Natural theology has fascinated me since I discovered it over a decade ago. The realization that not only the existence of God but also aspects of His nature were knowable and understandable through our experience of the physical world and the use of our reason was mind altering to say the least. I find it almost incomprehensible that it has been forgotten by the modern world and is largely ignored or dismissed, especially by faithful Christians. God, for many Christians, becomes entirely unknowable and inscrutable and resembles, in more ways than one, more common perceptions of Allah. Refusing to utilize our perception and our rational faculties to know the divine, many Christians would tell us that we must and should rely completely on faith. One wonders if many have forgotten part of the beauty of the Incarnation; that we might know God in the flesh.
When Ayn Rand takes religion to task, it is in particular for this blind faith, devoid of the use of reason. If we cannot know God exists, but must rather believe him into our lives, how are we do decide in what kind of a god we should believe? If one were to answer, “the one written about in the Book” the obvious retort is to ask, “Which book, and why that one above any other?” The answer of “I have faith,” rings circular and hollow, and Rand sees only hopeless gullibility and naivete of a people who blindly follow what they are told by the current high priest standing before them, or the dead one who preceded him. To this extent one’s faith exists entirely devoid of reason, it is hard to argue that she is incorrect.
This is of course not the faith of the Catholic Church or of St. Thomas Aquinas who contributed more to our understanding of the nature of God than probably any other mere man in history. As natural theology can teach us that God must exist, that he must be Perfect, and Good, and True, and One, the work of our faith becomes something entirely different. No longer do we need to have faith that the Unmovable Mover is, but rather we only need to have faith in Him. If I understand through reason that he actively holds in existence in every moment, the question is not whether He loves me, but why?
And with this knowledge, faith can grow. We have a basis on which to recognize, respect, and trust authorities. We can ask whether what they teach agrees with our understanding of reality and the divine. We can observe if an authority can expand our knowledge or address errors in their own thinking or that of others. Without this foundation in our reason, which is itself grounded in sense knowledge, our faith is just a superstition. It is gullibility and belief in mystical powers and incantations. No understanding, just a naive belief that we are right and the hope that we can will away any nagging doubt in ourselves or others.
Enter the atheist. Like Rand, he sneers at the gullibility and mysticism he observes in organized religion. He sees faith in God as a crutch for those mentally unequipped to deal with reality. He, unlike those backward mystics of the Dark Ages has the advantage of the modern sciences. He knows antiquated ideas like “causality” have been completely refuted. Even something as monumental as the creation of the universe can be casually dismissed by the latest scientific discoveries. It came from nothing:
And here we start to see where our poor atheist friend has begun to lose his way. I have it on good authority that modern physics is a fairly complicated subject. Many do not have the aptitude for it, and those that do need many years of study to grasp what was cutting edge half a century ago. The number of people who can appreciate the equations of modern particle physics, which is the subject of the above article, is vanishingly small.
And even among this tiny cadre of physicists who can investigate these deep questions, there is a lack of consensus about what the equations even mean. And even where there is consensus, questions about ontology are largely forgotten in favor of empirical prediction. Ask a physicist how it could be that something could come from nothing, given that if it has the power to create something it, by definition, can’t be nothing, and if you get a coherent answer at all, you will probably hear something about how that’s not a question physics can answer or something about the quantum foam or some other piece of incoherent technobabble. If you are extremely lucky, you might get the admission that they don’t really mean nothing but a something that they don’t really understand all that well.
Now we see something of the crux of the issue. Due to their proficiency with mathematics and the advances of 100’s of years of genius which have come before them, physicists can appreciate in an incomplete way some of the most fundamental truths of the physical world. These discoveries are then translated into popular science literature and eventually make their way in some distorted and simplified form into the mainstream. Where our atheist can read about them, believe the conclusions uncritically and then believe that he is enlightened. And then lacks enough self-awareness to call Christians gullible.
Does he actually believe he knows or understands anything about physics? Surely, like so many others, he knows that “physics is hard.” But the smart scientists said so. Or at least the science reporter for his publication of choice says they do. And if they know it and they told him it was true, than he must know it as well.
The religious person at least recognizes their faith as such. They know there is a gap in their understanding and that they are trusting an authority, be it divine or human. But our skeptical friend thinks he actually knows something. He doesn’t recognize belief as belief. He thinks almost nonsensical truths have been revealed to him and he now possesses deep wisdom. Why?
And now we see the incredible projection that has taken place. He does not know any physics. He does not really understand Newtonian mechanics, a 300 year old discipline, but he is sure it has disproved the argument of the Unmoved Mover. He couldn’t describe any of the predictions of special or general relativity, but he is convinced he knows it disproves the existence of causality. He couldn’t tell you any of the experiments that led to the development of quantum mechanics, but he’s read enough blog posts about it to think he is an expert on the many-worlds interpretation and anyone who thinks a cat can’t be both fully alive and dead at the same time is stuck in outdated modes of thinking.
He has so internalized his beliefs that he no longer recognizes them as such. He has submitted his thoughts so completely to the shaman which lead his tribe of skeptics that he is willing to discard even the evidence of his own senses. He wields the careful poetry his priests use to try to explain their inscrutable equations as both sword and shield against those who would offer through critique. He mumbles the words and phrases he has heard used by those he blindly follows as if they were a magic spell.
And then he rolls his eyes at the humble Christian who might admit they do not know why they believe, but are adamant that they know they should.
Interesting post. I agree with you that many Atheists (especially the New Atheists) are quite poor when it comes to engaging the intellectual arguments for Theism. If you want formidable engagements of Natural Theology from sophisticated Atheist philosophers, J.L. Mackie's "The Miracle of Theism" is a classic. The two best definitive critiques of arguments of Natural Theology would be J.H. Sobel's "Logic and Theism" and Graham Oppy's "Arguing About Gods".