Foundations for a Radical Christianity, Part 6 - Theology, Philosophy, & Science

Even as we explore postmodern science and philosophy here at Relevancy22 we must be reminded that science and philosophy has its place within theology even as theology must learn to converse with the same. That is to say, science and philosophy are useful as external critiques to the Christian lexicon of understanding biblical truth. That without this societal context theology is imperiled by its own version of revelation creating an incubus that would isolate its traditions and dogmas from introspection.

However, this does not mean that theology becomes subservient to science and philosophy but that it learns to relate as equals in unparalleled relationship with postmodern science and philosophy to that of an orthodox system inhabiting special revelation as its basis of truth. And yet, this theistic foundation is not a protection from the fallibility of imperfect human interpretation. That the Christian reading of the Bible cannot be immune to what the world discovers and continues to discover about ourselves and God's creation. But that Christian theology must utilize outside commentaries, ideas, and discoveries to continually improve its reading of the Bible so that its continually reflects the Redeeming God who is at all times at work within humanity and His creation.

To be aware that our own cocoons of "wisdom and thought" may mislead when designed to protect its faithful. And to know that "looking without to look within" is at all times more helpful than sealing the doors, throwing up ecclesiastical boundaries, and forestaying the "wolf outside" our communal structures. These actions are not helpful but harmful to the church's study of God's Word. Did not Jesus come to teach and disturb His people? And if the church does not do the same is it not doing a disservice to its peoples?

Even as theology is about God so science and philosophy are about how we perceive ourselves with one another and are connected to our world. These latter do not necessarily deny God so much as to rigorously study the world of objects that can be tested and verified through experiments and studies. Even as the Platonist believes he knows all by knowing the One, so the Aristotelian pupil believes nothing can be known without first studying the particular in order to create a more holistic philosophy. Each system is in antagonism to the another but only if the philosopher allows them to be. And yet, in another light, each system can be a help to the other with wisdom and discernment.

So too with Christianity. We come as theists to any human discipline. But this does not mean that we may throw out those academics that dispute our beliefs. It would be to our peril and poorer understanding of God's universe and even ourselves within His greater plan. A Radical Christianity would willingly converse with the world while at all times inspecting itself within the light of that conversation. In some points there will be agreement. In others not at all. And in many a correlation can be found that may be enlightening to a Christian culture at an impasse with its understanding of God's Word.

So we have found in the science of evolution that has shown quite plainly that the popular Christian reading of the Genesis 1-11 is in serious conflict with what we know both scientifically and from historical-source criticism. Hence, somewhere within this reading we must adapt our biblical interpretations (or hermeneutics) to allow for these truths without losing sight of the theology behind the ancient symbolic or historical mythological texts of Genesis 1-11. As example, God is our Creator, sin is a present reality that has somehow entered the world (this author claims through the sublime act of God granting freedom to His creation), and redemption must now ensue.

We also better understand postmodernism's rejection of modernity's secularism that has been embraced by the (evangelical / denominational) 19th-20th century church. That it's formalistic or syllogistic reduction of theology into its separate systematic theologies does not better explain God to us except from a Greek (Hellenistic) and Medieval / Enlightened mindset. That those theologies must now learn how to absorb the newer philosophies out there lest the Christian church no longer  be progressive in its witness but regressive, sectarian, if not possibly cultic (as can be readily seen in the various pockets of the church's culture).

For example, the church does no longer crusade against other nations even as medieval churches once did. But what about our nation's one-time policies of colonialism affected by the church, or now, in its national policies in a post-colonial world? Or, as another example, should the church associate Jesus' love and openness with militaristic images of sword and shield as some Americans would think of their church's patriotism? It would be in err to think of the Gospel of Jesus as a "truth-and-justice" weapon to the world.

As such, God is not in need of being defended. But He is in need of our willingness to see new truths where we believed none existed. To grow beyond our "enslavement" ages of the church, and its "discriminatory" phases now being bashed about as "Christian" when it is neither Jesus-ordained nor rightful on the human plane of civil equalities and rights. In all instances God has not changed in His love to mankind but His fallible church does harm to the gospel of Jesus when bantering cultural prerogatives about in the name of Christ.

If this is not the Christianity we wish we must admit that it is not the Christianity of the God of the Bible whom we so highly elevate and value. In truth, it is we ourselves who must change along with the charters of our fearful churches confusing pride for penance. Sin is still sin but its form is in how we relate to one another, what we do towards one another, and what we deny to one another. Sin is not dismissed. Nor is it absent from the church itself. The Kingdom of God demands another ethic. A heavenly one. And not a human morality that would make us feel comfortable, assured, or at peace with ourselves while refusing the rights of other human beings these same affects and conditions.

The Kingdom of God is not of man but of God. It is of a God who rules and not us. And of His choice to rule through Jesus by the tools and tradecraft of love and peace. And if it were to be one of condemnation than let it be directed to His own people. And especially to those templed priests and theologians then, as now, who deny God by their words, and doctrines, and dogmas, and harden beliefs. For these so-called "believers" who claim they know God hell awaits. But for the penitent man and woman heaven's bounties are opened wide and deep both in this life by witness and life blood to the gospel of Jesus. So be it with the church in this world this day. Let us rethink what we think we know. Let us relearn what we must. And at all times let us serve others the gospel of love and peace by our hands and feet and tongues.

Peace,

[Below are two articles and how they each are dealing with the subjects of Christian theology in juxtaposition with philosophy and science. I deem each as useful as you will soon see.]

R.E. Slater

May 28, 2015

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Resisting De-Personalizing the Biblical God

into the Philosophical Category of "Being Itself"

Is God “A Being” Or “Being Itself?”

source link

by Roger Olson

May 16, 2015

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Introduction

I grew up thinking of God, the God of the Bible, the “Christian God,” as “a being”–at the top of a great chain of beings but with a clear gulf fixed between him and everything else down the chain. The gulf was crossable only from God’s side and had to do with the fact that only God is eternal and uncreated. Everything else in the chain was below God and created by God. The gulf was widened by the fall of angels and humans.

This picture of God and everything seemed self-evident in Scripture. I never thought to question it until I got well into my theological studies when I encountered Origen, Augustine, Dionysius (the Pseudo-Areopagite), Anselm, Thomas Aquinas and (skipping far ahead) Paul Tillich. Then I learned that, as a thinking Christian wishing to avoid idolatry, I was supposed to think of God not as “a being” but as Being Itself–not as one, even the supreme and self-existent one, among many but as the Power of Being, the One OF the many.  [RES - (sic, NOT "One of many" = polytheism NOR demiurges of God, that is, greater or lesser instances of God re Christian gnostic belief as versus the Trinity of God, one Being in three essences or Persons as established the Councils of Calcedon).]

If God is really God, so the argument goes, and not like us, limited, finite, conditioned, he must be Absolute. Anything less than “the Absolute,” the Unconditioned, cannot really be God. If the God of the Bible is a being and not Being Itself, the Absolute, the Unconditioned, the One behind the many, then, so the argument goes, then he does not really deserve to be thought of as God because, to borrow Anselm’s term, the mind can think of a great being than him.

Well, that’s obviously a whirlwind explanation that doesn’t come close to doing justice to the argument for God as Being Itself.

I have often felt pressured to rise above my “simple Biblicism” and primitive picture of God as a personal being, even if the greatest of all beings, transcendently surpassing in greatness and glory all creatures, and confess God as Being Itself–not the Supreme Being at the top of a great chain of being but something entirely different–perhaps more like the infrastructure of a city that makes it “work.” (All analogies become problematic, of course, when attempting to depict Being Itself.) I have even been told that my childhood picture of God borders on idolatry.

The assumption underlying much of that thinking (of God as Being Itself) was expressed by Alfred North Whitehead who said that while Buddhism is a metaphysic in search of a religion, Christianity is a religion in search of a metaphysic. That is, the underlying assumption is that the biblical narrative does not give us an adequate, or any, metaphysical world picture, account of reality-itself, but expresses especially transcendent reality in myths, symbols and images which must be interpreted through the lens of some ontology borrowed from outside the Bible. One obvious candidate in early church history was Middle or Neo-Platonism (see also Neo-Platonism, and Neo-Platonism and Christianity). Another, especially in the Middle Ages, was Aristotelianism. (cf. also Aristotle's teachings) Whitehead’s, of course, was his own organic philosophy of process (or, process thought).

What do all those attempts to bring Athens to Jerusalem have in common?

All assume that the biblical portrait of God cannot be taken seriously; it must be supplement if not replaced by a philosophical picture of God which is then interpreted as “what the Bible really means.” Practically speaking, then, all biblical references to God as personal are relegated to the realm of anthropomorphisms–figures of speech that depict God in human terms whereas God is not really much like humans at all.

Over the years I’ve kept an eye open for (non-fundamentalist) theologians who pushed back speaking of God as Being Itself (as opposed to a personal being among others even if the “others” are created). I encountered especially, of course, Karl Barth and Emil Brunner, but even they seemed to me inconsistent at times–wanting to affirm God’s “holy otherness” in ways that seemed to make God float off into inaccessible transcendence. I know that was not their intentions, but I came to believe they, like most serious, academic, “world class” theologians, were still infected with the idea that God’s transcendence must mean he is somehow absolute, unconditioned, etc. Brunner, in my opinion, came closest to taking the biblical portrayal of God seriously, resisting ontological ideas of God as Being Itself. Brunner sometimes spoke of God in brutally personal terms–pushing back against the whole Christian theological tradition of negative (apophatic) theology (e.g., attempts to explain what God is not as versus what God is.)

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[r.e. slater (RES) - This line of thought is sometimes associated with mysticism and the desire of the personal to transcend to the spiritual beyond ordinary perception - Wikipedia. It has also been used somewhat helpfully in postmodern attempts to deconstruct religion of its anthropomorphic-centeredness. In sum, "While negative theology is used in Christianity as a means of dispelling misconceptions about God, and of approaching Him beyond the limits of human reasoning, most commonly Christian doctrine is taken to involve positive claims: "that God exists and has certain positive attributes, even if those attributes are only partially comprehensible to us." )]

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Every once in a while throughout my theological career (and even as a student of theology) I have run across a theologian that really appealed to me but is not widely known, read or discussed. Recently I’ve been reading articles published in the 1950s in theological journals by an American Protestant theologian named Edmond La B. Cherbonnier (b. 1918). Cherbonnier, who taught at Trinity College in Hartford, CT, pushed back very hard against ontological ideas of God as Being Itself and insisted that there is a “biblical metaphysic” in which God is “a being,” neither unconditioned nor absolute (as in “The Absolute,” the Being Greater Than Which None Can Be Conceived drawing on Greek philosophical ideas of “greatness” as metaphysical perfection).

Cherbonnier attempted to work out what he called “the biblical metaphysic” as a “third way”–alternative to Platonism and Aristotelianism (and certainly also alternative to Whitehead’s ontology). According to Cherbonnier, this biblical metaphysic differs from others than have been imposed on Scripture, or through which Scripture has been interpreted, because it is embedded in, implied by, Scripture itself. According to him, the biblical narrative contains an implied metaphysic and all attempts to interpret Scripture through the “lens” of extra-biblical, philosophical metaphysics or ontologies end up failing to do justice to the biblical revelation of God and reality.

For those interested, I recommend these two articles by Cherbonnier (whose death year I cannot find so I’m hoping he’s still alive so I can correspond with him): “Biblical Metaphysic and Christian Philosophy” (Theology Today 9:3 [October, 1952]: 360-375) and “Is There A Biblical Metaphysic?” (Theology Today 15:4 [January, 1959]: 454-469).

One reason I resist thinking of God as Being Itself as opposed to a personal being is that it tends to undermine prayer except as meditation. It lends itself easily to the idea that “Prayer doesn’t change things; it [only can] change me.” That is, it undermines petitionary prayer which Schleiermacher, understandably [noted] because of his philosophical influences, called “immature prayer.” If God is Being Itself, the Absolute, the Unconditioned, then it would seem prayer cannot affect God. In fact, it would seem God cannot be affected by anything outside himself. My early Christian faith, which I have not entirely discarded (!), focused much on a “personal relationship with God.” God is someone, a being, who is other than I, and we stand vis-a-vis one another in what Buber and Brunner called an “I-Thou relationship.” Regarding God as Being Itself tends to lead away from relating to God as “Thou” with whom one can have a real, personal relationship.

Cherbonnier was on the right track, I believe; we need to retrieve from the biblical narrative its own metaphysic and not borrow ontology from elsewhere and interpret Scripture through that as a lens overlaying it. This would be an exercise in “the Bible absorbing the world” (Hans Frei) and therefore might be called a “narrative metaphysic”–an oxymoron to many philosophical theologians.

Postliberal Protestant theology has been mostly resistant to metaphysics, but if Cherbonnier is right, that could be because most Protestant theologians tend to think of “metaphysics” as synonymous with extra-biblical, rational ontologies that function as natural theologies. But if Cherbonnier is right, there is a biblical metaphysic that is embedded in biblical revelation itself. That is, the Bible itself strongly implies a reality picture that is deeper than doctrines but equally, if not more, important - it is an alternative to philosophical ontologies that usually conflict with God as person or as omnipotent power (as in process thought).

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[RES - thus, some of my conflict with process thought even as other parts of it are embraced as capturing important salient images of God and the Bible. So too with Radical Theology's usage of postmodern philosophy to uncover what today's evangelical Christianity blatantly discards, discourages, or outright misses beginning with its (Reformed) hermeneutical interpretations which are self-fulfilling and circular in argument (the latest being its 1980's emphasis upon "the inerrancy of Scripture" disallowing for external criticism). These radical disciplines are meant to recover modernal Christianity back to its orthodox charters and teachings and not to dismiss Christianity out of hand by irrelevancy to humanity. By using epistemological frameworks outside of the evangelical frameworks we've become unquestioningly comfortable with it is possible to "negate" popular (but unbiblical) folklores and arguments by re-instating God's presence through Jesus within a postmodern framework making relevant revelation's truth and handiwork to the souls of men. It should also be noted here that throughout the body of Relevancy22 there as been a strong resistance to "disembodying God" as "mere Presence" and always a strong identity of God as a Redemptive Being in relationship to His creation.]

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I have never been able to become comfortable with calling God “Being Itself” or thinking of God as “absolute” or “unconditioned.” These ideas of God seem to me unbiblical. In this case, as Pascal famously said, “The God of the philosophers is not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” But there is a philosophy of God revealed through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Isaiah, Jesus, and Paul. It’s just not what most people think of as “philosophy.” To hint at it: It does reveal reality as a “great chain of beings” (plural) with God at its top as creator and governor of all below him with a fixed gulf between him and the rest marked by the difference between being uncreated, self-existent, and being created and dependent (to say nothing of fallen).

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This is Why We Need Christians Engaged in Science!

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2015/05/28/why-we-need-christians-engaged-in-science-rjs/

by RJS

May 28, 2015

Comments

Ed Stetzer had an interesting post on his blog last week -  3 reasons for Christians to Engage in Science. This post is a reprint of an essay he wrote for a small booklet recently released by the National Association of Evangelicals: When God and Science Meet and available for free download. The booklet includes essays by John Ortberg, Mark Noll, Christopher Wright and more.

Stetzer’s three reasons (read his essay on his blog or in the booklet for his elaboration of these points, bold added):

First, creation speaks to a creator. Because we know there is a creator, we should be the ones most concerned about his creation.…

In Romans 1; Paul points out that attributes of God are made clear in creation. We can know his eternal power and divine nature, because they have been clearly seen since the creation of the world.

If Scripture says creation, and therefore the sciences that explore it, point to God, why would we run away from that? We, above all others, should love, study, explore, examine and care for the creation that provides evidence of God and his character.

Second, dismissing science undermines our witness. But many evangelicals are backing away from science. In a society driven by scientific achievement, it is unwise and counterproductive to our mission for Christians to embrace an anti-science label.

Third, science can better society. … The fact is, as we find better ways to farm, powerful new medicines to heal and more effective ways to power our society, the poor benefit, societies are transformed for the better and the world looks and is more of what God intended it to be.

Christians are to champion the good of their city and society as a whole. Leveraging scientific study and achievement for the betterment of people is an entirely Christian thing to do.

All three of these are great reasons for Christians to engage in science. The pursuit of science brings a sense of wonder, beauty, and awe to many scientists, religious or not. For a Christian in the sciences there is an added wonder and beauty. When we, as scientists, study the “natural” phenomena of the universe, whether in physics, chemistry, paleontology, geology, biology or some other science, we are studying the nature of God’s creation. This can make the pursuit of scientific understanding a form of worship as Dorothy Chappell, Dean of Natural and Social Sciences at Wheaton College, says in her essay:

Scientists can discover, study and contemplate the complexities of the created order while apprehending God’s glory, which remains resplendent throughout the creation; in other words, they can worship and interact with God as they do their own professional work. This represents a profound discipline: doing good science and practicing vibrant faith. A natural outcome that results when scientists explore the mysteries of creation from a biblical worldview is a greater capacity for wonder, awe and humility. These, after all, are the traits of effective scientists and devout Christians. (p. 36, When God and Science Meet)

Stetzer’s third reason is also highlighted in a number of the essays in When God and Science Meet. The pursuit of science is transforming the world for the better. This isn’t to embrace the myth of human moral progress where human effort will produce a perfect society or bring the Kingdom of God. It is simply to state a fact – vaccinations, sanitation, clean water, efficient transportation, medicines, instrumentation for imaging and diagnosis, all of these and many more developments, have made life for many longer, healthier, and safer. “Leveraging scientific study and achievement for the betterment of people is an entirely Christian thing to do.”

Finally his second reason, which is undervalued or misinterpreted by many:  Dismissing science, or worse yet distorting and misrepresenting science, undermines our witness as Christians in profound ways.  The church needs Christians engaged in science to hold fellow Christians to a high standard and to provide the needed expertise and review. John Ortberg notes in his essay:

I have seen too many young people in too many churches exposed to bad science in the misguided idea that someone was defending the Bible; then they go off to college and find out they were misinformed and they think they have to choose between the Bible and truth. (p. 28)

Bad science does no one any good.  Not Christians adults or youth, and certainly not non-Christians who find bad science a reason to dismiss any need to dig deeper and understand Christian faith. We need to pursue the truth.

Christian faith and the study of science are not mutually exclusive pursuits. Taking the Bible seriously does not mean holding to positions clearly contradicted by modern science. The Bible is not a science book.  Taking the Bible seriously does call us to stand against the metaphysical conclusions that some draw from science, just as it calls us to stand against the “wisdom of the world” driven by the pursuit of money, sex, and power.

The pursuit of scientific understanding has unearthed a wealth of new information. Information that our predecessors had no knowledge of and did not need to wrestle with … the vastness of the universe, the age of the earth, evolution. The church today does need to wrestle with this data.  In order to do this we need people who are conversant in science, who will take the time to explain the data and explore the relationship between the new insights from science and Christian theology. One of the reasons we need Christians to engage in science is to lead the church faithfully into the future.

Lucas Cranach Man and Woman and this leads to Adam. If that seems like a sharp left turn, changing the subject, it shouldn’t. Every discussion of science and Christian faith these days seems to return to the question of Adam, human evolution, and common descent. This is an overstatement, but not by much. Many of my posts over the last several years have turned around the discussion of Adam. In general I’ve focused on the biblical and theological issues because, quite frankly, I am convinced by the evidence of common descent. As a result I am deeply interested in the ramifications this has on our understanding of life from a Christian perspective.

Many readers, however, remain unconvinced that a unique couple is disproved by the scientific data. We need Christian scientists with the expertise and patience to explain the scientific data and consensus on a level accessible to non-scientists and to point out both the strengths and the weaknesses of the data and interpretation. I haven’t the patience (or the ready expertise in genetics) to offer a coherent and accessible explanation on common descent and human genetics. Fortunately Dennis Venema, professor of biology at Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia, has the patience, expertise and ability. Dennis is in the middle of a long series of excellent posts at Biologos exploring Adam, Eve, and human population genetics.

The last few installments of Adam, Eve, and human population genetics have looked at the arguments Dr. Vern Poythress advanced in his recent short book Did Adam Exist?. Dr. Poythress’s scientific argument leaves much to be desired. He misinterprets the scientific papers he uses to defend his position that common descent is unsupported by the genetic data and that science cannot rule out a bottleneck consisting of one unique human couple as progenitor of the entire human race.  Dennis does an nice job of pointing out the problems with Dr. Poythress’s scientific argument.  Bad scientific arguments are far too common and do devastating damage to the faith of far too many. (See John Ortberg’s quote again.)

We need Christians like Dennis, engaged in science and with a heart for the church.

Book Review by Peter Enns - "Genesis: History, Fiction, or Neither"

7 problems with a recent evangelical defense of the historicity of Genesis 1-11

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2015/05/7-problems-with-a-recent-evangelical-defense-of-the-historicity-of-genesis-1-11/

by Peter Enns

May 26, 2015

Comments

Zondervan’s latest volume in their popular “Counterpoints” series concerns the historicity of Genesis 1-11, Genesis: History, Fiction, or Neither?: Three Views on the Bible’s Earliest Chapters. The three well-known contributors are James Hoffmeier (Trinity International University), Kent Sparks (Eastern University), and Gordan Wenham (Trinity College and University of Gloucestershire).

The editor, Charles Halton, summarizes the differences between them:

Professor Hoffmeier believes that theology begins from the foundational understanding that the events recorded in Gen 1-11 really happened and that the Israelite scribes did not borrow from the Mesopotamian or Egyptian myths but were writing in opposition to them. The Israelites corrected the misunderstandings and mythologies of their day with an authoritative and historically accurate portrait.

Professor Wenham believes that there is a core of historical reality in Gen 1-11 but that the telling we have is like an impressionist painting–we can only make out vague outlines of what really took place.

Professor Sparks thinks that the writers of the Bible employed standard forms of ancient historiography whose primary intent was not to precisely relay events that occurred in space and time. These scribes emplotted a theological story that reveals deep insights into the character and nature of God. (pp. 155-56, my emphasis and formatting)

I’m familiar with the unavoidable limitations of the “Counterpoints” format (I’ve worked on two of the volumes, here and here). Not every question can be addressed, nor is this the place for authors to say everything they want to say about their topic.

Nevertheless, I had the modest hope for this volume that James Hoffmeier–the pre-eminant evangelical scholarly defender of the historicity of the exodus–would put evangelicalism’s best foot forward, move beyond familiar apologetic rhetoric, and offer readers a best case for why the historical and comparative evidence point clearly toward Genesis 1-11 as history.

Instead, more often than not, I found Hoffmeier rehearsing frustratingly predictable apologetic tactics that are typically deployed whenever the historicity of a biblical episode is considered “under attack,” (tactics that Kent Sparks patiently laid out in his 2008 book God’s Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship).

Hoffmeier’s “here I stand” rhetoric is clear in his introductory section, which I reproduce below (pp. 23-24, my emphasis):

Genesis 1-1 begins the story of redemption–the loss of God’s presence, intimacy between God and humans, and access to the tree of life. The narrative commences with “Paradise Lost,” and culminates in the New Testament with “Paradise Regained,” to borrow from one of John Milton’s seventeenth-century classic poems. Because of this overarching theme connecting the early chapters of Genesis to the book of Revelation, Genesis 1-11 must be taken seriously. In recent centuries, especially because of the influence of Enlightenment rationalism on scriptural interpretation, readers of the Bible wonder whether Genesis can be read as it once was in pre-critical times. The dominant scientific worldview has understandably influenced the way Christians read the Bible in general and Genesis 1-11 in particular. A consequence of this hermeneutic has prompted the preoccupation of European biblical scholars to employ “scientific” (Wissenschaftlich) approach that has sought to isolate the sources that stood behind Genesis, thereby denying the Jewish-Christian tradition of Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch.

The short essay cannot devote time to the history of speculation about sources and origins of the book of Genesis, the so-called “critical” study of the Pentateuch. Consider, however, that the four-source hypothesis of Wellhausen that dominated biblical schoalrship from the mid-nineteenth to the end of the twentieth century has been in “sharp decline,” as E. W. Nicholson has observed and he admits “some would say [it is] in a state of advanced rigor mortis.” Consequently, the “assured results” of critical scholarship are being rejected, ironically enough, by European Old Testament scholars!

This rhetoric of “faithful to the Bible” vs. “critical scholarship” is disappointing and sets the tone for Hoffmeier’s essay and his responses, particularly to Sparks.

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Let me summarize and interpret Hoffmeier’s concerns by rephrasing his comments:

1. Genesis 1-11 sets the theological stage for the rest of the Bible, and so, if Genesis 1-11 cannot be trusted to deliver to us historical truth, the entire theological structure of the Bible falls apart. Hence, the historical nature of Genesis 1-11 must be protected at all costs.

2. Denial of the historical nature of Genesis 1-11 is simply the product of atheistic thinking–of Enlightenment rationalism, which is fundamentally in rebellion against God. Hence, biblical criticism is only “so-called ‘critical’” because it is rooted in the deep bias of anti-biblical thinking.

3. Perhaps the most damaging aspect of Enlightenment thinking is the bewilderingly speculative preoccupation to distill sources behind Genesis. Since Wellhausen’s four-source theory (JEDP) has been rejected by even European scholars–and as such is DOA–we evangelicals who reject (and have always rejected) source criticism are not only vindicated but are actually show ourselves to be more rigorously academic than those who blindly hold to older critical “orthodoxies.”

4. Further, continuing to give quarter to the particularly odious, speculative theory of sources pits one against the entire Jewish and Christian pre-critical tradition that has accepted Moses as the fundamental author of the Pentateuch.

These opening paragraphs do not bode well for encouraging academic discourse. Hoffmeier revisits these themes in his essay and in his response to Sparks. To the 4 listed above, let me add 3 others that surface.

5. Since Genesis 1-11 refers to people with lineages and real geographic locations, it is clearly intended to be read as relaying historical space/time events, and so we must take this historical intention “seriously”–which means accept that this historical intention produced a historically accurate text.

6. Sparks puts science over the Bible, and which inexorably leads to a denial of the resurrection of Christ, which is also impossible on scientific grounds.

7. Genesis 1-11 cannot be influenced by Mesopotamian myth because it is a polemic against Mesopotamian myth.

Sparks addresses these 7 points and other concerns in his 10-page response, and regardless of where one’s sympathies lie, interested readers should avail themselves of both.

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My own brief responses are as follows.

1. I agree that there is a theological “structure,” so to speak, for the Christian Bible, and that structure reflects the theological sensitivities of the biblical writers and of those who directed the process of canonization (first OT then NT). But the presence of this theological structure does not settle the vexing historical problems of Genesis 1-11, and to think that it does is a common evangelical and fundamentalist assertion.

Theological needs (i.e., better, perceived theological needs) does not determine historical truth. Evangelicals do not tolerate such self-referential logic from defenders of other faiths, and they should not tolerate it in themselves.

2. Claiming alleged Enlightenment influence on opponents is a well known conversation stopper among evangelical apologists, and I am particularly disappointed to see Hoffmeier resort to it. Evangelical defenses of historicity are often quickly propelled into the philosophical stratosphere of “presuppositions,” which has the unfortunate effect of reducing debates on concrete matters to claims of theological superiority.

As far as I am concerned, “you’re just beholden to Enlightenment rationalism” is on the same rhetorical level as “that sounds like Hitler (or Bultmann, or Barth),” or more economically, “you’re liberal.”

This sort of rhetoric is not designed to converse but to gain a theological upper hand by determining the playing field and rules of engagement. It has worn out its welcome and has no place in scholarly engagement.

3. Another common evangelical tactic repeated here by Hoffmeier is to equate Wellhausen’s 19th c. theory of Pentateuchal composition with source theories that have developed since Wellhausen. Sparks effectively addresses this in his response.

Let me simply say that source criticism is most certainly not dead, though most all have moved beyond Wellhausen, including neo-documentarians like Joel Baden and Jeffrey Stackert. (On this see Dozeman, Schmid, and Schwartz, The Pentateuch: International Perspectives on Current Research, 2011; especially Schwartz’s essay, “Does Recent Scholarship’s Critique of the Documentary Hypothesis Constitute Grounds for Its Rejection?)

And one would be hard-pressed indeed to find any biblical scholar outside of the inerrantist camp–whether Israeli, American, or European–who does not see the Pentateuch as having a rich and complex developmental pre-history spanning several hundred years and not coming to end until long after the return from exile.

P and D are not seriously questioned among biblical scholars. The origins of Israel’s ancient narratives– J and E–are. That is a great discussion to have. But the “we know Wellhausen was wrong so now we can retreat back to Mosaic authorship” rhetoric is at best misleading because it is grounded in a description of Pentateuchal scholarship that is absolutely wrong.

4. Following on #3, Hoffmeier seems to think that debunking Wellhausen not only neuters any source analysis of the Pentateuch but de facto puts Mosaic authorship back in its rightful place as the traditional, and problem-free explanation for Pentateuchal origins.

But Mosaic authorship, regardless of how the matter is framed, cannot be given a free pass. Its problems, which have been observed since long before the advent of “Enlightenment rationalism,” do not simply disappear.

Pre-critical misgivings about Mosaic authorship (albeit few and far-between) are not unknown (e.g., of Abraham Ibn-Ezra, 12th c. rabbi). Ironically, none other than conservative Calvinist E. J. Young lists in his Introduction to the Old Testament a long history of questions raised concerning Mosaic authorship stemming back at least to Jerome in the 4th c. (who queried whether Moses could have written the account of his own death in Deuteronomy 34 or whether perhaps Ezra is repsonsible).

Questioning Mosaic authorship is not recent invention. Where the modern period differs is in moving from canonical observation to historical explanation.

One should also note that source analyses do not necessarily stem from anti-religious bias. Jean Astruc (d. 1766) was the first to argue for different sources in Genesis based on the use on the divine name (Yahweh and Elohim, which become J and E, respectively), and did so in an effort to protect Mosaic authorship (by arguing that Moses was working with ancient sources).

Similar to response #1 above, disagreement with tradition does not make such disagreement wrong. “Who are you to go against tradition?” can be a valid question at times, but more often than not is a bullying tactic aimed at closing off discussion. Tradition can be wrong, as it was with a geocentric cosmos and “the Jews killed Jesus.”

5. Sparks addresses this point, when he states what appears to me to be obvious: intending to write history doesn’t mean you pulled it off, and biblical authors do not get a free pass on “historical accuracy,” especially without addressing the type of history writing we can expect from ancient Israelite/Jewish authors.

Addressing this key issue is what Sparks’s essay is all about. Hoffmeier, however, seems content to assume ancient and modern standards largely overlap.

Ancient genealogies and narratives set in real locations do not a historical narrative make, despite Hoffmeier’s strong contention to the contrary.

6. This same slippery-slope line recurs again and again and again and again whenever it is suggested that science or other scholarly disciplines affect how we think of the Bible (especially in the evolution debate), but this rhetoric is useless for reasoned and scholarly discussion.

I can say with full confidence that Sparks has not made some thoughtless presuppositional commitment to “Wissenschaft über alles (i.e. science triumphs over all!!), as Hoffmeier rather indelicately caricatures him (p. 142). To say that the study of human history–including ANE religious texts–renders suspect the historicity of Gen 1-11 is not to say that science triumphs over ALL but that science informs our thinking on issues that are actually open to scientific investigation.

Cosmic and human origins leave footprints that can be studied through scientific means (and is why Hoffmeier, I presume, does not think the world is 6000 years old). The resurrection of Christ doesn’t provide such footprints and therefore is not open to the same type of scientific investigation.

Of course, many do believe that science is the ultimate determiner of truth and so things outside of scientific investigation cannot have happened, but that is not at all where Sparks is coming from and to attempt to discredit Sparks by painting him as a science worshipper is somewhere between a gross misunderstanding and a low blow.

Allowing–even embracing–science to inform our reading of an Iron Age text does not mean one will also have to deny the resurrection. This line of defense needs to be put to rest.

7. I find it incredible that Hoffmeier contends that Genesis 1-11 is essentially independent of Mesopotamian origins stories. This is like suggesting that Roman theology and politics can be best understood apart from preceding Greek culture.

A key element in Hoffmeier’s argument is that Gensiss 1-11 is a polemic against Mesopotamian myth and therefore independent of it. But the fact that Genesis 1-11 is certainly polemical does not in any way suggest that far older Mesopotamian myth does not form the cultural back drop for Genesis 1-11. The polemic only works because it embraces ancient assumptions about the nature of the cosmos.

Genesis 1-11 cannot be isolated from its environment like this. To suggest that Genesis 1-11 alone escapes the many-layered interpenetration of ancient origins stories we find throughout the ANE is an essential rejection of any value for comparative study of the Bible.

To sum up, despite whatever positive evidence Hoffmeier feels he has adduced in his essay for the historicity of Gen 1-11, those points are only convincing if one is willing to:

1. assert that theological need is the unimpeachable grounding for reading Genesis as history,
2. characterize alternate view points as beholden to the philosophical biases of “Enlightenment rationalism,” and consequently
3. keep at arm’s length two fundamental (and outside of inerrantist camps, universally accepted) elements of modern scholarship on Genesis: that Genesis (1) has a lengthy, complex pre-history that continues into the postexilic period, and (2) reflects far older Mesopotamian (and Canaanite and Egyptian) influence.

Let me stress this third point. We all know that historical criticism has its problems and excessive confidence in its alleged objectivity is to be roundly criticized–as it has been for generations. But the two elements of critical scholarship Hoffmeier rejects are not excessive or trendy but the very intellectual structure of the historical/academic study of the Pentateuch.

Hoffmeier is free to dismiss them, but let there be no mistake of the degree of distance Hoffmeier is willing to put between himself and basic, even elementary, conclusions of generations of modern scholarship on Genesis and the Pentateuch in order to maintain his position.

Hoffmeier is well within his right to make assertions and defend them. But as I said at the outset, I was hoping for something more than this. I’ve read much of what Hoffmeier has written. He is an educated man and capable of much more. But we don’t find it here.

If this type of rhetorical defense is the best that evangelical academia can muster to defend its theology, evangelicalism may have little left to contribute to the discussion.

Has Science Made Philosophy and Theology Obsolete?

Has Science Made Philosophy and Theology Obsolete?

For those readers interested in the Christian side of this discussion I might suggest substituting the word "theologian or theology" for the word "philosopher or philosophy." Generally it is the observation of how to fit the academic discipline of science in-and-around the contrary disciplines of philosophy and theology.

For myself, I believe both disciplines need the other and that neither has a hold of the truth in themselves alone. Without science, philosophy and theology cannot think new thoughts beyond their own reasonings. And without philosophy and theology, science cannot examine what it has uncovered as fully as it might. Moreover, to argue for a "philosophy of metaphysics" alone as cosmologists generally do cannot inform humanity as to the philosophical or theological question of ethics, aesthetics, politics, or epistemology. It is a disservice to think that either can do an adequate job without the other.

And so, both disciplines require the other - however technical either discipline can be in their own realms of understanding. It behooves both scientists and philosopher / theologians to be fully invested in each other's knowledge-realms. To work with one another and to challenge one another when either side becomes too complacent or intellectually lazy to do the hard work of examination. I have especially observed this among Christians who argue over the evolution of man in Genesis: its meaning for Adam's "historicity" and the theological idea of "original sin" and whether a symbolic or mythological narrative may carry any currency in Christian theology? The simple answer is that it can.

As such, the reader will find a "bible vs. science" debate written by Peter Enns at the end of this article to focus the Christian reader on the foolishness of thinking that "special revelation is alone to itself in the world of knowledge of the theologian." Certainly this cannot be true. Science will demand from the Christian theologian a re-examination of his or her's understanding of the interpretative tradition of Scripture they cling to. That its challenge neither lessens God's claim to the world nor removes it but may re-arrange one's older interpretations of God's relationship to His creation for newer interpretations that are more congruent with scientific discovery. To pretend otherwise is to persevere in hermeneutical traditions that can no longer be true for more conversant readers familiar with scientific inquiry and discovery.

R.E. Slater

May 26, 2015

*ps - for more on Stephen Hawking's ideas on metaphysics please refer to the "Index to past articles on Particle Physics, Quantum Science, and the Universe" section in Relevancy22 where those ideas have been discussed in a positive manner.

The ongoing feud between physicists and philosophers cuts to the

heart  of what science can tell us about the nature of reality.

Physicists Are Philosophers, Too

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/physicists-are-philosophers-too/?WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook

In his final essay the late physicist Victor Stenger argues for the validity of philosophy in the context of modern theoretical physics

By Victor J. Stenger, James A. Lindsay and Peter Boghossian | May 8, 2015

Editor’s Note: Shortly before his death last August at the age of 79, the noted physicist and public intellectual Victor Stenger worked with two co-authors to pen an article for Scientific American. In it Stenger and co-authors address the latest eruption of a long-standing historic feud, an argument between physicists and philosophers about the nature of their disciplines and the limits of science. Can instruments and experiments (or pure reason and theoretical models) ever reveal the ultimate nature of reality? Does the modern triumph of physics make philosophy obsolete? What philosophy, if any, could modern theoretical physicists be said to possess? Stenger and his co-authors introduce and address all these profound questions in this thoughtful essay and seek to mend the growing schism between these two great schools of thought. When physicists make claims about the universe, Stenger writes, they are also engaging in a grand philosophical tradition that dates back thousands of years. Inescapably, physicists are philosophers, too. This article, Stenger’s last, appears in full below.

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In April 2012 theoretical physicist, cosmologist and best-selling author Lawrence Krauss was pressed hard in an interview with Ross Andersen for The Atlantic titled “Has Physics Made Philosophy and Religion Obsolete?” Krauss's response to this question dismayed philosophers because he remarked, “philosophy used to be a field that had content,” to which he later added,

“Philosophy is a field that, unfortunately, reminds me of that old Woody Allen joke, “those that can't do, teach, and those that can't teach, teach gym.” And the worst part of philosophy is the philosophy of science; the only people, as far as I can tell, that read [essays]/works/[treatises] by philosophers of science are other philosophers of science. It has no impact on physics whatsoever, and I doubt that other philosophers read it because it's fairly technical. And so it's really hard to understand what justifies it. And so I'd say that this tension occurs because people in philosophy feel threatened—and they have every right to feel threatened, because science progresses and philosophy doesn't.”

Later that year Krauss had a friendly discussion with philosopher Julian Baggini in The Observer, an online magazine from The Guardian. Although showing great respect for science and agreeing with Krauss and most other physicists and cosmologists that there isn’t “more stuff in the universe than the stuff of physical science,” Baggini complained that Krauss seems to share “some of science’s imperialist ambitions.” Baggini voices the common opinion that “there are some issues of human existence that just aren’t scientific. I cannot see how mere facts could ever settle the issue of what is morally right or wrong, for example.”

Lawrence Krauss, author of "A Universe From Nothing:
Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing"

Krauss does not see it quite that way. Rather he distinguishes between “questions that are answerable and those that are not,” and the answerable ones mostly fall into the “domain of empirical knowledge, aka science.” As for moral questions, Krauss claims that they only be answered by “reason...based on empirical evidence.” Baggini cannot see how any “factual discovery could ever settle a question of right and wrong.”

Nevertheless, Krauss expresses sympathy with Baggini’s position, saying, “I do think philosophical discussion can inform decision-making in many important ways—by allowing reflections on facts, but that ultimately the only source of facts is via empirical exploration.”

Noted philosophers were upset with The Atlantic interview, including Daniel Dennett of Tufts University who wrote to Krauss. As a result, Krauss penned a more careful explication of his position that was published in Scientific American in 2014 under the title “The Consolation of Philosophy.” There he was more generous to philosophy's contribution to the enrichment of his own thinking, although he conceded little of his basic position:

“As a practicing physicist...I, and most of the colleagues with whom I have discussed this matter, have found that philosophical speculations about physics and the nature of science are not particularly useful, and have had little or no impact upon progress in my field. Even in several areas associated with what one can rightfully call the philosophy of science I have found the reflections of physicists to be more useful.”

Krauss is not alone among physicists in his disdain for philosophy. In September 2010 physicists Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow published a shot heard round the world—and not just the academic world. On the first page of their book, The Grand Design, they wrote: “Philosophy is dead” because “philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.”

The questions that philosophy is no longer capable of handling (if it ever was) include: How does the universe behave? What is the nature of reality? Where did all this come from? Did the universe need a creator? According to Hawking and Mlodinow, only scientists—not philosophers—can provide the answers.

Famous astrophysicist and science popularizer Neil deGrasse Tyson has joined the debate. In an interview on the Nerdist podcast in May 2014 Tyson remarked, “My concern here is that the philosophers believe they are actually asking deep questions about nature. And to the scientist it's, ‘What are you doing? Why are you concerning yourself with the meaning of meaning?’” His overall message was clear: science moves on; philosophy stays mired, useless and effectively dead.

Needless to say, Tyson also has been heavily criticized for his views. His position can be greatly clarified by viewing the video of his appearance in a forum at Howard University in 2010, where he was on the stage with biologist Richard Dawkins. Tyson's argument is straightforward and is the same as expressed by Krauss: Philosophers from the time of Plato and Aristotle have claimed that knowledge about the world can be obtained by pure thought alone. As Tyson explained, such knowledge cannot be obtained by someone sitting back in an armchair. It can only be gained by observation and experiment. Richard Feynman had once expressed a similar opinion about “armchair philosophers.” Dawkins agreed with Tyson, pointing out that natural selection was discovered by two naturalists, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, who worked in the field gathering data.

What we are seeing here is not a recent phenomenon. In his 1992 book Dreams of a Final Theory, Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg has a whole chapter entitled “Against Philosophy.” Referring to the famous observation of Nobel laureate physicist Eugene Wigner about “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics,” Weinberg puzzles about “the unreasonable ineffectiveness of philosophy.”

Weinberg does not dismiss all of philosophy, just the philosophy of science, noting that its arcane discussions interest few scientists. He points out the problems with the philosophy of positivism, although he agrees that it played a role in the early development of both relativity and quantum mechanics. He argues that positivism did more harm than good, however, writing, “The positivist concentration on observables like particle positions and momenta has stood in the way of a ‘realist’ interpretation of quantum mechanics, in which the wave function is the representative of physical reality.”

Perhaps the most influential positivist was late 19th-century philosopher and physicist Ernst Mach, who refused to accept the atomic model of matter because he could not see atoms. Today we can see atoms with a scanning tunneling microscope but our models still contain unseen objects such as quarks. Philosophers as well as physicists no longer take positivism seriously, and so it has no remaining influence on physics, good or bad.

Nevertheless, most physicists would agree with Krauss and Tyson that observation is the only reliable source of knowledge about the natural world. Some, but not all, incline toward instrumentalism, in which theories are merely conceptual tools for classifying, systematizing and predicting observational statements. Those conceptual tools may include non-observable objects such as quarks.

Until very recently in history no distinction was made between physics and natural philosophy. Thales of Miletus (circa 624–546 B.C.) is generally regarded as the first physicist as well as the first philosopher of the Western tradition. He sought natural explanations for phenomena that made no reference to mythology. For example, he explained earthquakes to be the result of Earth resting on water and being rocked by waves. He reasoned this from observation, not pure thought: Land is surrounded by water and boats on water are seen to rock. Although Thales’ explanation for earthquakes was not correct, it was still an improvement over the mythology that they are caused by the god Poseidon striking the ground with his trident.

Thales is famous for predicting an eclipse of the sun that modern astronomers calculate occurred over Asia Minor on May 28, 585 B.C. Most historians today, however, doubt the truth of this tale. Thales’ most significant contribution was to propose that all material substances are composed of a single elementary constituent—namely, water. Whereas he was (not unreasonably) wrong about water being elementary, Thales’ proposal represents the first recorded attempt, at least in the West, to explain the nature of matter without the invocation of invisible spirits.

Thales and other Ionian philosophers who followed espoused a view of reality now called material monism in which everything is matter and nothing else. Today this remains the prevailing view of physicists, who find no need to introduce supernatural elements into their models, which successfully describe all their observations to date.

The rift to which Tyson was referring formed when physics and natural philosophy began to diverge into separate disciplines in the 17th century after Galileo and Newton introduced the principles that describe the motion of bodies. Newton was able to derive from first principles the laws of planetary motion that had been discovered earlier by Kepler. The successful prediction of the return of Halley’s Comet in 1759 demonstrated the great power of the new science for all to see.

The success of Newtonian physics opened up the prospect for a philosophical stance that became known as the clockwork universe, or alternatively, the Newtonian world machine. According to this scheme, the laws of mechanics determine everything that happens in the material world. In particular, there is no place for a god who plays an active role in the universe. As shown by the French mathematician, astronomer and physicist Pierre-Simon Laplace, Newton's laws were in themselves sufficient to explain the movement of the planets throughout previous history. This led him to propose a radical notion that Newton had rejected: "Nothing besides physics is needed to understand the physical universe."

Whereas the clockwork universe has been invalidated by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics, quantum mechanics remains devilishly hard to interpret philosophically. Rather than say physics “understands” the universe, it is more accurate to say that the models of physics remain sufficient to describe the material world as we observe it to be with our eyes and instruments.

In the early part of the 20th century almost all the famous physicists of the era—Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, among others—considered the philosophical ramifications of their revolutionary discoveries in relativity and quantum mechanics. After World War II, however, the new generation of prominent figures in physics—Richard Feynman, Murray Gell-Mann, Steven Weinberg, Sheldon Glashow and others—found such musings unproductive, and most physicists (there were exceptions in both eras) followed their lead. But the new generation still went ahead and adopted philosophical doctrines, or at least spoke in philosophical terms, without admitting it to themselves.

For example, when Weinberg promotes a “realist” interpretation of quantum mechanics, in which “the wave function is the representative of physical reality,” he is implying that the artifacts theorists include in their models, such as quantum fields, are the ultimate ingredients of reality. In a 2012 Scientific American article theoretical physicist David Tong goes even further than Weinberg in arguing that the particles we actually observe in experiments are illusions and those physicists who say they are fundamental are disingenuous:

“Physicists routinely teach that the building blocks of nature are discrete particles such as the electron or quark. That is a lie. The building blocks of our theories are not particles but fields: continuous, fluidlike objects spread throughout space.”

This view is explicitly philosophical, and accepting it uncritically makes for bad philosophical thinking. Weinberg and Tong, in fact, are expressing a platonic view of reality commonly held by many theoretical physicists and mathematicians. They are taking their equations and model as existing on one-to-one correspondence with the ultimate nature of reality.

In the reputable online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Mark Balaguer defines platonism as follows:

“Platonism is the view that there exist [in ultimate reality] such things as abstract objects—where an abstract object is an object that does not exist in space or time and which is therefore entirely nonphysical and nonmental. Platonism in this sense is a contemporary view. It is obviously related to the views of Plato in important ways but it is not entirely clear that Plato endorsed this view as it is defined here. In order to remain neutral on this question, the term ‘platonism’ is spelled with a lower-case ‘p.’”

We will use platonism with a lower-case “p” here to refer to the belief that the objects within the models of theoretical physics constitute elements of reality, but these models are not based on pure thought, which is Platonism with a capital “P,” but fashioned to describe and predict observations.

Many physicists have uncritically adopted platonic realism as their personal interpretation of the meaning of physics. This not inconsequential because it associates a reality that lies beyond the senses with the cognitive tools humans use to describe observations.

In order to test their models all physicists assume that the elements of these models correspond in some way to reality. But those models are compared with the data that flow from particle detectors on the floors of accelerator labs or at the foci of telescopes (photons are particles, too). It is data—not theory—that decides if a particular model corresponds in some way to reality. If the model fails to fit the data, then it certainly has no connection with reality. If it fits the data, then it likely has some connection. But what is that connection? Models are squiggles on the whiteboards in the theory section of the physics building. Those squiggles are easily erased; the data can’t be.

In his Scientific American article Krauss reveals traces of platonic thinking in his personal philosophy of physics, writing:

“There is a class of philosophers, some theologically inspired, who object to the very fact that scientists might presume to address any version of this fundamental ontological issue. Recently one review of my book [A Universe from Nothing] by such a philosopher.... This author claimed with apparent authority (surprising because the author apparently has some background in physics) something that is simply wrong: that the laws of physics can never dynamically determine which particles and fields exist and whether space itself exists or more generally what the nature of existence might be. But that is precisely what is possible in the context of modern quantum field theory in curved spacetime.”

The direct, platonic, correspondence of physical theories to the nature of reality, as Weinberg, Tong and possibly Krauss have done, is fraught with problems: First, theories are notoriously temporary. We can never know if quantum field theory will not someday be replaced with another more powerful model that makes no mention of fields (or particles, for that matter). Second, as with all physical theories, quantum field theory is a model—a human contrivance. We test our models to find out if they work; but we can never be sure, even for highly predictive models like quantum electrodynamics, to what degree they correspond to “reality.” To claim they do is metaphysics. If there were an empirical way to determine ultimate reality, it would be physics, not metaphysics; but it seems there isn't.

In the instrumentalist view we have no way of knowing what constitutes the elements of ultimate reality. In that view reality just constrains what we observe; it need not exist in one-to-one correspondence with the mathematical models theorists invent to describe those observations. Furthermore, it doesn’t matter. All these models have to do is describe observations, and they don’t need metaphysics to do that. The explanatory salience of our models may be the core of the romance of science but it plays second chair to its descriptive and predictive capacity. Quantum mechanics is a prime example of this because of its unambiguous usefulness despite lacking an agreed-on philosophical interpretation.

Thus, those who hold to a platonic view of reality are being disingenuous when they disparage philosophy. They are adopting the doctrine of one of the most influential philosophers of all time. That makes them philosophers, too.

Now, not all physicists who criticize philosophers are full-fledged platonists, although many skirt close to it when they talk about the mathematical elements of their models and the laws they invent as if they are built into the structure of the universe. Indeed, the objections of Weinberg, Hawking, Mlodinow, Krauss, and Tyson are better addressed to metaphysics and fail to show sufficient appreciation, in our view, for the vital contributions to human thought that persist in fields like ethics, aesthetics, politics and, perhaps most important, epistemology. Krauss pays these important topics some lip service, but not very enthusiastically.

Of course, Hawking and Mlodinow write mostly with cosmological concerns in mind—and where metaphysical attempts to grapple with the question of ultimate origins trespass on them, they are absolutely correct. Metaphysics and its proto-cosmological speculations, construed as philosophy, were in medieval times considered the handmaiden of theology. Hawking and Mlodinow are saying that metaphysicians who want to deal with cosmological issues are not scientifically savvy enough to contribute usefully. For cosmological purposes, armchair metaphysics is dead, supplanted by the more informed philosophy of physics, and few but theologians would disagree.

Krauss leveled his most scathing criticisms at the philosophy of science, and we suggest that it would have been more constructive had he targeted certain aspects of metaphysics. Andersen, for The Atlantic, interviewed him on whether physics has made philosophy and religion obsolete. And although it hasn't done so for philosophy, it has for cosmological metaphysics (and the religious claims that depend on it, such as the defunct Kalām cosmological argument begging the necessity of a creator). Surely Krauss had metaphysical attempts to speculate about the universe at least partially in mind, given that the interview addressed his book on cosmology.

Whatever may be the branches of philosophy that deserve the esteem of academics and the public, metaphysics is not among them. The problem is straightforward. Metaphysics professes to be able to hook itself to reality—to legitimately describe reality—but there's no way to know if it does.

So, although the prominent physicists we have mentioned, and the others who inhabit the same camp, are right to disparage cosmological metaphysics, we feel they are dead wrong if they think they have completely divorced themselves from philosophy. First, as already emphasized, those who promote the reality of the mathematical objects of their models are dabbling in platonic metaphysics whether they know it or not. Second, those who have not adopted platonism outright still apply epistemological thinking in their pronouncements when they assert that observation is our only source of knowledge.

Hawking and Mlodinow clearly reject platonism when they say, “There is no picture- or theory-independent concept of reality.” Instead, they endorse a philosophical doctrine they call model-dependent realism, which is “the idea that a physical theory or world picture is a model (generally of a mathematical nature) and a set of rules that connect the elements of the model to observations.” But they make it clear that “it is pointless to ask whether a model is real, only whether it agrees with observations.”

We are not sure how model-dependent realism differs from instrumentalism. In both cases physicists concern themselves only with observations and, although they do not deny that they are the consequence of some ultimate reality, they do not insist that the models describing those observations correspond exactly to that reality. In any case, Hawking and Mlodinow are acting as philosophers—epistemologists at the minimum—by discussing what we can know about ultimate reality, even if their answer is “nothing.”

All of the prominent critics of philosophy whose views we have discussed think very deeply about the source of human knowledge. That is, they are all epistemologists. The best they can say is they know more about science than (most) professional philosophers and rely on observation and experiment rather than pure thought—not that they aren’t philosophizing. Certainly, then, philosophy is not dead. That designation is more aptly applied to pure-thought variants like those that comprise cosmological metaphysics.

Thanks to Don McGee, Brent Meeker, Chris Savage, Jim Wyman and Bob Zannelli for their helpful comments.

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Victor J. Stenger (1935–2014) was emeritus professor of physics at the University of Hawaii and adjunct professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado. He is author of The New York Times bestseller, God:The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist. His latest book is God and the Multiverse: Humanity’s Expanding View of the Cosmos.

James A. Lindsay has a PhD in mathematics and is author of God Doesn't; We Do: Only Humans Can Solve Human Challenges and Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly.

Peter Boghossian is an assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University and an affiliate faculty member at Oregon Health & Science University in the Division of General Internal Medicine. He is author of the bestseller, A Manual for Creating Atheists.

* * * * * * * * * * *

What I think about NOMA

(not the ex-Red Sox shortstop but the evolution thing)

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2015/04/what-i-think-about-noma-not-the-ex-red-sox-shortstop-but-the-evolution-thing/

by Peter Enns

April 13, 2015

Comments

So, I’ve been thinking of NOMA this past week. Probably because the Yankees have been hitting like a high school team (until last night, let’s hope it lasts) and I need to take my mind somewhere else.

And so my mind wound up at NOMA.

NOMA is part of the lingo of the science/religion discussion (argument, debate, controversy, smack talk, etc.), a term coined by famous evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould and it stands for “non-overlapping magisteria.”

And that means that science and religion are separate “domains” of knowledge where each operates by different rules of inquiry. These “magisteria” do not “overlap” and so the rules of one cannot determine the findings of the other.

In other words, religion can’t tell science what to do and vice-versa. The idea is debated when you get to details. I have also know Christians to bristle when they see the term, in part, perhaps because Gould was a avowed atheist.

Still, in the Christianity/evolution discussion, Christians are generally happy with half of NOMA: science can’t tell us what to believe. But they are less happy about the other half: the Bible can’t tell science where it is wrong.

From where I sit at the present moment, I think both halves of NOMA are right. I never use the term in The Evolution of Adam, but in retrospect the idea sits pretty comfortably in the background of the whole book.

The various branches of modern science have made tremendous advances in our understanding of cosmic, geological, and biological evolution. We know a lot. Far from everything, as any good scientist will readily admit, but a lot.

But when scientists conclude from their work that a higher power does not exist, or that this or that religious tradition is not “true,” they have overstepped their bounds, because spiritual reality is not subject to the rules of scientific inquiry.

Faith is a different kind of “knowing.” People are free to reject faith, of course, but to do so on the basis of the lack of scientific corroboration for God is precisely the problem NOMA speaks against.

And zeroing in on the Bible and saying that science has “disproven” Genesis displays ignorance of nature of biblical literature, assuming that it can and should be evaluated by the rules of scientific inquiry.

Christians mirroring these missteps when they dismiss evolution on the basis of its alleged incompatibility with “biblical teaching.”

By pitting the Bible against science, they are–ironically–making the same mistaken assumption of pitting science against the Bible. They assume that the two are alternate means of describing origins (they are) and therefore both are subject to the same rules of evaluation (they aren’t).

Pitting one against the other like this is what I call COMA, “completely overlapping magisteria.” Both sides insist that these two alternate “narratives” of origins can be evaluated by the rules that operate for their own field–scientists imposing scientific expectations onto the Bible and biblicistic Christians imposing the Bible onto science.

But Christians have understood, since at least the days of Augustine (354-430 CE), that the Bible simply isn’t set up to address scientific matters, and to think that it does betrays an unfortunate ignorance about the nature of the Bible:

"It is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these [cosmological] topics, and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn." (Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, 1:42-43).

That “disgraceful” treatment of Genesis is even less excusable today than in Augustine’s day. The Bible and science have grown further apart.

We don’t know everything, but we certainly know a lot more about (1) how the universe works, and (2) how ancient stories of origins work, and none of those we read outside of the Bible are in any way “historical” by any commonly accepted sense of the term.

To think that the Bible is somehow immune from its ancient cultural influence is more a blind assertion that a reasoned argument, and it contributes directly to the persistent mess which is the unfortunate, ongoing debate over evolution among more literally minded Christian readers of the Bible.

Back to NOMA. It makes sense to me. For me to think differently, I would need to see either (1) where the Bible has contributed to a scientific knowledge of origins, or (2) where scientific inquiry has been able to bring to light evidence for or against the numinous.

And I think, by definition, neither of those things can happen. Biblical literature doesn’t contribute to scientific knowledge; scientific inquiry cannot evaluate spiritual experience. They don’t overlap.

If you think differently, please feel free to chime in. But be nice about it. This issue tends to generate a lot of heat. Mean, abrasive, combative comments will be blocked.