Thomas Aquinas vs. The Intelligent Designers
What is God’s Finger Doing
in My Pre-Biotic Soup?
prepared for the
Gonzaga Socratic Club
by
Michael W. Tkacz
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Gonzaga University
Where are the Thomists?
A few years ago I received a phone call from Dr.
Stephen Meyer, then on the philosophy faculty at Whitworth
College. He had just returned from an international conference
devoted to challenges to evolutionary biology from Intelligent Design
Theory. There was a bit of urgency in Dr. Meyer’s tone, so I
agreed to meet him. As it turned out, he had something of a
complaint to make, for he opened our meeting by showering me with a
series of questions: Where are the Thomists? Where are the
Catholics? How come you Thomist guys are not out there defending
us Intelligent Designers? After all, we are on the same side, are
we not? Asking Dr. Meyer the occasion of this outpouring of
questions, he explained that he and the other organizers of the
conference had invited several Thomists to participate and he was
dismayed that, far from expressing sympathy with the Intelligent Design
Movement and its challenge to Darwinism, they were quite critical of
the Movement. Perhaps feeling a bit betrayed, he wanted to ask
me, a Thomist, just what was going on.
The debate between Creationists and Evolutionists
has been going on for a long time now and neither side has been
especially interested in what Thomism—a minority position to be
sure—has had to contribute to the discussion. To the extent that
philosophers working in the Thomistic tradition are considered at all,
both sides seem to have been dissatisfied. Secular Darwinians
often view Thomists as just another species of literalists attempting
to substitute the Book of Genesis for good biology—indeed, the only
difference between Thomists and Protestant Creationists, on their view,
is that Thomists do it in Latin. On the other hand, Protestant
Creationists have often viewed Thomists as already half-way to
secularism and naturalism—no doubt due to insufficient attention to the
reading of scripture.
Now come the Intelligent Designers who have revived the debate with
evolutionary biology on scientific grounds. This new challenge to
Darwinism attempts to show that the biological evidence supports
gradual evolution of species less than it does direct creation by a
Divine Designer. Given the philosophical sophistication of their
arguments, it is perhaps natural that Intelligent Designers would
assume that they had allies among traditional Thomists who are known
for their systematic defense of the doctrine of creation. Yet,
Thomists have not generally been quick to jump onto the Intelligent
Design bandwagon. As Dr. Meyer discovered, the Intelligent Design
Movement has, overall, not been well-received in Thomistic
circles. So, the question is: Why? Why have Thomists,
who share with Intelligent Designers so many of the same concerns about
the secularization of our society, not been more supportive of the
Movement? Why have so many Thomists hesitated to join Intelligent
Design Theorists in their campaign against Darwinism? Why do some
Thomists, far from being supportive, appear even a bit hostile to the
Intelligent Design project?
A bit of attention to the Thomistic philosophy of creation may help to
answer these questions. More importantly, investigating the
coolness of Thomism toward Intelligent Design Theory may help to move
the debate away from its polarized Creation vs. Evolution state toward
a discussion that is more philosophically productive. A look at
the Thomistic understanding of God’s relationship to nature may even
suggest a third alternative to the already well-known positions of the
Darwinians and Intelligent Designers.
Thomas Aquinas on Creation
Back in the days of Thomas Aquinas himself, there
was a scientific revolution that seriously challenged the traditional
Christian doctrine of creation. From the time of the early
Church, orthodox Christians have held that the universe was created by
a transcendent God who is wholly responsible for its existence and the
existence of everything in it. In fact, this is a teaching that
Christians inherited from the Jews and shared with those of the Islamic
faith. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, however, a
great historical change came to Western Europe as the works of the
ancient Greek natural philosophers and mathematicians became available
in the Latin language for the first time. Especially important
among these works were those of Aristotle who had worked out the basic
principles of nature and developed a methodology for scientific
research that promised, in time, to unlock the secrets of the universe.
This scientific revolution caused great excitement
among the Latin-speaking scholars in the then new universities of
Europe. They avidly pursued research in many of the natural
sciences and, essentially, founded the historical tradition of
experimental science that continues today. It was not long before
progress was being made in such fields as mathematical astronomy,
optics, meteorology, botany, zoology, and other sciences. At the
same time, the new science was a cause for concern, for some
theologians saw in it a challenge to the doctrine of creation.
Specifically, many held that there is a fundamental incompatibility
between the claim of the Greek naturalists that something cannot come
from nothing and the Christian teaching of creation ex nihilo.
Indeed, the Greek philosophers used their fundamental principle as
grounds for arguing that the universe is eternal: there can be
neither a first nor a last motion. It certainly appeared to many
of the contemporaries of Thomas Aquinas that one cannot have his
Christian cake and scientifically eat it too; Christianity and natural
science seemed to be incompatible and one must choose between the two.
Into this medieval debate comes Thomas
Aquinas. He pointed out that the Christian conception of God as
the author of all truth and the notion that the aim of scientific
research is the truth indicates that there can be no fundamental
incompatibility between the two. Provided we understand Christian
doctrine properly and do our science well, we will find the truth—not a
religious truth and another scientific truth—but the truth, the way
things actually exist and function. Yet, what about the apparent
conflict between notion of creation from nothing and the scientific
principle that for every natural motion or state there is an antecedent
motion or state?
Thomas points out that the judgment that there is a
conflict here results from confusion regarding the nature of creation
and natural change. It is an error that I call the “Cosmogonical
Fallacy.” Those who are worried about conflict between faith and
reason on this issue fail to distinguish between cause in the sense of
a natural change of some kind and cause in the sense of an ultimate
bringing into being of something from no antecedent state
whatsoever. “Creatio non est mutatio,” says Thomas, affirming
that the act of creation is not some species of change. So, the
Greek natural philosophers were quite correct: from nothing,
nothing comes. By “comes” here is meant a change from one state
to another and this requires some underlying material reality, some
potentiality for the new state to come into being. This is
because all change arises out of a pre-existing possibility for that
change residing in something. Creation, on the other hand, is the
radical causing of the whole existence of whatever exists. To be
the complete cause of something’s existence is not the same as
producing a change in something. It is not a taking of something
and making it into something else, as if there were some primordial
matter which God had to use to create the universe. Rather,
creation is the result of the divine agency being totally responsible
for the production, all at once and completely, of the whole of the
universe, with all it entities and all its operations, from absolutely
nothing pre-existing.
Strictly speaking, points out Thomas, the Creator does not create
something out of nothing in the sense of taking some nothing and making
something out of it. This is a conceptual mistake, for it treats
nothing as a something. On the contrary, the Christian doctrine
of creation ex nihilo claims that God made the universe without making
it out of anything. In other words, anything left entirely to
itself, completely separated from the cause of its existence, would not
exist—it would be absolutely nothing. The ultimate cause of the
existence of anything and everything is God who creates, not out of
some nothing, but from nothing at all.
In this way, one can see that the new science of the thirteenth
century, out of which our modern science developed, was not a threat to
the traditional Christian doctrine of creation. To come to know
the natural causes of natural beings is a different matter from knowing
that all natural beings and operations radically depend on the ultimate
cause for the existence of everything: God the Creator.
Creation is not a change. Creation is a cause, but of a very
different, indeed unique, kind. Only if one avoids the
Cosmogonical Fallacy, is one able to correctly understand the Christian
doctrine of creation ex nihilo.
Thomism and the Autonomy of Nature
Two implications of this distinction between change
and creation are worthy of note here. One is that God creates
without taking any time to create, he creates eternally. Creation
is not a process with a beginning, a middle, and an end. It is
simply a reality: the reality of the complete dependence of the
universe on God’s agency. The other implication is the radical
otherness of God’s agency. God’s productive causality is unlike
that of any natural cause, for God not only produces what he produces
all at once without any process, but also without requiring anything
pre-existing or any preconditions whatsoever. God does not act as
part of a process, nor does God initiate a process where there was none
before. There is no before for God; there is no pre-existing
state from which God’s action proceeds. God is totally and
immediately present as cause to any and all processes.
On the basis of these implications for the correct
understanding of creation, modern Thomists distinguish between the
existence of natural beings and their operations. God causes
natural beings to exist in such a way that they are the real causes of
their own operations. Indeed, if this were not the case, then it
would not have been that God created this natural being, but some
other. Salmon swim up stream to spawn. In creating such a
natural being, God created a fish that reproduces in this way. If
God created salmon without their natural reproductive agency, then he
did not create salmon, but something else.
Consider another example: a large quadrapedic
mammal, such as a hippopotamus, gives live birth to its young.
Why? Well, we could answer this by saying that “God does
it.” Yet, this could only mean that God created
hippopotamuses—indeed the mammalian order, the whole animal kingdom,
and all of nature—such that these animals have the morphology, genetic
make-up, etc. that are the causes of their giving live birth. It
cannot be that God “reaches into” the normal operations of
hippopotamuses to cause them to give live birth. Were one to
think that “God does it” must mean that God intervenes in nature in
this way, one would be guilty of the Cosmogonical Fallacy.
Now, if this distinction between the being of
something and its operation is correct, then nature and her operations
are autonomous in the sense that nature operates according to the way
she is, not because something outside of her is acting on her.
God does not act on nature the way a human being might act on an
artifact to change it. Rather, God causes natural beings to be in
such a way that they work the way they do. Hippopotamuses give
live birth because that is the sort of thing they are. Why are
there such things as Hippopotamuses? Well, nature produced them
in some way. What way did nature produce them and why does nature
produce things in this way? It is because God made the whole of
nature to operate in this way and produce by her own agency what she
produces. Thus, God remains completely responsible for the being
and operation of everything, even though natural beings possess real
agency according to the way they were created.
Intelligent Designers and the
Cosmogonical Fallacy
In light of this sketch of the Thomistic account of
creation and natural cause, one can perhaps understand the reluctance
of contemporary Thomists to rush to the defense of the Intelligent
Designers. It would seem that Intelligent Design Theory is
grounded on the Cosmogonical Fallacy. Many who oppose the
standard Darwinian account of biological evolution identify creation
with divine intervention into nature. This is why many are so
concerned with discontinuities in nature, such as discontinuities in
the fossil record: they see in them evidence of divine action in
the world, on the grounds that such discontinuities could only be
explained by direct divine action. This insistence that creation
must mean that God has periodically produced new and distinct forms of
life is to confuse the fact of creation with the manner or mode of the
development of natural beings in the universe. This is the
Cosmogonical Fallacy.
Among the most sophisticated attempts of Intelligent
Design Theorists to counter the Darwinian account of the formation of
organisms is the Irreducible Complexity Argument of biochemist Michael
Behe. He argues that there are specific life forms and biotic
subsystems which are irreducibly complex and which could not possibly
be brought about by means of natural selection. Irreducibly
complex systems and forms reveal intelligent design in nature and,
therefore, indicate the reality of an Intelligent Designer of the
universe. Intelligent Design Theorists are often perplexed and,
even a bit put out, that Thomists do not acknowledge the cogency of
Behe’s argument. After all, Thomists are quite open to the notion
that creation provides evidence for the existence of the
Creator—cosmological arguments for the existence of God based on the
order of nature have long been the special preserve of Thomism.
Why, then, have Thomists not been among Behe’s most
ardent supporters? First of all, they would agree with many
biologists who have pointed out that Behe’s claims of irreducible
complexity fail to distinguish between the lack of a known natural
explanation of the origin of complex systems and the judgment that such
explanation is in principle impossible. Thomists, however, would
go even further than most biologists by identifying the first claim as
epistemological and the second as ontological. Now, a Thomist
might agree with Behe’s epistemological claim that no current or
foreseeable future attempt at explanation for certain biological
complexities is satisfactory. Yet, a Thomist will reject Behe’s
ontological claim that no such explanation can ever be given in terms
of the operation of nature. This ontological claim depends on a
“god of the gaps” understanding of divine agency and such an
understanding of God’s action is cosmogonically fallacious.
Conclusion
There is, of course, much more to be said on this
topic. Let me be the first to admit that this presentation
provides, at best, a sketchy account of the issues. For one
thing, a complete treatment of the relationship of Thomism and
Intelligent Design Theory must take account of the variation of views
on each side. Nonetheless, what has been presented here regarding
the identification of the Cosmogonical Fallacy provides some insight
into the reasons for fundamental disagreement between Thomists and
Intelligent Design Theorists. The careful distinctions of Thomas
Aquinas clarifying the Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo exclude
certain ways of conceiving of God’s relation to the natural
world. Thus, despite their many shared cultural and religious
concerns, those who do philosophy in the Thomistic tradition and those
who have devoted themselves to the Intelligent Design Movement find
themselves on opposite sides of the crucial issue of the nature of
divine agency.
Bibliographic Note
There is a growing body of literature on Intelligent Design
Theory. Consult the bibliographies available on the website of
the Discovery Institute (www.discovery.org) for a list of titles.
For the Thomistic reaction to Intelligent Design Theory, see Aquinas on
Creation, tr. Steven E. Baldner and William E. Carroll (Toronto:
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1997); William E. Carroll,
“Creation, Evolution, and Thomas Aquinas,” Revue des Questions
Scientifiques 171 (2000): 319-47; Marie I. George, “On Attempts
to Salvage Paley’s Argument from Design,” in Science, Philosophy, and
Theology, ed. John O’Callaghan (South Bend: St. Augustine’s
Press, 2004). For theists, much of the debate over evolutionary
biology is related to issues concerning the proper way to understand
the opening lines of the Book of Genesis. For a fine discussion
of the Genesis text in the context of the evolution debate see Leon R.
Kass, “Evolution and the Bible: Genesis 1 Revisited,” Commentary
(November 1988): 29-39.