Part 4: The Problems of Naturalism
The Bible establishes a strong case against naturalism: without God, we have no basis for understanding the world, neither for what is within the scope of science and certainly not for what lies outside it. On the other hand, accepting that the biblical God is real and active gives a thorough basis for confidence in looking at and understanding the natural world.
Finally, we now consider what happens if we do away with this. Just suppose the naturalists are right. What if the natural world is all that exists? What if we have no resources for explanation or understanding other than what we can observe around us? What then?
The Problem of Power
Theologian Colin Gunton writes:
Is the universe in some way divine, in the sense that it accounts of itself for the way that it is, or is it the creation of an agent who is other than it, and, specifically, personal? Once the Bible has made its impact on human thought it is a recurring and unavoidable question. That such a distinction between two ontologies is inevitable is shown in the writings of some modern popularizers of science. . . . It is the biologists, although not only they, who are now carrying the burden of proclaiming science as an alternative to religion, taking up the tasks that once fell to the priests, at least as they sometimes see the matter. Yet as we read some of them it appears to be the case that when the being of the world is no longer attributed to the personal agency of God it is itself made the bearer of divine or creative powers. In other words, something like a pantheism is generated.40
Where does the generative power of the universe come from? Why is it here at all, and what keeps it going? We have two alternatives: either the power comes from within or outside the universe. For naturalists, this is reduced to one alternative: the power comes from within the universe itself. Most naturalists would balk at being called pantheists, but that is very close to what they are saying. Naturalists are committed to saying that the creative power of matter comes from matter itself.
However there is an essential problem in claiming this, for the scientific conclusion from study of the natural universe itself is that the universe had a beginning. It is not eternally self-generating. It started from nothing. What made it start?
The questions do not stop there. Even if we take the universe as it is right now, what keeps it going? This is generally not recognized as such a big question. The simple answer is energy or the second law of thermodynamics, the imperative of entropy to increase, the arrow of time that leads from one end of the universe to the other. The mechanism keeps itself running in all the ways that we can describe in such detail. Causality marches on. One thing causes another, which causes another, which causes another. The beginning may be something worth discussion, but now that the beginning has happened, the ongoing process is not contentious.
Yet is it so simple? As David Hume pointed out some centuries ago, we never actually observe causation. We observe one thing happening, then another. We observe the same pattern of events happening hundreds of times. We see billiard ball A hitting billiard ball B and transferring its momentum. But all we actually observe is one event, then the next event: ball A moving, ball B moving. We do not actually observe causation.
We live in a universe that keeps on working reliably and consistently over time. Why? What makes it keep going in this causal fashion? Naturalism can give no answer. It just does, and let’s be grateful that it does because if it did not we would not be here to ask the question.41 Naturalism cannot accept a creator God who keeps it going. It must be content without having an explanation.
This is something to take seriously about naturalism. The choice between Christianity and naturalism is not the choice between different types of explanation. It is the choice between having an explanation or not having one at all. Unlike God, the universe does not contain its explanation within it. The universe itself testifies to the fact that it had a beginning, and it is proceeding to an end. Why? Alone, the universe cannot tell us.
The Problem of Morality
Every human society has had some system of morality, generally agreed and enforced rules about what is right and wrong, what humans ought to do in their conduct towards each other. Almost every human being, as far as we know, has an internalized set of rules about what he or she ought to do in certain situations. We usually call such sets of rules “morals” and the field that discusses and theorizes morality “ethics.”
Where do the rules about right and wrong come from?
We have a few choices. Perhaps it is something we have worked out as intelligent beings who need to get along somehow. We decide which rules work best and agree with each other to abide by them. Crudely speaking, this is the view known as utilitarianism.
We might also think that there are certain rules of good behavior that are innate to human nature. We are social animals. It is not surprising if built into our sociable nature is a certain understanding of how to get along. You may think this is a useful survival strategy and not at all surprising. Many evolutionists hold this view.42
A third view, and one that naturalism does not support, is that ethics come from God. God decides what is right and wrong, and only God can decide. This view is decidedly unpopular among many people these days. It is seen not just as outdated, but arrogant, intolerant, and denying human dignity.
Let us consider the alternatives.
The Christian view is that God is a personal creator and has made us as responsible creatures. We are responsible for ourselves, each other, and the world he gave us.
Naturalistic ethics will, in general, utterly deny this. In any purely evolutionary schema, we are just matter that merely evolved the way we evolved. Here we are, and we just are. Our ethics can consistently reflect only this. A purely naturalistic ethic recognizes that we are meaningless organisms, purposelessly evolved matter on one unimportant branch of the evolutionary tree. We are not beings created to love and care for each other with responsibilities, duties, and moral expectations. We are merely animals, and the fittest will survive.
This makes for an easy solution to many ethical problems. “I don’t see what the fuss is,” stated one politician about the issue of experimenting on human embryos. “I’ve looked down the microscope, and they’re just a bunch of cells.” That answer is entirely consistent with naturalism. Of course an embryo is just a bunch of cells. Why make a fuss over it? It does not matter. Experiment on it if you like.
The problem is that the politician himself is no different. He, too, is just a bunch of cells. A bigger bunch, granted, but what does that matter? If someone wants to experiment on him, why not?
If there is nothing but the natural world around us, then we don’t matter. We can do whatever we like to each other because there is no sin. If there is no God, then there is no sin. We can answer the uncomfortable question of the judgment of God by dispensing with God. If we get rid of God and his relationship with man, then we get rid of the judgment of God.
The trouble is that if you are not created by God, if you are not held accountable by God, then you have no meaning or purpose. Not many people applaud this idea. Dispense with God and yes, you lose the problem of evil, but you also lose people. You lose humanity. There is nothing wrong, then, with eliminating people who have diseases. They are just animals that have gone wrong, and we know what to do with diseased animals: we cull them.
It is not only humanity that fails to matter if there is nothing more than the natural world. Ironically, the natural world ceases to matter as well. It is just a collection of atoms. Some of us like our collections of atoms in the form of trees and meadows. Others prefer cars and fuel. Who is to say which is better? There is no value to be attached to the world other than what any individual cares to give it; and no individual matters more than another. It just comes down to who has the power to make their values win.
But people do matter because they are made in the image of God. We should feel heartache over suffering. People do have dignity; they do have freedom and responsibility. We are responsible to care for each other. There are very few practical atheists in this world, thank God, for when most atheists face suffering, they still think it matters. They do not have any good reason to—but they do. It is when we see the truly hardened atheists that we see the real inhumanity and horror of such a view. Stalin was a truly consistent atheist. He did not think human suffering mattered. He made that quite clear.
Moreover, the natural world does matter because God made and values it. God gives a value to nature that humans cannot. He is the one who says it is important and that we have a responsibility to care for it because it is his. Naturalism cannot manage to protect the one thing it has: nature. Only God can give nature its true value.
If there is no God, we need not worry, for there will be no consequences. But if there is no God, then nothing matters, for there are no consequences. Which would you really prefer?
Explaining Humans
There is more to explaining humans than simply explaining human ethics. That is certainly a major and intractable problem if you insist there is nothing other than the natural world. Humans are more complicated than that. If we are to account for reality, we need to account for the bizarre, contradictory, wonderful things that are human beings.
Humans are animals. We have physiology, anatomy, chemical structure, and a whole host of other describable properties that are analogous with other animals. We exist as physical matter. We eat, survive, and reproduce. Physically, we are objects for scientific study in the same way that any other organism can be. From the minute level of biochemistry up to the level of observable behavior and anthropology, we can be understood as animals and as part of the interwoven network of organisms that make up the biological world.
Why, then, are we so outlandishly different from other animals?
It is truly astonishing that this question is so easily brushed aside. Television documentaries, science journalism, and school textbooks make the most of the similarity between humans and other animals. We are told of our anatomical structures that are analogous with birds, reptiles, and other mammals and the ways in which human embryology goes through similar developmental stages. We are educated that chimpanzees can display complex social behavior and that other anthropoids can use tools or hunt intelligently. These are emphasized most when we examine the natural world. Of course, it makes sense that we would look for similarities. If nothing else, we are self-absorbed creatures, and what interests us most about other animals is the way in which we can identify with them. Makers of television documentaries understand this and so cater to their audience.
We are so used to looking at the similarities between ourselves and other creatures, however, that we can miss the truly amazing fact that for all our similarities—for all our common DNA and shared traits and anatomy—humans stand out as the only species that actually rules the world. Certainly we rule it badly. We are destructive, selfish, and wantonly cruel. But even the failures of our rule still make us stand out against the rest of the animal world. We are, simply, very different.
How are we to account for this? In physical terms, it does not make much sense. We share so much in common, physically, with other animals. We have, it appears, 97% of the same DNA as chimpanzees. The actual genetic difference is tiny, yet we are not chimpanzees or really anything like them. Why is it that a 97% chimpanzee manages to conquer the highest mountains and the depth of the seas, dominate any habitat, survive in the most wide-ranging and hostile of environments, discover the fundamental particles of matter itself, go into space, overcome disease, and even investigate the very nature of life, when a 100% chimpanzee does not? Why are we concerned with justice, love, linguistics, communication, and society? What could make a 97%-chimpanzee being like this? The 97% similarity does not prove that we are “just” apes. It proves that there is something very strange about being human.
It is not at all surprising that Darwin’s theory of human descent from apes created such outrage when it was first suggested, and this outrage cannot be attributed solely to religious arrogance. If it is true that humans evolved from ape-like ancestors with a pedigree not different in kind from any other anthropoid, then there is a huge amount that needs explaining. These days we are so familiar with the theory that we forget how much it fails to explain humanity. At least when people believed in the special creation of humans, there was a satisfying explanation for why humans are so different from other animals. If we are to believe instead in evolutionary descent, or any other entirely naturalistic theory, we need much more.
A naturalistic theory of humanity—whether it is Darwinian evolution or any other theory that might come along—still has a lot of explaining to do. It is not good enough to reduce our conception of humanity to fit the convenience of a naturalistic theory. Any theory has to cope with reality. We are not, actually, just intelligent apes. We are beings with extraordinary abilities to conquer, dominate, and change our world. We are beings with concepts of meaning, responsibility, and love.
There is a common naturalistic story told about the progress of human ideas. Once upon a time, the story goes, we used to believe that we lived in the center of the universe and were the most important part of God’s creation. We were arrogant and ignorant, and religion conspired to keep us that way. Gradually, however, the forces of humanity and reason began to exert themselves. Heroes arose from time to time with new ideas that brought us closer to truth. And although religion usually killed these heroes and tried to suppress their ideas, reason and the human spirit could not be suppressed forever, and so slowly we began to progress away from our superstitious, dark roots.
One of these heroes, the story goes, was Copernicus, who discovered that the earth is not at the center of the universe, but instead revolves around the sun. He, like his follower Galileo, was cowed and beaten by religious authority, but the idea still spread, and so humanity was dethroned from its place at the center of the universe. Later on, another hero, Darwin, told us that we were not the peak of God’s creation, but in fact descended from other animals, and so we humbly accepted our place alongside them. Human reason told us the truth: we are not so special or different after all.
Historically, the story is largely nonsense, but that is for another discussion.43 The point to be made here is, even if it were true, humans have done a very bad job at becoming humble. We will not be dethroned. For all our faults, we keep hitting up against the inconvenient reality (for this picture) that we are, in fact, more than animals. The real problem is how to account for the undeniable difference that exists.
Yet how are we to do this without God? If all we have is the natural world, then all we can appeal to are natural characteristics. We can talk about evolved intelligence, even though that does not really account for the moral realities that we observe in human responsibility for the planet. We can talk about the acquisition of language and social structures and even an evolved need for a religious sense. We can transfer religious awe to nature and talk about evolution in a semi-mystical way. It is very common for naturalistic apologists to fill science with religious imagery in an attempt to satisfy religious feeling with awe of science, evolution, or human history.44
Naturalism alone does not account for the complex reality that humanity is. In our very attempts to theorize and understand ourselves as an equal part of nature, we demonstrate our inequality. Naturalism fails to explain humanity. It can deny or reduce it, but it does not explain it.
Conclusion
It has taken a long time for our society to reach a point where naturalism is easily accepted. It has been a difficult fight on the part of determined naturalists to get us here. We are currently bombarded with the views of fervent atheists who still feel the need to keep us from questioning this particular worldview.
In many ways naturalism is an easy philosophy to slip into. It does not demand much of us. It leaves us without any particular responsibility. It can even feel intellectually humble by not postulating entities unnecessarily. It can feel as if one is, simply, not going beyond the evidence.
The easiness of the philosophy is deceptive. Accept naturalism, and you enter a bewildering universe in which there is no necessary reason to accept that things will continue on as they always have, that they will be understandable, or that anything will make sense at all. It is a universe in which you are merely another bit of stray matter fighting for survival among all the other bits of stray matter. It is a universe in which your consciousness is an unfortunate side-effect of complexity. It is unfortunate because it enables you to ask questions that will never be answered and enables you to be aware of the agony of existence that does not mean anything.
It is also an entirely unnecessary philosophy. There is no need at all for the contortions that well-meaning materialists go to in order to understand the universe, humanity, the existence of life, or the eternal struggle for harmony. The tools are all there and all perfectly accessible for those who would actually like to know the truth.