Can science explain the order we find in the world, without God? Is the universe and all the
things in it the result of an absolutely random and absolutely unguided process?
Are we ourselves the result of such a process? Some say yes. They point to scientific discoveries
in quantum mechanics and also in the field of evolutionary biology, arguing that randomness
gives rise to the intricate complexity and apparent order that we see around us.
Some of them then use this to undermine belief in God, as if to say:
“we can explain everything we see without God.” In response, some Christians and other theists
have argued that chance events could not have given rise to this order we see around us,
and that we must instead posit that God has designed each thing
and has brought it into being in its final and irreducibly complex form.
And so it might seem as if we have to choose between God and randomness:
between a world where God is in charge with a plan for the cosmos, and one where there
is no plan, and no God in charge of it. But according to St. Thomas Aquinas,
both sides of this debate are making a mistake. In this video and the next, we’ll explore why.
What is randomness? In an earlier video, a physicist who is also a Dominican priest,
Fr. Thomas Davenport, gives some examples from contemporary physics. If you empty your junk
drawer (filled with things like pencil stubs, rubber bands, paperclips, and old takeout menus)
into a box and shake it up, the resulting position of each item in the box is unpredictable and could
even seem random. But as Fr. Thomas explained, this apparent randomness is not absolute,
and it exists within a wider context of order – for example, items of various
shapes fall into a position that minimizes gravitational energy as the shaking stops.
The point is that, when we use the word “random,” we usually mean something that is hard or
impossible to predict, or that does not follow any recognizable pattern. But that doesn’t mean
that it is absolutely uninformed by any order whatsoever, is without purpose or directedness
– or even less that it is uncaused. Such a view of absolute randomness is neither philosophically
coherent nor compatible with contemporary science. In fact, when contemporary science talks about
something as undetermined – whether it is the location of a paperclip in your junk drawer, or
the position and momentum of a subatomic particle – it is identifying an indeterminacy in a certain
range, but set in the context of a wider order. How does this work in quantum mechanics?
It might seem that, in that field, we find quite strong claims of indeterminacy.
At a minimum, quantum mechanics teaches that there is a limit on how well the actual conditions of
an object can be known – such as its position and momentum, and especially when we are talking about
very small things like subatomic particles. Now, some physicists think that a subatomic
particle does have a determinate position and momentum, and we just cannot observe or know it.
Others think that this is not just a limit on our knowledge; they theorize that the underlying
reality itself is undetermined and probabilistic. Even so, what ever the case, quantum mechanics
presupposes a wider order. A radioactive atom, like uranium, will either decay or
not decay – and when that decay happens may be unpredictable or even undetermined in principle.
But when it does happen, we know it won’t become, say, a bunny rabbit. We know that this event will
be characterized by a great deal of order: for example, energy and momentum will be conserved.
Even if the timing of the decay is undetermined, there still are patterns
and structures about how an atom will decay. Indeterminacy of this sort is not absolute
randomness – and this kind of indeterminacy is compatible with the views of St. Thomas Aquinas.
According to Aquinas, God is the only purely or absolutely necessary reality.
All other beings are contingent – that is, it is possible for them not to be.
Indeed, Aquinas holds that God has created more noble and higher beings than any material
creature, which he calls angels. They are purely spiritual beings, and so they are not affected
by the change and contingency that are an inescapable dimension of material reality.
As we descend from the highest things, from God, into the order of what is visible and material,
Aquinas thinks that we find more and more potentiality and thus more and more
contingency and indeterminacy. In fact, following Aristotle, Aquinas identifies
a principle of material realities called “prime matter,” which is purely potential,
and thus which is profoundly indeterminate. Likewise, Aquinas enumerates different kinds of
causes: some are necessary causes while others are truly contingent causes – there is, for Aquinas,
true chance and contingency in the world, and especially in the material world. All of this
is caused by God as a part of his providential governance of the world: God brings some things
about through necessary causes, and he brings other things about through causes and processes
that, seen within the perspective of this world, are truly contingent and even undetermined.
We will have more to say on precisely how Aquinas understands this in our next video.
For now, it is enough to say that, when physics investigates the building blocks
of our material universe and comes up against quantum indeterminacy,
we should not be scandalized. There is no need to worry that this means God is not in
charge. Far from it: for Aquinas, the answer is precisely that God shows his greatness in that
he governs the world in a vastly superior way to any creature: God can do so through things that,
within the framework of creation, are not determined to any necessary outcome or result.
Seen from our creaturely perspective from within the universe, those causes are truly contingent.
But from God’s perspective, since he establishes them in being and gives them their causal power,
he can use them to bring about a definite result according to his plan. That is because God is
the transcendent cause and source of all that is: He is not a part of universe but infinitely
transcends it, undergirding it and holding it in being, and giving to everything its actuality and
its power to cause, at every moment whatsoever. Let me conclude with one final point.
No matter what one says about indeterminacy or randomness, it will always remain the case
that there must be a cause for why there is something rather than nothing. Nothing
causes itself, nothing brings itself into being. And the wider framework of order that we find
all around us – within which science identifies indeterminacy and randomness
– is an even more powerful witness to the reality of a transcendent uncaused cause of all that is.
Philosophy can prove that there is one ultimate and first cause of all things, which itself is
uncaused – and, as Thomas Aquinas says in the Summa Theologiae, this cause is what we call God.
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