Exploring the Borderlands

Recent books on atheism and religion have been the focus of much debate recently, which I think is a good thing. It’s no surprise that the debate is dominated by traditional religious believers on the one hand, and those who hold to a traditional materialist strain of atheism on the other. Of course, there is a wide, if seemingly less populated, territory between these views. I think the truth lies in the border regions.

If one is a realist, as I am, about first-person experience and the existence of some degree of freedom, then materialism is inadequate. On the other hand, one’s worldview must be shaped by valid inferences from the success of science. Because of this, I find traditional supernatural entities and interventions highly implausible, and have in the past characterized my own worldview has an enriched or expanded version of naturalism.

My more recent ruminations on modal realism and abstract entities have led me to consider that my realist commitments may actually require a necessary ground of possibilities underlying and penetrating our contingent concrete world. While at the end of the day labels aren't important, it seems as if a commitment to the idea that reality extends beyond our world in this way may get me expelled from the naturalist club.

I’m very reluctant to name this necessary existent “God”, since that unavoidably summons up a cluster of attributes and associations which go far beyond my commitments. But there is no getting around the fact that I may be moving into the vicinity of theism.

A Look at Pantheism

Why not split the difference between the traditional forms of theism and atheism? By traditional theism I mean the worldview featuring the personal, transcendent, benevolent “omni-everything” deity. By traditional atheism I mean the materialist/physicalist worldview (essentially “billiard balls all the way down”).

I make the following two observations:

1. The most compelling arguments atheists make against traditional theism have little or no force against a deity which lacks some of the usual attributes of being, say, personal, transcendent, and omnipotent. I’m thinking of the argument from evil as well as the general argument from the absence of evidence for ad hoc supernatural interventions.

2. The most compelling arguments made against materialist atheism point to a need for “something more” but they don’t require a deity with all those classic attributes. Here I have in mind the arguments from the irreducibility of first-person experience and intentionality and a modified version of the Thomist cosmological argument (the existence of things requires a unifying ground or force).

I’d also note that, in my opinion, religious experiences provide authentic evidence which points toward theism, but they don’t provide much support for specific religions (I’m skeptical that a person who never heard of Jesus would ever have an explicitly Christian religious vision).

So, what about pantheism? Pantheism is the idea that God is identical with nature or the universe, or alternatively God is a ubiquitous force or presence uniting entities in the universe. What God is not is a person or being distinct from the world. I thought this SEP article on pantheism by Michael Levine provided a fine, sympathetic summary.

His article shows that a difficulty with pantheism is that (not surprisingly) there are many versions, and it appears that few have been fleshed out in detail. There doesn’t seem to have been a leading figure in Western thought who was a pantheist since Spinoza (Levine lists some figures who are “possible” pantheists). So there is no metaphysical program to sign on to. On the other hand it seems pantheism is an idea which is all too easy to invoke in a fuzzy new-age way.

Actually, I would highlight two issues which need to be addressed. First, and to me most important, what problems does pantheism help us solve? Specifically, what are the metaphysical features which improve on the perceived limitations of atheism without broaching the problems of classical theism? The second issue is a question about why the worldview entails invoking something divine. What makes it a religious as well as a philosophical worldview?

To bring out the issues, let’s look at a particular simplified version of pantheism which identifies God with the natural world (with no further detail). On the first issue, one would have to say this worldview adds no “metaphysical value” to a naturalist philosophy which lacks God. On the second issue, it begs the question of why it would make sense to treat the natural world as something divine. What type of religious practice (worship or prayer) makes sense if there really is nothing supernatural? Traditional theists have understandably criticized this sort of pantheism as atheism with window dressing.

It seems to me it may be possible to form a more successful version of pantheism to address these issues. In the article, Levine highlights the concept of unity as something important to pantheism. Let me sketch something building on this concept. Perhaps God/World has two modes of presentation. The entities and properties studied through third-person investigations are one mode. The second mode is a unifying force which binds and connects individuals in the world-network and also endows them with the gift of first-person experience (minimal for simple entities, robust for humans). So, we’ve given the God/World some features beyond the usual worldview of naturalism, and also have a mode of existence (a uniting “world-mind”) which may be worthy of religious feeling. Obviously this sketch leaves many unanswered questions. What accounts for the dual modes? Is it a monistic system or really a dualism? Is the ontology one of substance, like Spinoza’s, or not? What are the implications for ethics, etc.?

Given the deficiencies in both poles of the traditional theism-atheism debate, these seem to be ideas and questions worth exploring.

One last note on a variation of pantheism: that is, panentheism. This is the idea that while our world is part of God, it does not exhaust God. God extends beyond our world. Given that even physicists speak more and more about multiple universes and/or dimensions, it seems reasonable to think that God could be a repository of many real or possible worlds, of which ours is a particular manifestation.

Purpose, but not "Higher Purpose"

I want to briefly clarify what I mean when I speculate that first-person purposeful experience is a part of the natural world. Using the word purpose can lead to misunderstanding because it is so often part of the construction “higher purpose”. Because I subscribe to philosophical (or metaphysical) naturalism, I do not believe the world includes supernatural entities or interventions. Thus in investigating the world there is no appealing to “higher purpose” (or “intelligent design”, for that matter).

But I believe naturalism can and should include first-person experience as an ingredient in the fabric of the world (the philosophical position known as panexperientialism). I have further speculated that this experiential element does some work in the world, and this work consists of the modification of natural events to serve the purpose of the participating experiencing system. This happens within a limited scope consistent with our observations of physical phenomena. Further out on a limb, I speculate that it is at the subtle level of quantum events (measurements) that this modification takes place in nature.

Now, I may be wrong about all this, but it won’t be because it is inconsistent with the methods or prior findings of science. The room for my speculations is opened up due to the fact that the prevailing materialist or physicalist versions of naturalism fail to account for first-person experience. And modifying or expanding naturalism to include experience need not lead to any slippery slopes to irrational or supernatural beliefs.

Methodological vs. Metaphysical Naturalism

Recently there was this post on The Panda’s Thumb (the group evolution blog) introducing a new contributor, Henry Neufeld, whose professional field is biblical scholarship. He is both a theist as well as a defender of evolution. This led to some discussion on the blog about the compatibility of these stances. Also on the relationship between the creationism/evolution divide and the theism/atheism divide see this blog entry from Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

I listened to a talk by philosopher Paul Draper awhile back on the topic of “God, Science and Naturalism”. Part of his talk highlighted a distinction between methodological naturalism and metaphysical naturalism. Now, not everyone agrees on the definitions of these terms, so let me give the impression I got from Prof. Draper. Accepting methodological naturalism means that one accepts that in our collective efforts we should look exclusively for natural explanations for phenomena when investigating the world. One accepts this stance based on the established pattern of the success of this approach, but not because of a pre-commitment to a belief regarding the existence or non-existence of supernatural entities. Some theists are comfortable with this stance. Others feel their personal beliefs are threatened by this stance and advocate a search for signs of God’s interventions when examining the world (unfortunately some of them try to subvert the public education system to try to include this approach). Subscribing to metaphysical naturalism goes the extra step in explicitly adopting a philosophical worldview which rules out the possibility of supernatural intervention. A traditional theist could not take this step and retain a belief in a deity which is transcendent, omnipotent, supremely good, etc.

I think this distinction is helpful in parsing these kinds of discussions. So, if someone supports and defends evolution and the other products of science, but is also a traditional theist, I would think you could assume they support methodological naturalism, but do not subscribe to metaphysical naturalism.
On the other hand, when I’ve said I subscribe to naturalism, I did mean metaphysical naturalism. I’m therefore someone willing to take the step from the success of the methodology to a claim about the truth about the world. Finally, I have explained why such a naturalistic worldview can be consistent with some (admittedly less traditional) forms of theism (see this post).

The God Option, Part 2

In the last post, I discussed the idea that God could be identified with the immanent presence of purposeful experience exhibited by the world as a whole. I bypassed the transcendent creator role which is a usual feature of God’s description. The whole concept of creation is difficult. I’ve always felt that positing a deity as the unmoved mover only begged more questions. And in particular the idea of non-existence followed by magical creation ex nihilo seems unreasonable to me, given my commitment to naturalism.

In thinking about the problem as it specifically relates to my worldview, note my frequent use of the phrase “our world” in the last post.

When I say “our world”, I am referring to the natural universe as we know it (about 14 billion years old, filled with galaxies, undergoing expansion). Now, rejecting creation ex nihilo, it seems likely that this universe arose from some other context, and many physicists would postulate the existence of a multiverse (see my previous post).

So, in thinking about the “God option”: if God is identified with our universe, what do we make of the relationship between our universe and this postulated larger context? Perhaps one could adopt the perspective of ancient creation stories where the world arises from pre-existing entities or from “Chaos.” Then, extending the pantheistic perspective, perhaps we can just extend the identification of God and nature to this larger universe or multiverse, in essence giving back to God a transcendent aspect (this would seem to be a version of “panentheism”). I guess a different way to extend the framework would be to say a multiverse means multiple gods. Now that would be interesting!

These considerations clearly complicate the formulation of a theistic option within the worldview I’m advocating. Still, I think a version of pantheism or panentheism seems reasonable.

By the way, given that I think the more compelling case is for an emphasis on God’s immanence rather than transcendence, the old notion of deism is not attractive. The deist world is too much like the materialist-atheist world with a creator bolted on.

The God Option

This post (building on this previous one) explores the theism/atheism landscape assuming one adopts the worldview I’ve been developing in this blog: a worldview of expanded naturalism which posits first-person purposeful experience as a fundamental component of the unfolding sequence of events in the world.

To summarize, in this worldview the traditional forms of both theism and atheism are no longer tenable. Revised forms of theism and atheism would both remain options. However, they are options which are much closer in spirit than in the traditional dichotomy.

Given a commitment to naturalism, there can be no omnipotent transcendent deity who reserves the right to supernaturally intervene in our world. However, most atheists (who understandably reject this notion of God) subscribe to a false worldview in thinking the universe is a machine made of inert matter moving without purpose in space and time. I’ve argued that such a worldview cannot account for first-person experience and is inconsistent with modern (quantum) physics to boot.

The new perspective sees our world as an evolving network of systems whose interactions intrinsically feature first-person purposeful experience. We humans are especially complex and developed systems which are integrated into the network. I think it follows that one can characterize our experience as one of participating in the larger experience of this world.

Now, the idea that the world as a whole is the subject of first-person experience is provocative. Could one use the name God to refer to the experiencing world-entity in this picture? I think you could. It would be a limited God, who is immanent in the process of the world’s evolution, rather than transcending it. But this God is a being much larger than us and our integration into the world could be thought of as our relation with this God. This take on things leads one to an updated version of pantheism.

An atheist option would be to call the larger experiencing world-entity something like “Nature”. One might think it is too limited and impersonal a concept to merit calling it God. Alternatively, one could accept the fundamental status of first person experience as a feature of things in the world and yet reject the idea I posited above of a world-entity which as the sum of these parts has any kind of its own coherent experience.

So, assuming acceptance of this expanded naturalism, the theism and atheism options still exist. However, which ever option you choose, one accepts that we humans are an integrated part of a world which naturally manifests life, consciousness, and purpose, but is devoid of supernatural interventions.

(Coming next: what about God's role as creator?)

Wright/Dennett Update

Since I commented on this, it is only right that I note that Dennett felt misrepresented by Wright in the article I linked to. Here is Dennett; here is Wright’s follow-up.

I was less interested myself in whether or not Dennett was agreeing with Wright or somehow changing positions (has anyone ever convinced him to change his mind?). I was more interested in focusing on the interview's underlying search for common ground between evolution and scientific naturalism on the one hand and the idea that there could be a sense of purpose infused into the world on the other. I think Wright's article is a case of good intentions coupled with not-so-good execution.

Robert Wright's "Planet with a Purpose"

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan's website, I found this on-line article by Robert Wright with a video of a interview segment of Wright and Daniel Dennett. Wright makes good points trying to find common ground between naturalism (especially Darwinian evolution) and the idea that there is some sort of design or purpose inherent in the world. Dennett comes across as unusually pliable in the video. I added a comment post under the username sesser.
-- Actually, I just clicked through and discovered Wright's own site meaningoflife.tv, which has a variety of interesting interviews on topics relevant to Guide to Reality.

Does Naturalism Mean Atheism?

No, it need not. But maintaining consistency with naturalism is a significant constraint for a theist.

Even with an open mind toward an expanded or liberal view of naturalism, using the word at all means accepting the truth that our world is a systematically evolving network of related events which share the same underlying fundamental character. This means that there is no room for intermittent supernatural intervention from a transcendent God. It also implies there is no dualism involving souls or spirits which interact with our world. This means no miracles, no intercession to answer prayers, no resurrection, for example.

Doesn’t this mean no God or religion at all?

If you follow the debates on evolution and other hot buttons in the conflict between science and religion you might think so. The most brilliant and eloquent defenders of scientific naturalism, such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, are indeed atheists. Those who feel threatened by science are of course those with the most traditional or fundamentalist religious views.

But there is a huge area of religious belief which is not threatened by accepting the truth of naturalism as I’ve defined it. Systems traditionally known as deism, pantheism, and panentheism come to mind. Certainly there are modern Christian and Jewish theological perspectives which are compatible with the findings of science. There are two roles potentially ascribed to God. First, as a transcendent creator: especially for those who think the questions “why something rather than nothing?” or “why this kind of world?” are real and important questions which are not answerable by present or future science. The second role is an immanent presence infused into nature itself: the wonder and reverence we feel in experiencing the world is identified with God’s being in the world.

My point here is just that the polarization which seems to characterize the cultural conflict between science and religion is unnecessary given the large area of concord which can exist between naturalism and forms of theism. I know this perspective is not new news, but it certainly doesn’t get much “air time.”

More "Naturalisms"

I want to note some other references to the idea of an expanded (or not) naturalistic worldview.

Philosopher Gregg Rosenberg has a new book called “A Place for Consciousness: Probing the Deep Structure of the Natural World” (the on-line version is here, order book here). In the book he uses the term “liberal naturalism” to describe the perspective which lay behind the detailed proposals regarding consciousness and causality he makes in the book. I will post more about this thought-provoking book after receiving the hardcopy I ordered and rereading it.

In contrast to “liberal” naturalism, philosopher Daniel Dennett was recently happy (here) to go along in a tongue-in-cheek way with a critic’s depiction of him as advocating “fundamentalist” naturalism, meaning a kind of narrow conservative scientific naturalism.

Process philosopher/theologian David Ray Griffin is someone who has distinguished between different types of naturalisms in arguing for his theory as a middle way in the conflict between science and traditional Christianity. (See for instance this book which is drawn from recent lectures). He used the following terms: Naturalism(ns) means no ad hoc supernatural interventions by God, but otherwise being flexible on many points; in contrast Naturalism(nati) – “nature is all there is” -- means being committed to an atheistic, materialistic stance.

Expanded Naturalism

We need an improved worldview to close the gap in our culture between science and religion. The worldview associated with science is impoverished and inadequate. The phenomenon of our first-person experience cannot be reduced to inanimate matter and mechanism. At the same time, religious worldviews which feature supernatural phenomena are simply untenable. Science has uncovered a compelling pattern of facts revealing our world’s true nature which is not to be ignored.

It has been suggested that science and religion, even as traditionally practiced, can somehow simultaneously be accepted. The idea is that perhaps they are both true but reside in separate spheres or realms of truth. I reject this notion: it is a cop-out. Traditional science and traditional religions are not compatible – they are in real conflict.

Expanded naturalism is my term for an improved worldview which is fully compatible with science, but looks for additional insights which improve our understanding of the world in ways which also serve to narrow the cultural gap. My starting point is to argue that science’s description of the world must begin to formally incorporate the phenomenon of first person experience itself, without which there is no world.

The Future of the Science/Religion Conflict

I’ve always been amazed by the amount of controversy regarding evolution.   Evolution is probably the most important and powerful concept to come out of science and it is central to our increasing understanding of the natural world.  But, frustrating as it is for defenders of science, it is a brute fact that a huge number of people feel evolution and other well-founded scientific theories are in opposition to their personal values and/or religious beliefs.  What I want to do in this post is present an optimistic vision of how the cultural divide epitomized by the evolution wars might be reduced in the years to come.  The solution lies in the expansion and richening of the scientific worldview.
 
Let me offer a crude sketch of the worldview typically associated with science in our culture today.  The universe consists of bits of inanimate matter moving in a vacuum of space.  Any large object or system can be understood by breaking it down into these small bits and analyzing their interaction.   It all got started in a big bang (somehow), and since then has evolved in a mechanistic way.  Human beings are part of the system and our lives are therefore also completely determined by mechanism.
 
To the extent that folks believe science is irrevocably committed to this worldview, it is understandable that there would be a big disconnect.  It isn’t only a question of this worldview conflicting with specific religious beliefs.  People of all backgrounds and beliefs intuitively sense that it is an incomplete picture of our reality.
 
Here’s the good news.  The worldview I sketched may have been consistent with Newton’s model of classical physics, but it certainly misses the richness of science in terms of where it is today and where it’s going.  Specifically, in solving some of the mysteries currently at hand, science can offer an expanded (but still naturalistic) worldview which both improves its explanatory power and also closes the gap with some of our intuitions about reality.  In turn, this will lead to greater cultural consensus.
 
While I can’t know in detail how things will develop, here is a list of some current issues facing science, the resolution of which I believe should lead toward an improved and more unifying worldview.  It would be great if any readers could add to this list.
 
1.     Unifying quantum mechanics with the rest of science.  As is well known, the mechanistic worldview breaks down when scientists analyze the subatomic domain.   Quantum mechanics implies probabilistic causality, wave/particle duality, and non-local interaction.  So far there has been a disjunction between quantum physics and the rest of science which has prevented these features of the theory from penetrating into the cultural perception of the scientific take on reality.  As physicists make progress toward integrating quantum mechanics into a theory which also describes the macroscopic and cosmological scales, it seems reasonable to expect some of the implications of quantum theory to become a foundational aspect of all of science.  In turn, this may help explain some phenomena which are hard to understand through a reductionist, mechanistic analysis.
 
2.     Improving upon the original Big Bang theory.  When most of us first heard of the Big Bang it was described as follows:  the universe, including the dimensions of space and time themselves, originated in an infinitely dense, infinitely small point (a singularity), which expanded to form our universe.  This idea of an emergence from a singularity seemed to have little to recommend it over non-scientific conceptions of creation.  Now, if one reads the literature further, you find that this conception of a singularity is apparently ruled out by quantum physics.  It seems as likely that our observable universe arose from some pre-existing reality.  Some physicists now postulate that we could be part of a “multi-verse”.   An improved theory of origin will aid the development of an even more compelling worldview.
 
3.     Accounting for the one directional “arrow of time” in physics.  Our experience of the flow of time is not captured well by current physical theories, most of which are time-symmetric.  While the second law of thermodynamics has time-directionality, it is not incorporated into more fundamental physics or to a theory of cosmological origin.  If scientists can uncover evidence for the flow of time as a necessary outgrowth of more fundamental laws, that would be a meaningful advance.
 
4.     Integrating “complexity theory” more completely into the rest of science.  As a layperson, I have been exposed to the concepts of “dynamical non-linear systems”, “dissipative systems”, “chaos” theory, “self-organizing systems”, etc. It seems that science has improved its toolkit for understanding natural systems which exhibit some remarkable phenomena.  For example, simple algorithms can yield complicated, yet ordered outcomes.  Higher order features of a system can emerge which could not be predicted from a reductive analysis of component parts (the parts seem to “know” what role they should play in the larger system).  Jumbled pieces can appear to spontaneously assemble into a new organization.  While I know part of the problem is my own limited knowledge of this topic, it seems as if this type of systems analysis is not integrated into more fundamental theories of physics.  If it could be, it would foster the development of a richer cultural conception of the scientific worldview.
 
 
5.     Incorporating first-person experience into the scientific worldview.  (A “big one”, in my view).   Science proceeds by adopting an objective, or third-person, stance toward natural phenomena.  One simulates objectivity by carefully examining data using methods which lead to repeatable results which can be validated by others.  The one empirical fact which cannot be analyzed in this way is first-person experience itself.  As I have commented on at greater length before, a modification of the scientific worldview will be required to include subjective experience as a fundamental feature of reality.  This will lead to an expanded but still naturalistic perspective which offers a more fitting home for humanity.