Learn these three words:
- Occasionalism
- Conservationism
- Concurrentism
These three words summarize the three main worldviews with regard to the relationship between God and the world…that is every perspective generally fits into one of the three.
As a preface, ever since Aristotle was rejected in the “Enlightenment”, forms of the first and second views have become ever more popular in the western world. This change essentially manifests the polarization of faith and reason, which The First Vatican Council, Leo XIII, Pius IX and Pius X all tried to prevent and John Paul II had to deal with after the Second Vatican Council, now not only outside the Church but from within. Cardinal Avery Dulles S.J. wrote in his essay “Faith and Reason: From Vatican I to John Paul II:
“Also in the footsteps of Vatican I, John Paul II opposes both a rationalism that dismisses the input of faith and a fideism that distrusts the guidance of reason ($552, 53). He repeats the teaching of Vatican I that faith and reason “mutually support each other” ($100)…. In line with Vatican I, the pope teaches that the Magisterium has the right and duty to condemn philosophical tenets that are opposed to truths of faith (955, fn. 72), and that there can be no conflict between faith and-reason, since both are gifts of the same God, who could never contradict himself (998,53)” Full Text here
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Here are the three:
- Occasionalism-(wrong) -The view that every occasion of change in the world is a direct result of God causing it to happen. When one billiard ball hits the second billiard ball, then occasion of the second ball moving was a direct result of God caused it to happen.
- My physics professor in college, Dr. Sich, once told me a story of being in the desert in Saudi Arabia. The bus had broken down and everyone was off of the bus. In order to see if the tank had any gas left in it, the driver lit a match. When Dr. Sich objected to him doing this (quite forcefully), the man calmly responded, “Allah protects us, things only happen if he wills.” This is occasionalism in action and also fideism (faith alone apart from reason/scientia) This is of course a very dangerous an incorrect view incompatible with the Catholic understanding of the world.
- This is also what many fundamentalist Christians fall into when they refuse to recognize the findings of archeology that there is a good chance evolution is true.
- Consequentialism-(wrong)-As quoted from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: “It holds that God may have created the world in the beginning, but that since that moment and with the exception of miracles, the world runs causally of its own accord and on the basis of its own powers and principles, without the need for God (if he exists) to be continually and perpetually involved.” This is the view that was taken in the enlightenment and the view that the Popes condemned because it leads to atheism…
- in this view, God is the first mechanical/efficient cause, not the first final cause. The universe is dependent on him in the way that a son is dependent on his father for his existence–(if the first hadn’t existed then the second couldn’t have existed. However, God essentially isn’t involved…once the universe exists, in the same way someone winds up a clock and lets it run–Deism.
- So…God becomes unnecessary. If the world runs on its own, why even propose the idea that God preceded it? The world could have always existed on its own and reasonable person recognizes that God is a superfluous concept and we thereby become atheist, agnostic, or if you are feeling spiritual–pantheist. And yes, this is exactly what progressively happened. This is why everyone is so confused when they say science disproves God–because now we can find the merely mechanical explanation for everything and this is sufficient because this is the only type of causation that exists…the mechanical. How was the world created? Now it is sufficient to say the mechanism of evolution evolution… This is different from the classic view that actually makes sense where God is the first final cause (many claim this view was destroyed in Kant’s Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics but I’m sure that’s worth another post), tied in with the world at every moment, allowing everything to happen.
- Concurrentism-The view (and the right view) says that nothing happens without the “permission” or allowance of God because everything that exists, exists because God holds it in being at every moment. He is the thing towards which all things are oriented. However, any change in the world, (unless it is a miracle by direct intervention) happens, in a less removed sense, because of the parts in the world that are involved-they are following their natures. If objects did not have natures we would not be able to depend on them acting in consistent and predictable ways, which would not only destroy modern empirical science, but science in general since this is the basis of all knowledge.
- I distinguished between modern empirical science (MES) and science in general because after the enlightenment, many started to believe that the only form of knowledge/science is the subcategory we mean when we refer to science today (modern empirical science, which asserts that all science (knowledge) can only come from observation and experimentation. If it can’t be demonstrated it can’t be believe. Unfortunately that claim doesn’t hold up because that very same claim can’t be demonstrated–this is why philosophy remains the more fundamental branch of science, despite what anyone might say.
- The biggest difference between the old view and the new view is that along with believing that the only type of knowledge is the type that comes from the MES, any knowledge beyond the mere mechanism of a thing is no longer knowledge. This means that if you believe the purpose of a plant is actually to produce another plant or if the purpose of sex is to produce the next generation…that not actually part of the object/action it is only in our minds.
- Though books can be written on the topic, purpose and form are not merely in our minds for the following reasons:
- Read my post on Randomness
- The Modern Empirical Sciences are based on the same principles…if purpose and form in objects go, so does all forms of science because there is no reason to try to predict what is purely random and not directed towards an end.
- The idea of “merely in our minds” itself is meaningless because if it is true then we admit our minds have purpose…which would be to deceive us. The idea is there are few reasons in favor of the idea, so why even advocate it when everything points the opposite direction? Well, that is another topic…but the bottom line…is that it certainly it is useful to study the mere mechanism of nature. Behold the glory:
However, illogically, the result focusing on the mere mechanical has for many people acted as a retroactive justification for the incorrect metaphysical position that coincided with it. If the demonstration of mechanism is all you are looking for, it’s not surprising that is all you will find. We are smarter than that. No one can become completely ignorant of the appearance of orientation/telos of the mechanism because we live and breath in it everyday. God’s existence is necessary because his role is existence itself…he is that towards which all things are oriented towards for their perfect as Aquinas argues in his five proofs.
Here are some related posts:
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/ February 24, 2012 