For Further Reading

Chapter 4

Science and the Philosophy of Religion

In the previous chapter, we explored some leading themes of the philosophy of science and considered their relevance to the discussion of religious questions. The present chapter develops this approach further, by examining the way in which the insights of the natural sciences might have implications for – or at least the potential to contribute to discussions within – the philosophy of religion.

The field of ‘philosophy of religion’ is generally understood to refer to the philosophical examination of the basic themes and concepts associated with religious traditions such as Christianity, while also including the broader philosophical task of reflecting on matters of religious importance, such as the relation of God and evil, the nature of religious language, the use of analogies in religion, and the assessment of alternatives to religion, such as secular naturalism. The philosophy of religion is a very rich subject, and for our purposes in this chapter we shall focus on one of its most important themes – philosophical arguments for the existence of God. In what way do the insights of the natural sciences affect such arguments? As a reading of the literature makes clear, recent discussions of arguments for God's existence make extensive reference to scientific understandings of the world.

In

In this chapter, we shall consider some of the lines of argument relating to the existence of God that have been developed within the philosophy of religion, and then focus specifically on the arguments which are particularly affected by the natural sciences. We shall therefore begin our analysis by turning to deal with some of the classic arguments for the existence of God, to allow the reader to gain something of an understanding of the types of approach which are widely discussed within this field of study.

Science, Religion, and Proofs for God's Existence

One of the most interesting issues in science and religion concerns the nature of ‘proofs’ of theories – whether the theory in question is Einstein's theory of relativity, or the Christian affirmation of the existence of God. When I first began to study science as a teenager, back in the 1960s, I was encouraged to think that science proved its findings with total conviction. The chemical composition of water, for example, could be proved to be H₂O. It is a commonplace for those committed to the outdated ‘warfare’ model of the relation of science and religion to contrast them at this point. Science and religion are often placed at opposite ends of the scale on the question of evidence.

Richard Dawkins, a vigorous – though not, it has to be said, a particularly well informed – advocate of this approach, argues that science proves its core convictions by an appeal to experimental or observational evidence, whereas religion refuses to offer any rational or evidential support for its beliefs. More philosophically informed scientists, however, take a very different view. Max Planck, the father of quantum theory, was quite clear that faith played a critical role in the natural sciences, arguing that an unproven belief in the fundamental unity of phenomena provides both a motivation and justification for the scientific enterprise. It is not something that can be proved, but which nevertheless seems to provide a working basis for the scientific project. For Planck, the scientist thus has faith in an unseen order of things and finds this both justified and reflected in the success of the sciences.

Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: ‘You must have faith.’ It is a quality which the scientists cannot dispense with.

A similar point was made by Thomas H. Huxley, widely known as ‘Darwin's Bulldog’ on account of his tenacious defence of Darwin's ideas. In 1885, Huxley declared that ‘science … commits suicide when it adopts a creed.’ Science, when at its best and most authentic, has no creed or ideology, whether religious or anti‐religious. Its public standing would be risked if it was contaminated by religious or anti‐religious agendas. While science may not have a creed, Huxley insisted that it has one, and only one, article of faith.

The one act of faith in the convert to science is the confession of the universality of order and of the absolute validity in all times and under all circumstances, of the law of causation. This confession is an act of faith, because, by the nature of the case, the truth of such propositions is not susceptible of proof.

Huxley has clearly appreciated that the practice of science rests on an unproven (and unprovable) belief. It is a belief which is arguably reinforced through the outcomes of the scientific process – but it remains what the psychologist William James called an unproved ‘working hypothesis’.

Earlier in this work, we considered the place of explanation in the natural sciences and Christian theology (65–84). In the case of the natural sciences, the question is how to make sense of an accumulation of observations of the natural world. What ‘big picture’ makes most sense out of these observations? As we saw in , this usually involves the process of ‘inference to the best explanation’. Yet this is always understood to be a provisional assessment, which is open to review and revision as evidence accumulates and reflection proceeds. On the basis of the evidence available to us today, we might accept this scientific theory; on the basis of new evidence or revised interpretations of old evidence that we acquire tomorrow, we might accept a quite different scientific theory.

As Michael Polanyi, a chemist and noted philosopher of science pointed out, natural scientists find themselves having to believe some things that they know will later be shown to be wrong – but not being sure which of their present beliefs would turn out to be erroneous.

Scientific theorizing offers what is believed to be the best account of the experimental observations currently available. Radical theory change takes place either when it is believed that there is a better explanation of what is currently known, or when new information comes to light which forces us to see what is presently known in a new light. Unless we know the future, it is impossible to take an absolute position on the question of whether any given theory is ‘right’. We do not – and cannot – know which of today's theories will be discarded as interesting failures by future generations. Yet this does not prevent scientists from committing themselves to a given theory, believing that it is right (while knowing it may prove to be inadequate or wrong in the longer term).

This emphasis on the provisionality of scientific theories severely undermines the outdated positivism that often accompanies the ‘warfare’ model of the relation of science and religion. Where the positivist declares that ‘science has proved this to be true’, wiser and more reflective scientists would prefer to state that: ‘There is a broad consensus within the scientific community that this is correct, but this will probably shift as and when more evidence accumulates.’ This is not in any way a criticism of the natural sciences. It is simply a recognition of how the scientific method works. Historians of science regularly point to a group of theories which were held to represent scientific orthodoxy in their age and are now regarded as clearly incorrect.

To explore the importance of this point, let us ask a question: is Darwin's theory of evolution correct? The best answer to this question would be that Darwin's theory, as modified by his successors, is currently believed to be the best explanation of a vast body of biological data. Yet as more and more data builds up, what Thomas Kuhn called a ‘paradigm shift’ may take place, involving a radical theory shift away from Darwinism towards some new theory, at present unknown. Richard Dawkins, an enthusiastic advocate of Darwinism, is quite clear about this point:

Darwin may be triumphant at the end of the twentieth century, but we must acknowledge the possibility that new facts may come to light which will force our successors of the twenty‐first century to abandon Darwinism or modify it beyond recognition.

So what about religious beliefs? There are three interesting questions that should be noted here:

We shall consider these questions in this chapter, beginning with Thomas Aquinas's classical arguments for the existence of God, generally known as the ‘Five Ways’.

Traditional Philosophical Arguments for the Existence of God

The most widely discussed philosophical arguments for the existence of God were developed by Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas Aquinas during the Middle Ages. Anselm's ‘ontological argument’ is of considerable interest to philosophers of religion, but its non‐empirical character means that it has little place in any discussion of the natural sciences. In marked contrast, Aquinas's ‘Five Ways’ are directly grounded in an engagement with empirical reality, and thus connect well with scientific inquiry. We shall consider these arguments in what follows.

In some textbooks, the ‘Five Ways’ are described as ‘proofs’ of the existence of God. This is an overstatement. In many ways, these traditional arguments are best seen as a demonstration of the internal rationality of religious belief. Aquinas's approach is of especial interest on account of the explicit connection he proposes between the existence of God and the human capacity to make sense of our world. More recent statements of these arguments have generally taken three forms:

In what follows, we shall consider the classical forms of these arguments, and some of their more recent forms.

Thomas Aquinas's Five Ways

Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274) is probably the most famous and influential theologian of the Middle Ages. Born in Italy, he achieved his fame through his teaching and writing at the University of Paris and other northern universities. His fame rests chiefly on his Summa Theologiae, which was composed towards the end of his life and remained unfinished at the time of his death. However, he also wrote many other significant works, particularly the Summa contra Gentiles, which represents a major statement of the rationality of the Christian faith, and especially the existence of God. Aquinas believed that it was entirely proper to identify pointers towards the existence of God, drawn from general human experience of the world.

For Aquinas's purposes in demonstrating the rationality of theistic belief, God is treated primarily as an explanatory agent whose existence and nature provides a retrospective explanation of various aspects of our experience of the world and ourselves as God's creatures – such as the ordering of the world, or our sense of goodness or beauty in response to nature. Aquinas regards it as unacceptable simply to affirm the brute reality of the existence of our world and its specific characteristics. He clearly believes that it is both reasonable and appropriate to look for an explanation of why this world exists in the first place, and why it has the distinct characteristics that we observe within its processes and structures in the second. The universe needs to be explained in terms of a relationship with something other than itself – that is, with God.

Aquinas's ‘Five Ways’ represent five lines of argument in support of the existence of God, each of which draws on some aspect of the world which ‘points’ to the existence of its creator. So what kind of pointers does Aquinas identify? The basic line of thought guiding Aquinas is that the world mirrors God, as its creator – an idea which is given more formal expression in his doctrine of the ‘analogy of being’. Just as an artist might sign a painting to identify it as his handiwork, so God has stamped a divine ‘signature’ upon the creation. What we observe in the world (for example, its signs of ordering) can best be explained on the basis of the existence of God as its creator. God is thus to be seen as both its first cause and its designer, bringing the world into existence and impressing something of the divine image and likeness upon it.

So where might we look in creation to find evidence for the existence of God? Aquinas argues that the ordering of the world is the most convincing evidence of God's existence and wisdom. This basic assumption underlies each of the ‘Five Ways’, although it is of particular importance in the case of the argument often referred to as the ‘argument from design’ or the ‘teleological argument’. We shall consider each of these ‘ways’ individually, before focusing on two of them later in this chapter.

The first way begins from the observation that things in the world are in motion or change. The world is not static, but is dynamic. Examples of this are easy to list. Rain falls from the sky. Stones roll down valleys. The earth revolves around the sun (a fact, incidentally, unknown to Aquinas). The first of Aquinas's arguments is normally referred to as the ‘argument from motion’. The Latin term motus, often translated as ‘motion’, has a wider sense than this suggests, so that the translation ‘change’ is more appropriate at points.

So how did nature come to be in motion? Why is it changing? Why isn’t it static? Aquinas argues that everything which moves is moved by something else. For every motion, there is a cause. Things don’t just move – they are moved by something else. Now each cause of motion must itself have a cause. And that cause must have a cause as well. Aquinas thus argues that there are a whole series of causes of motion lying behind the world as we know it. Now unless there is an infinite number of these causes, Aquinas argues, there must be a single cause right at the origin of the series. From this original cause of motion, all other motion is ultimately derived. This is the origin of the great chain of causality which we see reflected in the way the world behaves. From the fact that things are in motion, Aquinas thus argues for the existence of a single original cause of all this motion – and this, he concludes, is God.

In more recent times, this argument has been restated in more explicitly cosmological terms. The most commonly encountered statement of the argument takes the following form:

The argument basically assumes that the existence of the universe is something that requires explanation. It will be clear that this type of argument relates directly to modern cosmological research, particularly the ‘big bang’ theory of the origins of the cosmos.

The second way begins from the idea of efficient causation. Aquinas notes that we observe an order of efficient causes within what we see around us. However, we do not observe, and cannot expect to observe, anything that is the efficient cause of itself. Since it is not possible that there should be an infinite series of efficient causes, it is reasonable to suppose that there is some prime efficient cause (prima causa efficiens), which is what everyone calls ‘God’.

The third way concerns the existence of contingent beings. In other words, the world contains beings (such as human beings) which are not there as a matter of necessity. Aquinas contrasts this type of being with a necessary being (one who is there as a matter of necessity). Whilst God is a necessary being, Aquinas argues that humans are contingent beings. The fact that we are here needs explanation. Why are we here? What happened to bring us into existence? Aquinas argues that a being comes into existence because something which already exists causes it to exist. In other words, our existence is caused by another being. We are the outcome of a causal series. Tracing this series back to its origin, Aquinas declares that this original cause of being can only be someone whose existence is necessary – in other words, God.

The fourth way begins from human values, such as truth, goodness, and nobility. Where do these values come from? What causes them? Aquinas argues that there must be something which is true, good, and noble itself, and that this brings into being our ideas of truth, goodness, and nobility. The origin of these ideas, Aquinas suggests, is God, who is their original cause.

The fifth and final way is the teleological argument itself, or the ‘argument from design’. This is among the most widely discussed of the philosophical arguments for the existence of God. Thomas Aquinas frames the argument in terms of apparent design within the natural order. Things do not simply exist; they appear to have been designed with some form of purpose in mind. The term ‘teleological’ (meaning ‘directed towards a goal’) is widely used to indicate this apparently goal‐directed aspect of nature. This leads Aquinas to conclude that there exists ‘an intelligent being by whom all natural things are directed to their end’ – in other words, God.

Aquinas's five arguments show a similar structure. Each depends on tracing a causal sequence back to its single origin and identifying this with God. A number of criticisms of the ‘Five Ways’ were made by Aquinas's critics during the Middle Ages, such as Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. The three following criticisms are especially important.

The Kalam Argument

The argument which is now generally known as the ‘kalam’ argument derives its name from an Arabic school of philosophy which flourished in the early Middle Ages. The basic structure of the argument can be set out as four propositions:

Although some scholars regard this as a variant of the cosmological argument, already set out above, others regard it has having certain distinct features, meriting its treatment in its own right.

The structure of the argument is clear. If the existence of something can be said to have begun, it follows – so it is argued – that it must have a cause. This type of argument is easily linked to the modern scientific idea of a ‘big bang’. Modern cosmology strongly suggests that the universe had a beginning. If the universe began to exist at a certain time, it must have had a cause. And what cause could there be other than God? Although this argument was developed during the Middle Ages, the scientific consensus of that age was that the universe did not have a beginning – in other words, that the second premise of the argument, as set out above, is invalid. The cosmological paradigm shift that led to scientific acceptance of the ‘big bang’ now means that the argument's second premise chimes in with the prevailing scientific consensus of the twenty‐first century, thus giving a new scientific plausibility to this approach.

This form of the kalam argument has been widely debated in recent years. One of its most significant defenders has been William Lane Craig, who sets out its main features as follows:

Since everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence, and since the universe began to exist, we conclude, therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence …. Transcending the entire universe there exists a cause which has brought the universe into being.

Debate over the argument has centred on three questions, one of which is scientific and the other two of which are philosophical.

It will be clear that the traditional kalam argument has been given a new lease of life by the movement away from the idea of an eternal universe to the more recent theory of the origins of the universe in the ‘big bang’. The philosophical issues which are raised are, however, likely to remain the subject of lively critical discussion.

A Case Study: William Paley's Biological Argument from Design

It is widely agreed that the most significant popular contribution to the ‘argument from design’ is due to William Paley. His Natural Theology; or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature (1802) had a profound influence on popular English religious thought in the first half of the nineteenth century, and is known to have been read by Charles Darwin. Paley was deeply impressed by Newton's discovery of the regularity of nature, especially in relation to the area usually known as ‘celestial mechanics’. It was clear that the entire universe could be thought of as a complex mechanism, operating according to regular and understandable principles.

For some deist writers, this suggested that God was no longer necessary. A mechanism could operate perfectly well without the need for its creator to be present all the time. One of Paley's significant achievements, which has not been fully recognized in the scholarly literature, was to rehabilitate the idea of the ‘world as a mechanism’ within a Christian perspective. Paley managed to transform the ‘clockwork’ metaphor from an image associated with skepticism and atheism to one associated with a clear affirmation of the existence of God. Where scientific advance seemed to lead to atheism in France, as the works of Laplace indicated, Paley established a context within which scientific advance was accommodated within the ample girth of a suitably generous natural theology. Paley's vision for natural theology offered a significant degree of religious and political stability at a time when many feared both internal and external insecurity. It pointed to the fixed laws of science having counterparts in fixed laws of society, both of which were grounded in the divine nature.

For Paley, the Newtonian image of the world as a mechanism immediately suggested the metaphor of a clock or watch, raising the question of who constructed the intricate mechanism which was so evidently displayed in the functioning of the world. One of Paley's most significant arguments is that mechanism implies ‘contrivance’. Writing against the backdrop of the emerging Industrial Revolution in England, dating from about 1760 to 1840, Paley sought to exploit the apologetic potential of the growing interest in machinery – such as ‘watches, telescopes, stocking‐mills, and steam engines’ – within England's literate classes.

The general lines of Paley's approach are well known. By the opening of the nineteenth century, England was experiencing the Industrial Revolution, in which machinery was coming to play an increasingly important role. Paley argues that only a fool would suggest that such complex mechanical technology came into being by purposeless chance. Mechanism presupposes contrivance – by which Paley means that it has been designed for a purpose and intelligently constructed. Both the human body in particular, and the world in general, could be seen as mechanisms which had been designed and constructed in such a manner as to achieve harmony of both means and ends. It must be stressed that Paley is not suggesting that there is simply an analogy between human mechanical devices and the natural world – in other words, that nature is like a machine. At some points, the force of his argument rests rather on his assertion that nature is a mechanism, and hence was intelligently designed and expertly constructed.

Paley's argument hinges around a controlling image: the biological world is analogous to a watch. The apologetic strategy developed by Paley rests upon establishing this vivid analogy, which possesses sufficient imaginative potential to carry his readers along and subvert the evidential force of objections that might be raised against his approach. Paley's analogy of the watch may be derivative, in that it was used by Dutch writers in the mid‐eighteenth century; the use he makes of it, however, shows an ingenuity and creativity that cannot be overlooked.

The opening paragraphs of Paley's Natural Theology are widely known, along with their controlling image of a watch found in the midst of a bleak natural habitat.

In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there. I might possibly answer, that for any thing I knew to the contrary it had lain there for ever; nor would it, perhaps, be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place. I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that for any thing I knew the watch might have always been there. Yet why should this answer not serve for the watch as well as for the stone; why is it not admissible in the second case as in the first.

What distinguishes the watch from the stone? The nub of Paley's answer can be summed up in the single word contrivance – a system of parts that were designed and assembled to work together for a specific purpose, demonstrating both design and utility. Paley used the term ‘contrivance’ to convey the idea of something that is both designed and constructed, appealing to the popular interest in machinery characteristic of the new age of industrialization then emerging in England.

Paley then offers a detailed description of the watch, noting in particular its container, coiled cylindrical spring, many interlocking wheels, and glass face. All show evidence of design for a specific identifiable purpose. Having carried his readers along with this careful analysis, Paley turns to draw his critically important conclusion about the intricacy and obvious purpose of its mechanism:

This mechanism being observed (it requires indeed an examination of the instrument, and perhaps some previous knowledge of the subject, to perceive and understand it; but being once, as we have said, observed and understood), the inference we think is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker: that there must have existed, at some time and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer, who comprehended its construction and designed its use.

Paley's extended discussion of the watch is intended to establish a framework of interpretation, capable of being transferred to other objects that appear to show evidence of design. Paley's detailed analysis of the watch mechanism is intended to establish that it is a contrivance, showing evidence of being initially designed and subsequently constructed for a specific purpose, and thus indicating the existence of a designer. And, for Paley, those same patterns can be discerned within the biological world.

Many Christian apologists of the early eighteenth century appealed to the beauty and ordering of the physical world as evidence of the existence of God. Paley shifted focus, turning his attention to the biological world. Astronomy might indeed point towards the magnificence and wonder of God to believers; it could not, however, prove God's existence in the first place.

My opinion of Astronomy has always been, that it is not the best medium through which to prove the agency of an intelligent Creator; but that, this being proved, it shows, beyond all other sciences, the magnificence of his operations. The mind which is once convinced, it raises to sublimer views of the Deity than any other subject affords; but it is not so well adapted, as some other subjects are, to the purpose of argument.

Paley points out that observation of the planets and stars points to their simplicity. ‘We see nothing, but bright points, luminous circles, or the phases of spheres reflecting the light which falls upon them.’ For Paley, however, the inference of design rests upon the evidence of complexity. ‘We deduce design from relation, aptitude, and correspondence of parts. Some degree therefore of complexity is necessary to render a subject fit for this species of argument.’ Paley found that complexity in the structures of the biological world – above all, the human eye.

Who, Paley wondered, could possibly look at the complexities of the human eye – which he describes in attentive detail – and fail to see that it also has a designer? The eye, he suggests, is analogous to a telescope.

There is precisely the same proof that the eye was made for vision, as there is that the telescope was made for assisting it. They are made upon the same principles; both being adjusted to the laws by which the transmission and refraction of rays of light are regulated. … What could a mathematical‐instrument‐maker have done more, to show his knowledge of his principle, his application of that knowledge, his suiting of his means to his end … to testify counsel, choice, consideration, purpose?

Having developed this analogy, Paley emphasizes the superiority of the eye over the telescope. The eye is more ingeniously designed than the telescope and is better adapted to cope with a wide range of circumstances, such as differing levels of illumination, or the range of distances of objects to be viewed. For Paley, this demands that both the eye and telescope should be considered to be contrivances. And since the eye is more ingenious and functional than the telescope, the creator of this natural contrivance is worthy of greater admiration and praise than the creator of the telescope.

Paley's essential point is that nature bears witness to a series of biological structures which are ‘contrived’ – that is, designed and constructed with a clear purpose in mind. ‘Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature.’ Indeed, Paley argues, the difference is that nature shows an even greater degree of contrivance than the watch. Perhaps it is fair to say that Paley is at his best when he deals with describing immensely complex natural structures, such as the human eye or heart, treating both as machines designed with specific purposes in mind.

So much attention is paid to Paley's opening analogy of the watch that the later stages of his argument are often overlooked, particularly some raised by the skeptical philosopher David Hume in relation to earlier forms of natural theology. Hume pointed out that such an argument from design might lead to multiple deities, or to no deity at all. The act of creation did not imply the continued existence of a creator. ‘A great number of men join in building a house or ship, in rearing a city, in founding a commonwealth: why may not several deities combine in contriving and framing a world?’ Nor need the original designer still exist, in that the watch will continue to exist, independent of the fate of its contriver. And what of the moral character of the designer? Hume suggested that this world is ‘faulty and imperfect’. It could, Hume argued, have been the first botched attempt at creation on the part of ‘some infant deity’, or the ‘production of old age and dotage’ of some creator God who had lapsed into an incompetent senility.

Paley deals with these concerns through a long and cumulative argument, the later stages of which are often overlooked by his interpreters. First, he addresses the question of whether there is only one creator. His argument, though complex, reduces to the assertion that there is a consistency of purpose and design within nature which points to there being only one mind lying behind what is observed. The constancy and universality of the laws of nature, for example, clearly point to a single rationality expressed within the natural world. Furthermore, Paley suggests, to speak of design immediately implies that the designer is a person, rather than an abstract force. But is the designer good and wise?

Paley here uses a form of argument from perfection, which had been developed by a number of earlier writers, including Charles Darwin's paternal grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, noted for his work Zoönomia; or the Laws of Organic Life (1794–1796). Paley argues that the character of a designer would be disclosed in that which is designed. Since natural contrivances appear to have come into being for the overall good of creatures, it is reasonably to infer that the creator intends good for the creation – and that God is therefore good.

Paley's argument was influential, especially at the popular level. His fundamental argument is that nature contains biologically complex structures that cannot be attributed to chance. Its appeal to popular science – especially natural history – gave a new motivation for the close and appreciative study of the natural world. Yet Paley was dependent upon the scientific consensus of the early eighteenth century, which held that the world was essentially static and not subject to radical change. Paley's essentially static notion of creation reflects a belief that there is a designed, unchanging order to things. Charles Darwin's Origin of Species offered a very different account of the origin of biological complexity, attributing this to the phenomenon of natural selection, not to divine design and construction.

Yet Paley's approach was not entirely discredited by Darwin. Many English theologians of the 1860s and 1870s took the view that Darwin actually rescued Paley's approach to natural theology, by placing it on a firmer intellectual foundation through rectifying a faulty and ultimately fatal premise. Charles Kingsley argued that the word ‘creation’ implied a process rather than a mere event, so that Darwin's theory actually clarified the mechanism of creation. ‘We knew of old that God was so wise that he could make all things; but, behold, he is so much wiser than even that, that he can make all things make themselves.’ Where Paley thought of a static creation, within which God seemed to play only a figurehead role, Kingsley argued that Darwin made it possible to see creation as a dynamic, fundamentally teleological, process, directed by divine providence. Deism, for Kingsley, offered only a ‘chilling dream of a dead universe ungoverned by an absent God’; Darwinism, when rightly interpreted, offered a vision of a living universe constantly improving under the wise direction of its benevolent creator.

Richard Dawkins argues that natural selection – the ‘blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered’ – removes any grounds for speaking meaningfully about nature being ‘designed’. Dawkins allows that it is possible to speak of the ‘appearance of design’, while insisting that this semblance arises from a purposeless natural process. Natural selection thus subverts any argument from design. The logic of Dawkins's argument is slightly opaque at this point. It is not clear why accepting Darwin's account of the mechanism of evolution requires anyone to abandon belief in goodness or purpose. In fact, the most that Dawkins can say on the basis of an empirical approach is that there is an appearance of absence of purpose. As the philosopher Alvin Plantinga points out, the claim that evolution is without purpose is a ‘metaphysical or theological addition’ to any purely scientific account of evolution. Plantinga argues that there are various ways in which God could have guided the evolution of life that are compatible with Darwin's theory of evolution.

The Ambiguity of ‘Proof’: Justification in Science and Theology

The concept of proof plays an important role in both science and theology, generally being understood to designate arguments or observations that offer compelling reasons for believing that a certain theory is to be regarded as correct. The atheist biologist Richard Dawkins provides a good example of this approach to evidence. In the second edition of his influential work The Selfish Gene, Dawkins proposes an absolute dichotomy between ‘blind faith’ and ‘overwhelming, publicly available evidence’:

But what, after all, is faith? It is a state of mind that leads people to believe something – it doesn’t matter what – in the total absence of supporting evidence. If there were good supporting evidence, then faith would be superfluous, for the evidence would compel us to believe it anyway.

This view of the relation of evidence and belief in the natural sciences, while rightly recognizing the importance of identifying and assessing evidence which might be adduced in support of a belief, fails to make the critically important distinction between the ‘total absence of supporting evidence’ and the ‘absence of totally supporting evidence’.

To appreciate the importance of this point, consider the current debate within cosmology over whether the ‘big bang’ gave rise to a single universe, or a series of universes (the so‐called ‘multiverse’). Many distinguished scientists support the former approach, and just as many equally distinguished scientists support the latter. The matter cannot at present be settled by an appeal to the available evidence. Both are real options for thinking and informed scientists, who make their decisions on the basis of their judgements of how best to interpret the evidence and believe – but cannot prove – that their interpretation is correct. To put this more technically, they believe their position is justified, but know it cannot be proved.

A similar issue arises in relation to quantum theory. Which model is right? The Copenhagen approach? Or the rival approach of Louis de Broglie and David Bohm, often known as the ‘pilot wave theory’? Or the ‘many worlds’ interpretation offered by Hugh Everett? As these three models are empirically equivalent, no experiment can be performed to settle the question, which must ultimately rest on complex and disputed judgements about conceptual elegance, simplicity, and whether they appear to be constructed to advance a metaphysical agenda. Yet these difficulties do not prevent individual quantum theorists from making decisions about their preferred choice. They may not be able to prove it is right, but they can offer good reasons for that choice.

In its rigorous sense, ‘proof’ is only attainable in the fields of logic and mathematics. We can thus prove that 2 + 2 = 4, or that ‘the whole is greater than the part’ – but not that there is a multiverse, or that the Copenhagen approach to quantum theory is right. John Polkinghorne – a theoretical physicist turned theologian – insists that the real issue in both science and religion is whether a belief can be regarded as warranted or justified.

Neither science nor religion can entertain the hope of establishing logically coercive proof of the kind that only a fool could deny. No one can avoid some degree of intellectual precariousness, and there is a consequent need for a degree of cautious daring in the quest for truth. Experience and interpretation intertwine in an inescapable circularity. Even science cannot wholly escape this dilemma (theory interprets experiments; experiments confirm or disconfirm theories).

Good reasons can be given for believing that a scientific theory (or religious belief) are justified, even if these fall short of the rigorous proof that we expect in logic or mathematics.

‘Justification’ can be understood as the process by which a belief becomes a justified belief – for example, through enumerating the good reasons that someone might set out in defending a belief as likely to be true. As Laurence Bonjour puts it, ‘The basic question is whether I have good reasons for thinking that my beliefs are true (and, if so, what forms those reasons take).’ For some philosophers, such as Alvin Plantinga, the key difference between a basic belief and a properly basic belief is in the reliability of the production of that belief. Science rightly demands that we provide justification of our beliefs, on the basis of the best knowledge and methods at our disposal. Yet, as Stanley Fish pointed out, those methods of inquiry and bodies of knowledge change over time:

[A defence of objective truth] will not proceed by citing unmediated and unchallengeable evidence, but by citing evidence that appears to me to be conclusive given the features of the world as I see it and the force of arguments I unproblematically affirm, at least for now. In short, I rely on the world that has been delivered to me by the traditions of inquiry and demonstration I currently have faith in. That is what objectivity means, going with the best arguments and bodies of evidence one has at the moment.

Fish's point merits close consideration: methods of investigation and normative assumptions are embedded within social and professional contexts, and thus change over time. The same ‘evidence’ or observations is thus open to being interpreted in different ways in different socio‐cultural locations.

In the previous section, we considered William Paley's 1802 arguments for the existence of God based on an appeal to biological complexity. Paley clearly considered that he is offering a ‘proof’ of the existence of God (or at least of a creator). However, a more careful study of his statements makes it clear that Paley does not mean that these observations amount to a logical proof, but rather to a rhetorical demonstration, similar to that then encountered in an English court of law. Yet in 1836, a series of legal reforms to the English legal system put an end to the simplistic idea that ‘evidence’ took the form of facts speaking for themselves. The concept of evidence was now recognized to be a theoretical, not an empirical, notion. Evidence is not something that is observed within or read off from nature. Evidence is shaped by assumptions, by hypotheses that create a framework within which an observation plays a particularly significant role. A factual observation could be supportive of a number of possible theories. It is therefore important to identify the theory that brings the greatest degree of ‘order and connexion to a mass of facts’. Factual observations thus only become evidence when placed within a proper context of interpretation.

In legal, scientific, and theological contexts, the question of how a belief can be said to be ‘justified’ is of considerable importance, irrespective of the diversity of viewpoints on what quantity of evidence may be said to justify a belief, or precisely what criteria – whether extrinsic or intrinsic – should be used to decide between beliefs. As we noted in (00‐00), the concept of ‘inference to the best explanation’ recognizes the serious difficulties in proving that a given belief is right, and instead aims to determine which of a number of theoretical options is to be preferred, while acknowledging that this does not amount to declaring that it is true.

God's Action in the World

One of the more interesting intersections of scientific and religious thought concerns the manner in which God can be said to act in the world. For example, does God act within the laws of nature? Or can these be violated or transcended in order to serve some special divine purpose? These questions remain live and important. The last two decades have witnessed a surge of interest in the question of whether, and to what extent, God may be said to act in the world. Can God be understood to act entirely in and through the regular structures and capacities of nature, or does a robust account of divine action also require us to affirm that God acts specially in order to redirect the course of events in the natural world, thus delivering outcomes that would not have occurred if God had not acted in this way?

Although this discussion is sometimes framed in terms of a generic notion of divinity, the most significant recent engagements with the question have reflected Judeo‐Christian conceptions of God. The language of divine action is integral to both Old and New Testaments. The God of Israel is regularly and definitively depicted and described as a God who acts in history. God's identity and character are understood to be made visible in the sphere of human action and reflection. This concentration on God's actions in nature and history could lead to the neglect of important themes (such as the more subtle unobtrusive forms of divine activity in everyday experience), as well as creating an essentially impersonal notion of God as a spiritual force. Yet despite these important qualifications, Israel understood and represented God as one who acted in nature and in history. The New Testament maintains this tradition, and focuses it on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

In 1988, Pope John Paul II celebrated the three hundredth anniversary of the publication of Newton's Principia by sponsoring a series of events with the overall title ‘Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action’. This series of events continued for nearly 20 years, opening up some important questions about how – and whether – God could be meaningfully said to ‘act’ in the world of nature. The debate about special divine action takes place against a framework of scientific discourse, framed in terms of the ‘laws of nature’, which raise significant concerns (often based on the philosopher David Hume) about the notion of divine ‘interference’ with the regular structures of the world. With the benefit of hindsight, it can now be seen that the important ‘Divine Action Project’, noted earlier, was haunted by the fear that interventionist approaches to divine action seemed to call into question the validity of the laws of nature.

In what follows, we shall explore three broad approaches to this important question which have been influential in the last hundred years, before briefly considering some more recent approaches based on the notion of indeterminacy in quantum mechanics. We begin with the notion that God acts through the laws of nature.

Deism: God Acts Through the Laws of Nature

Historians generally agree that the modern concept of ‘laws of nature’, understood as mathematical descriptions of exceptionless regularities, first emerged in Western culture during the early modern period, particularly through the influence of Galileo, Kepler, and Newton. Although the concept of the regularity of nature was widely accepted during the Middle Ages, the specific phrase ‘laws of nature’ was not used to express this rationality but was generally used to refer to moral laws that were held to be grounded in a divinely established order. By the time of Newton, however, the phrase ‘laws of nature’ was becoming well established within scientific circles, bearing the sense of certain fundamental principles, capable of being expressed mathematically, which captured and expressed essential structural relationships within the world of nature.

The Newtonian emphasis on the regularity of nature, particularly when coupled with the growing trend to think of nature as analogous to a clockwork mechanism, created difficulties for any notion of divine intervention within the natural world. Intervention seemed to entail disruption of the natural order or a subversion of the laws of nature. Isaac Newton had no difficulty with the idea that God had established the ‘laws of nature’; he was concerned, however, by the idea that God might break these laws, in what seemed to him to be an act of potential anarchy. The ‘laws of nature’ were thus interpreted as denying causal openness in the structures of nature.

This hostility towards special divine action is clearly mirrored in Newton's religious writings. He regarded accounts of miracles in the early church as ‘feigned’ and argued that the biblical accounts of miracles were more concerned with the infrequency of their occurrence, rather than their supposed divine origins. Many theologians of the eighteenth century – such as Jonathan Edwards – regarded Newton's scientific view of the world as undermining traditional religious belief, not least because of its suspicions and hesitations concerning any notion of divine action beyond the primordial act of creation.

The Newtonian emphasis upon the mechanical regularity of the universe was closely linked with the rise of the movement known as ‘deism’. Recent research on the nature of deism has emphasized that this was not a well‐defined coordinated movement, but rather a broad spectrum of individual opinions characterized by varying degrees of skepticism concerning both the rationality and utility of traditional religious beliefs. Deism takes too many forms to be enfolded within a single definition or history, even though it is helpful to think of it as a family of beliefs and attitudes.

Despite these definitional difficulties, what is generally understood to be a ‘deist’ position can be conveniently summarized as follows. God created the world in a rational and ordered manner, reflecting God's own rational nature, and endowed the natural order with the ability to develop and function without the need for God's continuing presence or involvement. This viewpoint, which became especially influential in the eighteenth century, tended to follow Kepler in thinking of the world as a clock and God as a clockmaker. God endowed the world with a certain self‐sustaining design, such that it could subsequently function without the need for continual intervention. It is thus no accident that William Paley chose to use the image of a watch and watchmaker as part of his celebrated defence of the existence of a creator God.

So how does God act in the world, according to deism? The simple answer to this question is that God does not act in the world. Rather, God established a framework within which the world can function. Like a watchmaker, God endowed the universe with its inviolable regularity (expressed in the ‘laws of nature’) and set its mechanism in motion. Having provided the impetus to set the system in motion, and establishing the principles which govern that motion, there is nothing left for God to do. The world is analogous to a large‐scale watch, which is completely autonomous and self‐sufficient. No action by God is necessary for its continued functioning.

Inevitably, this led to the question of whether God could be eliminated completely from the Newtonian worldview. If there was nothing left for God to do, what conceivable need was there for any kind of divine being? If it can be shown that there are certain self‐sustaining principles that are active within the world, there is no need for the traditional idea of ‘providence’ – that is, for the sustaining and regulating hand of God to be present and active throughout the entire existence of the world.

The Newtonian worldview thus encouraged the view that, although God may well have created the world, there was no further need for divine involvement. The discovery of the laws of conservation (for example, the laws of conservation of momentum) seemed to imply that God had endowed the creation with all the mechanisms which it required in order to continue. This is the point made by the astronomer Pierre‐Simon Laplace (1749–1827) in his famous comment to the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte about the idea of God as a sustainer of planetary motion: ‘I have no need of that hypothesis.’

Yet as the writings of Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas make clear, it is perfectly possible to affirm that God acts in the world through the laws of nature, without abandoning a belief in divine providence. For example, consider Augustine of Hippo's affirmation of the role of divinely created ‘determinate qualities’ within the natural world in ensuring an ordered process of natural development.

The normal functioning of nature is subject to its own natural laws, according to which all living creatures have their determinate inclinations. … The elements of non‐living material things also have their determinate qualities and forces, by means of which they function as they do and develop as they do. … From these primordial principles everything that comes about emerges in its own time and in the due course of events.

To explore this point further, we shall turn to consider the more activist understanding of the manner in which God acts in the world, due to Thomas Aquinas and modern writers influenced by him, which focuses on secondary causes within the natural order.

Thomism: God Acts Through Secondary Causes

A somewhat different approach to the issue of God's action in the world can be based on the writings of the leading medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas's conception of divine action focuses on the distinction between primary and secondary causes. According to Aquinas, God does not work directly in the world, but through secondary causes. Yet although we can distinguish between primary and secondary causality – or between divine and natural causality – and argue that these work at different levels, it is important to appreciate that these are not absolutely independent from one another, because divine causality is ultimately the cause of creatural causality.

Aquinas's approach is best explained in terms of an analogy. Imagine a gifted pianist, who possesses the ability to play the piano beautifully. Yet the excellence of her playing is partly dependent upon the quality of her piano. A piano that is out of tune or mechanically defective will not allow her to give a satisfactory performance of a Chopin nocturne, no matter how well she can play the instrument. In this analogy, the pianist is the primary cause of the performance, and the piano the secondary cause. Both are required; each has a significantly different role to play. The ability of the primary cause to achieve the desired effect is dependent upon the secondary cause that is used for this purpose. Yet the analogy of the pianist and piano is deficient in an important respect, in that it fails to correlate the primary and secondary causes as having their ultimate origins in the same agent.

Aquinas uses this appeal to secondary causes to deal with some of the issues relating to the presence of evil in the world. Suffering and pain are not to be ascribed to the direct action of God, but to the fragility and frailty of the secondary causes through which God works. God, in other words, is to be seen as the primary cause, and various agencies within the world as the associated secondary causes.

Aquinas thus argues that God is the ‘unmoved mover’, the prime cause of every action, without whom nothing could happen at all. Yet he allows that God can act indirectly, through secondary causes. A chain of causality can be discerned, leading back to God as the originator and prime mover of all that happens in the world. Yet God does not usually act directly in the world, but rather through the chain of events which God initiates and guides.

For Aristotle (from whom Aquinas draws many of his ideas), secondary causes are able to act in their own right. Natural objects are able to act as secondary causes by virtue of their own nature. This view was unacceptable to theistic philosophers of the Middle Ages, whether Christian or Islamic. For example, the noted Islamic writer al‐Ghazali (1058–1111) held that nature is completely subject to God, and it is therefore improper to speak of independent secondary causes. God causes things directly. If lightning sets a tree on fire, the fire is not caused by the lightning, but by God. God is thus to be seen as the primary cause who alone is able to move other causes. In the view of many historians of science, this approach to divine causality (often known as ‘occasionalism’) has not made a positive contribution to the development of the natural sciences, as it downplays the regularity of actions and events within nature, and their apparent ‘law‐like’ nature.

It will thus be clear that Aquinas's approach leads to the idea of God initiating a process which develops under divine guidance. God, so to speak, delegates divine action to secondary causes within the natural order. For example, God might move a human will from within so that someone who is ill receives assistance. Here an action which expresses God's will is carried out indirectly by God – yet, according to Aquinas, we can still speak of this action being ‘caused’ by God in some meaningful way. Aquinas's approach has proved fruitful, and has been adopted and adapted by those wanting to affirm divine involvement in the ‘big bang’ and the process of biological evolution.

A related approach was developed by the British philosophical theologian Austin Farrer (1904–1968). This account of divine action is often termed ‘double agency’. According to Farrer, every action which takes place in the world includes a causal role for one or more agents or objects in the world (the ‘secondary’ causes) and a distinct role for God as the ‘primary’ cause of what occurs. We could therefore speak of an ordered nexus of created causes and effects which are ultimately dependent upon divine agency. Two different orders of efficacy can be distinguished: a ‘horizontal’ order of created causes and effects, and a ‘vertical’ order through which God establishes and sustains the former.

The notion of indirect divine operation within nature by secondary causes governed by the ‘laws of nature’ played an important role in framing theological responses to Darwin's evolutionary theory. Writers such as Aubrey Moore (1848–1890) picked up on Darwin's emphasis on the ‘laws impressed on matter by the Creator’, a notion which was given a significantly higher profile in the second edition of the Origin of Species than in the first. For Moore, God's action was disclosed in natural laws, which were not to be understood in terms of the quasi‐deism of Paley's natural theology, but in terms of an immanentist theology of nature, which Moore held to be much more compatible with Christianity.

Science had pushed the deist's God further and further away, and at the moment when it seemed as if He would be thrust out altogether, Darwinism appeared, and, under the guise of a foe, did the work of a friend. It has conferred upon philosophy and religion an inestimable benefit, by showing us that we must choose between two alternatives. Either God is everywhere present in nature, or He is nowhere. He cannot delegate his power to demigods called ‘second causes’. In nature everything must be his work, or nothing.

Although Moore's views on secondary causality are open to criticism (Aquinas, for example, does not treat such causes as ‘demigods’), his analysis is clearly of interest at this point, particularly in engaging with Paley's static view of creation.

Process Theology: God Acts Through Persuasion

The origins of process thought are generally agreed to lie in the writings of the Anglo‐American philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947), especially his important work Process and Reality (1929). Reacting against the rather static view of the world associated with traditional metaphysics (expressed in ideas such as ‘substance’ and ‘essence’), Whitehead conceived reality as a process. The world, as an organic whole, is something dynamic, not static; something which happens. Reality is made up of building blocks of ‘actual entities’ or ‘actual occasions’, and is thus characterized by becoming, change, and event.

All these ‘entities’ or ‘occasions’ (to use Whitehead's original terms) possess a degree of freedom to develop in response to their surroundings. It is perhaps at this point that the influence of biological evolutionary theories can be discerned: like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), Whitehead is concerned to allow for development within creation, subject to some overall direction and guidance. This process of development is thus set against a permanent background of order, which is seen as an organizing principle essential to growth. Whitehead argues that God may be identified with this background of order within the process. Whitehead treats God as an ‘entity’, while distinguishing God from other ‘entities’ on the grounds of imperishability. Other entities exist for a finite period; God exists permanently. Each entity thus receives influence from two main sources: previous entities and God.

Causation is thus not a matter of an entity being coerced to act in a given manner: it is a matter of influence and persuasion. Entities influence each other in a ‘dipolar’ manner – mentally and physically. Precisely the same is true of God as for other entities. God can only act in a persuasive manner, within the limits of the process itself. God ‘keeps the rules’ of the process. Just as God influences other entities, so God is also influenced by them. God, to use Whitehead's famous phrase, is ‘a fellow‐sufferer who understands’. God is thus affected and influenced by the world. This aspect of Whitehead's thought has been developed in the context of the science‐religion interaction by a number of writers, especially Ian R. Barbour.

Process thought thus redefines God's omnipotence in terms of persuasion or influence within the overall world process. This is an important development, as it explains the attraction of this way of understanding God's relation to the world in relation to the problem of evil. Where the traditional free will defence of moral evil argues that human beings are free to disobey or ignore God, process theology argues that the individual components of the world are likewise free to ignore divine attempts to influence or persuade them. They are not bound to respond to God. God is thus absolved of responsibility for both moral and natural evil.

The traditional free will defence of God in the face of evil is persuasive (although the extent of that persuasion is contested) in the case of moral evil – in other words, evil resulting from human decisions and actions. But what of natural evil? What of earthquakes, famines, and other natural disasters? Process thought argues that God cannot force nature to obey the divine will or purpose for it. God can only attempt to influence the process from within, by persuasion and attraction. Each entity enjoys a degree of freedom and creativity, which God cannot override.

While this understanding of the persuasive nature of God's activity has obvious merits, not least in the way in which it offers a response to the problem of evil (as God is not in control, God cannot be blamed for the way things have turned out), critics of process thought have suggested that too high a price is paid. The traditional idea of the transcendence of God appears to have been abandoned, or radically reinterpreted in terms of the primacy and permanency of God as an entity within the process. In other words, the divine transcendence is understood to mean little more than that God outlives and surpasses other entities.

Earlier, we noted the importance of Ian Barbour as a formative influence over the field of science and religion. Barbour championed the use of process thought to provide an intellectual basis for the facilitation and consolidation of this intellectual dialogue. Instead of seeing the emergence of the field of ‘science and religion’ as a pragmatic response to the need for two powerful cultural forces to engage in dialogue, Barbour argues that there is an intellectual bridge between the two, which makes this dialogue necessary and proper.

The key aspect of process theology which Barbour appropriates to facilitate this dialogue is the rejection of the classic doctrine of God's omnipotence: God is one agent among many, not the sovereign Lord of all. As Barbour points out, process thought affirms ‘a God of persuasion rather than compulsion … who influences the world without determining it’. Process theology thus locates the origins of suffering and evil within the world to a radical limitation upon the power of God. God has set aside (or simply does not possess) the ability to coerce, retaining only the ability to persuade. Persuasion is seen as a means of exercising power in such a manner that the rights and freedom of others are respected. God is obliged to persuade every aspect of the process to act in the best possible manner. There is, however, no guarantee that God's benevolent persuasion will lead to a favourable outcome. The process is under no obligation to obey God. As Barbour comments, process theology thus calls into question ‘the traditional expectation of an absolute victory over evil’.

God intends good for the creation, and acts in its best interests. However, the option of coercing everything to do the divine will cannot be exercised. As a result, God is unable to prevent certain things happening. Wars, famines, and holocausts are not things which God desires; they are, however, not things which God can prevent, on account of the radical limitations placed upon the divine power. God is thus not responsible for evil; nor can it be said, in any way, that God desires or tacitly accepts existence of evil. The metaphysical limits placed upon God are such as to prevent any interference in the natural order of things.

Barbour finds this approach (especially as it is set out in the writings of Whitehead himself) valuable in illuminating the manner in which science and religion interact. It allows God to be seen as present and active within nature, working within the limits and constraints of the natural order. It would be fair to categorize Barbour as a ‘panentheist’ at this point (meaning the view that ‘God is present in all things’, and not to be confused with ‘pantheism’, the view that all things are divine).

Perhaps the most interesting way in which Barbour uses the distinctive ideas of process thought relates to the theory of evolution. Barbour argues that the evolutionary process is influenced by – but not directed by – God. This allows him to deal with the fact that the evolutionary process appears to have been long, complex, and wasteful. ‘There have been too many blind alleys and extinct species and too much waste, suffering and evil to attribute every event to God's specific will.’ God influences the process for good, but cannot dictate precisely what form it will take. It is here that Barbour's influence has been particularly significant, with many contemporary works exploring the religious implications of evolutionary suffering appealing to the principles of process thought to make the point that God does not directly determine the precise form of the evolutionary process. He suffers, along with others, within that process.

Whitehead's basic ideas have also been developed by a number of writers, most notably Charles Hartshorne, Schubert Ogden, and John B. Cobb. Hartshorne modified Whitehead's notion of God in a number of directions, perhaps most significantly by suggesting that the God of process thought should be thought of more as a person than an entity. This allows him to meet one of the more significant criticisms of process thought: that it compromises the idea of divine perfection. If God is perfect, how can he change? Is not change tantamount to an admission of imperfection? Hartshorne redefines perfection in terms of a receptivity to change which does not compromise God's superiority. In other words, God's ability to be influenced by other entities does not mean that God is reduced to their level. God surpasses other entities, even though he is affected by them.

Process thought has no difficulty in speaking of ‘God's action within the world’, offering a framework within which this action can be described in terms of ‘influence within the process’. Nevertheless, the specific approach adopted causes anxiety to traditional theism, which is critical of the notion of God associated with process theology. For traditional theists, the God of process thought often seems to bear little relation to the God described in the Old or New Testaments.

Quantum Theory: God Acts Through Indeterminacy

A fourth approach has emerged as significant more recently, largely as a result of the ‘Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action’ programme, noted earlier. The three approaches just outlined are widely encountered in theological and philosophical discussions of divine agency. In recent years, however, these have been supplemented by other approaches. Although these more recent understandings of divine agency have yet to gain a wide degree of acceptance, they are of sufficient interest and importance to mention here.

One approach, based on the Copenhagen model of quantum mechanics, holds that the idea of indeterminancy offers a way of thinking about God's actions in the world. Events which might seem to occur randomly are actually caused by divine agency. The appeal of the approach is obvious. Most philosophers want to affirm that any belief in real freedom in agents, whether human or divine, requires an open future, rather than one which is predetermined. The Copenhagen approach to quantum mechanics incorporates such a notion of indeterminacy, thus suggesting that divine agency can operate without detection or interference in the autonomy of natural (particularly living) entities. God is thus the ‘determiner of indeterminacies’.

This approach is adopted by Robert John Russell in his NIODA (non‐interventionist objective divine action) proposal, developed as part of the ‘Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action’ programme. Russell is specifically concerned about whether God can be said to act objectively in nature while avoiding violation of the laws of nature. Russell argues that God's special action ‘results in specific, objective consequences in nature, consequences which would not have resulted without God's special action.’ Although this might seem to appeal to a ‘God of the gaps’ framework, Russell argues that this is not the case. God has created the world in such a way that God is able to act in special ways without intervening in the flow of natural processes. Physical processes are open to God's direction or influence because God created them this way. ‘God creates the universe such that the quantum events occur without sufficient natural causes and acts within these natural processes and together with natural causes to bring them about.’

Yet there are problems with this potentially attractive position. Even if an indeterminist approach to quantum theory is favoured, critics such as Jeffrey Koperski have argued that the theological outcome of such a strategy is close to deism. The indeterminist Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory may well be dominant; yet others – such as that developed by David Bohm – are determinist and seem to offer no such indeterminate quantum nexus as a means of safeguarding the idea of divine agency. Nor is there any indication that quantum fluctuations could have the cumulative force necessary to speaking meaningfully of God ‘acting’ in the world.

One of the issues that is significant in discussion of divine action concerns the status of the notion of the ‘laws of nature’. Are these to be seen as inviolable principles governing the processes within the universe? Or simply as summaries of observations, without any sense that these are regulative or normative? Philip Clayton and others have argued that there are good reasons for thinking that there are emergent systems of phenomena that are dependent on the laws of nature, yet which also display emergent causal powers that cannot be predicted in this manner.

Others have turned to the notion of ‘downward causation’. This notion is often stated in slightly vague and imprecise forms. The basic idea is that we can speak of forms of ‘top‐down’ or ‘downward causation’ within the natural world, most notably the way in which the human mind operates on various components of the human body. Might the way in which the human mind controls the body be analogous to the manner in which God governs the universe?

It is a fascinating possibility, yet one which at present remains difficult to evaluate. The suggestion that mental causation can elucidate the interaction between divine agency and human free will has an obvious appeal. For example, in initiating processes that are transmitted by neurons, the mind cannot be said to violate or override the nature or properties of neurons. One of the more obvious difficulties, for example, is that the relation between the concept of ‘mind’ and the human brain still remains incompletely understood. Might we eventually have to speak of the brain – rather than the mind – controlling other parts of the body? This would seriously reduce the value of this approach.

A third way of thinking about divine agency is to consider God as a source of information. John Polkinghorne and Arthur Peacocke have both argued the case for understanding divine action as an ‘input of pure information’. God can be considered as a choreographer, who allows his dancers a degree of freedom in their movements, or a composer, who allows an orchestra to explore possible variations for a yet unfinished symphony. The appeal of this approach lies partly in the fact that, at least at first sight, the transference of information does seem to not require the violation of conservation laws. Yet its critics point out that the input of information into a system implies the reorganization of energy or matter, thus apparently raising more or less the same difficulties encountered by other, more traditional, approaches.

Miracles and the Laws of Nature

As we noted earlier, the concept of ‘laws of nature’ as mathematical descriptions of exceptionless regularities first emerged during the early modern period, particularly through the influence of Galileo, Kepler, and Newton. As Peter Harrison and other historians have pointed out, leading scientists of this period, almost without exception, had a dual commitment to a science premised upon a mechanical universe governed by immutable laws of nature on the one hand, and on the other to an omnipotent God who intervened in the natural order from time to time, thus breaching these laws of nature.

Leading scientists of this age did not see this as problematic. Robert Boyle, for example, wrote that while God established laws of nature, ‘yet he has not bound up his own hands by them, but can invigorate, suspend, overrule, and reverse any of them as he thinks fit.’ Newton himself took the view that a given event might seem miraculous to one observer and natural to another, depending upon the state of knowledge of the observer.

Miracles are so called not because they are the works of God but because they happen seldom and for that reason create wonder. If they should happen constantly according to certain laws impressed upon the nature of things, they would be no longer wonders of miracles but would be considered in philosophy as part of the phenomena of nature notwithstanding that the cause of their causes might be unknown to us.

The phrase ‘laws of nature’ was not generally used before about 1650, although it is frequently encountered after this date. This historical point is significant, in that modern discussions of miracles, all of which date from after 1650, are almost invariably framed in terms of a ‘violation of the laws of nature’ – a phrase particularly associated with David Hume's critique of miracles.

David Hume's Critique of Miracles

David Hume's influential critique of miracles depends on his understanding of a miracle as ‘a violation of the laws of nature’ or ‘a transgression of a law of nature by particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent’. There is an obvious inconsistency here within Hume's own thought. One of Hume's most distinctive contributions to the philosophy of science is a rigorous skepticism concerning the inductive process. How, Hume asked, can we arrive at any conclusions that go beyond the past instances of which we have had experience? Hume argues that inductive reasoning is based on the principle ‘that instances, of which we have had no experience, must resemble those, of which we have had experience, and that the course of nature continues always uniformly the same.’ Inductive reasoning thus assumes its own validity in offering a justification for its practice. A universal law of nature can only be established inductively; since the possibility of a future observation which disconfirms this cannot be excluded, these ‘laws’ are to be seen as provisional and partial, not universal and necessary. By Hume's own criteria, a ‘miracle’ might be a violation of the laws of nature – or the anticipated disconfirmation of the universality of that law.

Hume's views on the inductive processes that lead to the formulation of ‘laws of nature’ leads him to conclude that the regularity they express is not a feature of the ‘real world’ but is rather a construction of an order‐imposing human mind. Hume's overstatement has not been well received within the scientific community, which generally holds that regularity is an intrinsic feature of the world, uncovered (not imposed) by human investigation. For example, consider the comments of the physicist Paul Davies, which would be widely endorsed by natural scientists:

It is important to understand that the regularities of nature are real. … I believe any suggestion that the laws of nature are similar projections of the human mind is absurd. The existence of regularities in nature is an objective mathematical fact. … In conducting science we are uncovering real regularities and linkages out of nature, not writing them into nature.

A religious (and especially a Christian) approach to this discussion will focus on the ordering of the world as something which exists in that world, independent of whether the human mind recognizes it or not, and that this ordering can be understood to be related to the doctrine of creation. While many natural scientists have discarded the original theological framework which led their predecessors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to speak of ‘laws of nature’, there is no reason why such an insight should not be reappropriated by natural scientists sensitive to the religious aspects of their work.

There is a second point that needs to be made here. Hume's definition of a miracle, as has often been pointed out, has the unfortunate consequence that few, if any, would have believed in a ‘miracle’, as Hume defines it, for the first sixteen hundred years of Christian history. Why? Because few, if any, believed in absolute ‘laws of nature’ by that name before 1650. Thomas Aquinas, writing in the thirteenth century, described a miracle as something that ‘surpasses the capabilities of nature’, making no reference to violating the laws of nature. (A similar view was set out by Pope Benedict XIV in 1738: a miracle is an event whose occurrence exceeds the power of visible and physical nature.)

The Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza offered an important criticism of miracles in 1670. In his Tractatus Theologico‐Politicus, Spinoza argued that miracles were impossible, in that the ‘laws of nature’ are decrees of God which are expressions of the necessity and perfection of the divine nature. ‘Nothing happens in nature which is in contradiction with its universal laws.’ Since a miracle represents a violation or contravention of the laws of nature, anyone suggesting that God performed miracles would have to accept that God here contradicted his own nature, which is clearly absurd.

Albert Einstein often indicated his respect for and debt to Spinoza, noting that ‘followers of Spinoza see our God in the wonderful order and lawfulness of all that exists’. Einstein suggests that belief in a personal God was the ‘main source of the present‐day conflicts between the spheres of religion and science.’ Why? Because the ‘doctrine of a personal God interfering in events’ was not consistent with the ‘ordered regularity’ of natural processes. God does not break the laws of nature. For Einstein, the concept of a personal God entailed a God who did not respect the laws of nature – despite having established them in the first place. Einstein appears to have believed that to allow that God was ‘personal’ opened the way to God being capricious or whimsical.

These historical points are important in setting a context for the discussion of miracles within both a scientific context and a religious context. The concept of ‘law of nature’ is here understood as a divinely established rule that certain things shall happen, and others shall not. Yet many philosophers of science would respond critically to such an approach, seeing it as an over‐interpretation of the idea of a ‘law of nature’. Natural laws are better understood as incomplete inductive generalizations and reduce any universal natural law to a statistical approach similar to that found in quantum theory.

Albert Einstein, noted for his rigorous pursuit of the fundamental laws of nature, was dismayed by the growing tendency of quantum theory to use statistical approaches. The quotation often ascribed to Einstein – ‘God does not play dice’ – is actually an unhelpful contraction of a more measured statement: ‘It seems hard to sneak a look at God's cards. But that he plays dice and uses ‘telepathic’ methods (as the present quantum theory requires of him) is something that I cannot believe for a single moment.’ Einstein's point is that the notion of causality becomes complex in the context of quantum theory, raising questions about what a ‘law of nature’ might be able to stipulate in this situation. Einstein believed that it ought to be possible to formulate the insights of quantum theory as laws of nature, rather than in terms of statistical probabilities.

Hume's definition of a miracle remains influential and is often the starting point for contemporary discussions of the notion. For example, in his Concept of Miracle (1970), the philosopher of religion Richard Swinburne follows Hume in defining a miracle as ‘a violation of a law of nature by a god’. Many contemporary writers, including both scientists and philosophers, also resist the notion of the ‘laws of nature’ as inductive generalizations summarizing the observed behavior of physical events. The physicist Paul Davies, for example, holds that the laws of nature are embedded within the universe, leading him to ‘strongly support the Platonic idea that the laws are “out there”, transcending the physical universe.’

Yet the debate continues. As Hume himself pointed out, inductive generalizations are necessarily incomplete, and for that reason cannot be regarded as ‘proven’ or ‘universal’. Furthermore, the advance of science inevitably entails the review, and sometimes the revision, of what previous generations regarded as being firmly established. This point is made repeatedly by writers who are alert to the danger of becoming locked into what one era or generation regarded as self‐evidently true assumptions about the natural world. Our knowledge of the laws of nature will expand over time. One of the more influential discussions of this point is found in F. R. Tennant's book Miracle and Its Philosophical Presuppositions (1925), in which he made this significant assertion: ‘until we shall have arrived at something like omniscience as to Nature's constitution and intrinsic capacities, we cannot affirm any marvel to be beyond them.’

Keith Ward on Miracles

Yet this discussion focuses excessively on the idea of a miracle as something that violates – others would say expands – our understanding of the laws of nature. What about its religious significance, which is not framed in terms of its violation of the laws of nature, but rather in terms of being a sign of God's presence or activity? The British theologian Keith Ward made this point in his book Divine Action (1990):

It is quite unsatisfactory to think of miracles as just rare, highly improbable and physically inexplicable events. The theist has no interest in the claim that anomalous physical events occur. The events in which the theist is interested are acts of God; and Divine acts do not occur arbitrarily or just as anomalous and wholly inexplicable changes in the world.

For Ward, miracles are better understood as ‘epiphanies of the Spirit’, which aim to disclose that nature is not to be considered as a closed physical system. Rather, nature can be interpenetrated and reordered by God, who created it in the first place. Ward thus locates his discussion of miracles within a changing understanding of the universe that he sees in contemporary science, which offers a picture of a universe that is much ‘looser’ and more open than that disclosed by the somewhat deterministic Newtonian mechanics. ‘The whole “seamless robe” picture of nature as a closed causal system is much less compelling than it once may have seemed.’

Ward also critiques Hume's inflated understanding of a ‘law of nature’, and his apparent exclusion of God's goals in establishing the universe in the first place.

If we think of laws as having been created by God, the laws themselves must exist for some reason – and if God is a personal agent, that reason could well justify some occurrences that transcend general law‐like principles.

Ward offers an example to help us understand his point. Suppose God intends that human beings can come to know and love God and enjoy the divine presence. If this is indeed the case, this goal will be reflected in the causal structures of the universe. What happens to help bring about this relationship is thus not a ‘violation’ of the laws of nature, but rather is their teleological fulfilment. Ward presses home this point as follows:

Laws of nature are the general principles of intelligible regularity that govern the physical cosmos, but there is every reason for a theist to think that there are higher principles than laws of nature—principles that draw finite persons into conscious relationship with the Creator. Miracles, events that transcend the regularities of nature, result from the application of such intelligible principles.

Wolfhart Pannenberg on Miracles

The German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg adopts a more theological approach to the question of miracles, arguing that the ‘laws of nature’ have a purely provisional status, until they are placed on a firmer theoretical foundation by theological analysis. So do miracles represent violations of the laws of nature? Pannenberg concedes that they can indeed be understood in this way, and that this raises some very difficult scientific questions. ‘The concept of miracle as a violation of natural law subverts the very concept of law.’ Yet this is a modern statement of the question, which can be corrected by considering earlier approaches to the issue. Pannenberg notes with particular approval the approach of Augustine of Hippo (354–430), who emphasized that events of that type do not occur contrary to the nature of things. They may indeed appear to be contrary to this order, yet this is due to our limited knowledge of the course of nature.

Pannenberg advocates the rejection of the notion of a miracle as contra naturam – that is, as an event which contradicts or violates the laws of nature. Augustine of Hippo's approach, as set out in his commentary on Genesis, rests upon a recognition that we experience or observe certain events as unusual and exceptional in contrast to the accustomed patterns of events. ‘A miracle is just an unusual event or action, and religious interpretation identifies it as an act of God.’ What is really miraculous, in Pannenberg's view, are the laws of nature themselves. Why is there such ordering in a radically contingent world? ‘The order of nature itself by natural law is one of the greatest miracles, in view of the basic contingency of events and of their sequence.’

Pannenberg takes this emphasis on contingency further, making the point that contingencies are unpredictable. Some would see the hand of God in certain contingencies, interpreting certain events as miracles, not because they violate the laws of nature, but because they stand out as unusual.

Once in a while, however, contingencies occur that make people aware of the basic contingency that permeates all reality. Such an unusual occurrence may be experienced as a ‘miracle’, and religious persons will take it as an act of God, a ‘sign’ of the continuing activity of the Creator in creation and perhaps of new things to come.

For this reason, Pannenberg argues, the Augustinian approach to the miraculous is to be advocated. It does not require any opposition to the order of nature described in terms of natural law. ‘It only requires us to admit that we do not know everything about how the processes of nature work.’

Natural Atheology? Evolutionary Debunking Arguments against God

Finally, we turn to the emergence of a series of arguments linked to particular interpretations of Darwin's views on natural selection or the ‘Extended Evolutionary Synthesis’, which hold that an evolutionary understanding of the origins of human rational capacities call into question the rationality of belief in God. The fundamental theme underlying what have come to be known as ‘evolutionary debunking arguments’ is that the origins and characteristics of religion can be explained on evolutionary grounds without the need to invoke the existence of God.

There are some significant difficulties with such a generic approach to religion, perhaps most notably that there is no agreed empirical definition of ‘religion’. It may be natural for us to think of religion in essentialist terms, seeing it as a universal category, embracing individual examples of this universal – such as Buddhism, Christianity, and Hinduism – so that summative generalizations can be made about the ‘essence of religion’. Yet historically, views about the nature, function, and identity of religion have varied from one historical location to another, as they do today. The category of ‘religion’ is probably best seen as a useful social construction that has little, if any, basis in scientific investigation. The term is socially important – for example, in relation to ensuring the basic right of ‘religious freedom’ (which clearly requires some agreement on what counts as a religion). Simplistic definitions of religion in terms of a specific belief in gods or spiritual beings – underlying Daniel Dennett's bold yet inaccurate declaration that ‘a religion without God or gods is like a vertebrate without a backbone’ – are rendered problematic by Buddhism, which obstinately refuses to conform to such definitions.

Yet most evolutionary debunking arguments focus on the social utility of religion as a factor which increases its potential for survival, making the question of definition less important. Beliefs which encourage the emergence of pro‐social attitudes are likely to lead to an increased possibility of survival for communities which adopt them. This, of course, raises the question of the distinction between religion and ethics, in that while an ethical system can be derived from ‘religious’ beliefs, it can equally arise for pragmatic reasons.

Many have argued for the adaptive character of religion, in that religion is seen to encourage social cohesion and discipline, giving a group a greater capacity to survive and reproduce. It has long been recognized that one of the primary functions of religion is the promotion of this type of group solidarity, which is often strengthened through rituals, expressing both the fundamentals of group identity and the dangers which attend it. This enhanced social bonding within a group is not to be seen as an end in itself; by increasing solidarity, religion facilitates cooperation within the group, thus enhancing its survival prospects.

But is the capacity of religion to enhance group survival prospects a consequence of its truth, or its utility? Might an evolutionary account of the origins of religion show that its ideas evolved, not in response to tracking truth, but to enhancing the group's capacity to flourish and reproduce? This line of inquiry lies behind the emergence of ‘evolutionary debunking arguments’, some of which argue that the evolutionary process leads to a reductive explanation of religious beliefs as accidental and unreliable.

One set of evolutionary debunking arguments is based on the origins of religion, holding that the phenomenon of religion can be explained on evolutionary grounds without the need to appeal to the existence of a god or other transcendent agency or entity. The philosopher Robert Nola, for example, argues that religion emerges naturally, and is thus explained by natural factors – hence implicitly subverting any assumption that religion is justified in appealing to any supernatural agency or entity. Others, however, argue that this represents an instance of the ‘genetic fallacy’, in which a theory of the social origins of a system or community is held to be a definitive explanation, excluding others. Different levels of explanation are possible. An evolutionary explanation of how music developed, for example, does not exhaust the question of its present value to individuals or its social utility. Nor do evolutionary perspectives adequately explain justified beliefs. This evolutionary debunking argument clearly assumed that explaining the origins of religion amounts to showing that religious beliefs are false.

An evolutionary account of the origins of religion does not exclude other causes or explanations of religion – or any comparable community of belief. Nola appears to believe that theological and evolutionary accounts of religion are incompatible, perhaps reflecting an unwise dependence on the ‘conflict’ metaphor of their relationship. In reality, multiple explanations of the origins of religion can be provided, operating at different levels, and each being inadequate to account for the specifics of religion as a phenomenon in general, or the specific features of any religious community. As the Oxford philosopher Janet Radcliffe‐Richards remarked in her criticism of the evolutionary debunking of altruism, ‘explaining how altruism comes to exist no more shows that it is not real altruism than explaining how a cake was made shows it is not a real cake.’

A second approach argues that the origins of religious belief lie in the unreliability of human rational faculties. Evolution does not select according to any capacity to seek and find the truth, but rather on account of a capacity to survive and reproduce. ‘Natural selection does not care about truth; it cares only about reproductive success.’ While it could be argued that it makes sense to suggest that evolution has designed us to appraise the world accurately and to form true beliefs, the question of whether at least some misbeliefs might be adaptive remains open.

This line of thought leads to a second set of evolutionary debunking arguments, which hold that religion is the outcome of a flawed capacity for reasoning, reflecting the fact that evolution does not select for the truth of human beliefs. Religion is thus held to be the outcome of flawed human rational faculties, which leads us to hold certain misbeliefs which turn out to be adaptive on account of their pro‐social outcomes. John Wilkins and Paul Griffiths, for example, argue that empirical beliefs have a clear evolutionary advantage – for example, in helping us identify possible survival strategies. It is therefore possible to argue that human rational faculties work well in one domain (the empirical) but not so well in others (such as the religious or the moral).

Yet it is far from clear where this takes us. Arguing that human rational faculties have an evolutionary origin does not entail that they lead to false beliefs. It is well known that different areas of engagement and interaction – such as the sciences, ethics, and theology – use different rational strategies and norms, adapted to their research task and goals. Wilkins and Griffiths are right to raise questions about the rationality of our judgements, arising from our evolutionary past; yet in the end they depend on those same rational faculties in evaluating the reliability of their judgements, introducing an uncomfortable degree of circularity and self‐referentiality into the discussion.

Natural Theology: Is God the ‘Best Explanation’ of our Universe?

In the previous section, we considered some arguments which suggest that the phenomenon of religion or a specific belief in God might be ‘explained away’ by the natural sciences. Although these arguments are weaker than many believe, they raise an entirely legitimate question: in what way might God be seen as the ‘best explanation’ of our universe? Is there some intellectual pathway which connects observation of our world with a transcendent reality, such as God? This question is often explored with reference to the notion of ‘natural theology’, which has long been recognized as an important theme within the field of science and religion.

In its most general sense, natural theology suggests that there is a link between the natural world and the transcendent. It is a deeply human intuition, shared by both artists and scientists. G. K. Chesterton was one of many to point out how the human imagination reaches beyond the limits of reason, grasping for a half‐glimpsed reality that seems to lie beyond the threshold of our experience. ‘Every true artist’, Chesterton asserted, feels ‘that he is touching transcendental truths; that his images are shadows of things seen through the veil.’ Another way of expressing this is found in the writings of the philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, who concedes that there is no ‘arc’ of evidence that securely and unequivocally links the empirical world and transcendent reality. Yet Ortega asks us to imagine a Roman arch, linking two pillars. Part of the arch has collapsed, but we can still see the trace of its original arc, and make the now imaginative, but once real, connection between the two pillars.

Although the term ‘natural theology’ (Latin: theologia naturalis) was known to early Christian writers, the term was generally not used by medieval writers such as Thomas Aquinas. As the Oxford scholar C. C. J. Webb rightly noted in the early twentieth century, historical scholarship indicated that the term ‘natural theology’ was rarely used during the patristic and medieval periods, and only came into wider use in the sixteenth century, mainly on account of the influence of the fifteenth century Catalan scholar Raimundo de Sebonde (c. 1385–1436).

Sebonde's Liber Creaturarum (The Book of the Creatures) was thought to have been written in the final two years of his life. A posthumous sixteenth‐century editorial decision led to the addition of the subtitle seu theologia naturalis (‘or natural theology’) to the second Latin edition of this work – and hence to the adoption of the term ‘natural theology’ to describe the broad form of theological engagement with nature that Sebonde commended. Yet the Latin term theologia naturalis can be understood as both ‘a natural theology’ and ‘a theology of nature’. It can be understood both as the process of arguing from nature to God, and of viewing nature from the standpoint of faith. Sebonde tends to adopt the second of these two approaches.

Sebonde's work was widely imitated, with multiple publications appearing from French and Spanish publishers in the sixteenth century developing its method and approach, shaping expectations of what a ‘natural theology’ looked like, in theory and practice. The form of ‘natural theology’ found in Sebonde's work, however, bears little relation to modern understandings of the concept, which emerged two centuries later. Natural theology is not understood as an apologetic enterprise, but is more seen an affective engagement with the natural order, seen from the perspective of faith. Sebonde's treatise, while including some later catechetical sections dealing with dogmatic theology, is really a work of spirituality rather than theology.

Although philosophers of religion tend to define natural theology as the ‘branch of philosophy which investigates what human reason unaided by revelation can tell us concerning God’, an examination of the historical development of natural theology indicates that this is only one of several forms it has taken during this process. This specific understanding of natural theology emerges mainly within late seventeenth century England and is shaped by the cultural and intellectual context of that period, particularly the growing sense of a rift between scientific and religious ways of thinking. The term ‘physico‐theology’ is sometimes used to refer to this specific approach to natural theology.

‘Physico‐theology’ emerged as an intellectual tool which both encouraged scientific research within the persistently religious culture of England during the eighteenth century, while also and affirming the value and rationality of religion within an increasingly scientific culture. Its emphasis on the rational transparency of nature and the ease with which this mapped onto a religious map of meaning seemed to bypass the great theological controversies of the age, while encouraging the emergence of the natural sciences. In its heyday in the early eighteenth century, ‘physico‐theology’ (from the Greek: physikos, ‘natural’) was seen as disclosing and proclaiming the fundamental harmony of the universe, grounded in the ‘laws of nature’ established by a benevolent creator.

One of the best‐known statements of this vision of a harmonious universe is found in Joseph Addison's famous ‘Ode’ of 1712 – an extended commentary on Psalm 19.1 which declares that the regularities of the natural world display the wisdom and rationality of its Creator. For Addison, the regularities of the sun, moon, and planets were a publicly accessibly manifestation of divine presence within the universe:

Th’unwearied Sun, from day to day,

Does his Creator's power display,

And publishes to every land

The work of an Almighty Hand.

Human reason was able to discern this regularity and express it mathematically. For Addison and his contemporaries, the rationality and elegance of this vision of cosmic harmony was a reassurance of God's handiwork in creation.

In Reason's ear they all rejoice,

And utter forth a glorious voice,

For ever singing, as they shine,

The Hand that made us is Divine.

There is now a widespread recognition of the diversity of possible approaches to natural theology, including two quite different directions of intellectual movement: from nature to God, and from God to nature. In what follows, we shall briefly note four approaches to natural theology, two of which represent the first line of approach, and two the second.

Both the two approaches to natural theology just outlined take their starting points within the world of nature and point towards a generic divinity, which then requires correlation with a more specific understanding of divinity, such as the Christian concept of God.

So what about approaches to natural theology that originate from within a community of faith and are informed by its distinctive beliefs? We shall consider two approaches of this form.

Other approaches can, of course, be discerned and developed. The point to be appreciated is that ‘natural theology’ designates a multifaceted intellectual enterprise, resistant to definition but rich in applications, which explores possible connections between the world of nature and a transcendent reality – such as the Christian concept of God. Those connections are multiple and complex. Traditionally, these have focused on reflection on God as an explanation for the beauty and regularity of nature, using inductive, abductive, and deductive modes of argumentation. Yet other approaches must be noted, particularly the classical Renaissance metaphor of ‘God's Two Books’, the origins of which can be tracked back to the early medieval period. This strongly visual metaphor invites us to see God as the author or creator of two distinct yet related ‘books’ – the ‘Book of Nature’ and the ‘Book of Scripture’ – and thus to imagine nature as a readable text which requires interpretation in a manner comparable to the Christian interpretation of the Bible.

The strengths and limits of such an approach can be seen in the writings of the physicist and theologian John Polkinghorne. His starting point is that while theology and the natural sciences diverge in their research methods, they share a vision of a deepened understanding of our world. ‘Theology and science differ greatly in the nature of the subject of their concern. Yet each is attempting to understand aspects of the way the world is.’ Aware of the limits and shortcomings of ‘physico‐theology’, Polkinghorne argued for a ‘new natural theology’ which is both revived and revised. This approach to natural theology sees it as supplementing the explanations of the natural sciences, rather than considering itself as a rival or competitor to scientific explanation. ‘The God of physico‐theology consequently was the God of the gaps, a pseudo‐deity purporting to supplement scientific explanation where it was currently lacking, and so always liable to be declared redundant when further scientific advance provided its own explanation.’

Polkinghorne's ‘new’ natural theology makes no claims to prove the existence of God, but argues that its approach offers insight into a broader engagement with the natural world, in that it offers a more satisfying account of nature than its atheist or naturalist alternatives. While science itself does not appear to need any theological supplementation within its own distinctive domain, it nevertheless raises questions which it cannot answer on the basis of its own working methods. ‘There are metaquestions, which arise from our scientific experience and understanding but which point us beyond what science by itself can presume to speak about.’ These ‘metaquestions’ are addressed by the new natural theology.

A good example of such metaquestions are these:

Natural theology offers an explanatory framework which supplements – not displaces – that of the natural sciences, allowing a fuller and deeper grasp of their potential and limits.

Polkinghorne suggests that another example of a metaquestion arises from the observation of the fine‐tuning of the universe, often expressed in terms of the ‘anthropic principle’. Why is the universe apparently ‘just right’ for life? This new natural theology offers the insight that our universe can be seen as a ‘creation which has been endowed by its Creator with the exact conditions necessary for its fruitful history.’

Polkinghorne thus rejects the idea of natural theology as a freestanding means of demonstrating the existence of God. His argument is that natural theology rightly belongs within ‘the fold of general theological inquiry’, and that it aims to offer enhanced insight into the way the world is by complementing or supplementing the sciences, rather than seeking to displace them.

There are several uses to which a natural theology may be put. One, as we have seen, is to affirm the intellectual legitimacy of a dialogue between science and religion – perhaps seeing each as offering different yet potentially complementary insights into a complex world. Yet natural theology can also serve an additional function – to raise questions about the legitimacy of ‘scientism’, particularly through highlighting the impoverished vision of nature which arises from taking the view that science alone determines our understanding of, and attitudes towards, the natural world.

This anxiety about the limits of the natural sciences in our quest for meaning is echoed in ‘Lamia’, the 1820 poem of John Keats, which raises concerns about the potentially impoverishing effect of reducing the beautiful and awesome phenomena of nature – such as a rainbow – to the abstract logic of scientific theory. Such a reductionist strategy is aesthetically impoverishing, emptying nature of its beauty and mystery, and reducing it to something cold and clinical.

Do not all charms fly

At the mere touch of cold philosophy?

There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:

We know her woof, her texture; she is given

In the dull catalogue of common things.

Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings …

The key to Keats’ concern lies in his reference to ‘clipping’ an angel's wings. For Keats, the natural world is – and is meant to be – a gateway to the realm of the transcendent. Human reason can grasp something of the real world; its insights are supplemented by the capacity of the human imagination to reflect on what lies beyond the reach of the empirical method. Keats, like many other Romantic poets, prized the human imagination, seeing this as a faculty which allowed insights into the transcendent and sublime. Reason, in contrast, kept humanity firmly anchored to the ground, and threatened to prevent it from discovering its deeper spiritual dimensions.

For Keats, a rainbow is meant to lift the human heart and imagination upwards, intimating the existence of a world beyond the bounds of experience. For scientistic writers, such as Richard Dawkins, the rainbow remains firmly located within the world of human experience, possessing no transcendent dimension or capacity. The fact that it can be explained in purely natural terms is assumed to prevent it from having any significance as an sign of something which lies beyond it. The ‘angel’ that was, for Keats, meant to lift our thoughts heavenwards has had its wings clipped; it can no longer do anything save mirror the world of earthly events and appearances, in that any link with a possible transcendent world has been ruptured.

For theists, this imaginatively deficient and rationally truncated understanding of the natural world can be challenged and corrected through a natural theology. Such a natural theology is able to enrich a scientific narrative by preventing it from collapsing into what Keats censured as a ‘dull catalogue of common things’. A natural theology provides a framework for an informed imaginative engagement with nature, allowing it to be appreciated for its beauty, not simply treated as an object of rational dissection. One of scientism's most disturbing features is its excessive rationalism, which prevents any serious engagement with the deeper levels of the natural world, including its affective impact upon us.

A Metaquestion: Creation and the Uniformity of Nature

John Polkinghorne developed the idea of a ‘metaquestion’ in considering the relation of science and religion. ‘There are metaquestions, which arise from our scientific experience and understanding but which point us beyond what science by itself can presume to speak about.’ An excellent example of such a metaquestion concerns the uniformity of nature, which the natural sciences are required to assume, but which they cannot prove.

In his 1912 work The Problems of Philosophy, the British philosopher Bertrand Russell raised some difficult questions concerning the scientific method, noting that the scientific enterprise apparently depended on certain unjustifiable assumptions. The essential difficulty noted by Russell is that the scientific method is obliged to assume the uniformity of nature in order to proceed yet cannot itself substantiate this implicit assumption. ‘The belief in the uniformity of nature is the belief that everything that has happened or will happen is an instance of some general law to which there are no exceptions.’ But what are the grounds of this belief, which is arguably foundational to the scientific method?

Science may uncover regularities and uniformities; nevertheless, past patterns of regularity cannot be regarded as leading to any degree of certainty. ‘The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.’ The issue here concerns the limits of inductive reasoning – an issue raised by David Hume yet developed more rigorously here by Russell.

Thus our inductive principle is at any rate not capable of being disproved by an appeal to experience. The inductive principle, however, is equally incapable of being proved by an appeal experience. … Thus all knowledge which, on a basis of experience tells us something about what is not experienced, is based upon a belief which experience can neither confirm nor confute, yet which, at least in its more concrete applications, appears to be as firmly rooted in us as many of the facts of experience.

Russell thus argues that empirical investigation cannot provide a justification of induction (or associated concepts such as the uniformity of nature) in that any such inductive or empirical justification of induction would simply beg the question. As Russell put this point in a later work, ‘the principle itself cannot, without circularity, be inferred from observed uniformities, since it is required to justify any such inference.’

The philosophical relevance of the doctrine of creation to the natural sciences was explored in the Oxford philosopher Michael Foster's classic yet neglected article published in 1934, entitled ‘The Christian Doctrine of Creation and the Rise of Modern Science’. In this paper, Foster set out the way in which a belief that the natural order was created had major consequences for scientific inquiry. While Foster focused his attention particularly on the developments of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it will be clear that his analysis continues to have relevance for subsequent developments.

Foster argues that the ‘metaphysical implications of Christian dogma’, especially in relation to the notion of creation, provided an intellectual foundation for a scientific analysis of nature. The methods of the natural sciences reflect a series of assumptions about nature which rested on Christian beliefs concerning God and creation. As part of his analysis, Foster offers the observation that the displacement of pagan ideas of creation (especially those resting on the idea of a ‘demiurge’) by Christian ideas was an essential historical precondition for the emergence of the natural sciences.

Foster suggested that a Christian doctrine of creation made possible a specific outlook to nature which encouraged the rise of the natural sciences. The doctrine of creation ex nihilo allowed the scientist to approach nature with the expectation that the divine rationality would be reflected in its structures and workings:

Hence are derived two assumptions which will easily be recognized to be fundamental assumptions of modern scientific method: the first the assumption that the scientist has to look nowhere beyond the world of material nature itself in order to find the proper objects of his science; the second (which is really a corollary of the first) that the intelligible laws which he discovers there admit of no exception. Both are consequences of the doctrine that the material world is the work, not of a Demiurge, but of an omnipotent creator. … A divine Creator who is not limited by a recalcitrant material can embody his ideas in nature with the same perfection in which they are present to his intellect.

Foster contrasts this Christian notion of God with those he found in his reading of classic Greek philosophy and suggested that only the former could offer an intellectual basis for the methods of the natural sciences. Foster attempted to distinguish the Christian and Greek views of nature and identify their importance for the natural scientist. He located the most fundamental distinction between the Greek and Christian conceptions of nature as lying in the concept of creation. To assert that the world is created is to make a series of significant statements concerning nature:

Nature, on the Greek view, includes everything. It includes men and gods (men and gods are fellow‐citizens of the universe, says Cicero, reproducing a Stoic view); men and gods spring from a common origin, said Hesiod … Science of nature is a contemplative study; it proceeds from sensuous contemplation of the appearances of divinity to intellectual contemplation of the divine in itself. … On the Christian conception, on the other hand, nature is made by God, but is not God. There is an abrupt break between nature and God. Divine worship is to be paid to God alone, who is wholly other than nature. Nature is not divine.

Although Foster's approach requires some qualifications, it highlights the significance of Polkinghorne's point that science is dependent on certain critical assumptions that it cannot itself provide, yet which are provided with intellectual stability through a theological framework.

For Further Reading

General Themes

Arguments for the Existence of God

God's Action in the World

Miracles and the Laws of Nature

Evolutionary Debunking Arguments

Natural Theology

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