July 19, 2007
Philip Clayton’s God and Contemporary Science
Reviewed by Dale Gillette
God and Contemporary Science
By Philip Clayton
274 pp., ISBN 0 7486 0798 6
Abstract: Philip Clayton invokes a “presumption of naturalism” in presenting his theory of panentheism which he developed with Arthur Peacocke. The presumption of naturalism rejects physical miracles. However, by using the concept of “emergentist supervenience,” he allows psychological miracles to take place as direct communications of God to individuals. In his and Peacocke’s theory of panentheism, God is the base of all being; the world is within God but God is more than the world.
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One of the dominant names found for scholarly articles on the subject of Panentheism is that of Philip Clayton. His book God and Contemporary Science [G &CS] was the first of his books I have read and it remains one of my favorites of all the books I have ever read. At the time of reading his book, I was in the final years of a career in the physical science and was fully committed to the value of science as a reliable engine for finding the truth. Additionally, I have been committed to an “all-in-god” view of the world my entire adult life. Both of these commitments are compatible with the theology given in Philip Clayton’s G&CS.
Much of the first four chapters of the book are devoted to discussion of the Hebrew and Christian bible accounts of God and providing possibilities for finding compatibilities with these views and that of modern science. “..it [is] not obvious to everyone that God exists and that he is revealed only in the history of the Christian religion.” <p.1> He adds that, owing to postmodernist considerations, “the claims of reason to universal validity and its claim to be able to derive important truths in a priori fashion, ‘from reason alone’, are now under severe challenge.” <p 2> In defending the faith “Christian thinkers have tended in recent years to move in one of two directions: either …to damn the consequences…and anything that would challenge the tradition (the fundamentalist orientation), or to cease to make any specifically Christian truth claims at all…” <p4> In G & CS, Clayton moves to both challenge the tradition and propose a framework in which some of the traditions will survive.
Deism, the doctrine that God created the universe and is now leaving it to run itself is not opposed to scientific explanations of the universe. Theism, however, includes God’s agency in the universe along with its creation. It is only the problem of God’s agency in the world that is being addressed in this book; this problem is of extreme importance theologically when it comes to the problem of evil. “Whenever a theologian claims a large amount of divine involvement in the world, she will find herself confronted in an urgent way with the question of God’s non-involvement on particular occasions….if God is constantly altering natural events to bring about goals of his own, and if he often answers prayers…then the question is all the more urgent: why is God not active in a similar way” for other more urgent or worthy causes? <p10> That is, “theologians and believers must think of God as an agent whose actions are consistent with the nature that one attributes to him.”
It is the thesis of Clayton’s book that “in cases of outright conflict between Christian knowledge claims and our best current knowledge of the world, a clear burden of proof rests on the Christian to address the conflict or alter her beliefs.” <p77> Clayton urges theologians to accept scientific findings; in turn he suggests that “it seems…that theologians sometimes do in fact have the better arguments---that for example, a theistic understanding of the origin of life constitutes a better explanation of the phenomena than does the explanation a la Darwin.” To theologians who demand that holy doctrines are infallible and therefore “insulated” from criticism, he asserts that “to demand insulation from critique would require the Christian theologian to extend the same ‘tolerance’ to other religious positions.”
Chapter 4 outlines the history of theistic thought from polytheism to monotheism to radical monotheism (of Niebuhr) to panentheism. An important difference is made between pantheism and finally to panentheism: “We are not God because we are different in our fundamental nature from God….we remain God’s created product, the work of his hands. …the world is contained within God; yet the world is not identical to God.” “If space is God’s space, then the world is not ‘outside’ him, but by definition within him.” < p 89> “A God who exists apart from his creation might remain unaffected by it. But as long as God holds the world within himself in some sense, he cannot view it with the dispassionate objectivity that the theological tradition sometime asserted of God.” <p 94> The problem of divine causality is dealt with: “When the world is understood as ontologically ‘outside’ God, then any actions that God takes within the world must represent interventions ‘from outside’ into the world’s order. This model of God as a sort of foreign agent intervening in an independently existing order raises numerous problems.”
(1) If the created world were perfect at the start, why would it need to be ‘fixed’ from time to time?
(2) Are regularities of the world independent of God? If so, why?
(3) How can divine intervention be sensed by humans since they come from completely outside of the domain of humans?
In Chapter 5, Creation and Cosmology: what theologians can and cannot learn from scientific cosmology Clayton demonstrates the variety of positions on the science/theology dialogue about cosmology that covers the work of such scientists as Frank Tipler, Paul Davies, David Bohm, and several others. The positions are as follows:
1. Science leads to a natural theology
- Science (contemporary physics) supports one particular religious viewpoint. However this viewpoint differs ranging from some form of theism, eastern metaphysics, generic spirituality, to non- or anti-religiousness.
- Science is itself a religious perspective.
- Science supports multiple religious perspectives.
- Science supports spirituality but not theological truth claims.
- Science and theology have nothing to do with each other.
7. Naturalism (science) is the best truth we have and theology is a pure human construct.
The wide diversity of viewpoints speaks that there is nothing close to strong consensus of the position of theology from the viewpoint of prominent scientists who have made statements of their feelings.
Presumption of Naturalism is the title of chapter 6. It is the thesis of Clayton that panentheism should presume naturalism (i.e. scientific explanation) for physical events of the universe. His presumption of naturalism includes not only physical events for which we have a well-supported physical theory and experimental evidence, but for those physical events for which such scientific theory and experimental evidence do not exist. If this were not so, then every physical event that presently does not have a good physical theory with confirming evidence would be presumed a “miracle.” God would be a “God of the gaps” where the gaps would be of physical theory and evidence. This slightly pathetic and ever-decreasing “God of the gaps” would be diminished after every scientific advance.
Given Clayton’s “presumption of naturalism” for physical events and considering the state of contemporary science, he gives possibilities for divine action in the world in Chapter 7 in the following list.
Possibilities for Divine Action in the World not violating the Presumption of Naturalism
1. Directly in creation of the Universe.
2. Directly by sustaining the existence of each entity in every event.
3. Directly acting to determine events which occur by chance on the finite level (quantum-level).
4. Indirectly through causal chains that extend from God’s direct actions (chaos theory effects).
5. Indirectly through the free actions of persons whose choices have been shaped by the rest of God’s activity in the world (divine persuasion)
6. Direct communication by God with parts of the world in a way similar to ourselves and the body.
Although physical events are presumed to be potentially explained scientifically, Clayton’s theory of panentheism allows for direct communication between individuals and God. “Given the present state of knowledge, given that we just don’t understand the complexity of mental causation as well as we understand the laws of physical causation, the possibility of psychological miracles remains fully open.” <p 181>
Many of what are commonly called miracles are disallowed by the presumption of naturalism. However, direct communication by God in a psychological event is advanced by Clayton and Peacocke. It is Arthur Peacocke’s panentheistic theory that Clayton most strongly endorses as a theory of divine action. Clayton quotes Peacocke, “ ‘[God] is the ‘Ground of Being’ of the world; or for theists, that without which we could neither make sense of the world having existence at all nor of its having that kind of intellectually coherent and explorable existence which science continuously unveils.’” However, “there is an ongoing creativity within creation itself: ‘so we have to see God’s action as being in the processes themselves, as they are revealed by the physical and biological sciences, and this means we must stress more than ever before God’s immanence in the world.’ The most adequate way to think of this immanence is to understand the emergence of new forms—primitive life, higher organisms and human self-consciousness—as a result of God’s immanent creative action in the world.” <p. 220>
“If God is to act providentially at all, the influence will move not from the part to the whole but from the whole to the part.” <p 222> This divine influence is called “top-down causation” following Campbell and Sperry. Peacocke points out that “the notion of causality when applied to systems, has usually been assumed to describe “bottom-up” causation—that is the effect on the properties and behavior of the system of the properties and behavior of its constituent units. However, an influence on a state of the system exercised by the whole on its parts—has to be recognized.” A simple physical example of this in fluid mechanics is the transition of random convective motion into the movement of fluid units in a hexagonal cell –the Benard’ phenomenon that incorporates random motions into an organized convective structure. Such a phenomenon is an emergence of organization from a chaotic organization to a convective structure and is classified as a “lower level emergence”.
Clayton’s and Peacocke’s theory of panentheism assumes “top-down” causation of the whole (God) on the structure of the parts (for example human individuals). “God is present not only to the totality but, as one who is ‘in, with and under’ the universe, he is also present to each individual entity as well. Due to the nature of the panentheistic hypothesis, the creative processes that make up the natural order are likewise the immanent creative activity of God. Since God is imparting information, we can preserve the doctrines of divine self-communication, revelation and prayer.” <p 224> Following up his reasoning, Peacocke explained that God did not enter the world in an un-natural (miraculous) method through Jesus of Nazareth, but used causal mechanisms fully consistent with the natural world.
In the last chapter, Clayton states that the relationship between God and the world must be different than the relationship of our mental properties to our brains and bodies attributed to Charles Hartshorne. “The dualism implicit in …the relationship between mind and body (and God and the world) has been widely rejected in our day.” <p 234> “..theology does not need to embrace either a radical dualism of mind/soul and body or the physicalism that is widespread among scientists and philosophers today. The theory of emergent properties forms an attractive via media between these two poles of the discussion. The attraction of the emergentist approach lies both in its adequacy as an overarching framework for relating various scientific disciplines and in its resources for specifying God’s relation to the world. Rather than reducing ‘life’ or ‘mind’ to the lowest common denominator, this approach sees them as emerging out of the lowest-order structures as a genuinely new type of phenomenon.” <p 247>.
Further, he solves the mind-body problem as emergent supervenience. Supervenience grants that a physical substratum is a necessary condition for the supervening state. An example of supervenience [literally “arrival on top of”] is Mind to Brain. The doctrine of supervenience encourages scientific studies of the brain as part of the study of mind. Clayton uses “weak supervenience” for the relationship of brain to some mental properties (for example the perception of a physical object using sense organs like eyes) and “strong supervenience” for the causality of some mental properties by other mental properties (for example, thinking about an event remembered but not presently seen).
In concluding the book, Clayton states “that if the argument is correct, we have achieved what we sought for to formulate a theory of God as divine agent which is both a product of theological reflection and consistent with (and perhaps even suggested by) what science has come to know about the natural world and the place of human agents within it. According to the panentheism I have defended, God can act on any part of the world in a way similar to our action on our bodies. At the same time, God also transcends the world and will exist long after the physical universe has ceased (or has died the death of entropy)”.
Discussion of Clayton’s theory of Panentheism contrasted with Stenger’s God, the Failed Hypothesis
Clayton has clearly laid out a panentheistic theory that scrupulously attempts to affirm the value of science, and to advance panentheistic theory using the concepts of supervenient emergence.
Strangely enough, it seems to me that one could almost take another apparently contradictory book God, the Failed Hypothesis by Victor J. Stenger to support forcefully the presumption of naturalism. Stenger’s book supports in detail that God does not alter the outcomes of physical experiments. This supports Clayton’s presumption of naturalism. Stenger’s assertion based on the presumption of naturalism is that God does not exist. It would seem that the main difference of the two books is that Clayton proposes direct psychological [e.g. not physical] communication by God to individuals along with being the base of all being (which I think are contained in the five “possibilities for divine action in the world not violating the presumption of naturalism”) while Stenger does not. This leads Stenger to atheism and Clayton to panentheism.
In my opinion, the five “possibilities for divine action in the world not violating the presumption of naturalism” are metaphysical in nature and cannot be verified or falsified by scientific methods. The same is likely true for direct communication by God to individuals.
However, it does seem to me that while God’s communication with individuals is metaphysical and therefore scientifically unverifiable, it is not without some kind of evidence. I had an experience when I was about 16 years old that I strongly interpreted as a direct communication from God (Gillette, 2007). In later years I found that similar experiences were reported as mystical experiences and documented in William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience. Although I cannot think of a way that such experiences might be measured scientifically, several people have testified to their apparent reality. Although this difference is only one of several differences Clayton’s and Stenger’s positions, I would like to offer two suggestions of where the problems of establishing the reality of God’s communication with an individual human being.
1. The feeling of mystical experiences does according to William James come with a feeling of confidence of the reality of the experience. In my experience, I have an absolute feeling of confidence that my mystical experience was genuine and true. However, my experience did not answer any specific question, but rather gave me the feeling that I was absolutely a part of everything. I accept Clayton’s hypothesis that there are direct communications with God, but do not know that my acceptance constitutes a clear proof for anyone but myself.
2. Interpretation of a direct experience from God must be interpreted. Such an interpretation is not infallible. This is not a criticism of Clayton’s hypothesis, but rather simply a warning that anyone announcing a message from God is not to be automatically trusted.
Clayton’s book is followed up by later work, for example The Re-Emergence of Emergence (Clayton and Davies, 2006) that follows up the emergence ideas of the present book. Another new book by Arthur Peacocke and edited by Philip Clayton follows up on the pantheistic philosophy of Arthur Peacocke. All that Is, A Naturalistic Faith for the Twenty-First Century (2007) gives more detail on the panentheistic philosophy advocated by the present book.
References
Gillette, Dale, My Path to Panentheism and William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience
Blog, 19 July 2007
James, William, 1902, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at
Stenger, Victor J. , God: the failed hypothesis—How science shows that God does not exist, Prometheus Books, 294 pp., 2007.