Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters, a blog where we are always seeking to take you further into the ocean of truth! I’m currently preparing for another project, though not as lengthy as the Trinitarian commentary or our look through the Summa Theologica, and while I wait for that to start, I would like to tackle some objections I see coming especially in light of the Hawking statement put out yesterday and with arguments regularly seen from the new atheists.
For instance, in “The New Atheism: Taking A Stand For Science and Reason”, Victor Stenger says on page 79 in the topic of if science can disprove existence, after talking about definitions, “I won’t get too pedantic and ask for the definition of existence. We all have a pretty good idea what that means.”
Oh really?
Suppose you were in a room one day and I came in and closed the door behind me and said “Something’s outside. I want you to tell me all you know with just one clue about it. It’s red.” Well you could list several things. You’d know it’s colored. You’d know it’s physical. You’d know it can be seen with the eyes. You’d know it has mass. You’d know that it’s extended. etc.
Now suppose the same scenario takes place but this time instead of saying “It’s red”, I say “It exists.”
Suddenly, you don’t know so much. Now it could be I’m thinking of an angel being right outside. You could counter that if you’re a materialist and say “That can’t be because we know that all that exists has physical matter!” That’s your presupposition kicking in. I could just as easily say there is an angel and although it is invisible, it has made its presence known to me somehow and is right outside the door.
Existence is a doctrine we don’t really know much about.
This is in fact a problem many of the new atheists have. They don’t understand existence. Consider Richard Dawkins’s 747 argument where he says that God must be more complex than anything he’s created and therefore will need a creator. To an atheist, that can sound reasonable, but to the informed theologian, this is a terrible argument and we have to wonder about people who put forward such an argument.
Dawkins should have known better seeing as he replied to Aquinas’s five ways in the Summa Theologica, and had he turned to just the very next chapter on the simplicity of God, he would have got an answer. God is the creator of matter and only material things are complex because they have parts. Now angels are complex in the sense that they are essence + existence, but they are simple in their essence. Their essence does not consist of parts.
God’s existence is his very nature and so if we ask “What caused God?” it is asking “What is the cause of that that exists by the very nature of its being?” It’s a nonsense question. We theists can definitely say “Yes. Something does not come from nothing and we do affirm then that something always existed.”
What we do then is get to the nature of this existence. What is it? We speak of the supreme being. He is being unlike any other type of being. He is being with all perfections and being without limitations, hence he is not material for matter is a limiting principle on any being.
Too many ideas in atheistic thought seem to imply that existence is its own explanation. There’s no need to study the concept. If you prove evolutionary theory, then you’ve disproved God. If we have an eternal universe, then there’s no need of God. Both of these are nonsense. I don’t even do the creation/evolution debate any more because I see it as pointless. I would prefer to grant my opponent macroevolutionary theory and then say “Now give me your argument against God’s existence.” I would even grant him an eternal universe and say “What is the cause of the universe’s existing?” (I am open to something being eternal but having an eternally derived existence)
Our trouble is that we’ve exchanged the authority of religion for the authority of science. It’s not an either/or game and the more we set it up, the more one side loses. Some people will avoid science thinking it is a threat to religion. Others will avoid religion thinking it has no truth since it’s not determinable by science. Both sides are making serious mistakes. (Although I consider the latter far more. Someone can be a Christian and think science is a threat)
Theologians who are unqualified in science need to stop playing scientist. Scientists who are unqualified in theology and philosophy need to stay out of that area. We can all have opinions in areas we don’t have much skill in, but we dare not speak as if we are authorities in those areas.
For those wanting further information, I highly recommend Joseph Owens’s book “An Interpretation of Existence.”
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