This is part two of a four-week series expanding on my review of Stephen Meyer's book Return of the God Hypothesis. Subscribe to get the next installment in your inbox!
In my last post, I introduced the thesis that Christianity birthed modern science. Lots of people have advanced versions of that thesis. I focused on the version that Stephen Meyer advocated in his recent book.
Of course, the natural next question to ask was: how did science end up becoming so detached from Christianity? Last week, I focused on one part of the story. Contemporary Christianity, I suggested, is at risk of losing the sense of possibility that made it the driving force of early modern science. But this isn't the full story. Now I'll try to tell the rest of it.
The usual story – and this seems to be the version that Meyer endorses – goes something like this. Over time, science got better and better at explaining how the natural world works. At some point, many scientists forgot that there was anything else to do besides explain one natural phenomenon by appeal to some other natural cause. They forgot that there are questions that science can't answer, such as: "How did the universe come into existence?," and even "How did complex biological life come into existence?" These questions – for Meyer – are ones that science cannot answer in principle. This is because the answer cannot lie in the normal operation of cause and effect within the universe.
Now, cards on the table, I don't buy Meyer's argument that complex biological life can't be explained using the laws of nature. I touched on that briefly in my review of his book. And I don't think this is a problem for Christianity, either, for reasons I'll explain next week.
Anyway, the story concludes with the amnesic scientists rejecting Christianity because they think they've explained everything about the world that needs to be explained. When Napoleon asks the mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace why his theories about the orbits of the planets don't involve God, he is able to reply: "I have no need of that hypothesis." By the 19th century, there is nothing more for God to explain. But that's only because scientists have forgotten some of the most important questions.
But what if there's a simpler explanation for the triumph of science over theology in the modern mind? I think there is: the European wars of religion. Meyer touches on this in chapter 3 of the book:
Newton died in 1727. In the years following, scientists continued to demonstrate the power of the systematic investigation of nature. Increasingly, Enlightenment philosophers extolled the virtues of reason (and science) over religion as a source of authority and knowledge. Indeed, many philosophers viewed science and reason generally as sources of authority that could and should replace revealed religion. The idea seemed increasingly appealing in Europe after centuries of strife and warfare pitting Catholics and Protestants against each other, waged in part over competing claims about the source of religious authority. After the ravages of the Thirty Years' War (1618–48), many Europeans felt exhausted by religious conflict, leaving them open to new perspectives, even radically new ones. (51)
I think this observation is worth a little more attention. Especially if we're going to stand a chance at bringing back the "God hypothesis."
The Protestant Reformation created a crisis of knowledge. Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anabaptists all claimed to hold to the true theology. This disagreement was pernicious because it went deeper than mere disagreement over what was true. Each of the groups thought that there was a different way to know the truth. For the Catholics, the Church had the ultimate authority over what was true. For most Protestants, it was the Bible. For the Anabaptists it was an "inner word." (This is simplifying things a lot, I know.)
This kind of disagreement is impossible to resolve by rational argument, because it's a disagreement about the methods of resolution themselves. Without the ability to resolve differences using reason, the competing factions turned to violence. The result was not only martyrdoms and local insurgencies, but the Thirty Years' War which devastated Europe.
But during this same period in the early 17th century, the Scientific Revolution was well underway. Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, and many others were making groundbreaking contributions to just about every field of science. While disagreements over theology were tearing Europe apart, the natural philosophers were advancing the dominion of humankind over the created world. More than that, thinkers such as Bacon and Descartes were proposing ways that people could come to agree about the operation of the natural world. This was something that theology had been unable to do.
Granted, both Bacon's and Descartes' methods were too simplistic to do what they promised. But isn't it easy to see how – from the perspective of an onlooker in the 17th century – science was a much more promising enterprise than theology? And isn't this exactly the sentiment we continue to see today? Science continues to be associated with progress and consensus, while theology is associated with division. Under normal circumstances, we're no longer killing each other over theological disagreements. But the theological world is far more fractured than the scientific world.
Yes, scientific disagreements still happen. And science still knows so little about so many things. But it has proven remarkably effective at giving us more and more effective knowledge about the world. This, in turn, has made our lives better in so many ways.
Meanwhile, theology contributes to many of the most pressing political divides in the United States. And – at least as far as I can tell – we've made very little progress toward resolving our theological disagreements.
My goal in saying all this is constructive. If the church is going to be an effective witness in today's world, we at least need to understand the obstacles that the gospel faces. It may not be possible to resolve this problem fully. But I do think that the God who reveals himself in the Bible can be understood, and that careful study of both Scripture and the natural world is the key to understanding him. And the church, to whom God has entrusted this study of himself, must be a voice of patient inquiry amidst a world that still so quickly turns to violence to resolve its disagreements.
I suspect that getting this right will do more for the "God hypothesis" than any scientific argument for God ever could.
This is part two of a four-week series expanding on my review of Stephen Meyer's book Return of the God Hypothesis. Subscribe with your email, or follow on Bluesky to get the next post in a convenient place!
Jack VanDrunen