God, Chance and Necessity By Keith Ward

God, Chance and Necessity

By Keith Ward

Oxford, Oneworld, 1996. 212 pp. $14.95.

Theology Today, Apr 1998 by Richardson, W Mark

Keith Ward's God, Chance and Necessity is a very accessible, highly engaging work with the right title: It is a theistic interpretation of the interplay of chance and necessity in the context of contemporary scientific theory, ranging over topics in physical cosmology, evolutionary biology, and sociobiology. But it is also a well argued apologetic for theistic metaphysics in the context of an increasingly vocal and aggressive atheistic materialism espoused by several prominent scientists.




In recent years, scientists such as Peter Atkins and Richard Dawkins, among others, have reached beyond their scientific disciplines to endorse a materialistic metaphysics. With lab coats on, they claim that scientific theory and evidence has shown theistic faith to be suitable today only for the uneducated. Keith Ward, Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford, argues convincingly that such anti-theism is not an entailment of science as such; it is, instead, a postulate of faith. In a sense, then, scientists such as Dawkins and Atkins are men of faith who have taken science to be capable of demonstrating metaphysical postulates. This, ironically, was the mistake of earlier natural theologians about whom the skeptical philosophers (especially Hume) were devastatingly critical.

As a highly competent philosophical theologian and proponent of traditional theism, Ward teases out the distinction between science (of which he is quite respectful) and unconscious (or bad) metaphysics running through these popular atheistic works. His opening chapters are, in effect, a careful response to philosophical assumptions in Atkins' Creation Revisited, exposing the non sequiturs and logical weaknesses in Atkins' argument, even pointing out the irony of how Atkins' aggressive claims actually serve the theistic alternative: that God, as necessary being, is the only ground for possibilities of the kind Atkins describes.

In chapter one, Ward calls attention to the fallacy of "misplaced concreteness" in Atkins' defense of the following claims: "there is nothing that cannot be understood," and "physical reality is mathematics and mathematics is physical reality." The fallacy of "misplaced concreteness" (a term originating with Whitehead) is "to take the abstract for the concrete . . . and to see experienced reality as a product of confused perception." Atkins' epistemological optimism, which feeds his atheism, hinges on a rather unconstrained status given to mathematical abstraction. This mistake, according to Ward, combines with other familiar ones (such as confusing the whole of things with their measurable properties and confusing reference with its object) to support such strange assertions. At issue in the first chapter are opposing postulates of faith: either in divine omnipotence and necessity and the limits of human intelligence or in the limitlessness of human knowing and the superfluousness of God. Ward makes his case for the former clearly and persuasively.

The middle of the book turns toward biology and performs the same function with respect to Richard Dawkins' several books that link neoDarwinian biology with atheism. Ward's principal thesis here is that "natural selection" simply cannot explain emergent phenomena such as sentience, morality, appreciation of beauty, and purpose, unless, of course, one chooses to explain these things away by denying that they are anything more than epiphenomena or bi-products of the struggle for survival. Again, the tactic of the materialist seems to be that of reducing reality to its simplest measurable components, at the expense of a more complete understanding of our experience of reality. Alternatively, the theistic explanation of a necessary being, within and from whom all complexity and variation come to be, succeeds in comprehensiveness even if it remains incomplete in terms of control over details and offers little in the way of rigorous testing of hypotheses. After treating a number of themes in Dawkins' works, Ward concludes that what Dawkins finds unnecessarythe assertion of a creator God-is in fact indispensable.

A very useful short chapter, "The Metaphysics of Theism," nicely states the relation and distinctions between: (1) theism and materialism as opposing postulates of faith, (2) the metaphysical developments of these postulates, and (3) scientific theory. These distinctions are often confused and abused by writers who explore interdisciplinary relationships. This chapter also includes some very beautiful and succinct statements about the nature of belief in God and how it orients one in relation to God, world, and self.

If there is a weakness in this book this reviewer finds it in the treatment of the topic of "Brains and Consciousness" (Chapter 8). This chapter is really about many things, all too briefly treated, and with certainly too little said on the topic named in its title. Here, Ward discusses phenomenal consciousness that makes possible the kinds of relationships human beings have with God; he discusses the kinship between theism and epistemological realism that places proper value on the whole of experience; and he discusses the relation between the far future of the cosmos and eschatological hope. Regarding the first of these, Ward argues that no biological explanation can be given for the emergence of phenomenal consciousness. Quite apart from the justification for this, and his claim that explanation of consciousness must be in terms of purpose, he cites only one book in the field, Richard Taylor's Action and Purpose, which was written in the mid- 1960s. It would seem that the topic deserves more contemporary reading on the relation between brain and consciousness. In this respect, Ward's treatment of the topic is not like that of the cosmology and biology chapters where he more rigorously argues against contemporary opposing views.

In contrast to a criticism from one reviewer of this book, who wished that Ward had stuck to specifically Christian theism, I applaud the fact that Ward defends theism in general and did not particularize his position. This is often a useful strategy, especially in this case where it is the basic assumptions shared by all of the major monotheistic faiths that have been rejected by Atkins, Dawkins, and others.

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Although God, Chance and Necessity is best understood in the context of the debate to which I have alluded earlier, it is also a very instructive work for students doing science and theology interdisciplinary work. Ward draws careful distinctions between kinds of discourse that arise in such discussions-between metaphysics and science, for example, and the relations that obtain between them. It will also be useful to clergy who are looking for resources to help think through, and respond to, challenges from those elements of intellectual culture opposed to theistic faith. Ward combines elegant rendering of familiar arguments with his own creative contribution. He is tough minded, willing to make a clear and unhedged statement of classical theism within the contemporary framework, and relentless in his challenge of the materialistic alternative. This book displays a maturity and clarity far surpassing Ward's earlier works in the same genre of theistic apologetics in the context of scientific culture.

W. MARK RICHARDSON

Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences

The Graduate Theological Union

Berkeley, CA

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