Cosmologists are Theologians
Cosmologists are Theologians
The above statement may seem like a fallacy to most — especially those who are inclined towards the sciences. “Theologians?” you might be thinking; “didn’t they go extinct 1500 years ago? What could cosmology possibly have to do with the study of God?”
Now, I don’t mean this literally (necessarily). Merely, this is an opinion piece that is meant to challenge some viewpoints within cosmology that I have found to be rather closed-minded. This is going to be controversial, but regrettably, I believe these viewpoints are due entirely to the lack of philosophy woven into today’s science — especially within the domain of cosmology.
Formally defined, cosmology is the study of the universe and its origins whereas theology is the study of God and religious beliefs. These might not seem immediately related, but if we change our perspective, it could be the case that they study the same x — via very different methods.
I studied astronomy and philosophy at university, so I came in contact with a diverse set of professors and thinkers: those who were very open-minded to creative ideas and novel approaches, as well as those who were rather closed-off given the importance of their field.
Over the course of my academic career, I interacted with and was instructed by astrophysicists and cosmologists at the cutting edge of their domain; I was disappointed to see that they seldom looked up from their coding terminals to think for a second about the meaning of their field.
“Has it not occurred to them what it is that they are studying?” I often thought to myself.
I was poked fun at when my fellow astrophysics majors and professors learned that I was a philosophy major as well — and I always found this to be strange. But unfortunately, the role of philosophy within science is seldom appreciated, and this has devastating consequences.
Scientists like Stephen Hawking and Neil deGrasse Tyson are famous for dangerously proclaiming that philosophy is “dead” and “useless” — but the irony is that, in making such statements, they are doing philosophy.
The physicist Carlo Rovelli makes this argument in his paper “Physics Needs Philosophy. Philosophy Needs Physics”:
“Science is not simply an increasing body of empirical information we have about the world and a sequence of changing theories. It is also the evolution of our own conceptual structure. It is the continuous search for the best conceptual structure for grasping the world, at a given level of knowledge.” (p. 486)
Scientists lost in the fog of dogma like to pretend that science is objective, but regrettably, it is not. Reality is objective, but science — our way of modeling reality — is as influenced by personality and culture. Ideally, it wouldn’t be so, but it is.
We pretend that science is objective by choosing one philosophy of science — one methodology — and acting like it is the one true method of empirical discovery. Hawking and Tyson have simply chosen a philosophy and refuse to change it.
Why is this dangerous? Let’s consider what would have happened had we not overthrown the methodology of the Catholic Church in favor of the scientific method that we use today: we never would have overcome geocentrism; we never would have discovered the true age of the Earth — some 4.5 billion years older than expected; we never would have uncovered the secrets of natural selection or germ theory. The list goes on.
So now consider, what are the chances that our current method for doing science is the best methodology for modeling the universe? Just as Einstein’s gravity overcame Newton’s — so too will a new theory of gravity overcome that of Einstein. The same is true of philosophies of science.
Einstein himself said: “A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight is — in my opinion — the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth.” (The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein)
Hopefully, if we have done our job correctly and have woven philosophy into our science, we will look back on today’s science and enjoy the same laugh we do now when we look back on the “science” of the church.
“What were they possibly thinking?”
This is especially true of cosmology; some sciences need philosophy more than others, and cosmology is one of them. No matter how you look at it, cosmologists study C/creation; it’s just that most of them don’t want to use a capital C. So why is this? Isn’t this simply a choice of notation?
Capital-C-Creation and capital-G-God have negative connotations within the sciences — for fair, though outdated, reasons. We tend to shy away from these terms as scientists because they are negatively affiliated exclusively with the 3-O God of Abrahamic religions. Within the context of these religions, this version of God has a fair amount of evidence working against His existence.
This God is not the only version, and the truth is that if any scientist studies God and Creation, it is the cosmologist. Cosmologists are studying the universe on its largest scales, from the beginning of time to its very end; if that isn’t modern-day, empirically-guided theology, I don’t know what is.
The theologians of the year 500 were the cosmologists of today; the only difference is their methodology. The questions were the same; our way of answering those questions has changed significantly. That is the only difference.
There is something to be said about this dichotomy across history, as well as within ourselves. Any scientist who believes in the scientific method should be agnostic about the existence of God — whatever “God” means to you. In fact, if your sole philosophy is the scientific method, to be an atheist goes against the tenets of good science: we cannot proclaim that x does not exist on the basis that there is no evidence for the existence of x; we can only say that there is no evidence for x.
If we have no evidence for x, the only belief that we are justified in holding is that we have no reason to believe in the existence of x. This is agnosticism about x: suspending a belief until we have thorough evidence.
It would be premature to say that x does not exist on the basis of no evidence of x. This is atheism about x: jumping the gun before we have evidence. This distinction is crucial. Agnosticism leaves room for investigation, theory, and creativity that atheism does not. Aren’t investigation, theory, and creativity things any “seeker of truth” should value?
I think we should make agnosticism about Creation the status quo amongst scientists. This might be too much to ask for some, but if we approach cosmology with an agnostic approach, then it becomes possible to consider the field from more perspectives than one. The cold and dark field of cosmology then gains some color and light.
By now, I have certainly angered both modern-day cosmologists and theologians equally, so let me make it worse by injecting some pure speculation.
In studying philosophy, I came across a plethora of fascinating and creative theories of God and the universe that were based on a more rational than empirical approach. I found myself loving to try to merge these theories with the astrophysics I was coming to worship.
The philosopher Spinoza, for example, argues in his Ethics for a form of pantheism. This is the view that everything — nature, reality, the universe — is God. He argued for this perspective to overcome the interactionist problem of dualism, but those philosophical weeds are not necessary to explore in this paper.
The universe is governed by laws, so the modern, scientifically-inclined twist on Spinoza’s pantheism equates the physical laws of the universe with God. Many of the more philosophically-engaged scientists have gravitated towards this perspective of God — including those like Einstein.
Carl Sagan speaks to this in his book Broca’s Brain: “[Einstein] considered God to be essentially the sum total of the physical laws which describe the universe. I do not know of any compelling evidence for anthropomorphic patriarchs controlling human destiny from some hidden celestial vantage point, but it would be madness to deny the existence of physical laws.” (p. 330).
Atheism and pantheism skew away from pure agnosticism by the same degree in opposite directions, but I believe that pantheism is infinitely more productive than atheism. I myself tend to be agnostically inclined towards pantheism because I find it adds immense depth and color to our study of the universe.
Similarly, if any modern-day cosmologist were to implement this slight change in perspective, they might find themselves looking up from their coding terminals more often to think about their place in the universe they are studying.
You are studying the universe in its entirety — across all space and time. You study the shadows of the earliest moments in our reality’s history — the how and why of our cosmos. You study Creation using telescopes rather than literature, and that is empirically-guided theology: embrace it.
Written by Curran Collier
2024.09.26
Originally published to Medium
