Let it Be

Four Forces, The Beatles, and the Limitations of Naturalism

    There are, according to present physics, four primary forces in the universe which are now constant.  These are the weak nuclear force, the strong nuclear force, electromagnetic force, and the gravitational force.  These four forces each have a very precise frequency.  Some in the scientific community who are naturalist in their philosophy conclude from our understanding of these frequencies that we can claim to understand these forces as "Natural Laws".  They seem to imagine that they know how and why these forces work merely because they know their frequencies.  
    Now, I am not so privileged as these naturalists, for when I hear them make such claims I feel they have left out all the important parts of what they were exploring and all the most exciting and wonderful elements about these forces.  I think in metaphors and analogies.  I should like to draw up an analogy to show just what I mean about how little science has actually said about these forces when some of them claim to have said all there is to say.  
    Imagine, if you will, a deaf man from a culture without electricity who enters a room where a radio station is playing "Let it Be" by The Beatles.  A few other people are in the room listening and dancing to the music.  The man has learned sign language, and asks what they are doing.  "We're dancing to a song," the deaf man is told.  He sees that the person has pointed to the radio.  He looks and makes observations.  The dial is on FM 105.2.  The red lines showing the bass, treble and other modulations of the song are fluctuating in patterns similar to the movements of the dancers.  He places his hand on the radio and feels it pulsing as well.  He asks, "What is it?" and is told the name of the song and the band.  He concludes that The Beatles' "Let it Be" plays at 105.2 Frequency Modulation and its signature is a pattern of rising and falling registers that he can chart on a graph.  This is a "musical law" which fully encompasses the song's meaning, purpose, and description.  There is nothing more to say on the matter.  
    He writes this out in essay form and presents his finding to the man who was dancing to the music.  The man reads the essay and says, "No. You can't hear the music, so I get why you might think this, but I'm afraid there is a lot more to it."  He explains who The Beatles were, that 105.2 FM is one of many stations that can play the song, that a DJ selects the songs at each of the stations, and that the song has words which convey meaning and notes of music which impact the emotions of listeners and instruct them how to dance to the song.  He could go on and on, but the deaf man interrupts him, signing,  "We don't need any of that. The frequency and fluctuation patterns are sufficient, and, in fact, are all there is to the song.  They explain everything that I experience about the song." he is fully convinced he isn't missing anything.
    Naturalist Scientists, claiming that they fully understand the four primary forces of the universe and that there is nothing more to say on the matter, sound to me like this deaf man.  They don't ask the important questions like, "Who or what can account for these forces?  Why are they at these frequencies and not some other?  How and why do they act in these manners?" To go back to our analogy, they do not care who wrote the song, what the words or meaning are, or that the song is not necessarily restricted to the frequencies they call laws.  
    When they are told by others that God set the frequencies by design to precisely tune the universe to the necessary conditions for maintaining a universe with particular characteristics, they scoff and claim they do not experience such things and can fully understand what the forces are without such explanations.
    We see from this example that any view of science or the world which assumes a naturalistic philosophy is incapable of answering anything about the full essence of reality or the universe because science is limited to offering merely the description of the effects of the mysterious and magical spells or music at work within nature.  It has no way of telling us what the spells or songs were, why they work, their meaning, or their source.  They simply say they don't have a source or meaning, while having no evidence to support this claim.  They reach this foregone conclusion because their starting philosophy distorts their experience of reality.  They cannot hear the music playing because the philosophy of Naturalism acts like earplugs, not allowing them to hear the music to which others are dancing.  
    All we can do is invite them to take out the earplugs.  "What's the point?" they ask.  "Well", we might reply, "so that 'When you find yourself in times of trouble, Mother Mary can come to thee'".  "See," they tell us, "you're always looking for comfort.  Why do you need a crutch?  Put your earplugs in and just enjoy the beauty of the red lines of modulation and the constant 105.2 on the radio display.  Now that is a far more beautiful song than anything you claim to hear." 
    We don't want to give up.  We pity them.  But a friend comes up from behind, speaking words of wisdom:  "Let it Be".

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    Another way to put this just so it isn't left purely as an analogy because all analogies describing God must break down in the end, is to begin with Aristotle's four causes.  Aristotle posits four different causes for all events.  These are the material cause, the formal cause, the efficient cause, and the final cause.  The material cause of a table is the wood it is made from.  The formal cause is the shape of the table or plan for how to put it together (like blueprints for a house).  The efficient cause is the action taken to make the table: the act of carpentry.  The formal cause is the reason or purpose the table was made:  to sit at, to eat, write, etc.  
    Now science is pretty good at describing the material of the universe.  Even in this realm, however, science has some troubles.  Quantum mechanic's uncertainty principle is one problem.  It is troublesome enough that we keep splitting subatomic particles into even smaller particles with no end in sight.  The fact that some of those particles might better be described as "smeared probability patterns" rather than particles leaves us on rather shaky ground.  Then there's the comment of renown physicist Richard Feymann that, "Anyone who claims to understand quantum mechanics doesn't understand quantum mechanics."  Even more than this is the recent suggestion that all we have previously thought of as "all the matter in the universe" makes up only 4 percent of our universe.  The rest, these new theories claim, is composed of dark flow, dark matter, and dark energy which must have mass to fit the current mathematics, but each of these "dark"nesses are invisible and undetectable with any instruments we currently use to detect existing things.  
    Still, Science's progress in these areas are tremendous, admirable, fascinating and just plain fun.  Even so, all scientists are doing is naming things and describing how they interact with other things.  We have no actual idea what any of these things are.  "What is a quark?"  Answer:  "a subatomic particle". "And what is a particle?"  "A small piece of matter." "And what is matter?" "That which is composed of quarks." Ah, and around and around we go.  In short, we don't know anything about the material universe other than a description of what is happening.  
    Science has also done tremendous things in describing the shape of the universe, giving hints to what the blueprints might have been if there indeed were any blueprints.  They are mapping the known universe, gathering information about what the shape was early on, is "now" and will be in our future.  Some scientists seem to talk as if the four natural laws of gravity, electromagnetism, weak atomic force and strong atomic force seem to suggest that perhaps the universe was designed in such a way that life and intelligent life were a part of the plan.  
    Others do not like using this language, and perhaps rightly so.  Science is not cut out to answer that question.  It can describe the material universe in detail and in scope, but moving to design and still calling it science would be a categorical mistake.  This is why intelligent design is not science.  Then again, neither is suggesting that because of Darwin we no longer believed God was a part of natural development of life on earth.  That too is not science.  It is a philosophical and theological claim.  Most theological claims about God include claims involving the deity's necessary participation in the sustenance and maintenance of the universe at all times and in this light God's involvement in evolution would still be required for every step of any and all processes or it wouldn't work at all.  
    Science has no way of speaking within their field to these claims without making a categorical error and leaving science behind.  Scientists are free to speculate, but when they do they are not speaking as scientists but as philosophers and theologians.  They have not been trained in the rigors of these disciplines.
    The efficient cause of the universe can only be described in terms like The Big Bang, describing the action of explosion which seems to have begun the universe some 13-14 billion years ago.  The universe then "expanded" rapidly, "cooled" slowly, matter "condensed", stars and galaxies "formed", etc.  This describes the processes through which the events took place.  What actually caused the original explosion and why it took this particular form with these particular tendencies is outside the realm of scientific inquiry. It is also unclear why aesthetically pleasing, and testable mathematical regularities are found in our universe.  This is an unexpected phenomenon for non-theists.
    The formal cause of the universe, that is, the purpose or reason it was created and whether or not this universe has meaning is entirely outside the scope of science.  To suggest, as some do, that the universe has no final cause, is not a scientific claim for it has no naturalistic evidence to support it.  Nor CAN it have scientific evidence to support it.  There may be scientists who claim that there is meaning and others who claim there is not.  When they do so they are not speaking as scientists.  Once again they have crossed over into the fields of theology and philosophy.  A few scientists make good philosophers.  Many do not.  They have not trained their minds to think about these questions.  To most philosophers and theologians people like Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking do not talk very intelligently when they leave science behind and start suggesting conclusions about God.  
    Note that taking into account the findings of science is permissible when doing philosophy, and scientists making philosophical claims are free to use scientific findings as support for their philosophy.  They simply must recognize that they are no longer doing testable science, but have become philosophers.  
    My own claim above about the four regularities science calls "natural laws" utilizes a scientific claim within a philosophic construct to make a theological claim.  I claim that the fine tuning of the universe suggests to me an intelligent artist in a similar way that a song's fine tuning suggests intelligence and artistry behind the universe.  As intelligence and artistry in my experience suggest a personal mind I conclude that something with the capacities of a personal mind was the Creator who knows the final, efficient, formal and material causes in full.  That mind even knows what a quark actually is in a way we will never know.
Naturalists say there is no such mind, that there is no God. They suggest that the universe has no final cause. They do not do this for scientific reasons. They do so because they are imposing their naturalistic philosophy from the start. They are deaf to theological claims. When others tell them their is a composer and music and reason to dance, they shake their heads and roll their eyes.
 When people claim this amazing universe is not the product of a mind, I am admittedly baffled.  I cannot entertain in my mind such an absurd notion that the music of the spheres has no composer.  I try and I offer as sympathetic an ear as possible to those who disagree, but I don't suppose I'll ever understand how they can make what to me is a preposterous claim. To me, they sound like deaf people telling me The Beatles didn't write "Let it Be" and that there is no reason to sing or dance.