On November 22, 1951, His Holiness Pope Pius XII delivered an address before the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that was to set an extremely important precedent regarding the theme that occupies us today, namely, the proofs of the existence of God in the light of modern natural science..
The character of that address is not dogmatic, nor does it even carry the importance of an encyclical; rather, it has the sense of an encouragement to continue investigating, within the properly scientific domain, the traces or vestiges of the Creator in His work.
It is worth noting that the Pontiff’s text is very solidly documented regarding the knowledge attained by science up to that time, especially considering that at the date it was delivered E. Hubble’s discovery at the Mount Wilson Observatory in 1929—that the galaxies were receding at a velocity proportional to their distance and following a universal constant (H)—was still very recent. A little earlier, Hubble himself (1889-1953) and H. Shapley (1885-1972) had unveiled the structure of the galaxies at the dawn of the twentieth century.
In 1927, C. Lemaître (1894-1966)—a Belgian Catholic priest, astrophysicist, and professor and president of the P.A.S.—on the basis of the General Theory of Relativity, explained the recession of the galaxies with the hypothesis of an expanding universe.(1) Lemaître’s work was made known to the public in 1930 by Eddington, one year after E. Hubble’s momentous discovery.
And this papal address was delivered one year before the theory of the expanding universe, or classical Big Bang, was made publicly known for the first time with scientific precision, its author being Gamow (1952), a Russian physicist exiled in the United States in 1934. He had expounded his theory three years earlier, publishing in 1932 “The Creation of the Universe” .
Thus the papal address is in keeping with the times and abreast of the latest discoveries and theories of the natural sciences, and for that reason it displays a plausible knowledge and precision.
The present Pontiff also addresses scientific cosmology on the occasion of an inaugural address at a scientific symposium in the aforementioned academy (1981). To this the well-known English theoretical physicist S. Hawking bears witness in his work A Brief History of Time, though in a superficial and very imprecise manner.
In reality, on this occasion the Pontiff, just as Pius XII had done in the aforementioned address, holds that a scientific hypothesis on the origin of the world such as that of the Big Bang “leaves open the problem concerning the beginning of the universe. Science cannot by itself resolve that problem; it requires the knowledge of man that rises above physics and astrophysics and that is known by the name of Metaphysics; above all it requires the knowledge that comes from the Revelation of God.” (2) These words of the Pope place the question of the origin of the universe on a plane that exceeds that of the natural sciences, finding its place in First Philosophy and Revelation, in perfect consonance with what Pius XII said in his time.
Apart from these two pronouncements, the Popes did not subsequently take up the question of the origin of the world or cosmological problems.
Today it is my intention to investigate this question, especially as regards the points of departure of each of the five ways, in relation to the natural sciences.
Every man inevitably confronts the problem of God, by his very intellectual nature, which becomes conscious in act through the perception of that which first falls within his intellect—being, in which all his ulterior conceptions are resolved; this, the finite being, he perceives everywhere in the world, because being is everything that in some way is; it shows itself independent of him, yet limited, and without having in itself the reason for its existence. Together with the perception of the world, we come to know our own existence, with the same characteristics and the same questions, limits, insufficiency, and imperfection, with the same inevitably contingent and therefore dependent character. This approach is, in essence, similar for men of all ages.
In the particular situation of man at the end of the twentieth century, we find ourselves in a very different situation because of the impact that scientific and technical advances have on the culture in which we happen to live.
The natural sciences invade our whole existence and explain to us the most varied phenomena in which we take part each day. But the sense of being is absent from them, “so that—in the words of Jacques Maritain—when we happen to experience the impact of being upon our spirit, it appears to us as a kind of intellectual revelation, and we become clearly aware at once of its power of awakening and of liberation, and of the fact that it entails a knowledge separated from the sphere of knowledge proper to the natural sciences. At the same time we understand that the knowledge of God…is first and foremost a natural fruit of the intuition of existence.”(3)
But once our particular situation has been noted, let us take a quick look at the contributions that the sciences themselves offer us as points of support for the search for God.
At present, as Cornelio Fabro said in 1979 on the occasion of the centenary of the Aeterni Patris, “The certainty of the believer, for one who views it from outside, might perhaps confirm and exasperate the separation between Christianity and the modern world and sharpen the opposition between science and faith, between nature and Grace, between philosophy and theology, which now seems to have reached its maximum point of tension and saturation…”.
First of all, the distinction between science and philosophy must be reaffirmed, inasmuch as they belong to radically diverse intentional perspectives. Modern science has developed ever more autonomously with respect to philosophy, inventing its own methods according to mathematical models and schemas.
Therefore, the progress of science is by no means a proof or confirmation of modern philosophy. Science, both in its research and in its methods, is in continual evolution and progress; whereas the notion of truth and the fundamental relation of man to being can never be changeable. Hence our intention in this work—with a most exalted concept of the dignity of man and with a firm conviction of the possibilities of his intellect—to take as our own the duty of discovering in nature, and on the basis of the results shown to us by the sciences that deal with it, the signs of the Supreme Intelligence.
Saint Thomas develops, in several of his works, at the thresholds of his theology, solid arguments that he calls Ways, to demonstrate the existence of God. Although we have before us several of his formulations, we shall take as our principal text—being the most systematic—that of the Summa Theologica, with the celebrated Five Ways, which, together with other truths of the natural order, constitute preambles to the Faith.
These arguments rest upon five evidences of the sensible order, or distinct modes of being, accessible to all minds.
First Way
The First and most evident, in the words of Saint Thomas, is the way of Motion, which is founded on the evidence of the motion or change that occurs in nature.
In a first approximation it is manifest to us that everything changes in the world—a fact so evident that it constituted one of the two poles that astonished man at the beginnings of Greek philosophy; famous and commonplace is the doctrine of Heraclitus, and the partial solutions to the problems it entails offered by Plato, Parmenides, etc., down to Aristotle, who defines it in his Physics (the first systematic Philosophy of Nature), defining it as “the Act of that which is in potency insofar as it is in potency.”(4)
Aristotle is the first to have formulated this way, which he develops in Physics VII and Metaphysics XII, but Saint Thomas then incorporates it into his own Metaphysics of Being and reformulates it, following Aristotle faithfully yet incorporating him as a solid point of support for his own doctrine.
It is not the purpose of this work to comment on the entire Way in its exact metaphysical scope; rather, our proposal is to show that, transcending the domain of the common man, the natural sciences have much to show today about motion or change in nature, the point of departure of the first way.
In its first formulation by Aristotle twenty-four centuries ago, the cosmos, for the Greek world, was of characteristics completely different from what we understand today by universe. It was what is known as the Static Universe, in which motion of every kind occurred only in the “Sublunary World”; the Microcosm, or the universe at the level of the elementary particles, was not yet known. The stars, or celestial bodies, had only local and uniform motion.
Today, far from being narrowed down, change in nature takes on a universal character both at the level of the macrocosm and of the microcosm, from the elementary particles to the universe as a whole.
The principal discoveries of the last 160 years will change the overall view of the universe. In the middle of the last century, Helmholtz formulates in 1847 the laws of Thermodynamics and the principle of the conservation of energy in its First Law, where he states that in a closed system the total energy always remains constant throughout its transformations.
In 1850, Rudolph Clausius, W. Thomson, and Lord Kelvin enunciate the Second Principle, called “Of the degradation of energy, or increase of entropy,” and it states that in a closed system energy transformations tend to assume the most degraded or disordered form, which is the caloric, uniformly distributed. Entropy, or the measure of the disorder of a system, tends to increase if the system is closed. This is then carried to the universal level, since the universe itself is a closed system. The universe is heading toward a thermal death; it ages and has its time fixed.
The entire universe is in becoming. Its origin was not yet spoken of, and already its end was being thought of on scientific grounds. Physics told us what Faith had already taught us: that our world must come to an end. This expresses what Saint Thomas will later say in the third way: contingent beings have the potency not to be; that is, the Second Law of Thermodynamics gives us a clear indication of the contingency of the universe as a whole.
In the second half of the nineteenth century the spectroscopic methods are developed, which showed us the physico-chemical nature of the stars and made possible the transition from astronomy to astrophysics. This discovery will show us the physico-chemical unity of the universe, which is constituted of the same elements, with a great predominance of H+ and He.
The stars also mutate, for within them there develops an energetic process that ends up exhausting all their energy, as if a fuel were being consumed.
Space is traversed by electromagnetic radiations and by cosmic rays (subatomic particles) that follow Maxwell’s laws.
In 1924, Hubble, with the great telescope of Mount Wilson, begins the discovery of the galaxies. Each would have approximately 100 billion stars, and according to some, there would be about 100 billion galaxies. The galaxies cluster together and form clusters and superclusters that give us an idea of the structure of the universe on a large scale. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, belongs to the Virgo supercluster.
In 1929, E. Hubble formulates his discovery of the recession of the galaxies (according to Hubble’s Law): the galaxies recede at a velocity proportional to their distances. This is the true key to present-day cosmology, for it is the verification of a mutable behavior on a large scale of the whole universe. The flight of the galaxies assigns to the entire universe a univocal temporal direction and leads one to think of a primordial moment of concentration of the mass of the whole Cosmos.
The Universe would have something analogous to a history; it is no longer the motion in the sublunary world that Aristotle and the men of his time conceived, but rather the whole Cosmos is in constant mutation.
The situation is no different at the subatomic level, for there is a whole world to investigate: that of quantum mechanics, the physics of subatomic particles..
We believe that up to this point we may take as sufficiently confirmed, on a cosmic scale, the point of departure of the First Way of the Angelic Doctor: “We see that in the world there are things that are in motion.” Moreover, the notion of rest is entirely transcendent to the physical world, which is the world of our experience.
Second Way
This way starts from the evidence of efficient causality in the world. Saint Thomas refers us to Aristotle in Book II of the Metaphysics as his source in this way, but in that text of the philosopher we see that he treats of causality in all its kinds, yet does not present an elaborate proof of the existence of God, and still less a mention of efficient causality properly as Thomas understands it; so that it would seem to be a formulation proper to the Saint, with Aristotelian elements, in the context of Thomas’s doctrine of being. But in any case this is only a comment, for this question is not the subject of the present study.
Saint Thomas begins his formulation by saying: We find that in this world of sensible things there is a determinate order among the efficient causes;
This proposition with which the way begins, evident to Saint Thomas, was called into question not only from the philosophical side with the empiricist critiques—D. Hume, J. Locke—the nominalist—William of Ockham—the conceptualist—I. Kant—but also in this century by physical science itself.
In the year 1900, Max Planck discovers the quantization of energy and the discontinuous character of energetic processes, which gives rise to quantum mechanics, that part of physics which studies subatomic phenomena. This discovery revolutionizes the scientific world, for the absorption or emission of radiant energy by jumps, and not in a continuous manner, creates an image of the physical world different from the classical model accepted until then..
In 1927, W. Heisenberg proposes his uncertainty principle, according to which, in the physical world of the electron and other subatomic particles, and in the phenomena that occur at values smaller than Planck’s constant h = 6.55 x 10 to the -27, there exists an interaction between the observed physical system and the observer that provokes in the former a disturbance impossible to avoid and to evaluate adequately; consequently, at that level the predictability of physical phenomena is lost, since it is impossible for the observer to establish a causal relation. That is, being unable to perceive a physical system below the order of Planck’s constant in its situation A (antecedent), we cannot calculate situation B (consequent).
Heisenberg himself concludes:…..“but in the precise formulation of the law of causality: ‘When we know the present sufficiently, we can calculate the future,’ it is not the consequence that is false but the premise. In principle we cannot know the present in all its minute details. Therefore every observation is a selection among a multitude of possibilities and a restriction of the possible future. Then, the statistical character of quantum theory is so bound up with the imprecision of all observation that one might feel induced to suppose the existence, behind the perceived statistical world, of a real world in which the law of causality holds; but such speculation seems to us, we insist, sterile and meaningless. Physics must only formally describe relations of observations; moreover, the state of affairs can be characterized much better thus: Since all experiments fall under the laws of quantum mechanics and thereby of equality, the invalidity of the law of causality is thus definitively established by means of quantum mechanics.” Thus far Heisenberg. With this, the determinism of the classical physics of I. Newton collapses, and it therefore also provokes reactions within the world of physics, as we shall see further on.
Until that moment, in the domain of the physical sciences, the world of I. Newton reigned, in which the law of causality and a knowledge of mathematical exactness made possible expressions such as that of Laplace: “We must therefore consider the present state of the universe as the effect of its previous state and as the cause of the one that is to follow. An intelligence which, at a given instant, knew all the forces that animate nature and the respective situation of the beings that compose it, and which moreover were sufficiently vast to submit these data to analysis, would embrace in the same formula the movements of the largest bodies of the universe and those of the lightest atoms; nothing would be uncertain for it, and both the future and the past would be present before its eyes.”.
To declare the invalidity of causality means neither more nor less than to affirm the impossibility of science, for science is a knowledge of things through their causes—understanding by these all the kinds of causes (efficient, final, formal, and material), although physico-mathematical science deals fundamentally with the efficient and material cause. The gravity of the situation was understood by scientists and philosophers alike, among them Max Planck himself, who went so far as to propose a new statement of the principle of causality in order to preserve it, or A. Einstein himself, who refused to accept the new situation as valid.
Now then. What is the scope of Heisenberg’s argument?
In the first place, one must not confuse a physical law of fundamentally empirical scope with a self-evident principle that finds its proper place in metaphysics.
Causality, from an empirical point of view, appears as a mere succession of phenomena in which the antecedent is always considered as the cause and the consequent as the effect; but in this order we are never in a position to prove that the consequent (effect) internally and necessarily involves the antecedent (cause), since a phenomenon, as a purely empirical fact, does not necessarily presuppose another. This is the plane on which causality can be denied. But the principle of causality is of a different order; it connotes an inescapable ontological aspect, because it is a relation of being to being, the effect receiving the being that the cause gives it. Hence the cause is active and the effect passive; the cause is act, whereas the effect is in potency with respect to the perfection that the cause communicates to it.
As a self-evident principle, Saint Thomas expresses it with various formulas, but he prefers, in order to show its per se nota character, the formulas of participation; for the being by participation evidently has received being and therefore is caused, as he says in an unsurpassable way in a formula that recapitulates all the others in the Summa Theologiae, in the treatise on creation: “because from being a being by participation, it follows that it must be caused by another. Consequently, such a being cannot exist without being caused”. I q.44 a.1 ad 1.
That is, participated being belongs to the essence of the caused.
Causality thus understood, in its proper gnoseological place, reveals in all its dimension the confusion of planes on Heisenberg’s part, for the principle of cause is evident in itself and to all; it suffices merely to enunciate it correctly. Since it expresses an ontological relation of being to being, it is of the metaphysical order and does not depend on any measurement of the physical type—if the redundancy be permitted.
In everyday life, all of us human beings have a perception of the sensible being—it is not yet a metaphysical perception, but it allows us to establish the first immediate and evident relations; one of them is that of cause and effect in the production of things in everyday life. Let us take an example: In the writing of this text I see three species of causality: pure spiritual causality, expressed in the will and in the direction of the ideas; that of the hand that writes; and finally the movements of the pen that traces the characters on the paper. This is a correct phenomenology: perceiving the phenomenon, I open myself to being and can perceive the cause as evident. But Heisenberg too knows this, for he had to admit that the cause of the uncertainty in quantum experience lay in the observer.
With this we may take as evident the point of departure of the second way of Saint Thomas.
Third Way
In the third way, the Angelic Doctor starts from contingent beings, or beings that can be or not be, in order to ascend to the First Being that is Necessary in itself.
Saint Thomas would have taken this way from the Arab Avicenna; it is also found again in the Jewish philosopher Maimonides, but Saint Thomas develops it as the third way of the Summa Theologica, reformulating it according to his own doctrine of being.
In the first way it has been demonstrated that God is the First Unmoved Mover, in the second the First Uncaused Cause, and in this one it will be demonstrated that He is the First Necessary Being and Cause of all the rest.
The point of departure is sensible, as in all the ways, and it starts from the universal phenomenon of generation and corruption, with the expression: “in nature there are beings that come into being and beings that are destroyed”.
With regard to the first way, when we analyzed motion according to the natural sciences, we saw that this phenomenon of production and destruction is universal, from the atomic nuclei to the galaxies, and from the most elementary living beings to man. Moreover, the very conception of an expanding universe, with all the precisions of the classical B.B., shows that contingency in the world is universally manifest. As we descend to the subatomic world, the necessity of physical laws becomes more imprecise. It is a commonplace among theoretical physicists to say that “all calculations of physical phenomena must be made within the uncertainty principle”(6).
On the other hand, since our very perception of subatomic phenomena is affected—as Max Planck would show—the emission and absorption of energy on the part of bodies, which is the basis of physical bodies, is discontinuous, contrary to what was believed in classical physics.
So that today the notion of contingency leaves the sublunary world and becomes universal, from the subatomic phenomena to the cosmos as a whole.
This is the point of departure of the third way, by which the Angelic Doctor invites us to ascend with our intellect toward God.
Fourth Way(7)
The fourth way, perhaps the most complex and metaphysical of all, starts from the degrees of perfection that exist in beings. For the elaboration of this way, Saint Thomas takes elements from Aristotle, the Pseudo-Dionysius, Proclus, etc.(8)
In this way Saint Thomas makes use of the notion of participation and starts from the continuity of being in the sensible order.
Today the natural sciences have verified, even in its most intimate details, an ascending order of complexity and perfection in corporeal beings. In the formation of the Cosmos, present-day cosmological theories show us the appearance of atomic nuclei, from hydrogen to the heaviest nuclei, covering the whole spectrum of the Periodic Table. Spectroscopy (9) has shown the existence and abundance of all these elements in the universe.
One also sees the exquisite range of points of contact among living beings that all biologists today accept, although the first to bring it to light in the last century was Darwin(10), who perceived it without fully understanding it. It is the manifestation of Aristotle’s scala naturae, which shows the continuity of being in the sensible order, an expression of the metaphysical participation of each species in the higher species, and the participation of all things with respect to God in the order of being. A participation that shows, and is founded upon, the transcendent causality of God, who is the First Cause over the second causes, which operate according to the mode of being of each one. This is a dynamic order, as the sciences of observation show ever better, for the corporeal being is being in motion, as has been seen up to this point.
Thus far the fourth way.
Fifth Way
The fifth way is taken by Saint Thomas, as he says, in the Summa contra Gentiles Book I, ch. 13, from Saint John Damascene, De fide orthodoxa, Book I, ch. 3. In the text of the Summa Theologiae he says: The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. We see, in fact, that things which lack knowledge, such as natural bodies, act for an end, as is evident from the fact that they always, or nearly always, act in the same way, so as to obtain what is best for them; whence it is clear that they achieve their end not by chance, but by intention. Now, whatever lacks knowledge does not tend toward an end unless it is directed by someone who understands and knows, as the arrow is directed by the archer. Therefore there exists an intelligent being who directs all natural things to their end, and this being we call God. (11)
This way, which is founded on the finality that all of nature possesses, is perhaps today the most manifest.
The men of science of modern times have always objected to the finality that philosophers find in nature; for that reason it is particularly interesting to know the opinions and findings dominant in the scientific world on this subject.
Finality is manifested not only in the operation of natural beings, but these are made in such a way that they seem to be oriented toward a result.
In the last century this notion was assailed from the side of the particular sciences, on the grounds that it was not scientifically verifiable. Indeed, authoritative voices such as that of Claude Bernard have written: “The final cause in no way intervenes as a law of present and efficacious nature” (12)
It is true that the final cause does not readily allow itself to be seen in the scientist’s laboratory, but it in no way contradicts what is verified by experiment; rather, it enriches it, giving it a deeper rational dimension.
But in present-day cosmology, the universe as a whole is considered to have a manifest order of finality, and this can be clearly seen from the side of the positive sciences, with a doctrine that appeared within scientific cosmology from 1960 onward: the so-called anthropic principle.
Modern cosmology had adhered to the Copernican principle, according to which no privileged position in the universe is to be attributed to the earth or to man, at least from a scientific perspective.
According to the cosmological principle, nothing suggested that the solar system, the Milky Way, or the local group, or the local Supercluster were special situations within the monotony of a uniform cosmos.(13)
In 1961, at Princeton, R. Dicke (14) publishes a study in which he shows that the age of the Universe was exactly that required to permit the formation of inhabited planets like the Earth.
With the assumption of an evolving Universe, T (the age of the Universe) has its value in some way limited by the biological requirements found in the epoch of man.
The first of these requirements is that the Universe, and therefore the Galaxies, have aged sufficiently for elements other than Hydrogen (H+) to exist.
It is well known that carbon (C) is required for the chemistry of life. An upper limit for the epoch of man lies in the requirement that he have a habitable home in the form of a planet revolving around a luminous star(15)
This reasoning, striking in a scientist, agreeably surprises us; in reality it is not scientific in the modern sense of the term, but properly philosophical, for it reasons taking into account the finality of its object. This would be the first proposal of the so-called weak anthropic principle.
In 1973, Collins and S. Hawking publish an article in which they ask why the universe is isotropic (the same in all directions), in which they answer: The isotropy of the universe and our existence are both the result of the Universe expanding just around the critical value (of mass density, with omega less than or equal to 1 but close to that value). (16)
In 1974, B. Carter (17) at Cambridge publishes the anthropic principle in its strong formulation, which reads thus: “The universe, and therefore the fundamental parameters on which it is based, must be such as to permit the creation of observers within it at some stage.” Paraphrasing Descartes: Cogito ergo mundus talis est.
Setting aside the Cartesian mention, which has little to do with an argument of a finalist cast—or at least with connotations such as this one has—and which probably has to do with the interpretations and the role of the observer in quantum mechanics, what Carter notes is that the fundamental constants of the cosmos, in their mutual relations and with their exact numerical values, are absolutely necessary to permit the existence of life and of man, to the point that, were they to vary even minimally, man could not exist.
That is, in its strong version, “the universe must possess the properties that permit the development of life within it, at some stage of its history.” This formulation also allows one to say that the principle in question is not only anthropic but also biotic, for it applies to every living being.
The anthropic proposition within scientific cosmology invites us to some reflections.
The physical world, according to the present state of science, centers on four fundamental forces according to the latest discoveries of particle physics.
In the first place, the force of gravity, the electromagnetic force or energy, the strong attractive force that binds the particles composing the atomic nucleus, such as protons and neutrons, and the weak attractive force. According to the dynamic equilibrium of these four forces, all the bodies of the universe are organized. For example, if there is a greater density of mass, there will be a greater gravitational predominance, which, past a critical value, produces a gravitational collapse; were it the reverse, the characteristics of
of grouping, the cosmic matter dispersing and thus preventing the formation of galaxies, stars, and planets. In turn, according to an ideal equilibrium for the ends of our universe (which is the only one of which we have experience), from these conditions a determinate time is required to produce all the requirements indispensable for intelligent life. To broaden the panorama—and why not, the astonishment that moved the scientist to speculate on this principle—the physical constants, that is, the values around which our universe is ordered, are not statistically the most probable but, on the contrary, in such a way that we can say that it appears, from the scientific point of view, finely tuned, or in fine attunement with life. As J.J. Sanguineti says: “Nature manifests itself as an authentic cosmos in the ancient sense of the Greeks, that is, as a very specific mathematical harmony, designed so that the planet of life and man fit perfectly within it..”
With what has already been said, we can conclude that the Universe in its totality moves and acts for an end, whereby it shows itself to be thought out by an intelligent being, who is the one who directs it to its end, and whom we call God, as Saint Thomas teaches us, and as the natural sciences allow us to affirm with rigor in our time, at the end of the twentieth century.
Conclusion
What I have written does not claim to be a development of the ways with an updated formulation, but rather to examine the points of departure and some concepts that are implicated in their development, which today might be called into question.
It is, I believe, invariable how notorious the points of departure of the ways are for the common sense of men of all ages, because, being everyday evidences, they are firm supports as a first step for ascending to the Creator. Chesterton used to say: Give me anything in nature and it will serve me as a point of departure for a way toward God. I fully share the position of the brilliant English writer; he is not mistaken, for to begin any way to demonstrate the existence of God, only an existent is needed.
In this study I wished to give the floor to the natural sciences of our time, in order to put to the test, to assume with a more rigorous sense, or indeed to enrich with new contributions our common-sense truths, in the light of present-day knowledge.
I must make some clarifications:
In the first place, I have given the floor fundamentally to physico-mathematical sciences, such as theoretical physics, scientific cosmology, astrophysics, and quantum mechanics, though only reviewing the aspects of those disciplines pertaining to my subject of study. These sciences, within the Thomistic sapiential framework, are the so-called middle sciences, in which mathematics (2nd degree of abstraction) is applied to physics (1st degree of abstraction).
In the second place, let us bear in mind something that is of no small moment:
a) Mathematics puts ontology in parentheses and ignores existence(18)
b) Physics and empiriological analysis presuppose the existence of their object but do not treat it.(19)
c) Metaphysics, on the other hand, starts from one existence in order to arrive at another existence; the act of being is its goal, and in being it resolves all its subject matter, so that it is there that the ways to the existence of God find their gnoseological place; but since the point of departure is a sensible existent, it will be the sciences of observation that are called to enrich our perception of those points of departure.
Now that this study is concluded, I believe the balance is positive, above all as regards the drawing near of the sciences—and more than anything of scientists—to the Creator at this end of the century. Scientists, as such, do not have to occupy themselves with philosophy, but as men they find it inevitable to live with a determinate and accepted universe of ideas in which to inscribe their existence; therefore it is better to know some basic things than to live confused, or enslaved to one’s own ignorance, for what is not known is invented when it becomes indispensable to us.
Finally, I shall recommend once more: in order to reach God as the transcendent cause of all that is, we must always start from an existence in order to arrive at the Pure BEING that is the reason of the whole universe—that is, from one existence to another Existence that, properly speaking, does not exist but simply IS.
The “five ways” to the existence of God in the light of modern science.
Author: Guillermo Alberto Romero
NOTES
1. Pius XII and the Proofs of the Existence of God. Address to the P.A.S., November 22, 1951, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 44, 1952, pp. 31 to 43.-
2. John Paul II, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 73, 1981, pp. 669-670.-
3. J. Maritain, Aproximaciones a Dios, Ed. Encuentro, Madrid, 1994. Trans. R. Rovira, pp. 12 and 13.-
4. Aristotle, Physics VII…
6. S. Hawking, A Brief History of Time,
7. S. Theol. I, q. II, c. Fourth arg.
8. Cornelio Fabro, Drama del hombre y misterio de Dios, pp. 362 and ff. Ed. RIALP SA, Madrid, 1977.-
9. J.J. Sanguinetti, El origen del Universo, pp. 151 and ff., Ed. UCA, Buenos Aires, 1994.
10. Ch. Darwin, On the Origin of Species,
11. Summa Theologiae I pars q. 2 a. 3 c.
12. Lessons on the vital phenomena common to animals and plants. Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, Paris, 1966
13. J.J. Sanguineti, op. cit., p. 223
14. R. Dicke, Dirac’s Cosmology and Mach’s principle, Nature. 192. 1961 New York
15. ibidem, pp. 440 and 441
16. Collins, S. Hawking – Why is the universe isotropic?. The Astrophysical Journal 180, 1973, pp. 317-334
17. B. Carter, Large number coincidences and the anthropic principle in cosmology, in M.S. LONGAIR (ed.) op.
18. Ch. de Koninck, El Universo vacío; also E. Gilson, Ese difícil ateísmo, Ed. U.C. de Chile, Instituto de Filosofía, Santiago de Chile, 1991
19. J. Maritain, Los Grados del Saber, ed. Club de Lectores, Bs. As.
