. In deism, the world must have within itself its continued principles of being. Both those views, of course, are to be distinguished with a-theism, which is like deism only without God: there is only the world continuing to  exist independently.   Note, finally, that all the above views are compatible with both universe and multi-verse theories of the world: we simply take 'the world' to refer to everything that exists.

We can order these views as theism -- deism -- atheism, with progressively fewer roles for God. In the last atheist view, there is no role. Theism is the opposite: that God is the direct or indirect source for actual causes in the world.

It is claimed often that modern science supports the view that the world (universe, multiverse, or whatever) exists in a self-sustaining manner, and has no causal input from outside it. That is to claim that scientific evidence supports the causal closure of the world. In that case, there are apparently no effects of God, and hence divine existence is unnecessary.

Some scientists with religious inclinations, and those desiring to see how the existence of God may be compatible with the supposed scientific evidence, insist that God still has a role. Namely, God is responsible for the laws of nature, and hence that God sustains the world by means of those laws. This view is essentially deism, but in popular culture the application of this theory to evolution has been called 'theistic evolution'. Under that name it has been supported by prominent scientists such as Francis Collins, Francisco Ayala and Stephen Barr. It is often taken as originating with Kepler, though in later posts we will investigate some earlier roots.

The laws of nature in modern physics are often essentially characterized in terms of their symmetries. These are the reflections/rotations/dilations that are allowed at the deepest level. More precisely, it is the 'underlying group structure' of the fundamental forces / fields / strings that is used to describe and distinguish different theories. Superstring theory is essentially the adoption of a particular set of fundamental symmetries at some deep level, though not at those levels we see with our eyes.

 

If God only sustains the world by means of natural laws, and these laws are only strict at some deep level, then it suggest a slightly more active role for God than in deism. But is it enough for theism?  Stephen Barr wrote along these lines in his First Things article "Fearful Symmetries" last year. He sees God essentially as producing the "great thought" that describes the deep symmetries, and hence sustains our world. This account enables him to continue as a mathematical physicist, and investigate these symmetries and these laws. However, it has particular consequences that hardly allow it to qualify as a theism.

The main consequence -- one Barr endorses completely -- is that "the world we experience is the result of processes that move upward". By 'upward', he means upward from the laws of physics to the evolutionary processes that produce living and then thinking creatures. These are just the processes that atheists point to, and he agrees that "that history--of matter self-organizing and physical structures growing in complexity--is correct as far as it goes."

Barr's view implies that all biological and mental processes are 'matter self-organizing', and can therefore be reduced to physical laws. The divinely-produced physical laws, he may insist, but physical laws nonetheless. There is nothing special in the human mind (if such minds are allowed at all to exist as minds) that allows humans to spiritually approach God in love, or even to think rationally. He might be reluctant to accept that conclusion, but that is the one that follows from his premises. He might seek endlessly for an account of 'non-reductive physicalism' for the mind, but, I believe, he will eventually fail.

The reason for this failure is that, in a proper theism, God enters into human life by means of spiritual and mental processes, and that God has causal effects in our spirits, minds, and hence also in our physical bodies. This is necessary not just for religious experiences, but also for day-to-day operations within us. In a fully fledged theism, the world is not causally closed, because it is open to God. 

Stephen Barr is reluctant to allow this openness to God to affect his science. He wants to keep some deep rationality of physics as the dwelling place of God in the world, rather than in the souls / minds / body complexes that make up humans (and other living creatures that might be sufficiently similar).

Part of this reluctance stems from a desire to follow the so-called theistic evolution theory (more accurately called 'deistic evolution' as I explained above), and to not allow the possibility of intelligent design. To allow divine input into specific creatures appears to unacceptably 'violate' the purity of his deep rationality, and remove from his mind the firm basis of natural laws at the physical level. 

Allowing divine input into the world, and allowing for causal laws that are not purely physical, is the task of the theistic science to come. For that, see the new book at www.beginningtheisticscience.com.