Strauss and Darwin as Zetetics in the Reason/Revelation Debate

In deciding how to find their bearings in the universe and how best to live their lives, Leo Strauss said, human beings face a fundamental choice: should they live in pious obedience to God whom they fear and love, or should they live under the guidance of their own minds as based on their human understanding of the world--"a life of obedient love versus a life of free insight" (1953, 74)?

In answering this question, they must choose between the two roots of Western civilization--reason and revelation, Athens and Jerusalem, Greek philosophy and the Bible.  Strauss thought that the vitality of Western civilization arose from the tension between these two peaks of human existence.  Over the past few centuries, this debate has been between science and religion, and particularly Darwinian evolution and the Biblical creation story (Strauss 2006, 144, 155, 160-61, 171, 173, 177).  Strauss's account of this debate is best stated in his "Reason and Revelation," a lecture delivered in 1948 at Hartford Theological Seminary (Strauss 2006), in "Progress or Return?," a series of lectures at Hillel House at the University of Chicago in 1952 (Strauss 1997), and in some parts of Natural Right and History (74-77).

In the history of the West, there had been attempts to resolve this tension either by synthesizing philosophy and theology in a unified vision or by showing that one side could refute the other.  But Strauss thought no such resolution of the tension was possible, because any supposed synthesis would require one side to be subordinated to the other, and because neither could truly refute the other without begging the question at issue.

The failure of philosophy to refute revelation creates a special problem for philosophy, Strauss believed.  If the philosophic life is to be rationally defensible, the philosopher must refute the claim that divine revelation shows that a life of obedience to God's law is superior to a life of rational inquiry into all things.  If philosophy cannot refute revelation, then the choice of the philosophic life would seem to be an arbitrary choice unsupported by reason; and yet Strauss wanted to claim that the life of philosophy is in fact rationally defensible.  By contrast, the life devoted to revelation does not face this kind of problem.  Since submission to revelation is based on faith rather than reason, the failure of revelation to refute philosophy through rational argument does not render the life of faith incoherent.

This is what Strauss called "the theological-political problem," which he identified as "the theme of my studies" (Strauss 1997, 453).  Strauss learned about this problem primarily from his reading of the medieval Jewish and Muslim philosophers--particularly, Maimonides and Alfarabi--who saw the conflict between Greek philosophy and the Bible or the Koran.  Although Strauss tried to claim that the reason-revelation debate can be seen in Greek philosophy and the Bible, he admitted that, of course, the Greek philosophers did not know the Bible, and the Biblical authors did not know Greek philosophy.  It is not clear, therefore, that the conflict between ancient Greek philosophy and religious myth is the same as the conflict between Greek philosophy and Biblical revelation in the Middle Ages.  After all, the Bible agrees with Greek philosophy in criticizing polytheistic religious myth.

According to Michael and Catherine Zuckert, in Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy, the best way to see the theological-political problem is to state Strauss's position as a "paradoxical syllogism":

"PROPOSITION 1:  In order to be a rationally defensible pursuit, philosophy must be able to refute revelation in a non-question-begging way."

"PROPOSITION 2:  Philosophy cannot refute revelation."

"PROPOSITION 3:  Philosophy is a rationally defensible pursuit." (314)

To resolve the problem in holding these three propositions, the Straussians have said that Strauss actually denied one of these three propositions; but they disagree about which one of the propositions needs to be denied. The Zuckerts lay out four alternative interpretations, and they imply that the most persuasive interpretation is that of the "zetetics, who argue that Strauss persisted in his view that the possibility of revelation could not be refuted by philosophy but who also maintain that Strauss had worked out a way to rationally justify the choice of the philosophic life without that refutation" (315), thus rejecting Proposition 1.  (The term zetetic is derived from the Greek verb zeteo--to seek or inquire--so a zetetic philosopher is one who seeks the truth or inquires about things without ever attaining full knowledge or wisdom.)

As my response to this, I will make three claims.  First, the Zuckerts are correct in identifying Strauss as a zetetic--as someone devoted to Socratic inquiry into the nature of the whole without expecting to achieve full knowledge of the whole--who makes a rational choice for philosophy over revelation but without ever refuting revelation.  Second, Charles Darwin was a zetetic scientific philosopher in choosing evolutionary science over Biblical creationism.  Third, the Darwinian liberalism that emerged during Darwin's lifetime promoted the public debate over reason and revelation that was revived by Strauss, which shows how the liberal social order secures the freedom of thought that allows people to freely choose between the philosophic life and the religious life.

In this post, I will explain the first claim.  In the next two posts, I will explain the second and third claims.

The Zuckerts rightly see four alternative positions among the Straussians interpreting Strauss's account of the reason/revelation debate.  The rationalists believe that philosophy really can refute revelation, and thus they deny Proposition 2--that philosophy cannot refute revelation.  The decisionists believe that philosophy cannot be rationally defended, that Strauss only arbitrarily decided in favor of philosophy, and so they deny Proposition 3--that philosophy is a rationally defensible pursuit.  The faith-based Straussians believe that Strauss points to the superiority of revelation over reason, and so they also deny Proposition 3, while claiming that any denial of this proposition must favor the choice for a life of faith in revelation.  The zetetics believe that while philosophy cannot refute revelation--thus denying Proposition 1--it is rational for those with the natural desire and capacity for philosophy to choose the philosophic life, when this is rightly understood as a Socratic quest for knowledge that never attains the full knowledge of the whole that would refute revelation.

The most prominent of the Straussian rationalists are Heinrich Meier (1997) and Thomas Pangle (2003).  They show how philosophers can give rational explanations for how religious belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, and providential God arose among human beings to support human morality and politics; and they believe that such a rationalist explanation of religion makes it unnecessary to believe in divine revelation, which is the refutation of revelation.  But they fail to answer Strauss's argument that every rationalist explanation of the genealogy of religious belief begs the question at issue, because it assumes the validity of rationalist explanations, and it fails to prove that miracles, including the miracle of a revelatory experience of God, are impossible.  To prove the impossibility of miracles, one would have to have complete rational knowledge of the whole--of everything in the universe--so that there is no place for a mysterious miracle-working God.  Since we do not have--and never will have--such absolute knowledge of the whole, we cannot prove that the experience of revelation is impossible.  We cannot prove that it is impossible that the origin of the universe, the origin of life, and the origin of human life came as the miraculous work of the Creator.  To say that miracles are impossible because they are contrary to the rational laws of nature assumes what needs to be proven--that it is impossible that the laws of nature are legislated by a divine lawgiver who can miraculously set aside those laws by his omnipotent will, and that this God can reveal Himself miraculously to those who have faith in Him.

The Straussian decisionists include Stanley Rosen (2000) and Laurence Lampert (1996).  They say that Strauss did not truly believe that philosophy is a rationally defensible pursuit (Proposition 3), because while he did say this, this was only his exoteric or public teaching, and his esoteric or secret teaching for his careful readers was that the choice for philosophy is an arbitrary or ungrounded act of will.  For Lampert, this means that Strauss was a Nietzschean who saw the philosophic life as devoted not to the discovery of truth but to the creation of truth by willful invention of the will to power.  And yet, as the Zuckerts indicate, Lampert's Strauss is a "timid Nietzschean," because unlike Nietzsche, Strauss did not openly legislate values.  In public, Strauss claimed that philosophers discover truth rather than create it, and thus Strauss was afraid to "shed his Clark Kent everydayness to step forth as the Superman he could be" (322).

Rosen's interpretation of Strauss on philosophy is even more radical than Lampert's.  For Rosen, when Strauss says that the philosophic life is possible, and even the best possible life, his secret teaching is that this is a "noble lie":

"There is good reason to infer from Strauss's texts that the truly secret teaching is the impossibility of philosophy, an impossibility that must be concealed from the human race for its own salvation.  That is to say, philosophy, understood as the quest for universal knowledge, for the replacement of opinions by knowledge, for knowledge of the whole, is impossible.  We are left with knowledge of ignorance.  No wonder that philosophy, as Strauss conceives it, is incapable of refuting revelation.  One could almost be persuaded to entertain the hypothesis that the main difference between Strauss and Wittgenstein is exoteric.  That is, Strauss believes that philosophy is a noble lie, whereas Wittgenstein regards it as neither noble nor base but harmful" (2000, 564).

Rosen offers this as "speculation" and a "conjecture" that is not explicitly stated in Strauss's texts, although Rosen thinks there is good reason to infer it from Strauss's texts.  But as the Zuckerts rightly observe, Rosen's interpretation of Strauss here is dubious, because it asserts that the most prominent theme in all of Strauss's writing--the goodness of the philosophic life--is only an intentional lie.

The faith-based Straussians don't deny Strauss's affirmation of philosophy, but they do interpret his account of the reason/revelation debate as stressing the limits of philosophy in ways that favor revelation as equal or even superior to philosophy.  The Zuckerts divide them into two groups.  One group includes two "West Coast Straussians"--Harry Jaffa (2012) and Susan Orr (1995).  (In a previous post here, I have written about the Zuckerts' mapping of Straussian geography--East-Coast, West-Coast, and Midwest Straussians.)  The second group consists of two people who are friendly critics of Strauss--Ralph Hancock (2007) and Peter Lawler (2007).

I have a special interest in Jaffa's reading of Strauss on reason and revelation, because his best statement was originally written in response to a letter that I and Rick Sorenson wrote to him in 1987.  Jaffa responded to us by saying that the unique teaching of the Bible is "the idea of the One God who is separate from the universe, of which He is the Creator," and "as both separate and unique, God is unknowable" (2012, 150).  Because He cannot be known by unassisted human reason, God can be known only by faith in revelation, and revelation is marked by miracles--with Creation itself being the primary miracle--that cannot be understood by reason, although reason cannot deny the possibility of miracles.

While Strauss saw this as setting up a sharp dichotomy between reason and faith, Jaffa claimed, there could be a synthesis of the two based on at least five points of common ground.  First, Socratic political philosophy and the Bible can agree that human beings are fundamentally ignorant of the whole, so that even Socrates had only knowledge of his ignorance; and complete knowledge of the whole must be forever unattainable (152, 155).  Second, because of this ignorance, both belief in philosophy and belief in the God of the Bible depend on acts of faith (153).  Third, reason and revelation need not be seen as contradictory if one sees that both reason and revelation are given to human beings by their Creator (153-54).  Fourth, philosophy and the Bible can agree on the authority of the moral order as based on the rule of reason over the passions (158-59).  Fifth, the political establishment of Christianity in fifth-century Rome was inconsistent with both reason and revelation, because the vitality of Western civilization as driven by the tension between reason and revelation required human freedom of thought in the reason/revelation debate to avoid both "theological despotism" (as in the medieval theocratic orders) or "ideological despotism" (as in the modern rule of a Hitler or a Stalin) (159-60).

Here Jaffa seemed to defend a Thomistic synthesis of reason and revelation, which departed from the argument of Jaffa's first book--Thomism and Aristotelianism--which stressed the conflict between Aristotelian rationalism and Thomistic faith.  At other times, oddly enough, in some lectures that were never published, Jaffa suggested that Thomas Aquinas's esoteric teaching was the superiority of the philosophic life over the life of Christian faith.  Thomas West has elaborated the reasoning for this position, and I have written about West's argument here.

Susan Orr's Jerusalem and Athens can be seen as statement of Jaffa's synthesis interpretation of Strauss as suggesting that he is neutral between reason and revelation or perhaps even tilting the scales towards revelation.  By contrast, Hancock and Lawler are Christian believers who think Strauss went too far to the side of reason in claiming that the philosophic life could fulfill the human erotic striving for transcendence without faithful submission to revelation: a life of philosophic inquiry without Christian faith in revelation cannot satisfy the deepest human longings for eternal redemption from the incompleteness of earthy life.

If this is true, then Pascal must have been correct in asserting the misery of man without God, because human beings have a yearning for God that cannot be satisfied by philosophy or any other human pursuit without faith.  But I think the Zuckerts are right in pointing out that Strauss is clear in rejecting this assertion as refuted by the fact that "the philosopher, as exemplified by Socrates in particular, lives on the islands of the blessed" (Strauss 2006, 161).  Pascal might answer by saying that Socrates did not have the Christian experience of faith-based happiness.  But, Strauss says, Plato could answer by saying that Pascal did not have the Socratic experience of philosophic happiness.

This appeal to the facts of the human experience of happiness is the crucial point for those the Zuckerts identify as zetetic or Socratic Straussians, who deny Proposition 1 of the paradoxical syllogism--the claim that philosophy cannot be a rationally defensible pursuit if it cannot refute revelation.  The Zuckerts point out that when Strauss seems to affirm this proposition, he is usually speaking of this as a "present day argument," thus suggesting that this is a modern philosophic position of Spinoza and others, but not the position of the ancient Socratic philosophers (Strauss 1997, 123).

In "Progress or Return?," Strauss wrote:

". . . The philosopher, when confronted with revelation, seems to be compelled to contradict the very idea of philosophy by rejecting without sufficient grounds.  How can we understand that?  The philosophic reply can be stated as follows: the question of utmost urgency, the question which does not permit suspense, is the question of how one should live.  Now this question is settled for Socrates by the fact that he is a philosopher.;  As a philosopher, he knows that we are ignorant of the most important things.  The ignorance, the evident fact of his ignorance, evidently proves that quest for knowledge of the most important things is the most important thing for us.  Philosophy is, then, evidently the right way of life.  This, in addition, according to him, is confirmed by the fact that he finds his happiness in acquiring the highest possible degree of clarity which he can acquire.  He sees no necessity whatever to assent to something which is not evident to him.  And if he is told that his disobedience to revelation might be fatal, he raises the question: what does fatal mean?  In the extreme case, it would be eternal damnation.  Now, the philosophers of the past were absolutely certain that an all-wise God would not punish with eternal damnation, or with anything else, such human beings as are seeking the truth or clarity.  We must consider later on whether this reply is quite sufficient.  At any rate, philosophy is meant--and that is the decisive point--not as a set of propositions, a teaching, or even a system, but as a way of life, a life animated by a peculiar passion, the philosophic desire or eros. . . ." (1997, 122)

So in choosing reason over revelation, the philosopher seems to contradict the very idea of philosophy by rejecting revelation without a rational refutation of revelation.  But the Socratic philosopher's choice of philosophy as the best way of life for him is warranted by three facts--the fact that he is a philosopher, the fact that his ignorance makes it necessary for him to seek knowledge, and the fact that he finds his happiness in a life of philosophic inquiry.  This makes a man like Socrates happy because he is driven by a "peculiar passion, the philosophic desire or eros."  This leaves open the possibility that other human beings who do not have this philosophic desire, or who do not feel it as intensely as Socrates, might have such a deep desire for religious understanding that their happiness comes not from philosophy but from faith.  A Socratic philosopher cannot refute revelation, because he cannot prove the impossibility that some human beings have had an experience of God through revelation in which they find their happiness by satisfying their natural desire for religious understanding.  But even without a philosophic refutation of revelation, the Socratic philosopher's experience of happiness in a life of philosophizing is evident.

This zetetic understanding of philosophy and of the philosopher's choice for reason over revelation seems to be Strauss's understanding.  As I will indicate in the next post, Charles Darwin arrived at a similar understanding of his life devoted to scientific philosophizing, which was part of the intense debate over reason and revelation that arose publicly during his lifetime.


REFERENCES

Hancock, Ralph. 2007. "What Was Political Philosophy? Or: The Straussian Philosopher and His Other, Political Science Reviewer 36.

Jaffa, Harry. 1952. Thomism and Aristotelianism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Jaffa, Harry. 2012. "Leo Strauss, the Bible, and Political Philosophy," in Crisis of the Strauss Divided. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Lampert, Laurence. 1996. Leo Strauss and Nietzsche. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lawler, Peter. 2007. "Strauss, Straussians, and Faith-Based Students of Strauss," Political Science Reviewer 36.

Meier, Heinrich. 2006. Leo Strauss and the Theological-Political Problem. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Orr, Susan. 1995. Jerusalem and Athens: Reason and Revelation in the Works of Leo Strauss. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Pangle, Thomas. Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Rosen, Stanley. 2000. "Leo Strauss and the Possibility of Philosophy," The Review of Metaphysics 53: 541-564.

Strauss, Leo. 1953. Natural Right and History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Strauss, Leo. 1997.  "Progress or Return?" In Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity: Essays and Lectures in Modern Jewish Thought, ed. Kenneth Hart Green. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Strauss, Leo. 2006. "Reason and Revelation." In Meier 2006.

Zuckert, Michael, and Catherine Zuckert. 2014. Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Heaven and Hell in the Reason/Revelation Debate: In Defense of Zetetic Scientific Philosophizing

Over the years, I have written a lot about the reason/revelation debate, particularly as manifest in the thought of Leo Strauss and Charles Darwin.   I have made five claims. 

First, I have agreed with Catherine and Michael Zuckert in identifying Strauss as a zetetic philosopher--as someone devoted to Socratic inquiry into the nature of the whole without expecting to achieve full knowledge of the whole, who makes a rational choice for philosophy over revelation but without ever refuting revelation.  

Second, I have identified Charles Darwin as a zetetic scientific philosopher in choosing evolutionary science over Biblical creationism, while recognizing that he could not refute the revelation of God as the First Cause of natural evolutionary history, which would support theistic evolution.  

Third, I have argued that the Darwinian liberalism that emerged during Darwin's lifetime promoted the public debate over reason and revelation that was revived by Strauss, which shows how the liberal social order secures the freedom of thought that allows people to freely choose between the philosophic life, as satisfying the natural desire for intellectual understanding, and the religious life, as satisfying the natural desire for religious transcendence.

Fourth, I have said that the success of Darwinian liberalism over the past two hundred years has made esoteric writing undesirable and unnecessary, so that now the choice between reason and revelation can be an open and public debate, because in a liberal or open society, there is no natural conflict between the philosophic life of the few and the practical life of the many.

Fifth, although the zetetic scientific philosophers cannot refute revelation, they can show that revelation suffers from such obscurity that religious believers cannot agree on what is religious orthodoxy, and consequently, as Locke said, "everyone is orthodox to himself," which supports the need for religious toleration and liberty.

As one illustration of the last point, I have pointed out that neither biblical revelation nor natural revelation provides a clear teaching to resolve the debate among Christians over creation and evolution. 

Another illustration of the obscurity of revelation is in the disagreement among Christians about the afterlife in Heaven and Hell.  In some ways, this is the crucial teaching of Christianity because it's the question of the eternal destiny or final end of human beings in the cosmos:  Will we achieve eternal happiness in Heaven or eternal misery in Hell?

In my next three posts, I will take up the question of Hell.  And I will argue that neither biblical revelation, nor traditional revelation, nor natural revelation provide Christians with a clear teaching about Hell on which they can agree.

The zetetic scientific philosopher will infer from this that either God has not revealed the truth about Hell, or He has, but He has failed to reveal it clearly enough to be understood by all (or at least most) believers.

Then, in subsequent posts, I will take up the question of Heaven, and argue that the revelation of Heaven has been just as obscure as the revelation of Hell.

The Incoherence of Deborah Haarsma's Christian Astrophysics in the Reason/Revelation Debate

 

What do you see in these pictures?  

The first picture is from the Hubble Space Telescope.  It's a tiny area of the sky (about one thirty-two millionth of the sky) visible only in the Earth's Southern Hemisphere.  It's centered on SMAC 0723, a galaxy cluster in the constellation of Volans.  As many as 10,000 galaxies are visible in this picture, and each of those galaxies probably have an average of 100 million stars.  The picture includes light from galaxies as they existed about 13 billion years ago, only about 400 to 800 million years after the Big Bang.

The second picture of this same area of the sky is from the James Webb Space Telescope.  A few weeks ago I wrote a post on the James Webb Telescope.  This picture was first revealed to the public at an event at the White House with President Joe Biden on July 11, 2022.  The picture from the Webb Telescope is clearer and more detailed than the Hubble picture.

Christian astrophysicist Deborah Haarsma sees in these pictures confirmation of what the Bible says in Psalms 19:1 (King James Version)--"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork."  

Is she right?  You might agree with her if you take the side of Revelation in the Reason/Revelation debate.  But you will probably disagree with her if you take the side of Reason.  Is there any way to decide which side is right?  Or can the two sides be reconciled?  Would most human beings be inclined to agree with her religious interpretation of these pictures?  If so, does this express a natural propensity of our evolved human mind?

Some Christians have reported that looking at these pictures from the Webb Telescope made them "feel very small."  One Christian journalist observed: "It's hard and uncomfortable to comprehend being a tiny speck on a tiny speck in a universe full of tiny, beautiful specks," which sent her into "a sort of existential crisis."  But when she asked Haarsma about this, Haarsma told her: "You don't have to look at the vastness of the universe and feel insignificant.  You can look at it and see how great God's power and love are."

Haarsma said that on the Sunday after the Webb Telescope images were released, she went to services at her church where the images were projected on a screen, and the congregation sang hymns about nature.  "They created an opportunity to thank God for the wonders of the natural world."

HAARSMA'S THEISTIC EVOLUTION

Haarsma received her Ph.D. in astrophysics from MIT.  She became a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Calvin College (now Calvin University).  She is now President of BioLogos, an organization founded by Francis Collins to promote the idea of theistic evolution among evangelical Christians who otherwise might reject evolutionary science as contrary to the Bible.  As suggested by name "BioLogos," the idea is that biology and natural science generally are "the language of God": "In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God" (John 1:1).  Christians should see the modern scientific study of nature as the natural revelation of God's creative activity.

In a recent lecture, Haarsma explained "Why I Never Had a Faith Crisis Over Science." She noted that of the many young people today who are losing their religious beliefs, many say that "the church seems to reject much of what science tells us about the world."  She said that it doesn't have to be this way if Christians understand that faith and science are not in conflict, and then she explained how she had reached this conclusion in her own life.

She grew up in a Calvinist evangelical church that "grounded me in the faith."  "When it came to Genesis and the age of the Earth, my church knew of only two options.  One was godless evolution, with a godless Big Bang billions of years ago.  The other option was a Creator God who made the universe in 6 days following the text in Genesis.  Given those two choices, of course we picked the one with the Creator!"

At the same time, however, as a schoolgirl, Haarsma had a love of math and science.  As an undergraduate at Bethel University, a Christian school, she majored in physics and music.  Then, as a graduate student in physics at MIT, she developed an interest in astronomy and astrophysics.  At that point, she was forced to reconsider whether astronomy and the Genesis account of creation were compatible or contradictory.

She came across the book Portraits of Creation, with chapters by Christian geologists and Christian astronomers who explained how the scientific account of the evolution of the Earth could be reconciled with their faith.  There was also a chapter by Old Testament scholar John Stek, who explained the ancient Egyptian and Babylonian accounts of how many gods created the universe so that there was a flat Earth with a solid dome sky with water above it, called a "firmament."  This interpretation of the Old Testament as shaped by its ancient Near Eastern cultural context has been deepened by scholars like John Walton who is on the BioLogos Advisory Council.

Haarsma observes:

"I realized that in Genesis chapter 1, on the second day of creation, God takes credit for making this firmament.  That means God didn't try to correct their misconceptions about the natural world; it would have distracted them from the larger message.  God had other goals in mind.  I concluded that if God didn't put modern science into Genesis, I shouldn't be trying to get modern science out of Genesis.  Instead I should focus on God's primary message: that there is one sovereign Creator (not a pantheon of gods), that creation is good, and that humans are made in God's image."

In this way, she could accept the modern scientific account of the evolution of the universe while also accepting the revelation of God's "primary message" in the Bible.  Science and Christian faith are therefore compatible.  The mission of BioLogos is to convey that message to her fellow evangelical Christians.

Notice that Haarsma's conclusion that "God didn't try to correct their misconceptions about the natural world," because this "would have distracted them from the larger message," comes not from her reading of the Bible but from her reading of Old Testament scholars like John Stack and John Walton.  Why did she have to go outside the Bible for this?  Does that mean that God's revelation in the Bible does not guide the reader to its correct interpretation?  Does that mean that the Bible by itself is not a clear revelation of God's teaching?  A Christian reader of the Bible like Ken Ham would deny this, because he would say that the clear teaching of the Bible about the six days of Creation must be true, and it should not be distorted by scholarly commentary on the Bible that denies its literal teaching. 

In contrast to the Young Earth Creationism of Christians like Ham, the fundamental intellectual framework for Haarsma's project is what is often called "theistic evolution" or what Haarsma calls "evolutionary creation."  God is the omnipotent Creator of everything, but God has chosen to exercise his creative activity by establishing the laws of nature that allow for the natural history of the universe to emerge through a natural evolutionary process that can be studied by natural science.

As I have indicated previously, theistic evolution depends upon the principle of dual causality that was developed by medieval Islamic and Christian thinkers as a way of defending natural science or natural philosophy against the charge of being irreligious: God's supernatural power as primary cause can be understood as compatible with the natural laws of secondary causes as studied by natural science.

RECONCILING REASON AND REVELATION THROUGH THE TWO BOOKS OF ONE TRUTH?

I have written a series of posts on the reason/revelation debate, in which I have agreed with Leo Strauss that there is no way of reconciling reason and revelation by synthesizing them, and that a Socratic philosopher or a Darwinian scientist is justified in adopting a zetetic position:  The zetetics believe that while philosophy or science cannot refute revelation, it is rational for those with the natural desire and capacity for philosophy or science to choose the philosophic life, when this is rightly understood as a Socratic or Darwinian quest for knowledge that never attains the full knowledge of the whole that would refute revelation by denying the possibility of supernatural miracles.

Against this position, Haarsma assumes that the debate between reason and revelation can be resolved through a synthesis of the two in the idea that there is one truth revealed in "two books"--the Bible and nature.  As a student at Bethel College, Haarsma reports:  "I was excited to discover that a science career didn't mean pushing God out of the picture.  I was introduced to John Calvin's phrase 'All truth is God's truth'; even if some truth in nature is discovered by an atheist, it could still be from God.  By studying science, I would be investigating God's world as well as God's word, both nature and scripture.  Science could be a Christian vocation; I didn't have to be a missionary to serve God, but could serve God with my mind, as well as my heart and soul."

This attempt to reconcile reason and revelation through the two books of one truth fails, however, because Haarsma fails to show how the clearly revealed truth of the Bible (particularly, in the first chapters of Genesis) concerning the divinely created origins of the universe and of human beings is consistent with the natural science of the evolutionary origins of everything.  I have already made this argument in some previous posts about how revelation fails to resolve the creation/evolution debate among evangelical Christians because the Holy Spirit has failed to guide them to agreement about the Biblically revealed teaching concerning origins.

Haarsma first confronted this problem while she was studying astrophysics in graduate school at MIT: "studying astronomy meant that all of my questions about Genesis were back on the table.  I believed, and still believe, that the entire Bible is God's authoritative word for our lives.  I didn't want to just pick and choose which verses to accept, or let science dictate that some verses weren't true."

But as we have already seen, Haarsma really does "let science dictate that some verses weren't true."  When she learned that the Bible's account of God's creating the "firmament" (the King James translation of the Hebrew word raqia) was using the language of ancient Egyptian and Babylonian creation myths that were contradicted by modern astronomy, she decided that this Biblical teaching about the "firmament" as a solid heavenly dome needed to be rejected as false.

In Egyptian iconography, the starry sky is represented by the goddess Nut, whose body arched over the land.  This was the boundary between heaven and earth, and it held back the water above.  The concept of heavenly waters was a natural deduction from the experience of precipitation from the sky.

The Bible echoes this image in the Genesis account of the "firmament" in the second day of creation.  "And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.  And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.  And God called the firmament Heaven.  And the evening and the morning were the second day" (Gen. 1:6-8).  This is the same Hebrew word for firmament that appears in Psalms 19:1--"and the firmament shewth his handywork."

But when we look at the Hubble and Webb pictures of deep space, we know that this is not a picture of a solid starry "firmament," because we know that astronomy shows the falsity of the Egyptian image of the sky.

As we have seen, according to Haarsma, in God's revelation in Genesis, "God didn't try to correct their misconceptions about the natural world; it would have distracted them from the larger message."  

But in response to Haarsma on this point, Ken Ham (a young Earth creationist) has complained that this "accuses God of using error to teach truth."   As far as I know, Haarsma has never replied to this criticism.

If God had corrected the errors of ancient Near Eastern cosmology, wouldn't this have confirmed God's revelation as truth that was beyond human understanding prior to modern science?  If there is no correction of ancient cosmology, does this imply that this is not really a revelation of a truth beyond the human beliefs of that time?

Haarsma might respond that we can see this was a true revelation because it corrects ancient theology in teaching a monotheistic religion of a creator God that was new.  But if we're going to read the Bible within its cultural setting, as she does, then we might notice that parts of the Bible seem to accept the polytheistic idea that different peoples have different gods (for example Judges 11:24).  We might then wonder whether Yahweh was originally one of many gods who at some point was elevated to be the one universal and transcendent god of Israel, which is the argument of Thomas Romer in The Invention of God (Harvard, 2015).  So why isn't God a cultural invention?  To deny this, it would help to have a revelation in the Bible of cosmological truths that correct traditional cosmologies in ways that people of the ancient Near East could not have understood, but which might be confirmed by modern science.

This illustrates the impossibility of rationally proving that a claim of supernatural revelation really is a miraculous revelation from God rather than the invention of human imagination.

This also illustrates how Haarsma's attempt to synthesize reason and revelation forces her into heresy in denying some of the fundamental theological tenets of the evangelical Christian Reformed Church (CRC) to which she belongs.  It is common for CRC schools like Bethel University and Calvin University to have a "Statement of Faith" that all the students and faculty must accept, and faculty members can be fired if they disagree with any article of that faith.  A fundamental tenet is that the Bible is "inerrant" or "without any error."  Haarsma denies that when she says that the Bible did not correct the "misconceptions about nature" in the Egyptian understanding of the sky as a "firmament" dividing the waters above from the waters below.

She also assumes that the Biblical account of all humanity originating in Adam and Eve is an error because the evolutionary science of human evolution from ancestral primate species does not recognize the origin of all humans in two individuals.  As I have written in some previous posts, this debate over the historical reality of Adam and Eve has led many evangelical Christians to identify theistic evolution as heresy, and some faculty members at Christian schools (including Calvin University and Bethel College) have been fired for denying the Bible's claim that human history began with Adam and Eve.  When Howard Van Till, a professor of physics at Calvin University, identified himself as a theistic evolutionist, he was charged with heresy; and eventually he was forced to retire from the University in 1999.  His position was filled by Loren Haarsma, Deborah's husband.

What we see here is that rather than achieving a reconciliation of reason and revelation, Haarsma has fallen into an incoherent position in which she vacillates between appealing to revelation to correct the claims of reason and appealing to reason to correct the claims of revelation.  So, for example, as we have seen, she will appeal to modern astronomy to correct what the Bible says about the heavenly "firmament."  But, then, when she writes about the "fine-tuning" of the universe, she corrects those scientists who deny that this is evidence for God, and she says that "from the perspective of biblical faith, science merely investigates the physical world that God created and sustains."

This debate over how to understand the First Cause of everything, including the laws of nature, points to the deepest problem for human understanding--the problem of ultimate explanation. All explanation depends on some ultimate reality that is unexplained. To the question of why nature has the kind of order that it has, we might answer that we must just accept this as a brute fact of our experience. That's just the way it is!

The response of the biblical creationist is that it is very unlikely that the Universe would exist uncaused, and it is more likely that God would exist as the uncaused cause of everything.

In our search for ultimate explanations, we must appeal either to nature or to God as the unexplained ground of all explanation. Thus does the natural desire to understand leads us to this most fundamental of choices--nature or God, reason or revelation. Philosophy cannot refute revelation, and theology cannot refute philosophy, because any attempted refutation would have to beg the question at issue. As Leo Strauss observed: "All alleged refutations of revelation presuppose unbelief in revelation, and all alleged refutations of philosophy presuppose already faith in revelation. There seems to be no ground common to both, and therefore superior to both."

WHY HAS BIBLICAL REVELATION AND THE HOLY SPIRIT FAILED TO RESOLVE THE CREATION/EVOLUTION DEBATE?

In a previous post, I have written about Haarsma's contribution to the edited book Four Views on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design.  As indicated by the editor Jim Stump, the purpose of bringing together the four authors in this book--Haarsma, Hugh Ross, Ken Ham, and Stephen Meyer--was to see if evangelical Christians who have studied the creation/evolution debate could come to some agreement in this debate as guided by God's revelation through nature and through the Bible.  But they failed to reach any agreement.  Why?

In John 17, Jesus prays to God that all believers will be as one, that they will come to complete unity, "so that the world may believe that you have sent me."  It seems that Christians give witness to the truth of revelation by showing their agreement about that revelation.  In Stump's "Introduction" to Four Views, he says that a primary purpose of this book was to pursue unity in what revelation teaches about origins (16).  But in his "Conclusion" to the book, he laments that this has not been achieved: "I doubt that readers will come away from this book with the feeling that we are any closer to the goal of Christian unity on the topic of origins" (232).

There are three possible explanations for this.  Either there has been no revelation (through the Bible or through nature) of God's teaching about origins. Or there has been such a revelation, but it's so obscure that it conveys no clear message. Or the revelation does convey a clear message, but human beings have a stubborn bias that blinds them to that clear message.  Hugh Ross says that "since most humans will choose autonomy over submission to God," most humans will refuse to see the clear evidence of God's creative activity in nature (166).  But this atheistic bias cannot explain why faithful Christians--like the four authors in this book--would refuse to recognize the clear teaching of revelation.  So, we are left with the first two explanations for why these Christians cannot come to agreement about origins: either there has been no revelation about origins, or the revelation is not clear enough to be understood.  All four of the authors believe that God has sent the Holy Spirit "to guide us persistently to truth" (71, 76, 107), but here the Holy Spirit has failed to guide them to agreement about the revealed teaching concerning origins.   

It would strengthen Haarsma's position if she could explain this failure of the Bible and the Holy Spirit to lead Christians to some agreement about the origins of the Universe and human beings.

Darwinian Liberalism Promoted Freedom of Thought in the Reason/Revelation Debate in Victorian England

There is a fundamental contradiction in the Straussian account of the reason/revelation debate and the need for philosophers to be esoteric in their speaking and writing about this debate.  Leo Strauss presented the irreconcilable conflict between reason and revelation as part of the irreconcilable conflict between philosophy and politics, because the philosopher's pursuit of truth about the whole clashes with society's need for unquestioned belief in the divine law that supports the social order; and consequently philosophers must speak and write esoterically to protect themselves from persecution and to protect society from being subverted by philosophic atheism.  At the same time, however, we see that Strauss spoke and wrote openly about the conflict between reason and revelation, apparently thinking he had no need to hide this disturbing teaching from public view by engaging in esoteric speaking and writing.  Moreover, Strauss argued that since every stable society must be a closed society that prohibits public questioning of the authoritative opinions supporting the social order, modern liberalism must fail in its attempt to establish an open society with freedom of thought and speech, so that even the most authoritative opinions can be questioned in public debate.  Oddly, Strauss said this while he himself enjoyed the freedom secured by the American liberal regime that allowed him to speak and write publicly about the conflict between reason and revelation and between philosophy and politics with no fear of persecution.

This is part of the most persistent and prominent theme in Strauss's teaching--his interpretation of Plato's metaphor of human beings living in a cave.  Most human beings are chained to the floor of the cave, and they can only see shadows cast on a cave wall, which symbolizes their mental confinement to common opinions about the world that they never question.  Only a very few human beings are capable of turning around to see the fire behind them and the objects carried before the fire that create the shadows on the wall.  These few can climb out of the cave to see the Sun outside.  This symbolizes the philosophic life of those few--like Socrates--who question everything in their pursuit of knowledge--in their quest to replace mere opinions with truth known by one's own reason.  The shadows on the wall of the cave include authoritative religious beliefs that the multitude of human beings accept without any rational proof.  Only the philosophic few can doubt those religious beliefs in demanding that all beliefs about the world be subject to rational examination, and so only these few can see the conflict between reason and revelation.  These philosophic few cannot speak about this openly in public without creating scandals that would harm themselves and others.  Strauss indicated that the failure of modern liberalism comes from the liberal attempt to establish open societies through popular enlightenment so that everyone can climb out of the cave to see the Sun, or at least question the shadowy opinions on the wall of the cave.

But then Strauss contradicted this teaching in his own words and deeds by publicly explaining the reason/revelation debate and then telling his audience (in "Progress or Return?"):

". . . No one can be both a philosopher and a theologian, or, for that matter, some possibility which transcends the conflict between philosophy and theology, or pretends to be a synthesis of both.  But every one of us can be and ought to be either one or the other, the philosopher open to the challenge of theology, or the theologian open to the challenge of philosophy." (116-117)

How can "every one of us" be free to make this choice between reason and revelation, philosophy and theology?  Doesn't that assume that "we"--those in Strauss's audiences at the University of Chicago and those who have read his published writings--live in modern liberal societies like the United States where it is possible for philosophers like Strauss to speak openly to a popular audience about the reason/revelation debate?  If so, doesn't that mean that modern liberalism has succeeded in creating largely open societies with freedom of thought and speech where "every one of us" can choose between reason and revelation, and where it is no longer necessary for philosophers like Strauss to speak and write esoterically, so that this choice is hidden from public view?  Wouldn't we therefore have to say that for Strauss to escape self-contradiction, he needed to be a "Midwest Straussian" who saw that modernity is good, and the modern liberal social order is the best regime, because it gives human beings the freedom to live the best human lives, including the religious life and the philosophic life?  (I have written about "Midwest Straussianism" here and here, and about esoteric writing here and here.)

The modern liberal promotion of the debate over reason and revelation could be seen as beginning in the 17th century (as in the controversy stirred by Spinoza's writings) or in the 18th century (as in the controversy stirred by Hume's writings).  But this became a fully free and public debate for the first time in the 19th century in Victorian England, where it arose in response to the new evolutionary science of nature and the intellectual culture created by Darwinian liberalism.  It was during this time that the public culture of Great Britain moved from "confessional values" to "liberal values" (see William C. Lubenow, Liberal Intellectuals and Public Culture in Modern Britain, 1815-1914: Making Words Flesh [Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2010].)

After the publication late in 1859 of Darwin's Origin of Species, Thomas Henry Huxley wrote one of the first reviews of the book in the Westminster Review, where he said that "every philosophical thinker" would hail Darwin's book "as a veritable Whitworth gun in the armoury of liberalism."  The Whitworth rifle was considered the most accurate rifle of its time, and so Huxley saw Darwin's book as a powerful weapon in the warfare of liberalism against its opponents, in which the "philosophical thinkers" were on the side of liberalism and scientific naturalism, and the anti-philosophical thinkers were on the side of the theological dogmas of supernatural religion.  Some years later, in a letter to his wife, Huxley described this as part of a centuries-long battle between "free thought and traditional authority" (letter to Nettie Huxley, August 8, 1873).

In this battle, the liberal science of Darwin and Huxley had an alliance with liberal theology, which questioned traditional Christian doctrines and thus subordinated revelation to reason.  This was clear in the controversy over the publication in March of 1860 of a collection of seven essays--entitled Essays and Reviews--arguing that a rational study of nature and history proved that the Bible could not be literally true and could not be a miraculous revelation from God, and therefore it should be read like any other ancient book.  One author claimed that modern natural science showed that miracles were impossible because the causal uniformity of nature does not allow for supernatural interventions violating the order of nature.  The general argument of the book was that traditional Christian doctrines would have to be changed to conform to what was known by natural science.  The religious public was shocked by this, especially because most of the authors were ordained clergy of the Church of England.  Some of the bishops of the Church wanted the essayists to be charged with heresy.

John Lubbock, Huxley, and other scientists close to Darwin signed a public memorial lending scientific support to the essayists.  In persuading scientists to sign this, Lubbock insisted that in "the battle of freedom," "the great Liberal Party should stand by their guns and their friends," supporting the "liberal and thoughtful" clergy (letter to Joseph Hooker, March 2, 1861).

Against this, however, another group of scientists wanted to defend Christian orthodoxy as compatible with natural science, and they signed a "Declaration of the Students of the Natural Sciences," which affirmed that it was impossible for the Word of God as written in the book of nature to contradict the Word of God as written in the Bible.  Therefore, they argued, scientists should "rest in faith" that any apparent conflicts between natural science and the Bible would eventually be reconciled to confirm the truth of Scripture (Brock and MacLeod 1976).  Darwin and his friends saw that this attempt at a synthesis of reason and revelation would actually require the subordination of reason to revelation, just as Strauss would later argue.

Many of the leading defenders of Darwinian liberal science against traditional orthodox theology were informally organized as overlapping networks of friends.  On November 3, 1864, nine of these friends decided to form a dining club--the X Club--that would meet in London for dinner and discussion on the first Thursday of each month from October to June.  After their dinner, they would attend the regular meetings of the Royal Society of London.  Their meetings continued into the mid-1880s.  The nine members were George Busk (1807-1886), Joseph Hooker (1817-1911), Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), John Tyndall (1822-1893), Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), William Spottiswoode (1825-1883), Edward Frankland (1825-1899), Thomas Hirst (1830-1892), and John Lubbock (1834-1913).  Although Darwin was not a member, because he preferred a reclusive life at his house in Down, much of the work of the X Club was devoted to defending Darwin's science and advancing the cause of Darwinian scientific naturalism against traditional theology.  Members of the X Club were responsible for persuading the Royal Society to award Darwin the Copley Medal, the highest honor they bestowed.  They were also responsible for having Darwin buried in Westminster Cathedral.  Even more importantly, they took control of the leading scientific organizations, such as the Royal Society and the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and many of the leading journals.  Perhaps the most important lesson from the history of the X Club is the importance of philosophic friendships in forming social groups in liberal societies for the advancement of the philosophic life.  (The best history of the X Club was published last year--Ruth Barton, The X Club: Power and Authority in Victorian Science.)

At the first meeting of the X Club, Hirst took notes and reported: "Besides personal friendship, the bond that united us was devotion to science, pure and free, untrammeled by religious dogmas.  Amongst ourselves there is perfect outspokenness, and no doubt opportunities will arise where concerted action on our part may be of service.  The first meeting was very pleasant and 'jolly'" (Barton, 13).  So they were committed to "science, pure and free."  By "pure science," they meant a science of relentless inquiry into nature for its own sake--for the Socratic pleasure of living a philosophic life--without regard for any practical utility, money making, or technological advancement.  This counters Strauss's claim that modern scientific philosophy denigrated the contemplative life of philosophy in favor of Francis Bacon's project for an effective knowledge directed to the mastery of nature for the relief of the human estate.  Actually, Huxley criticized Bacon for attaching "an undue value to the practical advantages which he foresaw"--in pleading for science as the "gathering of fruit."  Huxley thought this ignored the fact that the great steps in the progress of knowledge "have been made, are made, and will be made, by men who seek knowledge simply because they crave for it" ("The Progress of Science," 47, 56).

In their commitment to a "free science" that is "untrammeled by religious dogma," the X Club members took the side of reason and natural philosophy against revelation and theological doctrine.  As Strauss indicated, philosophers have made this choice for thousands of years, but they have hidden their argument for reason over revelation from public view by conveying it to only a few philosophic readers through esoteric writing.  What was new about the position of the Darwinian liberal scientists is that they defended their choice of reason over revelation openly in public debate before large audiences that included the great multitude of people in their society.

For example, the X Club members were active in the Sunday lecture societies, which was an anti-Sabbatarian movement that sponsored lectures at "Sunday Evenings for the People," as an alternative to attending church on Sundays and hearing sermons, and thus a challenge to Sabbatarian legislation that restricted secular activities on Sundays.  These lectures were attended by people of all classes, including workingmen and many women.

The first Sunday lecture in this series early in 1866 was Huxley's "On the Desirableness of Improving Natural Knowledge."  Thousands of people filled the lecture hall to capacity, and thousands more were turned away.  Newspapers published reports about the lecture.  A week later, the lecture was published as an article in the Fortnightly Review, and later it was published as a chapter in Huxley's Essays.  This was the common way to reach a large audience--lecturing and then publishing the lecture as an article in a journal and finally in a book.  Here we see one of the crucial elements of the Liberal Enlightenment: rising literacy and printing technology allowed for the general spread of knowledge through reading.  In Great Britain in 1600, only about 20% of the people were literate; by 1860, over 80% were literate.  And with improvements in printing techniques, newspapers, journals, and books were cheap enough to be purchased even by common working people.  (See James A. Secord, Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000].)

In his lecture, Huxley traced the modern movement for improving knowledge of nature to the founding of the "Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge," which began in 1660 with a royal charter from Charles II, and which became the oldest national scientific institution in the world.  And yet, Huxley observed, the true origin of the pursuit of natural knowledge is in the ancient history of humanity, at that point at which human reason first discovered nature:

"I cannot but think that the foundations of all natural knowledge were laid when the reason of man first came face to face with the facts of Nature; when the savage first learned that the fingers of one hand are fewer than those of both; that it is shorter to cross a stream than to head it; that a stone stops where it is unless it be moved, and that it drops from the hand which lets it go; that light and heat come and go with the sun; that sticks burn away in a fire; that plants and animals grow and die; that if he struck his fellow savage a blow he would make him angry, and perhaps get a blow in return, while if he offered him a fruit he would please him, and perhaps receive a fish in exchange.  When men had acquired this much knowledge, the outlines, rude though they were, of mathematics, of physics, of chemistry, of biology, of moral, economical, and political science, were sketched.  Nor did the germ of religion fail when science began to bud. . . . the little light of awakened human intelligence shines so mere a spark amidst the abyss of the unknown and unknowable seems so insufficient to do more than illuminate the imperfections that cannot be remedied, the aspirations that cannot be realized, of man's own nature.  But in this sadness, this consciousness of the limitation of man, this sense of an open secret which he cannot penetrate, lies the essence of all religion; and the attempt to embody it in the forms furnished by the intellect is the origin of the higher theologies" (32-33).

Strauss thought that nature was discovered about 2,600 years ago by some Greek philosopher.  But Huxley thought that the philosophic concept of nature had already been implicit inchoately in the mental experience of primitive human beings who saw regular patterns in the physical and living world around them.  The natural knowledge gained by philosophic science is the systematic and rigorous working out of human common sense experience of the natural world.

This natural knowledge includes the moral and political knowledge of human nature that Strauss called natural right.  Primitive human beings discovered that there was a natural punishment for attacking or threatening other human beings, because they had a natural propensity to punish those who injured them: "if he struck his fellow savage a blow he would make him angry, and perhaps get a blow in return."  This is what John Locke called "the executive power of the law of nature"--the natural inclination of every individual to punish those who harm him.  Primitive human beings also discovered the natural gains from cooperative trade: "if he offered him a fruit, he would please him, and perhaps receive a fish in exchange."  Here is the ground for Darwinian natural right in the natural punishment of injustice and the natural benefits of cooperative exchange.

As Strauss said, the philosopher seeks a natural knowledge of the whole, but that can never be fully attained because human knowledge will always be limited, and consequently the whole will always be mysterious, which leaves an opening for the possibility of revelation from a mysterious God.  Huxley agreed: the sense of "the abyss of the unknown and unknowable" is "the essence of all religion."  He also claimed that a scientific theology could be based on "the noblest and most human of man's emotions, . . . worship . . . at the altar of the Unknown" (38).  But notice that this "Unknown" has none of the features of the personal, providential, and miracle-working God of the Bible.

Despite the fact that natural knowledge is always incomplete--and thus a Socratic knowledge of ignorance--those human beings who are most moved by the natural desire for intellectual understanding will devote their lives to improving their natural knowledge.  To live such a philosophic life, Huxley observed in his lecture, philosophers must overcome two obstacles.

The first obstacle is the moral conviction common among human beings that authority must be obeyed--"that authority is the soundest basis of belief; that merit attaches to a readiness to believe; that the doubting disposition is a bad one, and skepticism a sin; that when good authority has pronounced what is to be believed, and faith accepted it, reason has no further duty."  Against this, Huxley argued: "The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority as such.  For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin. . . . The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification" (40-41).  Strauss expressed this same thought by saying that philosophy rejects the authority of the ancestral and recognizes that "nature is the authority" (NRH, 92).

The second obstacle to improving natural knowledge is the natural tendency of human beings to anthropomorphic projection of their own mental experience onto the universe, so that they imagine that the whole world is ruled by a divine Mind or an Intelligent Designer that demands love and obedience.  This is the idea developed by Darwin and some recent evolutionary psychologists for explaining religious belief through an evolved "hyperactive agency-detection device," which has been the subject for some posts here, here, and here.

In his lecture, Huxley explained:

"But, with respect to all the less familiar occurrences which present themselves, uncultured man, no doubt, has always taken himself as the standard of comparison, as the centre and measure of the world; nor could we well avoid doing so.  And finding that his apparently uncaused will has a powerful effect in giving rise to many occurrences, he naturally enough ascribed other and greater events to other and greater volitions, and came to look upon the world and all that therein is, as the product of the volitions of persons like himself, but stronger, and capable of being appeased or angered, as he himself might be soothed or irritated" (34).

This is an obstacle to improving natural knowledge because believing that the universe is governed by a divine Mind discourages us from rationally looking for the natural causes of cosmic order.  As natural philosophy increases our knowledge of those natural causes, Huxley suggested, we see that this is a better explanation of cosmic order than an anthropomorphic projection of mind onto the whole.

Strauss argued that the anthropomorphic analogy for explaining cosmic order as ruled by Mind is fallacious because it fails to distinguish that which is man-made and that which is not.  We have natural experience with how human beings make or design things with their minds, but we have no natural experience with how divine minds make or design things.  So there's a fallacy of equivocation in reasoning from human intelligent design to divine intelligent design.

But, still, Strauss argued, reason cannot demonstratively refute revelation, because reason cannot prove that it is impossible for any human being to have an experience of revelation from God.  Any supposed proof would have to beg the question at issue by assuming that nature is uniform, that there are no supernatural interventions in nature, and so miracles are impossible.

This irreconcilable debate over reason and revelation was carried on by the Darwinian liberals and their theological opponents in a remarkable series of discussions in The Metaphysical Society, which will be the topic for my next post.


REFERENCES

Barton, Ruth. 2018. The X Club: Power and Authority in Victorian Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Brock, W. H., and R. M. MacLeod.  1976. "The Scientists' Declaration: Reflections on Science and Belief in the Wake of Essays and Reviews, 1864-65." The British Journal for the History of Science 9: 39-66.

Huxley, Thomas Henry. 1896. Method and Results: Essays. New York: D. Appleton.

Strauss, Leo.  1997. "Progress or Return?" In Kenneth H. Green, ed., Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity. Albany: SUNY Press.

Strauss, Darwin, and the Reason-Revelation Debate

Darwinian science completes the Greek philosophic substitution of "natural order" or "natural morality" for "divine law" by providing a natural explanation for how the order of the cosmos could arise by natural evolution, within which human morality could arise as an expression of evolved human nature. In this way, Darwinian science took the side of reason against revelation, but without being able to refute the possibility of revelation. Thus does Darwinian science fit into the reason-revelation debate as understood by Leo Strauss.

In his lecture in 1948 on "Reason and Revelation," Strauss indicated that the irreconcilable conflict between revelation and philosophy or science is manifest in the conflict between the Biblical story of Creation and Darwinian evolutionary science.

In "Progress or Return?" (1952)--reprinted in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism--Strauss puts this conflict in the context of "the basic question of how to find one's bearings in the cosmos." He explains:

"The Greek answer fundamentally is this: we have to discover the first things on the basis of inquiry. We can note two implications of what inquiry means here. In the first place, inquiry implies seeing with one's own eyes as distinguished from hearsay; it means observing for oneself. Secondly, the notion of inquiry presupposes the realization of the fundamental difference between human production and the production of things which are not manmade, so that no conclusion from human production to the production of nonmanmade things is possible except if it is first established by demonstration that the visible universe has been made by thinking beings. This implication, I think, is decisive: it was on the basis of the principles of Greek philosophy that what later became known as demonstrations of the existence of God or gods came into being. This is absolutely necessary, and that is true not only in Aristotle, but in Plato as well, as you see, for example, from the tenth book of the Laws. An ascent from sense perception and reasoning on sense data, an ascent indeed guided, according to Plato and Aristotle, by certain notions, leads upwards; and everything depends on the solidity of the ascending process, on the demonstration. The quest for the beginning, for the first things, becomes now the philosophic or scientific analysis of the cosmos; the place of the divine law, in the traditional sense of the term, where it is a code traced to a personal God, is replaced by a natural order, which may even be called, as it was later to be called, a natural law--or at any rate, to use a wider term, a natural morality. So the divine law, in the real and strict sense of the term, is only the starting point, the absolutely essential starting point, for Greek philosophy, but it is abandoned in the process. And if it is accepted by Greek philosophy, it is accepted only politically, meaning for the education of the many, and not as something which stands independently" (255-56).  (Also in K. H. Green's edited anthology, Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity, pp. 113-14.)

As Strauss indicates here, the proofs for the existence of God by inferring invisible divine causes from visible natural effects were first developed by Plato and Aristotle--particularly, in Book 10 of the Laws, where Plato sketched the reasoning for intelligent design theory or natural theology, the same fundamental reasoning later developed in medieval natural theology and in the contemporary intelligent design theory of Bill Dembski and Michael Behe. Paul first introduced this into Christianity in his Letter to the Romans (1:20), when he declared (under the influence of Greek philosophy): "The invisible things of Him are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made."

Strauss also indicates, however, the essential fallacy in such reasoning--"the fundamental difference between human production and the production of things which are not manmade, so that no conclusion from human production to the production of nonmanmade things is possible except if it is first established by demonstration that the visible universe has been made by thinking beings." Indeed, this anthropomorphic assumption that our experience of human mental agency can be projected onto the cosmos runs through Plato's reasoning in the Laws and the longing of Plato's Socrates for a cosmos ruled by Nous. Dembski shows this same anthropomorphic assumption when he says: "The point of the intelligent design program is to extend design from the realm of human artifacts to the natural sciences." This rhetorical strategy hides the fact that while detecting the design of human artifacts is a matter of common observation and logic, detecting the design of divine artifacts is not, because while the working of human intelligent design is known by natural experience, the working of divine intelligent design is not.

The rational ascent to divine law is the starting point for Greek philosophy, but a starting point that is abandoned in the move from divine law to natural order or natural law. This requires the fulfillment of Greek natural philosophy, which sought to explain the cosmic whole as a product of nature and chance, within which human art could arise through custom and reason(Laws, 888e-89e).

But Greek natural philosophy faced three seemingly insurmountable problems. The first problem was that despite the weaknesses in the intelligent design argument, there did not seem to be any plausible alternative for explaining the apparent design in the natural world. If the irreducible complexity in the universe is not a product of divine design, then how else can we explain it?

The second problem was that a purely naturalistic explanation of the cosmos could not easily explain human moral order without falling into a radical relativism or nihilism. If the cosmos is not the product of a God who is also a moral lawgiver, does this mean that there is no cosmic support for human morality, which is a purely artificial and therefore arbitrary product of human will?

The third problem is that it's unclear whether even the most successful natural philosophy can refute the claims of revelation. If natural philosophy must assume that miracles are impossible--that there are no breaks in the causal regularities of nature--doesn't this beg the question at issue? How does natural philosophy prove the impossibility of miracles, including the impossibility of miraculous revelation in which some human beings can have a direct experience of God? (Actually, this third problem did not emerge clearly until Greek philosophy confronted the scriptural religions of the Bible and the Koran in the Middle Ages.)

Darwinian science supports the fulfillment of natural philosophy by solving--at least in principle--the first two problems. But it leaves the third problem unresolved.

Darwinian science solves the first problem by showing how natural order can arise through an evolutionary process of spontaneous order emerging from random variation and selective retention, by which irreducibly complex orders can arise without intentional design.

Darwinian science solves the second problem by showing how moral order can arise through the natural evolution of a human moral sense shaped by social instincts, social learning, language, and deliberate judgment. The human good is not a cosmic good, but it is a natural good in so far as it conforms to human nature.

Darwinian science does not solve the third problem--the reason-revelation debate--because it cannot refute the possibility of miracles--the possibility of miracles in natural history that are not detectable by natural science or the possibility that natural evolution itself is a miracle as arising from laws of nature originally created by nature's God or the possibility that some human beings can directly experience a revelation of God's presence.

Darwinian science can explain the evolutionary psychology of religious belief as prompted by the anthropomorphic fallacy, because it can explain this as an extension of our evolved social disposition for "mind reading" and detecting agency. As cognitive scientists like Jesse Bering and Justin Barrett have shown, we can explain the natural desire for religious understanding as the work of a "hyperactive agency detection device," which was first suggested by Darwin in his evolutionary theory of religion in The Descent of Man.

And yet even this does not resolve the reason-revelation debate, because even if we accept this evolutionary explanation of religious belief, we are free to see religion as either an adaptive illusion (as Bering does) or as an adaptive truth (as Barrett does).

In any case, Darwin made it clear--especially in his Autobiography--that in the choice between the life of reason and the life of revelation, he had deliberately chosen the life of reason: "As for myself, I believe that I have acted rightly in steadily following and devoting my life to science."

Related posts can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

The Reason/Revelation Debate Among the American Indians?

I will be writing some posts on how many of the American Indian wars of independence were inspired by Indian prophets who claimed to have had mystical visions of the Great Spirit promising that He would lead the Indians as His chosen people to defeat the white people and expel them from Indian lands.  This leads me to wonder whether there is any resemblance between these holy wars of Indian independence and the theology of the American Declaration of Independence. 

The Declaration of Independence appeals to God as Lawmaker, Creator, Supreme Judge, and Divine Providence.  But in Thomas Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration, the only reference to divinity was "Nature's God."  Later, other members of the Congress added three more references to deity: "they are endowed by their Creator" in the second sentence; "appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intensions" in the penultimate sentence; and "with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence" in the last sentence.  God as Creator, as Supreme Judge, and as Providential Caregiver does suggest a divine agency above or beyond the natural world that might intervene miraculously in the natural world against natural law to serve His purposes and thus enforcing a transcendent morality. 

In his Defense of the Constitutions of the United States of America (1786-1787), John Adams explained: "The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history."  Those who formed these new American governments did not claim "interviews with the gods" or "the inspiration of Heaven."  These thirteen governments were contrived "merely by the use of reason and the senses," and founded "on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretense of miracle or mystery" (Adams 2000: 117-118).

Here Adams was following Jefferson in appealing to "Nature's God," in appealing to "the simple principles of nature" that can be known "merely by the use of reason and the senses," without "interviews with the gods" or "the inspiration of Heaven."  Here Adams and Jefferson were on the side of reason rather than revelation.

But it's possible for those religious Americans who are on the side of revelation rather than reason to see support for their religious faith in the Declaration's references to God as Lawmaker, Creator, Supreme Judge, and Divine Providence.  These Americans can pray to this God and ask for His miraculous intervention in history to preserve America as a free and independent state.

Thus, the Declaration is open to freedom of thought and speech about the reason/revelation debate, so that people are free to choose between the philosophic life and religious experience without the need for persecution to enforce some religious orthodoxy.

Although it's not completely clear to me that the American Indian nations allowed such freedom of thought about reason and revelation, I do see some evidence for this.  For example, in Roger Williams' Key into the Language of America (1643), he describes the remarkable openness of the Narragansett Indians in discussing their religion and pondering whether Williams might be right about Christianity being the only true religion.

Williams taught the Indians the Bible's creation story in Genesis 1, and then he taught them the Bible's story about how those who know, love, and fear the one true God will go to Heaven after death for eternal happiness, while those who don't worship this God will go to Hell after death for eternal punishment.  Williams then described how the Indians reacted to these stories:

Once after I had talked, as well as my language permitted, before the chief Sachim, or Prince, of the country with his Archpriests and many others in full assembly and, being night, and tired from travel and talking, I laid down to rest.  Before I fell asleep, I heard this discussion:

A Qunnihticut Indian (who had heard our discussion) told the Sachim Miantunnomu, that he heard from the discussion that souls went up to Heaven, or down to Hell, but, he said, "Our fathers have told us that our souls go to the Southwest" [to the Southwest God Kautantowwit].

The Sachim answered, "But how do you know yourself, that your souls go the Southwest.  Did you ever see a soul go there?"

The Native replied: "When did Roger Williams see a soul go to Heaven or Hell?"

The Sachim again replied: "He has books and writings, and one which God himself made, concerning men's souls, and therefore may well know more than we, that have none, but take all upon trust from our forefathers" (Williams 2019: 117).

Notice the implication here that these Indians recognized two ways of knowing: what we see with our own eyes versus what we take upon trust from what we have heard from our forefathers or from a book that our forefathers have told us is the holy word of God.

The first way of knowing is what Adams identified as "the use of reason and the senses," while the second is believing in those who claim "interviews with the gods" and "the inspiration of Heaven."  This is what I mean by Reason versus Revelation. 

In previous posts, I have argued that there is no final resolution to this reason/revelation debate because neither side can refute the other.  But still, it is possible for the zetetic philosopher or scientist to make a rational choice for the philosophic life even without refuting revelation.  

Do we see some intimation of the zetetic philosopher in the Qunnihticut Indian?

REFERENCES

Adams, John. 2000. The Political Writings of John Adams. Ed. George W. Carey. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing.

Williams, Roger. 2019. A Key into the Language of America. Eds. Dawn Dove, Sandra Robinson, Loren Spears, Dorothy Herman Papp, and Kathleen Bragdon.  The Tomaquag Museum Edition. Yardley, PA: Westholme.