Resolved: Science Has Made God Redundant

by James Como (October 2015)

As I write I am invited to speak at the Belfast C. S. Lewis Festival in November. The gig may yet fall through, but if it does not, then, in addition to the opening address and an after-breakfast talk, I am expected to debate, speaking in opposition to the title above. Now, if this were an academic debate, the affirmative side would have spoken first, making (we would expect) at least a prima facie case in favor of the proposition, in which light I wonder: Would it have treated God as our omnipotent, omniscient, loving creator? Would it have shown Him to be redundant? Would it have demonstrated science to be the agency of that redundancy? These are their requirements for proof.

. . . there are no good philosophical arguments for denying God to be the explanation of the universe. . . . This being so, there is no good reason for philosophers not to return once more to the classical conception of their subject.

My final preliminary would be a caveat. It matters that we not confuse technology with science: invention is not discovery. If the affirmative side claims that because our robot overlords can beat good players at chess or at Jeopardy and therefore those overlords have replaced God, then I say to them: happy praying, and maybe change your reading and movie-going habits.

Then there is David Bentley Hart, a philosopher and Eastern Orthodox scholar of religion. His two dispositive books are Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies and God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss. The sub-title of the former speaks for itself, I think. Hart brings formidable learning to the debate, a depth of scholarship and forensic skill so far beyond that of his antagonists that the over-match becomes ludicrous. The second book has a richness of theological thinking absent from Atheist Delusions, beginning where it leaves off. There, commenting on the physicist Vincent Stegner, who wrote How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist, Hart writes:

Had he only inquired any decently trained philosopher with a knowledge of the history of metaphysics, ontology, and modal logic could have warned him of [his] catastrophic category . . . but apparently he did not inquire, and as a consequence the book . . . turned out to be just a long non sequitur based on a conceptual confusion and a logical mistake.

The rest of the book both resolves the confusion and corrects the mistake. It reminds me of the tiresome fact that the Movements Scientists, like the New Atheists, have not bothered with the opposition, have not done their homework. Does any one realistically suppose that the morally impoverished Pinker has read The Abolition of Man?

[Science] engages the world and inspires the best in us. But the pursuit of truth should not be driven by zealous agenda. Now should it overreach and speak with righteous authority where it??s on unsolid ground. That??s not science ?C and let??s not allow those who falsely invoke its name to diminish us.

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James Como is professor emeritus of rhetoric and public communication at York College (CUNY). His latest book, The Tongue is Also a Fire: Essays on Conversation, Rhetoric and the Transmission of Culture . . . and on C. S. Lewis will be published by New English Review Press on November 1. Biographical and contact information is at www.jamescomo.com.

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