Return Of The God Hypothesis Part 1: The Judaeo-Christian Origins Of Modern Science
- Jason Pluebell
- Mar 23
- 10 min read
Return of The God Hypothesis is a book written by Stephen C. Meyer. This book covers scientific discoveries that support a theistic origin of the universe and life. I will be doing an article series that overviews this book, and this series will be the longest yet (the book has 21 chapters and about an article per chapter) and consequently, contain the most information aswell. Without further discussion, let us begin by examining the opening chapter of Return of the God Hypothesis.
Introduction
Since the late 19th century many popular social voices have claimed the death of God (not literally, but due to a lack of credibility of belief). People like Richard Dawkins claim the universe contains the exact conditions expected in a Godless universe; "The universe as we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at the bottom, no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference. (Dawkins, River Out of Eden, 133)" Stephen Meyers says the truth of the matter is that the universe's properties on origins are exactly what would be if there was a mindful intelligence behind it.
The main concerns about the universe and life's origins consist of these three: 1. The origin of the universe (SpaceTime and Energy/Matter); 2. The origin of life (complex biological structures and genetic information); and 3. The origin/cause of the human experience/conscience. Spoiler alert, discoveries made in astronomy and cosmology shine light on the fact that the universe had a beginning sometime in the incomplete past. Mainly, in physics showing fine-tuning of the universe's initial conditions. These discoveries have such large implications that major astronomers like Allan Sandage have been converted in light of evidence, not in spite of it.
This first chapter of "Return of the God Hypothesis: Chpt 1 The Judaeo-Christian Origins of Modern Science" challenges the New Atheist narrative about the history of science. They claim that science and religion have "been at war" for a long time, but Stephen C. Meyer has done exhaustive research into the history of science and lays out the Christian origins of modern science and when the fall of theistic science happened.
The New Atheist's "History" of Modern Science
The Narrative of the New Atheists has been, simply put, that scientific endeavor and religious belief have always been in contradiction since men could remember. To bring an example, Stephen mentions the 2014 documentary Cosmos which starred Neil de Grasse Tyson. In it, he claims that Isaac Newton's Principia (in which Newton developed his theory of gravitation) wore away the need for a master clockmaker to explain the beauty of the solar system. His message in the series was this; for a person to conduct good science, they must abandon the restraints of religion and that modern science has enabled people to do exactly that.
The Warfare Model
The idea that science and faith stood in stern contradiction was birthed in two books written in the late 18th century, John William Draper's "History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science" and Andrew Dickson White's "A History of the Warfare of Science and Theology in Christendom." Both of these books were published shortly after Dawrin's "On the Origin of Species" (1859). They both claimed that Dawrin's critics "threatened to reignite the inquisition" as Stephen puts it.
Links for these books: https://www.amazon.com/History-Conflict-Between-Religion-Science/dp/1503210022 and https://www.amazon.com/History-Warfare-Science-Theology-Christendom/dp/0879758260
It was not very long before this Warfare Model was embedded in the educated minds and created the idea that science fought for freedom from the shackles of religion. In Summer for the Gods, Edward Larson says that in the decades following the Origin of Species, the Warfare Model became ingrained into the minds of secular citizens.
A Different Reality?
In the 20th and 21st centuries historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science began making some bold claims about the history of modern science. Specifically, they mention that belief in the Biblical God played a major role in the development of modern science in the scientific revolution. To stay honest, Stephen mentions that they do note some scientists and theories challenged belief in God at some points, but that in many others religious belief actually helped advancement. Many Historians of Science show that their belief in God served as motivation and grounds for explaining observations during the Scientific Revolution (1500-1750 AD), where systematic scientific study was established and birthed.
The "Why There, Why Then?" Question
The Cambridge University Historian of Science Joseph Needham first raised the question of "why there, why then?" in his study of the revolution. Joseph mentioned that all the material necessities for performing empirical observation existed in many cultures before 1500 AD. “It needs a fairly well-developed society so members can spend time thinking rather chasing the next meal… It needs simple technology so experiments can be conducted… There must also be a system of writing so records can be made… and a mathematical notation for numerical results of measurements. - Peter E. Hodgson (Hodgson, "The Christian Origin of Science," Occasional Papers 1)” Egyptians built pyramids and palaces, the Chinese invented the compass and gunpowder, the Romans built Roads and aqueducts, and the Greeks had philosophers... Yet none of them came as close to developing systematic methods for studying nature as Western Europe during the Scientific Revolution.
Stephen goes on to list many other Historians of Science who hold the same view. People such as Needham, Hudgson, Herbert Butterfield, and Ian Barbour answer the "Why there, why then?" question with the Judaeo-Christian ideas within Europe before the 16th century. Barbour says that Modern Science as it is arose, happened purely in Western culture among the entire world because it was the West that had the presuppositions underlying the rise of science. Stephen then goes to say that Butterfield notes that Aristotelian thinking was not enough, there had to be a change in thinking.
Greek Thought
Many Greek assumptions often derailed the development of rigorously empirical approaches to studying nature. They thought that nature reflected an underlying order called the Logos that was self-existing and Necessary, rather than deriving from a volitional mind. Because of this, many Greeks thought they could deduce how nature ought to work from first principles based on either none or a surface-level observation of natural phenomena. Stephen offers 2 examples of this. Aristotle and Ptolemy, they both assumed that the orbits of the planets must be circular because they existed in a heavenly realm where only perfection was possible. And since a circle possessed a perfect repetitive path, their orbits ought to have been that way.
The rediscovery of Aristotle's works in the 11th century influenced Christian Philosophers to adopt Greek assumptions about how nature and God must work. Some of these influences led to assumptions like the universe must be eternal, God cannot create new species, God could not create more than 1 planetary system, God could not create empty space, or God could not make non-circular planetary orbits. Many of these assumptions rhetorically display their inability to allow for any motivation for "checking of answers" and repeated experimentation.
The Contingency of Nature
For Science to advance there needed to be a more empirical evidence-based approach to the observation of natural phenomena. This shift in thinking happened well before the revolution because of a change in people's thinking about the order of the physical world. As early as 1277 Etienne Tempier the bishop of Paris condemned 219 theses influenced by Greek philosophy and Necessarian Theology (The "Ought" statements about God). The Biblical doctrine of creation helped break the chains of Necessarian assumptions by asserting the contingency of nature on the will of God. In other words, the natural order was impressed upon creation by an intelligent mind with a will and could have been made differently. From this, they thought that order in nature was not due to necessity but to the volitional choice of a rational creator.
Just as there are many different ways to build a vehicle, a motor, a clock, or paint a painting; there are various ways to organize a universe. Because a rational mind chose this order, it could turn out differently than what a human thinks it "ought" to have been. God's freedom required a rigorous observational approach to observing nature systematically. In the words of Robert Boyle, the job of the natual philosopher is not to ask what God must have done, but rather what God actually did. As Ian Barbour says "The Doctrine of Creation implies that the details of nature can only be known by observing them. (Barbour, "Religion and Science," 28)"
The Intelligibility of Nature
Natural Philosophers began their observation of nature via their assumption that; a rational mind has designed nature, and that same mind created the human mind, therefore nature was made in an intelligible way for the human mind. This assumption was from the Judaeo-Christian (and Greek) assumption that the universe was ordered---as Stephen puts it, "A Cosmos, not as Chaos." British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said the conviction was due to the "medieval insistence upon the rationality of God." Philosopher Holmes Rolston III says “it was monotheism that launched the coming of physical science, for it premised an intelligible world, sacred but disenchanted, a world with a blueprint… Newton, Galileo, Kepler, and Copernicus—Devoutly believed themselves called to find evidence of God in the physical world. (Rolston "Science and Religion," 39)" They insisted that the universe was the result of the designing will of a rational mind that made both the universe and the human mind to be understood and explored. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) also exclaimed that God wanted us to explore the natural laws, and by making us in His likeness to share in His thoughts (God's Image), He made that possible.
The assumption that a mind had designed nature birthed two ideas: the contingency of nature upon the will of God and its intelligibility, which led natural philosophers to even want to systematically study nature.
The Imperfection of the Human Mind
“Research in the history and philosophy of science suggests two biblical ideas as having been crucial to the rise of science, both of which can be attributed to the reading of Genesis provided by Augustine, an early church father, whose work became increasingly studied in the late Middle Ages and especially the Reformation. Augustine captured the two ideas in two Latin coinages, which prima facie cut against each other: imago dei and peccatum originis. The former says that humans are unique as a species in our having been created in the image and likeness of God, while the latter says that all humans are born having inherited the legacy of Adam's error, original sin." - Steve Fuller. The Biblical understanding of human fallibility (the doctrine of original sin and the fall) also influenced the natural philosopher's science.
Human nature implies that humans cannot obtain perfect knowledge of the natural world, they are vulnerable to fallibility in the forms of bad assumptions, jumping to false conclusions, or self-deception to name a few. This means that a person could only attain a good understanding of nature by careful study. Fallibility also created skepticism about a hypothesis if it lacked verifiability via testing and experimentation. This doctrine made it so a person shouldn't just take their initial observations at face value, but rather investigate and check their answers. Fuller notes “We should aspire to understand all of nature by proposing bold hypotheses (something of which we are capable because of Imago Dei) but to expect error (something to which we are inclined because of Peccatum Originis) whenever we fall short in light of the evidence. (Fuller, Foreword in "Theistic Evolution," 31 )"
Ockham's Razor
Stephen focuses on one particular 13th-century theologian who contributed massively to the development of modern science. His name is William of Ockham, and he is best known for his infamous "Oackham's Razor" where scientists try to avoid multiplying unnecessary explanatory entities and favor simpler hypotheses. In other words, choose the simplest answer, and it is most likely the correct one. William also emphasized the contingency of nature upon God's will.
Ockham's razor helped free science from appealing to Aristotelian Substantial Forms. Aristotle believed everything had four types of causes, the first being a Material cause or the substance that an object is made of. There are also Formal (The form the entity exemplifies, either the shape or idea in the designer's mind) and Efficient (How the object was made) causes. The last cause is the Final or the purpose for which the object was made for. Aristotle's way worked very well for objects created by human minds but applied rather poorly to the regularities of nature. Stephen offers an example of this in the way medieval philosophers described bread's nourishing ability as its "nourishing virtue." Ockham was not a big fan of the virtue game, by saying they only represented names or concepts in the mind rather than actual entities or causes in the real world. His skepticism reflected his belief in the fallibility of human reasoning and the extent of the imagination. His creation of the law of parsimony came from his conviction that the natural world was the product of God.
Ockham's focus on the requirement to check observations also reflected his understanding that the underlying order in nature completely depended on the creator's volition (will) to order it differently. As Ockham said “For nothing ought to be posited without a reason given, unless it is self-evident or known by experience or proven by the authority of Sacred Scripture. (Ockham, Sent I.30.1 (290), in Spade, "Ockham Nominalist Metaphysics," 104)"
The Warfare Model?
Concluding this chapter, Stephen aims to assess the validity of the New Atheist's Warfare Model narrative. He notes the release of Richard Dawkins's book The Blind Watchmaker (1986) where he argued that Neo-Darwinism (Modern Synthesis) offers a better explanation of the appearance of design in biological systems in nature. Dawkins holds this position for 2 main reasons; The universe has the exact properties we should expect if God does not exist, and that there is a total lack of supportive evidence for the existence of God.
This, along with other factors, motivated Stephen to dig into the question of the historical relationship between science and theism in much more depth by reading the works of the founders of modern science themselves.
Conclusion
As we have seen in this first part, the New Atheist's narrative that Science as a systematic endeavor and the belief in God have been in stern contradiction has many holes and leaps. The very founders of science were motivated by their belief in God. It offered logical grounds for even wanting to study nature and a framework for expecting regularity in natural phenomena. If there is no God, and the universe is all pure pitiless chance, then there is no epistemological justification for expecting order and regularity.
As we continue this series, we will see that in recent decades discoveries in astronomy, biology, and cosmology suggest the universe is finite and intelligently designed. But for now, we conclude with this, the Warfare narrative is a pseudo-history. Belief in God, and specifically the Christian God kickstarted the scientific revolution by insisting the universe was contingent and intelligible to the human mind. The next chapter will cover the 3 metaphors used to describe the regularities of natural phenomena.
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