Creation and Explanation

Ch.2, Introduction (pp.51–52).

It is worth dwelling a little longer on the claims I made in the last post. Richard Dawkins claims that central to the meaning of the word ‘God’ are explanatory claims about the existence and arrangement of the cosmos – that God is (the content of) an explanatory hypothesis. I claim that Dawkins is in error – at least, he is in error to the extent that he takes himself to be stating something essential about Christian (Jewish, Islamic) understandings of God.

What kinds of investigations would be necessary to adjudicate between us, though?

There are historical investigations that we could undertake – from deeply speculative examination of the earliest emergence of ideas about God or the gods, through discussions of the development of the idea of creation in pre-Christian Judaism and its borrowings from other cultures, on into the debates about creation that took place between gnostic and catholic forms of Christianity in the early centuries after Christ, and the interactions with neo-Platonism and other strands of thought, and on into the more philosophical discussion of creation in medieval Judaism, Islam and Christianity, and then the transformations of the doctrine that began to take place with late medieval nominalism/voluntarism, and accelerated in the early modern period… and so on. I only really know this story from the time of Christ onwards, but for that section of it there are some good resources out there: Gerhard May’s Creatio ex Nihilo, David Burrell’s Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions and Faith and Freedom, Michael Buckley’s At the Origins of Modern Atheism, and Kathryn Tanner’s God and Creation in Christian Theology, for instance. My claim – one which you can follow up using these and other resources – is that God-as-explanatory-hypothesis is a late and ambiguous arrival on the scene, rather than the obvious core of religious beliefs about God.

There are, however, other kinds of investigation that we could undertake. We could call in the sociologists of religion, and ask them to tell us the results of opinion surveys of religious believers. I suspect that we would find that there is a good deal of ‘God as explanatory hypothesis’ stuff out there now, because that kind of claim, and forms of apologetic argument supposed to back it up, have become very popular in recent decades. It is by no means universal, of course, and may not even be quite the overwhelming majority position that some of Dawkins’ remarks might suggest, but it will certainly be there in strength.

However, I think we can dig deeper than that. My claim is that, although that kind of argument has become popular as a defensive mechanism, it’s prevalence does not actually tell you a great deal about what ‘God’ actually means in contemporary Christianity. One can, I claim, imagine (as a thought experiment) Christianity stripped of that particular apologetic reflex, and one does not need to make many other changes to one’s picture of Christianity in order to do so. Most of the ways in which most Christians talk, think and practice in relation to what they call ‘God’ have, I claim, little to do with ‘explanation’ – certainly little to do with the kinds of explanation that Dawkins is talking about. In order to pursue that argument further, however, we would need to ask questions about how Christian belief works – about how Christian ideas hang together, about how they are embedded in different forms of Christian life, about what their presuppositions and implications are, about how they draw upon and relate to scriptural and traditional sources, about what forms of testing, questioning, and change they are open to, and so on. In other words – we might need to talk to some theologians.

When I say that Dawkins’ misrepresents Christian belief, I do not mean that he is missing nuances, or that his view is too harsh, or insensitive, or that it lacks proper respect. I mean something much more central than that. Dawkins’ description of the God hypothesis should itself be treated as a hypothesis – the hypothesis that it is appropriate to describe God as an explanatory hypothesis. And Dawkins’ implicit hypothesis should be tested appropriately. There are relevant bodies of evidence, argument and expertise that can be drawn on in order to test Dawkins’ implicit hypothesis – most of which you can find in a good theology department.

I contend that Dawkins’ implicit hypothesis fails, and that this failure undermines the saliency of his overall argument. And I also claim that one of the big problems with Dawkins’ book is that he appears not to realise that there is an argument to be had here, and appears to be ignorant of the resources that might be brought to bear on resolving that argument. And, lastly, I claim that the misrepresentation of the nature of belief in God that Dawkins promotes here is closely related to the misrepresentation promoted by creationists, and that in this limited but important respect Dawkins is their ally.

12 Thoughts on “Creation and Explanation

  1. Isaac Gouy on March 25, 2008 at 12:02 am said:

    > I claim that the misrepresentation of the nature of belief in God that Dawkins promotes here is closely related to the misrepresentation promoted by creationists …

    1) My guess is that you are thinking of Creationists – the several varieties of scriptural literalist that seem common in the USA.

    What about small ‘c’ creationists? Would it be wrong to describe the views expressed by Christoph Schönborn as small ‘c’ creationist?

    “Finding Design in Nature”
    http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/07/opinion/07schonborn.html

    2) When you talk about “the misrepresentation promoted by creationists” I’m puzzled – couldn’t “the creationists” just shout back that you are the one doing the misrepresentation?

    I’ll link that to something Paul Tillich wrote about Einstein’s views: “… to deal with theology in the same fairness which is demanded from everyone who deals, for instance, with physics – namely to attack the most advanced and not obsolete forms of a discipline.”

    In physics there’s global consensus about what forms are obsolete.

    Is there comparable consensus in theology that such-and-such is a misrepresentation or such-and-such is obsolete?

  2. I’m not familiar with a distinction between creationists and Creationists. I’m familiar with a distinction between creationists and people who have some doctrine of creation – but in my neck of the woods, the ‘ist’ ending gets reserved for something that combines some kind of biblical literalism and some kind of God-as-explanation-for-natural-phenomena approach. And I’d need to know more about Schönborn before knowing how I would characterise him.

    On the misrepresentation issue, the creationist would not need to shout back. We could argue about it. Yes, we’re arguing in a context where there is no global consensus, indeed one where there are pretty entrenched opposing positions, but there are still arguments to be weighed, evidence to consider, texts to interpret, and so on. When I say that creationism involves a misrepresentation, I am not saying ‘Every right thinking person will agree with me’, but nor am I saying, ‘This is simply a matter of my own personal opinion’; I am saying, ‘I claim (as does a sizable body of expert opinion, even if no global consensus) that on the available evidence and arguments a pretty strong case can be made for this.’ Were I at this point trying to make that case against creationists, of course I’d need to cash that out – but I’m not doing that in this context.

  3. Isaac Gouy on March 26, 2008 at 7:43 pm said:

    > the misrepresentation of the nature of belief in God that Dawkins promotes here is closely related to the misrepresentation promoted by creationists …

    And also closely related to those who “have some doctrine of creation”.

    In “The Language of God” Francis Collins, after explaining what is wrong with creationism and intelligent design, states that “The Big Bang cries out for a divine explanation”.

    (The Big Bang cries out for a mathematical description of the universe that doesn’t break – and it would be really nice if it also worked for small objects like spaceships.)

    When “there is a good deal of ‘God as explanatory hypothesis’ stuff out there now” it’s a struggle to see Dawkins response to that as a misrepresentation.

  4. We can distinguish several different claims, can’t we.

    (1) A theologian may believe that God created the world.

    (2) A theologian may add to (1) the idea that this claim offers a good explanation for some otherwise inexplicable natural phenomena, such that the existence of those phenomena, and their inexplicability on other grounds, constitute good reasons for belief in God.

    For some who hold to (2), they will take it in its weak form,
    (2a), where the explanatory argument is a secondary aspect of the theologian’s claims about God – such that dismissal of this explanatory argument would not do serious damage to the theologian’s belief in God or account of the nature of God, even if it damaged his or her attempts to commend that belief to others.

    For others who hold to (2), it will take form (2b), where this explanatory argument is taken as a primary aspect of the theologian’s claims about God, such that his or her account of God looks like it stands or falls by the success of this explanatory argument. In the strongest cases of (2b), God is presented as an explanatory hypothesis: the theologian believes in God because of the explanatory work that the God-claim does, and the content of the God concept is primarily dictated by the explanatory argument.

    Now, pretty much all Christian theology involves some version of claim (1). Quite a bit of Christian theology involves claims of some form like (2). Creationists are among those who present those latter claims in a form like (2b). The form of Dawkins argument against the existence of God seems to me to assume some quite strong version of (2b). Yet I think, for reasons we have discussed elsewhere, that (2b) is and can be shown to be a misrepresentation of Christian beliefs about God. That is a misrepresentation shared by Dawkins and creationists.

    Personally,
    I accept (1);
    I am unconvinced so far by any form of (2) in its weaker form (2a) (I think, for instance, that the Big Bang does not cry out for a divine explanation), and
    I reject (2b).

  5. Isaac Gouy on April 8, 2008 at 7:07 am said:

    Elsewhere you wondered “Maybe I’m being too restrictive in my use of the word ‘explanation’?”

    (I don’t mean it to seem as though I’m holding you responsible for the disparate comments of others. This is just another example of why I keep coming back to ‘God as explanatory hypothesis’ – and keep saying it’s not just creationists – it’s because I keep seeing “God” seemingly used as explanation.)

    “They both [atheist and theist] believe that reality is intelligible and that truth is worth seeking. What theology adds is that the existence of God – that is, of Infinite Being, Meaning, Truth, Goodness, and Beauty – provides an adequate justification of this belief, as well as an answer to the question of why the universe is intelligible at all.” p51-52

    “Even if religion and morality have been adaptive – say, in the evolutionary sense of aiding the survival of human genes – theology is not necessarily wrong to claim at the same time that religion and morality exist because of a quiet divine invitation to each personal consciousness to reach beyond itself toward an infinite horizon of Meaning, Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Such an explanation in no way competes with or rules out evolutionary and other scientific accounts of religion and morality.” p85

    “God and the New Atheism” John F. Haught 2008

  6. Thinking about this, I realise I need to expand my typology of claims about God and creation.

    (1) A theologian may believe that God created the world.

    (2) A theologian may add to (1) the idea that this claim offers a good explanation for some phenomena.

    For some who hold to (2) this will simply mean
    (i) that some kind of satisfying theological account can be given of how those phenomena relate to God, regardless of whether those phenomena must be regarded as inexplicable on other grounds

    For others who hold to (2) this will mean
    (ii) that the claim that God exists provides an account of otherwise inexplicable phenomena, such that the existence of those phenomena, and their inexplicability on other grounds, constitute good reasons for belief in God.

    For some who hold to (2.ii), they will take it in its weakest form,
    (2.ii.a), where this argument simply points to the considerability of the theological account: acting not so much as an explanation, more as a reason for exploration of an alternative worldview.

    For others who hold to (2.ii), they will take it in a moderately weak form, (2.ii.b) where this argument is held to present a straightforward positive reason for belief in God, but where this argument is a secondary aspect of the theologian’s claims about God – such that dismissal of this explanatory argument would not do serious damage to the theologian’s belief in God or account of the nature of God, even if it damaged his or her attempts to commend that belief to others.

    For still others who hold to (2.ii), it will take the strong form (2.ii.c), where this explanatory argument is taken as a primary aspect of the theologian’s claims about God, such that his or her account of God looks like it stands or falls by the success of this explanatory argument. In the strongest cases of (2.ii.c) – let’s, in order to make my notation even more cumbersome, call these 2.ii.c*, God is presented purely as an explanatory hypothesis – in the sense that (A) the theologian claims to believe in God simply because of the explanatory work that the God-claim does, such that belief in God properly stands or falls by the success of that explanatory argument, and (B) the theologian claims that the content of the God concept is dictated by this explanatory argument, such that the explanatory argument is sufficient to define the nature of God.

    It’s hard to tell exactly where Haught comes on the spectrum, though he’s clearly somewhere in the 2 camp, and I’d be surprised if on closer he inspection he turned out to be a pure 2.i, or a pure 2.ii.c.

    I think that the majority of Christians, and probably the majority of Christian theologians, go for some form of 2.ii. I continue to hold, though, that at least some creationists hold to 2.ii.c, or have a tendency to present their arguments as if they held to 2.ii.c. There may be some non-creationists who do this too. I personally can’t see justification for moving beyond 2.ii.a, and feel most sure of my ground at 2.i.

    My claim remains that the kinds of explanatory argument put forward in 2.ii.b and 2.ii.c are, whether or not they are right, not central to the development of the Christian idea of God, nor to the ways in which Christian belief in God is actually sustained and practised amongst believers. In other words, I claim that proponents of 2.ii.c, regardless of whether their explanatory arguments work, are guilty of a misrepresentation of the nature of Christian belief in God. And we’ve discussed before the kinds of historical and sociological evidence that I think can be brought to bear to make the case for that claim.

  7. Isaac Gouy on April 22, 2008 at 6:40 pm said:

    I don’t intend this as accusatory or agressive but it may be difficult not to read it in that way –

    > some kind of satisfying theological account can be given of how those phenomena relate to God, regardless of whether those phenomena must be regarded as inexplicable on other grounds

    How are we to distinguish this from a tradition of commentary from fantasists?

  8. Isaac Gouy on April 22, 2008 at 6:55 pm said:

    > … not central to … nor to the ways in which Christian belief in God is actually sustained and practised amongst believers.

    > … we’ve discussed before the kinds of historical and sociological evidence that I think can be brought to bear to make the case for that claim.

    Yes that claim has been sketched out, but it’s the next step that I would find interesting – demonstration based on “the ways in which Christian belief in God is actually sustained and practised amongst believers”.

  9. Isaac Gouy on April 22, 2008 at 7:13 pm said:

    > It’s hard to tell exactly where Haught comes on the spectrum …

    “… thinking of God as a hypothesis reduces the infinite divine mystery to a finite scientific cause, and to worship anything finite is idolatrous.” p43

    “God is not a hypothesis.” p51

    Seems that “God” is taken as a brute fact.

  10. Re: comment # 7

    The only way of distinguishing a theological worldview from fantasy is by seriously testing its coherence and habitability. That does not provide any absolute assurance of avoiding fantasy, but it’s the best we’ve got. But I think this is more generally true – not just a fact about theology.

    Re: comment # 8

    it’s the next step that I would find interesting – demonstration based on “the ways in which Christian belief in God is actually sustained and practised amongst believers”.

    That’s a big task: but by ‘“the ways in which Christian belief in God is actually sustained and practised amongst believers’ I mean the kind of practices of worship, of bible-reading, of prayer that are fairly pervasive among Christians. Most of those practices involve use of the word ‘God’, and I think Christian theological exploration of what ‘God’ means begins in principle with those (rather than with an abstract argument about why there is something rather than nothing – even if the latter argument might somewhere have a subordinate part to play).

    Re: comment #9

    “God is not a hypothesis.” p51

    Seems that “God” is taken as a brute fact.

    I’m not sure ‘brute fact’ is right, either. It’s a hackneyed example – but in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when Jones gets to the final chasm, and has to (on the basis, in effect, of promises he believes have been made to him) step out into the chasm in the trust that he won’t fall to his death, in one sense you could describe him as testing a hypothesis. But is does seem pretty odd to describe as a hypothesis something to which one has, in this way, entrusted one’s life. I said something about this back in post http://mikehigton.org.uk/?p=114 – the material about ‘entertaining’, and the comparison with the ‘mathematisability hypothesis’.

  11. Isaac Gouy on May 10, 2008 at 5:03 pm said:

    > avoiding fantasy

    We would have a coherent habitable heap of fantasies.

    “Most philosophers make consistency the chief desideratum, but in mathematics it’s a secondary issue. Usually we can patch things up to be consistent.”

    “Mathematics is true facts about imaginary objects.”

    Reuben Hersh

    > … pretty odd to describe as a hypothesis something to which one has, in this way, entrusted one’s life.

    I imagine that pretty much is the situation with some experimental medical treatments.

    > That’s a big task … Most of those practices involve use of the word ‘God’, and I think Christian theological exploration of what ‘God’ means begins in principle with those (rather than with an abstract argument about why there is something rather than nothing – even if the latter argument might somewhere have a subordinate part to play).

    I have several unordered responses (which may reveal once more what I’ve misunderstood):

    – whether or not it’s a big task, is it a necessary task if we are to substantiate the claim that’s been sketched out?

    – so why have we been discussing Aquinas’s abstract arguments rather than the practices of worship among Christians during Aquinas’s lifetime?

    – my impression is that Christian theological exploration of what ‘God’ means has been prescriptive rather than descriptive of practices of worship among Christians.

  12. > We would have a coherent habitable heap of fantasies

    Yes – although I didn’t say coherence was the only criterion. But in any case, I think this is how knowledge works in general: we inhabit an interconnected framework of beliefs, which can be tested, repaired and extended in all sorts of ways that make sense within that framework. That is, I’m a non-foundationalist – specifically, some kind of pragmatist (vaguely speaking).

    >- whether or not it’s a big task, is it a necessary task if we are to substantiate the claim that’s been sketched out?

    Yes: I simply mean it’s a big task for a discussion in the comments to a blog post.

    > – so why have we been discussing Aquinas’s abstract arguments rather than the practices of worship among Christians during Aquinas’s lifetime?

    I suspect the main answer is the rather prosaic one that I’ve been thinking quite a bit about Aquinas recently (for reasons completely unrelated to the blog). That, combined with Dawkins dismissal of Aquinas’ Five Ways, and the questions you had about McCabe’s Thomist line on analogy, mean that Aquinas has somehow wandered onto centre stage.

    In fact, though, the suspicion I mentioned elsewhere with which I have hitherto approached the ‘Five Ways’ is related to this: to the suspicion that this was the bit of Aquinas’ exposition of what ‘God’ meant that was least closely connected to the Christian faith he was supposedly trying to expound and understand.

    I’m not so sure about the justice of that suspicion, now. Like I have said in other posts, it now seems clear to me that Aquinas is in large part arguing with some of his fellow-Christians about whether the God they all believe in is ‘demonstrable’ – and therefore about whether certain kind of intellectual practice have a role in Christianity. And so although this particular argument is, on the whole, put together prescriptively rather than descriptively, Aquinas is still offering it to his fellow Christians as a way of making sense of their faith (and of challenging some aspects of that faith which he believes are mistaken) – and he relies upon their recognition as appropriate of various crucial descriptions of God (unmoved mover etc.) in order to close the deal. Elsewhere, Aquinas’ theology connects more closely to the beliefs and practices of the Christian communities of which he was a part, and which he was addressing: the bits I’ve been talking about are at the abstract end of his spectrum. Of course, even in the less abstract parts of his theology, it’s not that he tries simply to summarise what the Christians around him say and do, but that he offers them a carefully articulated way of making sense of what they say and do.

    Leaving Aquinas on one side for now, the connections between ordinary Christian practice and ‘sophisticated’ academic theology are in general complex – a point I’ve discussed elsewhere on the blog. One example comes to mind though, of the ways in which this can work. I quite regularly teach doctrine to evening classes largely made up of mature students heading for ministry in Christian churches. The classes only work if those students can see that I am talking about what they believe and do: if they can see how even the most abstruse and abstract stuff I talk about offers some kind of way of making sense of their faith. But that doesn’t mean that I have to offer them something which simply repeats the ideas they already have. It ends up being a messy mixture of pointing out to them patterns in what they already say and do, of pointing out to them things about the sources they point to as authoritative for their faith, of arguing about whether and how various of the things they believe fit together. I offer them a construal of their faith and practice (and, in the process, find that the attempt to make these connections provides one of the main motors by which my thinking on the matters in question develops).

    We also test that construed faith together, of course. If this is what Christian faith is, what critical questions should we ask about it, and in what ways does it invite testing? Some students find it quite a traumatic experience. Though perhaps that’s just having to listen to me for two hours on a Wednesday evening…

    Something like the account of analogy we’ve been discussing has an odd status in this. In some ways it’s pretty far removed from these students’ beliefs and practice. Most of them have never really thought about it before, and find it quite bamboozling once they do. But, I find that it (or something like it) keeps emerging as an important structural principle in the construals I offer them of their faith: I can’t see how to make coherent conceptual sense of all that without something a bit like the Thomist account of analogy in place.

    Anyway: the prescriptive and descriptive are pretty thoroughly mixed together in this kind of process – they’re almost impossible to disentangle. And that’s primarily true at a practical, social level – and doesn’t itself tell you whether the written version of the theology I have developed and deployed in this context will look very descriptive.

Post Navigation