Towards a non-reductionist view of the universe: meeting points for open-minded theists and atheists

Introduction

In exchanges between Christians and atheists, the question ‘Does God exist?’ is often raised. But to ask this is to assume, wrongly, that there is a collective agreement on a definitive concept of God, even within the Christian tradition, let alone more widely. To be persuasive, however, any theistic position needs to offer a plausible account of the term’s meaning, consonant with contemporary understandings of the universe we inhabit.

The character of our universe

It is likely that religious traditions began with the attempt to make sense of the world in which people found themselves and to respond appropriately to what they encountered in it. The experience that we have all had of this encounter may, of course, be described in either religious or secular terms. We need a metaphysics that makes sense of the existence of a universe long before the appearance of life or ourselves on the scene. There is indeed ‘more than’ us to it. We humans did not invent the universe or make the ‘stuff’ of which we are made. Any thoughtful person experiences awe and wonder at the extraordinary scale, intricacy, variety and interconnectedness of the universe and at its ordered reliability. These can be recognized and appreciated by the religious and non-religious alike. While the concepts of both ‘creationism’ and so-called ‘Intelligent Design’ have been discredited, there is nonetheless a dynamism to be found in the workings of the universe, with what some will see as a purposive movement, evident on our planet in the processes of evolution, towards complexification and the development of consciousness and self-consciousness. Is it this dynamic that underlies the religious concept of God’s activity?

We learn about ourselves and the universe through a whole variety of disciplines within both the natural and the social sciences, from our own experiences, and from the reported experiences of others we trust. There is much common ground to be found in the wide acceptance of the findings of the physical sciences – and it is important to note the extent to which science, like religion, has to make use of metaphor to describe what it finds. Despite attempts to polarize science and religion and set them against one another, many religious scientists affirm a complementarity and compatibility between them. However, many philosophers – and scientists as well – reject ‘scientism’: the overambitious claim that the methodology of science can by itself provide a sufficient explanation of ‘all that is’. ‘Scientism’ is not in itself a scientific proposition, but rather a philosophical one, grounded in a reductionist – and purely physical – materialism. But most of us believe that there is a need to find room in our metaphysics for the ‘non-physicalist’ aspects of what we encounter, such as mind, values, emotions and artistic creation. We are embodied creatures but do not appear to comprise just lumpen ‘stuff’.

It is crucial to be clear how narrow or broad is the content being attributed to ‘matter’. Some confusion can arise about the positions held on this. For some, physical matter is all that there is. For others, the nature of ‘matter’ can be understood in a more ‘expansive’ way. For example, the ‘New Materialisms’ movement points in a non-reductionist way to ‘matter’ having a broader range of properties and capacities than is commonly assumed; and the radical philosophical concept of panpsychism suggests that all matter has a ‘mental’ aspect to it. Alternative concepts of ‘emergence’ seek to explain how the physical might have given rise to the phenomenon of mind. Accounting in a satisfactory way for the coexistence of ‘mind’ and ‘matter’ – and working out an encompassing relationship in place of an unbridgeable dualism – is a very difficult task, arguably the most significant problem facing science and philosophy.

Naturalism

We all live in the same world, but we ‘see’ and understand it differently. In recent years many philosophers have espoused a reductionist form of ‘naturalism’ to match the reductionism of a dogmatic materialism. But this position is increasingly being called into question, given its inadequacy in dealing with the territory of the human and social sciences, which study the biological, social and cultural aspects of human life. Some of those working in the human and social sciences do, of course, adopt a reductionist stance, particularly where there is a heavy emphasis on quantitative data to the exclusion of more qualitative approaches. But science in itself is not enough.

What might a non-reductionist understanding of the world look like? New concepts of ‘naturalism’ are currently emerging that embrace all that we find within the world – all that is ‘natural’ – including that which goes beyond a physicalist reductionism and which in consequence can accommodate both the conscious ‘mind’ and concepts of value and meaning. And perhaps ‘God’ too, depending on how that word is understood. The term ‘liberal naturalism’ – or, better, ‘expansive naturalism’ – which rejects as inadequate any narrow concept of the natural, has been used to describe this position. Positing a universe of interconnected relationships beyond the purely physical, it rejects as inadequate the picture of a crudely mechanical universe of ‘billiard ball’ encounters and leaves room for a concept of the ‘spiritual’.

Clearly, this more expansive concept of ‘naturalism’ sits better with an understanding of the human that is not deterministic but allows for free will as a genuine reality. While the existence of free will is a matter of philosophical debate, we do feel that we can make genuine choices. Indeed, those who favour a metaphysic of the world rooted in a purely deterministic physicality do not appear to live their lives as if they believe it to be true, but rather to operate on the basis that their actions and decisions have genuine meaning.

God as ‘Being itself’

Christian theology has always argued that God cannot be confined within human thought and concepts. Indeed, it suggests that God is unknowable in himself/herself/itself as distinct from the effects of the ‘divine’ that we encounter; and that we can describe God – inadequately – only through analogy and by studying what God has created. That having been said, within mainstream contemporary theology (but in line with authoritative figures of the past, if not with ‘folk’ religion), God is now frequently seen not as a being among other beings, but rather as ‘Being itself’. On this footing, God is not an entity or an addition to the universe, which is to be found there or not. God is not to be seen as an item of furniture in it, present or absent. Nor is God relegated to some ‘supernatural’ realm. As is often said by theologians, God and the world are one, not two; and the unsatisfactory historical concept of a two-decker (or even three-decker) universe has long been discarded. Rather, God is understood as being integral to the universe and omnipresent within it, holding it together as an interconnected and interdependent reality, which is why it is a universe – and one that shows every sign of being work still in progress. Further, on this basis God is held to be what constitutes and sustains the existence of a dynamic – not inert – universe, providing ‘the ground of our being’ and the source of all that is. In some ways, perhaps, God can be helpfully understood conceptually as being a ‘force field’ and thought of as a verb or adjective rather than as a noun. It has been suggested that God should be seen not just as ‘the ground of our being’ but also as ‘the ground of our becoming’.

An approach of this kind avoids creating a dualistic framework of God and the world by emphasizing instead a unity in the ‘totality of all that is’ and links well to an approach which rejects a reductionist physicalist understanding of the universe.

Panentheism

A theological position that finds increasing favour today is that of panentheism, which sees the world as being in God – indeed, what might be described, in religious terms, as a God-soaked world. Panentheism – unlike pantheism, which sees God and the world as being identical – also understands God as being more than the world. Although the term itself has been widely used only in recent times, the panentheist position is one with strong historical roots in a variety of religious traditions, combining as it does the traditional concepts of ‘immanence’ – to be found in the world – and ‘transcendence’ – that which lies beyond the world.

Sometimes the term ‘transcendence’ is used today in the same way as ‘supernatural’ has been used in the past, avoiding the latter term because of the associations it has collected over the years in terms of ghosts and the ‘spooky’. ‘Transcendence’ is also often used in a secular way to describe experiences that go beyond the everyday, usually characterized by a sense of connection to something greater than that. So there is some scope for confusion here, with the term sometimes implying that there is more to reality than we humans can perceive – the ‘more than’ that lies ‘beyond’ – or, alternatively, or as well, to cover the special moments when we have a ‘transcendental’ experience that breaks through our everyday experience of life, perhaps in the face of a stunning landscape or when hearing an uplifting piece of music. Are these all different experiences or similar experiences that are differently understood? In this context there can be a knife edge’s difference between a religious and a secular experience, even though the two frameworks within which they are understood may appear to lie far apart conceptually. Perhaps they differ only in name?

An interventionist – or omnipresent – God?

Some of the imagery associated with God in the past has been of a being, in ‘heaven’, external to the world but intervening in it from time to time – a view that panentheism counters. There is obviously great moral difficulty with the concept of a God who sporadically intervenes within the natural order – from the ‘outside’, as it were. Why would God intervene to heal one child’s cancer but not that of another? Why did God not intervene to stop the Holocaust? Arguably, it is more plausible to understand God as providing the dynamism that powers the evolutionary process; exercising ‘pressure’ towards cosmic goals; and offering resources, which are always and consistently available to all, of healing and what might – in terms of Christian theology – be called ‘grace’, a concept with parallels in a number of religious traditions and perhaps best understood as a proactive ‘enablement’. This kind of God is not in any sense seen as an ‘absentee’ – as in deism – but rather is understood to be omnipresent in an active way, while respecting the ordered nature of a universe that may indeed offer resources and capacities we have yet to fully understand and appreciate. It is, for example, significant in this context that the world offers mechanisms of healing, whether in the case of a cut finger or the reclamation of land scarred by mining.

The concept of an omnipresent, rather than an intermittently interventionist, God does, however, put into question the status – within a variety of religious traditions – of accounts of exceptional ‘miracles’ that appear to ‘break’ the natural order. For many Christians, the universe will be seen as miraculous in itself – the source of dynamism in the world and of the evolutionary development of life and consciousness – and the notion of sporadic ‘miracles’, rupturing the orderedness of nature, will be found by them to be an obstacle to faith rather than the reverse. While most Christians would probably accept the traditional understanding of some miracles as historical events, from early times there has been some unease about doing so (as in Judaism too). In the light of greater scientific understanding and developing New Testament scholarship, an increasing number of Christians today, while being committed members of a Christian community, would see miracles more in symbolic terms than as historical events, albeit in some cases related to them. Moreover, the boundaries of what is ‘natural’ – even if unusual – may have to be expanded in the light of greater knowledge.

A ‘personal’ God?

Understanding ‘God’ in a panentheistic way, not as a being among other beings but as Being itself and the source of all that is, and as omnipresent may, collectively, offer a more plausible theistic concept of God and one more congruent with the findings of science. But how does this fit with the traditional concept of a personal God, which is an important source of comfort to many people? Complementary strands of belief and imagery can be found in religious traditions that offer both a ‘personal’ God and the more abstract God of metaphysical reflection. We humans are ‘persons’ in relationship with others and with all that is, including, therefore, in religious belief, the ‘omnipresent’ God. Indeed, relationship has been seen as being at the heart of God. In the Christian tradition, God is love. Theological language has often spoken of God in terms of a personal relationship with the believer, whether in prayer or in religious experience, and that experience, for a believer, will be a very personal one.

Seeing God in abstract terms as ‘Being itself’ and as ‘non-interventionist’ may therefore seem too sterile, particularly given that personal language about God has predominated in religious worship and devotion, if not in philosophical argument. On the other hand, unnuanced concepts of a ‘personal’ God can run the risk of domesticating divinity in a reductionist way – and, indeed, trivializing it. Nonetheless, not to use personal language, in a religious setting at least, risks inadequately expressing the experiences to which people have testified across many centuries. However, because personal experience is inevitably personal, it is difficult adequately to convey its content to others who have not themselves had such experiences; this is also the case, of course, with other kinds of experience, such as love and beauty.

For many people, personal religious language of the traditional kind will seem natural in prayer and worship, even if, in theological terms, they do not see God as a ‘person’ rather than some dynamic presence. A basic religious experience described by many is a consciousness of absolute dependence on ‘something’ – other and beyond – that grounds our very existence and makes possible everything we experience and everything we do. And ‘God’, or some equivalent, is the name that has traditionally been given to this ‘other’.

What lies beyond – as well as within – oneself can be encountered as a presence in one’s life, in a way that gives rise quite naturally to the use of personal language to describe what is experienced variously as support, care or judgement by some ‘higher power’ or ‘transcendent’ reality. In consequence, religious belief and worship often express themselves in ways that suggest that God is, by analogy, in some ways like us – even though much greater and more powerful. However, religious traditions, as in the apophatic tradition in Christianity; in Judaism, which even refrains from the naming of God; and in the Hindu injunction neti neti (which can be translated from the Sanskrit as ‘not this, not that’) teach their followers that God is beyond human imagining and to beware of assuming that the human mind can encompass the divine. Indeed, we are warned against devoting too much time to speculation about the ultimate, the absolute, the sacred or the divine, rather than focusing our attention on the needs of others. If religious experience is essentially a sense of being close to God, then this is arguably not at odds with the concept of God offered in this article, which is consistent with strands of the tradition from within which it has developed and which can stand on its own as a philosophical construct, without making use of the ‘personal’ language appropriate in the context of religious experience and devotion.

Ethics and goodness

Crucially, goodness has been understood to be a key attribute of God – a source of value and a sense of ‘oughtness’ – the ‘moral imperative’ of our consciences that call for a response from us in a transformative experience which invites us to go beyond self-centredness in living fruitful lives and gives those lives meaning. Religious traditions offer grounds for hope that the ‘totality of what is’ is fundamentally on the side of goodness, linked to a belief that we too should be a source of goodness. The accompanying assumption is that we possess free will in making moral choices and deciding how to act in this world. Moreover, the way in which the universe is constructed seems to have the consequence that doing the ‘right thing’ leads to genuine human flourishing.

On this understanding, a belief in God clearly stands over against the sense of meaninglessness that can lead to a corroding cynicism, alienation and self-centred hedonism, undermining our capacity to have trust in the universe or in others around us. But there are varying routes for the construction of a strong ethical framework and the development of a sense of meaningfulness. Humanists also act ethically, but without grounding a moral imperative in a religious belief, as distinct from an assessment – in the light of their experience – of what kind of actions lead us to fruitful lives. Some people may see belief in an inherent goodness in the world as a false optimism flying in the face of reality. For others, both religious and non-religious traditions offer in their different ways a framework for their values, with much common ground in the ethics they uphold, the virtues they seek to promote, the values they aim to uphold and their understanding of what constitutes human flourishing, despite the current differences of views to be found on, for example, end of life issues.

The ‘Nones’ and spirituality

In recent years, sociological studies have shown a decline in the number of people in the UK who claim to be adherents of Christianity and a growth in the number who do not profess to follow any religious tradition – the so-called ‘Nones’. However, as people search for meaning in their lives, surveys also show that, alongside those who follow the historical religious traditions or belong to one of the multiplicity of New Religious Movements, a significant proportion of ‘Nones’ declare themselves to be ‘spiritual’, though not religious.

The concept of the ‘spiritual’ is a slippery one. It encompasses a wide range of beliefs and practices, arising from a variety of personalities and experiences. Some will overlap with those of ‘religious’ people. After all, historical religious traditions have developed their own spiritualities as one of their core elements. However, a considerable number of those who see themselves as ‘not religious’ (having turned their backs on institutional religion) seek to develop their own personal spirituality in reflecting on their own lives and experiences. And, more generally, there are many varieties of atheism, just as there are of religious practice and belief.

So, sociologically and philosophically, the overall scene is a very diverse and complex one. However, such evidence as there is suggests that only a minority of people have adopted a considered determinist materialism, which is at odds with the lived experience of most people and is inimical to a broader and fruitful dialogue between different perspectives.

Finding some common ground?

There is a need to encourage dialogue across institutional boundaries between those who continue to follow historical religious traditions (which are themselves still developing), those who are adopting newer forms of spirituality, and those following a humanist or some other non-religious/philosophical tradition. There may well be more commonality between all of them than their different terminologies would suggest, but in exploring this we need to find a shared language with which those of different persuasions can feel comfortable. We also need to show humility in recognizing that our current understandings and commitments, while held with integrity, are necessarily provisional, being subject to revision in the light of further evidence, experience and reflection.

This article has focused primarily on issues of a metaphysical and theological character. Might some common ground emerge here, given the potential areas of overlap between the humanist tradition and some contemporary theological positions? Possibly this could be based on one or more of the following points, which start from a very general base while moving towards a more ‘religious’ position:

A sense of ‘oneness’ in the universe of which we find ourselves a part.

Of course, in themselves, none of these points requires acceptance of any religious tradition, even if they may parallel the foundations for one.

A shared endeavour?

Arguably, the crucial metaphysical divide today in philosophical/theological positions lies between those who espouse a determinist reductionist approach and everyone else – rather than between the ‘religious’ and ‘non-religious’ as such. Certainly, as recent experience with interfaith dialogue has illustrated, there is scope for a fruitful engagement between all those who are interested in drawing on the wisdom of different traditions, both religious and secular. And in that process there is a need to be ready to discard our, possibly long-standing, misconceptions of ‘the other’. On this basis, we can come together to seek common ground, hopefully encouraging what is valuable and fruitful; cultivating attitudes of awe and wonder, thankfulness and mutual respect; pursuing the shared goals of social and economic justice; recognizing our interconnectedness and mutual interdependence; and shouldering the shared responsibility we have for the future of our planet. But we shall not be able to create and identify a broad consensus of this kind – if this is indeed a possibility – if we spend all our time sitting in our own different tents rather than talking with others!

It would be helpful, therefore, to develop over time, as this dialogue progresses, new organizational frameworks and networks to promote it (especially if traditional institutional structures decline, with the risk of a damaging increase in individualism). The increasing proliferation of science and religion projects and associations is an encouraging example in this respect. Our experiences, including our relationships with others and with the world around us, are inevitably personal. But seeking to ground more firmly our sense of meaning, purpose and value can be a shared endeavour, despite our differences, and can help us to overcome these.