Paul Broman: When Science Outgrew Religion--The Decline of Natural Theology
Guest essay on Wednesday, 19 June 2024
We heard Paul Broman give a wonderful lecture at the Atlanta Freethought Society a week or two back and I was so impressed that I asked him to allow me to use it as a guest essay—more likely two or maybe even three of them. He graciously agreed.
I learned some new things—and you may, too. And I was delighted with the review of some things I already knew, too—I hope the same happens to you.
This is slightly delayed because I—yes, Ed Buckner!—am technologically impaired. Sorry.
Thanks, Paul!
When Science Outgrew Religion
by Paul Broman
Academic disclaimer
The author of this essay, Atlanta Freethought Society member Paul Broman, is not a credentialed historian. He does have a college degree, but not in the Humanities. Paul is, however, an avid history buff who is well read in non-fiction titles, especially science histories. Paul has made every effort to ensure that all the information contained in this essay is historically accurate but has not read every book mentioned in this essay, and has relied on academic summaries of those works.
Part 1: Foundations of Natural Theology
Natural Theology is the concept that the existence of god and other religious beliefs or teachings should follow naturally from reason and the discoveries of science. It involves:
Arguing for the existence of god or validity of a religion on the basis of observed natural facts, and through natural phenomena viewed as divine.
Seeing the complexities of nature as evidence of divine design or action.
Asserting that the discoveries of science do not in any way contradict religious scripture, and finding ways to explain away such contradictions.
In the Dark and Middle Ages, there was no science. The Bible was considered to be inerrant and infallible, and all good Christians were expected to believe the literal truth of the entire Bible. All comprehensive works of history during this time traced the Biblical creation story as the beginning of their history, such as at the beginning of the 6th century History of the Franks. There was no need for an idea like Natural Theology yet, because people were not pondering the wonders of nature except at the superficial level of everyday experience. There was no understanding of natural physical laws. There was not yet any perceived “clockwork” order of nature that needed to be explained by the hand of a divine “watchmaker.”
Science would begin during the 16th century Renaissance, and would be widely practiced by the 17th and 18th century Enlightenment, the point at which European scientific knowledge finally exceeded the level of knowledge of the ancients. Natural Theology was adapted from similar ideas from antiquity, which had been applied to different gods, but which had the same goal: understanding the works of nature as part of the divine.
In antiquity, Cicero wrote De Natura Deorum or On the Nature of the Gods in 45 B.C.E, where he discussed the creation of the world, and the providence of the gods, both forceful arguments that would form the core of the later idea of Natural Theology:
"The appearance [of the sun, moon, and stars] is sufficient to convince us they are not the effects of chance ... we have much greater reason to think that such wonderful motions, revolutions, and order of those many and great bodies, no part of which is impaired by the vast infinity of age, are governed by some intelligent being."
—Cicero, De Natura Deorum (45 B.C.E.)
John Ray, an early scientist credited with inventing the concept of a “species”, wrote The Wisdom of God in 1691, near the start of the Enlightenment. In it, Ray considered how nature worked as a whole, arguing that God's will was expressed in His creation of all 'visible and invisible.'
As the Enlightenment was ending at the start of the 19th century, William Paley wrote the first book to propose the “watchmaker analogy” insisting nature’s complexity requires God’s design. Darwin, Stephen Jay Gould and even Richard Dawkins wrote rebuttals to Paley’s arguments.
“The Divine "omnipresence" stands, in Natural Theology, upon this foundation: A law [of nature] cannot execute itself. A law refers us to an agent ... or Being, in whom that power resides … [who] may be taken to be omnipresent.”
—William Paley, Natural Theology (1802)
But was there really perfect harmony to be found in the idea of the Christian god as the author of all of nature? Would pious scientists really be able to reveal a grand design crafted by the mind of god? Influential Scottish philosopher David Hume suggested that supporters of that idea might be deluding themselves.
David Hume (1711-1776)
Hume’s thoughts on Natural Theology were published in 1779, shortly after his death. In the posthumous work Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, three fictional characters debate the existence and nature of god:
Cleanthes (who also appears in Cicero’s De Natura Deorum) argues strongly in favor of Natural Theology using a version of the teleological argument, which argues that the universe shows evidence of having been designed by a god.
Demea argues in favor of belief in God through the cosmological argument which argues the universe would not exist, or would not have a “first cause,” unless created by a god.
Philo argues against both Cleanthes and Demea, saying that human understanding isn’t sufficient for us to know anything about the true nature of god or his motives, methods, or goals.
Hume argues (through Philo) that it is faulty to make the analogy of nature as a “machine” with god as its “inventor,” as it is no easier to understand how a god came to exist in order to invent nature and its laws than it is to understand how the natural laws got started on their own without a god.
Philo also argues that humans wouldn’t be able to recognize any true designs of a god in nature, and that what we might perceive as god’s design or god’s necessity in any natural process is just human-centered thinking.
There is much debate about Hume’s religious beliefs. Hume was accused of being both a Deist and an atheist during his lifetime. Philo recants most of his arguments in the end, and It’s unclear whether Hume really intended to argue against Philo’s skeptical arguments or whether this was a literary device to try to expose the skeptical arguments while avoiding controversy.
This book was influential on the ideas of Natural Theology, but later authors on this topic (like Paley) felt the need to refute some of the skeptical arguments made in this book.
As the Enlightenment reached its zenith in the 18th century, there were still no scientific discoveries which unambiguously contradicted Christian scripture. Over a century earlier, many theologians, including Martin Luther, felt Copernicus’ heliocentric universe was in conflict with scripture such as Joshua 10:12 (“sun, stand thou still”) and Psalm 93:1 (“the earth…can not be moved”), leading to persecution of scientists like Galileo. However, by the Enlightenment, Newton’s laws of gravity had provided a mechanism of action for heliocentric orbits and it made such excellent predictions that both Protestants and Catholics came to accept the arguments of Georg Rheticus, an assistant to Copernicus, who first argued that the conflicting scriptures in question were too ambiguous to be absolutely incompatible with heliocentrism.
In 1650, around the start of the Enlightenment, Archbishop James Ussher of Ireland calculated the famous date of 4004 B.C.E. for the Biblical creation story. He calculated this date partly using the series of genealogical “begats” in the Bible that establish the lineage from Adam and partly by comparing historic events in the Bible (such as the enthronement of certain Babylonian kings) to historical sources outside the Bible. In the spirit of Natural Theology, the attempt to determine an exact date for the Biblical creation event was seen as a scientific endeavor at the time. The 4004 B.C.E. creation date, which leads to an approximately 6,000-year-old earth, was widely accepted at the time and still is accepted by “young earth” creationists today.
There was no scientific reason to challenge Ussher’s calculated age of the earth until the emergence of the new sciences of geology and paleontology in the closing decades of the 18th century. Arguably both sciences got their start due to the study of fossils in rock.
PART TWO next week.
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Natural theology still has many enthusiastic proponents who devote Herculean labors to their efforts, but perennially impress mostly themselves. Some years ago, overwhelmed with a sense of ennui, I stopped being interested in refuting the latest iterations of the same old arguments. Now, I think it is enough to refer the would-be natural theologian to the "Ex Apologist" site that has helpfully compiled over 200 arguments for atheism:
https://exapologist.blogspot.com/2019/09/sixty-arguments-for-atheism.html
Thanks a lot for publishing it, Ed! And I am quite happy that you learned something you found interesting. Indeed I did too when I was writing this essay, which came out of my own intrigue after learning the existence of and reading a certain anonymous book that will be discussed in the later installments of this essay (minor spoiler!)