God, Science and Free Will
What is a greater invention by man – a bicycle or an automobile? It seems obvious that it an automobile. A car can move on its own more than a bike. This is why a car is called an automobile – “auto” meaning “self”. It can move more its own as oppose to the constant peddling of a bicycle. Of course, a car is still dependent on us for direction. We must still press on the accelerator and use the steering wheel. It cannot make decisions on its own. I am convinced we will never be able to invent something that can actually work on its own. In spite of this, we have the science fiction movies out there about machines one day rebelling against man; I find this whole idea ludicrous. As a computer programmer, I know that the computer will never be able to rebel against what it was programmed to do. I can never tell my boss that the reason the computer is not doing what it should do because it is being stubborn. Intuitively, my boss knows that this is not possible. Computers are only doing what they are programmed to do.
Only God is capable of creating something that is able to think on its own. Only He was able to create a being that was able to think totally on its own, and do things on its own, and even to rebel against its creator. Only God could make a creature that can say “No” to Him. This does not detract from His glory. Rather it enhances His glory, for no matter how hard we try we can never make anything that can say “No” to us. Paradoxically, one can say that it was God’s will that we are able to say “No” to him, since He created us with that ability to say “No”. It is His passive will that the creatures He created can say “No” to His will. Of course, God still is displeased with us and offended with us when we do rebel, but still it was His will to give us that ability to rebel. So that means that evil is not directly caused by God, but God allowed it to happen.
The same can be said about all of God’s creation. God was pleased to create all things that can to some extent work on its own. This makes the world far more interesting. The Catholic philosopher/scientist Jean Buridian in the Middle Ages wrote that when Genesis said that God “rested” after creating everything, that meant God stood back and let things happen on its own. God, in a sense, now sits back and let nature takes its course. So when a baby seal is eaten by a polar bear, it is not because God directly commanded that bear to eat that seal. When a tornado ravages through a trailer, God did not command the trailer to do this. No, God instead is letting things happen on their own – by chance and by some scientific laws that God has originally established.
This is especially taught by St. Thomas Aquinas, who is declared to be a Doctor of the Church, and much of the teachings of the Church has been based on his writings:
The operation of providence does not exclude secondary causes, but is fulfilled by them, inasmuch as they act in the power of God
Of God and His Creatures LXXII
Since God wills effects to proceed from definite causes, for the preservation of order in the universe, it is not unreasonable to seek for causes secondary to the divine will
"The Will of God" in Summa Theologica, Reply to Objection 2
Further, since the will of God is the first cause, it does not exclude intermediate causes.... But the effect of a first cause may be hindered by a defect of a secondary cause
"The Will of God" in Summa Theologica, Reply to Objection 3
God's immediate provision over everything does not exclude the action of secondary causes; which are the executors of His order
"The Providence of God" in Summa Theologica, Reply to Objection 2
Further, nature in its working imitates the working of God, as a secondary cause imitates a first cause
"On The Order Of Creation In Its Distinction" in Summa Theologica, Reply to Objection 2
God is pleased to work through secoindary causes. That is His normative will. He allows nature to operate within their properties, and He allows us to do things according to our free will.
Now this does not mean that there is never any direct intervention from God. Even an automobile at times need some direct intervention. Sometimes the car needs to be taken into a mechanic to have some work done on it. In the same way, sometimes God’s creation gets too far out of whack and needs more of a “hands-on” approach. This direct intervention by God is what we call a miracle. God directly intervened when He saved the Israelites from the Egyptians, or when God came down from heaven to save us. These are miracles. God’s will is not just passive, but is also active.
At the Reformation, Christians started thinking differently about God’s providence. Calvinism taught that God directly causes EVERYTHING to happen – both in us and in nature. “Miracle” almost becomes redundant – since everything is directly caused by God. So then all suffering is directly caused by Him. Although God commands us to obey Him, He also causes us to disobey Him. Nothing escapes from His direct control. Islam has a similar view of the sovereignty of God.
As a reaction against Calvinism came Deism. Deism taught that God only initially created everything, and then He just stood back and then let nature take its course. This is similar to Catholic teaching that I previously expressed, but Deism sees God as either incapable or unwilling to get involved in His creation – there are no such things as miracles and the Incarnation could never had happened. But this seems illogical. Surely, a God who is capable of creating everything could also intervene whenever He chooses. And how can a Deist be so sure that God would be unwilling to intervene? Since the Deist denies God ever revealing His thoughts to us, how can the Deist be so sure that God has no intention of ever intervening?
Because of these inconsistencies in its logic, Deism was short-lived, and most Deists moved on to atheism. Whereas Deism taught that God no longer is involved in the world He created, atheism teaches that there was never a God in the first place. But atheism has its own inconsistencies. First, if God did not create the world, then how can there be scientific laws that govern the universe? How can there be laws without a Lawgiver? How can there be design and order to the universe without a Grand Designer? Second, along with Calvinists, atheists tend to deny free will. They believe in materialism. All that exists is the material realm. If it cannot be seen and measured, then it cannot exist. If the immaterial does not exist, then that means the soul does not exist. And if the soul does not exist, then free will does not exist. Materialists argue among themselves about nature versus nurture. But they agree that we are not actually free to think and make our decisions. To them, all our decisions have been either biologically or environmentally determined. I recall a materialist once writing in his book that if a reader believes in free will, that is merely because he has been determined biologically to think there is a free will. But the materialist is oblivious to his double-standard. If the materialist is right that there is no free will, then why should we believe him? Would not the materialist also be biologically determined to believe that free will does not exist?
Catholicism takes another option. Unlike the Calvinist and the materialist, the Catholic believes in free will. Along with the Deist, the Catholic believes that God created the world and had set things in motion, guided by His scientific laws. But unlike the Deist, the Catholic believes that God can and has intervened whenever He deems it necessary. The greatest intervention is the Incarnation – when God became man in Jesus Christ. So God at times does intervene, and sometime He does not.
But unlike the Calvinist, the Catholic does not see everything directly caused by God. Not even everything in nature is directly caused by God. In Matthew 8:26, Jesus rebuked a storm. How can God rebuke something that He directly caused? 1 Corinthians 15:26 says that death is an enemy. But how can death be an enemy if death is directly caused by God? Ecc 7:17 warns that if you are foolish, you can “die before your time”, which means that it is possible to die before God intended you to die. In the Catholic Bible, you also have the Book of Wisdom 19:6, which says “For all creation, in its several kinds, was being made over anew, serving its natural laws”. All these passages show that God does not directly cause every single event in nature to happen.
And Sirach 15:15-20 clearly teaches that man has a free will. It says “If you choose you can keep the commandments; it is loyalty to do his will. There are set before you fire and water; to whichever you choose, stretch forth your hand. Before man are life and death, whichever he chooses shall be given him. Immense is the wisdom of the LORD; he is mighty in power, and all-seeing. The eyes of God see all he has made; he understands man's every deed. No man does He command to sin, to none does he give strength for lies”. Unfortunately, the Book of Sirach, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite books in the Old Testament, is not in the Protestant Bible. This is one of the reasons why the Protestant Reformers rejected free will. There is no other clear passage to refute the Calvinist denial of free will when he quotes from Roman 9.
The Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Churches teaches “The dignity of the human person is rooted in his or her creation in the image and likeness of God. Endowed with a spiritual and immortal soul, intelligence and free will, the human person is ordered to God and called in soul and in body to eternal beatitude.” (MAN THE IMAGE OF GOD 358). The Catechism of the Catholic Churches teaches that God has set up all of creation to obey its own laws. “There exist interdependence and a hierarchy among creatures as willed by God. At the same time, there is also a unity and solidarity among creatures since all have the same Creator, are loved by him and are ordered to his glory. Respecting the laws inscribed in creation and the relations which derive from the nature of things is, therefore, a principle of wisdom and a foundation for morality” (1:2:1:354). Scientific laws are inscribed into nature by God. How different this is from Calvinism or Islam, which sees everything in nature as being directly caused by God’s hand!
Free will was taught by the Early Church Fathers.
Men are possessed of free will, and endowed with the faculty of making a choice.
Irenaus 120-170 AD (Against Heresies, Book IV Chapter 37)
Since man has free will, a law has been defined for his guidance by the Deity, not without answering a good purpose
Hippolytus (170 AD – 236 AD, The Refutation of All Heresies Book X)
Therefore it was proper that (he who is) the image and likeness of God should be formed with a free will and a mastery of himself; so that this very thing--namely, freedom of will and self-command--might be reckoned as the image and likeness of God in him
Tertullian (160 – 240 AD; Against Marcion Book II)
The Implication in our Defense of the Faith
A common argument among atheists is the purposeless suffering among creatures. C.S. Lewis once wrote that pain is God’s megaphone to get our attention, but atheists would argue why does this pain extend to poor, dumb creatures? They do not have the intelligence to rebel against God. Why does a baby seal get eaten by a polar bear? Why does a poor, helpless deer burn to death in a forest fire? Why do certain animals eat their children? To all this, the atheist assumes that the Calvinist position is the only Christian position – that all the cruel happenings in nature are directly caused by God. Many atheists say that they find the Deist position to be palatable, but reject the Christian position because they equate the Christian position to be the Calvinist position. But Calvinists do not have a monopoly to Christian philosophy.
The Catholic position is very close to the Deist position. The Catholic also believes that God has initially created the world and then allows its own course with scientific laws. That is why the Catholic is not opposed to evolution. The Catholic is not even opposed to the idea that some things have evolved by chance, only that the initial beginning has to have been created by God. And that in some process of evolution God breathed on the human species so that the human has an immortal soul. Also, the Catholic disagrees with the Deist that God could never intervene.
But let’s get back to those poor, suffering animals sometimes experiencing cruel suffering. The Catholic does not believe that God is ordering that bear to eat the baby seal, or that God has caused that forest fire to burn the deer. These things happen by chance. But there can also be someone else involved.
In Matthew 8:31, the demons in a possessed man begged Jesus to let them to enter a herd of swine. So if these demons could not torment a human, they would settle for some pigs. This gives us great insight into Satan and his demons. They are just plain mean! They are like a sadistic boy who enjoys pulling the legs off of caterpillars just for the fun of it. There are scores of demons, and it is possible that there is a certain hierarchy among them. It just could be that the lowest demons are too weak to be effective toward humans, so they may be assigned to wreak havoc on the animal kingdom. So they get their jollies in causing this senseless suffering on poor, dumb creatures. No reason to it. They are just that sadistic. This is just my opinion here. I have not read anything on the Church’s position concerning this.
But the main point is that not everything is directly caused by God. God created man and woman to have dominion over the world. But man rebelled, and God honored human's free will to rebel. But that meant that humankind lost its dominion to the devil. The world is now in the hands of the Evil One. So don’t blame God for the senseless suffering in this world. Blame the Devil.
Implication in our Prayer Life
And I sought for a man among them, that should build up the wall, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found none. Therefore have I poured out mine indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath: their own way have I brought upon their heads, saith the Lord Jehovah.
So let’s get back to this above passage in Ezekiel. God is actively seeking for someone to pray for Israel. But since He could not find anyone to stand in the gap for Israel, He allowed Israel to suffer the consequences of its actions. This shows us God’s attitude to our prayers. God sits back almost like a Deistic God, watching things unfold and allowing us to suffer the consequences of our actions. But God yearns so much to have a relationship with us that He is more than willing to intervene, if only we would pray. He seeks our prayers, and He promises us that prayer will change things.
So we do not pray that God changes His will, we pray that his will be done.
As a Protestant, I had a very difficult time with angels in the Bible. Often in the Bible, angels were used by God to carry out his will. An angel of death was sent by God to kill the firstborn of the Egyptians. An angel announced to Mary that she will give birth to Jesus. An angel warned Joseph to go to Egypt. An angel minstered to Jesus. Angels even bring the plagues in the Apocalypse. I asked myself this: Why does an infinitely powerful God need to use angels? Why did He not directly kill the Eqyptian firstborn? Why did He not personally tell Mary? Why did He not personally warn Joseph? Then it made sense to me as a Catholic. God does not need His angels. If he wanted to, He could have told the angels to just sit on the clouds and He will take care of everything Himself. But even though He could have done that, He chose not. He chose to bring about His will through secondary causes. He does not use angels because He needs them, He is just pleased to accomplish His will through them. This is why we pray to the sants, and especially Mary. It is not that God needs Mary and the other saints. It is just that, as God is pleased to work through the angels even though He really does not need them, so too does He work through the saints' prayers even though He does not need them. God is pleased to work through secondary causes, which includes His angels and His saints.
Implication in Our Responsibility
I once read that when we pray, we pray as if it all depends on God. And when we work, we work as if it all depends on us. We are living in a world that has certain laws, and those laws will happen. If we eat too much and do not exercise, we will become fat and unhealthy (I can personally vouch for this). It was not God’s will for us to be unhealthy. If we do not work hard, we may get fired or demoted. It was not God’s will for that to happen. Most of God’s commands are there as guidance on how we can most be adapted to our environment. We need to remember that our actions have almost automatic consequences. If we play with fire, we will get burned. If we have sex outside of marriage, we will suffer the consequences of venereal diseases and broken marriages. If we lie, we ruin our relationships with others. If spend more than we have, we will eventually fall into poverty. If we take drugs, we will ruin our bodies. When the consequences of our actions occur, we must remember that this was not caused by God, but by ourselves.
In Matthew 4, the Devil tries to tempt Jesus by saying that He should jump off the temple and the angels would save him. Jesus replied that we should not test God. Testing God is expecting God to violate the laws of nature to cover up our irresponsible actions. The law of gravity dictates that if you fall from a certain height, you will die. It would be sin for someone to jump with the expectation that God would shield him from the consequence of that action.
Atheists sometimes criticize Christians for using their faith as an excuse for living irresponsibly. So it is important that we Christians remember that there are consequences for our actions. But as long as we realize this, we are far more responsible than the atheist. We realize that our actions have consequences in this life but also in eternity. We realize that we must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ and give an accounting for all that we did while on earth (2 Cor 5:10).
Conclusion
God is pleased to work through secondary causes. He does not always directly causes things to happen. This is why we are able to do science. In fact, science would not have ever succeded if it was not this Catholic thinking.
Muslims and Calvinsts believe that every event was directly caused by God. If everything is directly caused by God, then there is no point to looking for scientific laws in the world. That would mean that the scientific laws could be applied toi God, and how can any law be ever imposed upon God?
Pagans believe that events in nature were caused directly by the gods. The sun is just a fiery chariot that is driven by the sun god. Earth is held up by Plato. Again, sience could never have succeded with this way of thinking. This is why we have centuries and centuries of paganism without any signiicant scientific inventions.
The Eastern religions tend to believe in pantheism, which is the belief that everything is God. A tree is God; a rock is God; we are God. The distinction between a tree, a rock, and us is an illusion. Everything is one, and everything is God. Again, science could not, and did not, emerge from this way of thinking. How can you study things, if you believe that everything is one, and all differences is an illusion?
And Atheism could never have brought upon science. Atheists like to say that they trust in science because they know that science works. But when science began this was not so. No one had any idea that science would bring us cars, television, radio, planes, medicine, etc. That only happened centuries later. Our first scientists were priest and monks. They used the cathedrals as observatories. Over half of the moon's craters were named after their discoverers, Jesuit priests. They wanted to study the world because they wanted to understand their Creator better, not because they foresaw all the marvelous inventions that would happen centuries afterward. If the Middle Ages were filled with atheists, they would not have done science. They do not believe in God, so why study nature to understand its Creator? Also, atheists are materialists. They believe that we should only believe what can be seen. Well, a free will cannot be seen. So atheists believe that all that we believe is a product of our genes or our environment. But if that is the case, then how can we ever trust our studying of the world? Our conclusions may seem rational, but they would be determined by non-rational forces. And finally, how could the atheists in the Middle Ages come up with scientific laws that govern the universe? Atheists tend to deny absolute truth. If there is no absolute truth, then how can it be true that there are absolute scientific laws that govern the universe? Scientific laws imply that there is order in the universe. But how can you have laws without a Lawgiver. How can there be order without a Grand Designer?
This does not mean that every little thing that happens in the universe is directly caused by this Grand Designer. The Catholic believes that there can be events within the overall scheme that God allowed to happen by chance. Since these events are chance, they can even be chaotic, or even senselessly evil. But still in the overall scheme, there is order. And since there is order, there are scientific laws within the universe.
So science could have thrived only within Catholic Christianity - not in paganism, not in Calvinism, not in the Eastern Religions, and defintely not in atheism. Skeptics like to argue that of all religions in the world, how can we say that ours is the only true religion. But the proof is in the pudding. It was in this religion, and this religion alone, that has brought us science. The reason that Western civilization is far more advanced than other civilizations is that Western civilization has been founded on Christian teaching. Christ said He is the light of the world, and that the world without Him is in darkness. Primarily this light is spiritual and moral, but He also brought us the light of science. Our world would still be in technological darkness if it was not for God visiting us in the person of Jesus Christ.
