On Miracles and Teleology

Two Dogmas Of Naturalism And Theism

As I was writing my last post, I felt the pull to discuss different biases held between naturalists and theists, and that each group holds at least one bias. For the naturalist, it’s against the existence of miracles; for the theist, it’s to read intention into the universe (teleology).

You could call these two competing beliefs “dogmas” as they are essential assumptions of their worldview. When I say they are dogmas, I am not saying that subscribers to either theism or naturalism hold these biases unquestioningly. But rather, if you remove these biases, the two schools of thought become unrecognizable.

A naturalism that permits miracles doesn’t appear to be naturalistic, and a theism that lacks teleology doesn’t resemble theism.

The Naturalist Dogma Against Miracles

The naturalist dogma is that miracles don’t happen. Naturalists judge human error or misperception to be a better explanation for miracles because human error or misperception are more common. Meanwhile, there is minimal to no credible evidence for supernatural phenomena.¹

Underlying this dogma is another bias, that the laws of nature are decipherable and ultimately, predictable.² For the naturalist, if the laws of nature weren’t decipherable, we wouldn’t be able to make sense of the world in a meaningful way. They reject miracles because thy undermine our ability to model the world with maximal accuracy, not because of a principled objection to the supernatural.

In a weird way, many theists agree with this formulation of rejection of miracles. They believe the world is decipherable, it’s just that God’s supernatural imposition is a decipherable component of the laws of the universe. God creating a miracle is itself not miraculous, because God suspending the laws of nature is one of the laws of nature.

The difficulty lies in drawing the line between miracle and decipherable reality. It’s a spectrum. On one end, in a universe where there are no miracles, all events and laws of causality would purportedly be decipherable. On the other end of the spectrum, a universe where every law was miraculous, would not be decipherable.

Naturalists are suspicious of miraculous claims and explanations because they have a bias toward scientific curiosity. If you need data to support this, philosophers of physics gravitate towards explanations of fine-tuning as somehow being expected, whether that be through a multiverse, brute fact, or the rejection of fine-tuning all together. ³

The Theistic Dogma of Teleology

The theistic dogma, especially in regards to the fine tuning argument (FTA), is teleology. Namely, the theist believes a priori that the universe was intentionally designed.

I’ll admit that I have a hard time trying to steelman this perspective because I don’t share the intuition. I don’t think there’s any good scientific justification for this bias when evaluating hypotheses of the world, but if you’re a theist and disagree, I would really like to hear your thoughts!

The reason why is because humans look for intention everywhere, even when it’s absent. For naturalists such as myself, that’s sufficient evidence that this bias is just a bias.

What’s more, I’ve not heard FTA proponents or other “God’s intentions explain this reality” advocates lay out an argument for why we should plausibly read intention into some natural outcomes, and not others.

There are at least two problems with this.

First, random things happen to humans all the time, and they prevent or even precipitate catastrophic consequences. For instance, if I’m randomly distracted by an annoying substack argument, I may miss the train. That may frustrate me at the time, but in another universe, catching that same train may set me up to get hit by a careless driver upon leaving the station later.

Or, take the inverse. I decide to open the substack app on my phone, and stumble on an argument that keeps me up all night. Sleep deprived the next day and immersed in the argument, I get hit by a car. Each small, random event had a causal outcome that saved or ended my life, but most people would not call those events the product of a divine hand, primarily because they’d look for the divine hand farther along the causal chain.⁴

Second, random things happen in nature all the time and they don’t enter the domain of meaning-creation. We look at random, complex clumps of matter, like sticks accumulating in a river, that are obviously not designed for any clear purpose, and conclude that they’re the product of random chance.

But later on, when they interact with humans, they seem to acquire teleology. For instance, that clump of sticks may randomly save someone’s life as they fall into a river and are saved from flowing further and drowning. In such a situation, someone may say that the not-designed stick-dam was actually designed for that purpose. But we don’t apply that same reasoning when a random, naturally occurring phenomena fails to prevent a tragedy. Maybe the natural stick-dam couldn’t support the person’s weight and so it doesn’t hold and they drown. The stick-dam failing isn’t going to be retold as part of the story of the person drowning, let alone God’s intentional design failing.

In this way, teleology is selectively applied. Another example that comes to mind is God supposedly saving three people from the plane crash, and not 70 other people. It seems capricious, and it raises questions about the problems of evil and suffering. Namely, intention everywhere means intention everywhere. Every post hoc claim about God wanting this or that at least appears true.

Now, there may not be any scientific or explanatory justification for the teleological bias, but there’s plenty of personal and existential justification for it. When you go through a time of suffering and pain, it’s reassuring to know that it’s for a purpose that will be worth it in the end. What’s more, when you accomplish an impressive feat, it feels reassuring to know that you were always meant to do that thing, and that you had some cosmic force on your side supporting you.

But scientifically and (for me) philosophically, I don’t think it’s a useful bias, as it creates more problems than it solves.

Why I’m More Sympathetic To The Naturalist “Dogma”

The purpose in writing this post is to point out not that naturalism and theism are incompatible, but to draw attention to why arguments like the FTA aren’t persuasive to people who disagree.

It was very popular 10 or 15 years ago for New Atheists such as Victor Stenger and Jerry Coyne to write books about science and religion being incompatible. Though I think that’s an interesting conversation and I’m sympathetic to some of their arguments, these writers missed that many of the motives or biases of religious thinking (such as teleology) are applied and useful primarily outside of science.

We’re in a different position online today. It’s more “normal” to see an internet theist do the equivalent of calling atheists dogmatic, referring to a high-level philosophy article⁵ that the poster doesn’t understand, and the tone of a smirking wojak saying “Atheists deny fine-tuning and thus deny science.”

These theists are wrong just as prior generations of atheists were wrong about theists. Atheists are unpersuaded by the FTA because it requires a bias toward intention that they don’t see as helpful, while at the same time it asks them to remove their bias against miracles, which they see as helpful in a scientific context.⁶

At the end of the day, naturalists believe that if you approach nature and assume intention without decipherability, you’re going to understand it less relative to approaching nature assuming decipherability without intention. In this regard, you may say that a hidden dogma of naturalism is against teleology. Maybe that’s fair! But given the history of teleological theories being falsified, it’s not an unwarranted assumption.

And that’s why I side with the naturalists on these disputes. Though I have a hard stop as far as my curiosity goes (it usually involves calculus and symbolic logic), I act as if miracles don’t happen and as if there is no intentional designer behind my life (other than myself). In general, this approach helps me understand the world around me, not get too big of a head when something good happens to me, and not too down when something bad happens.

That doesn’t mean I won’t humor a conversation or debate over whether a specific miracle happened - I can suspend that bias for the sake of conversation.⁷ But at the same time, it’s hard for me to adopt the theist position, not just because I don’t find theories of teleology helpful or persuasive, but because having a bias against miracles is a good defense mechanism against scammers.

In this way, the lines between saying an ancient’s miracles happened and not a random contemporary guru working miracles seems completely arbitrary. The manner in which I would disqualify the contemporary would also have me disqualify the ancient. I feel as if I have to accept both, or accept neither. Unlike Ross Douthat, I don’t think concluding we live in a demon haunted world is satisfactory, as it brings us away from decipherability, to say nothing of it being obviously false.

It still could be the case that the universe is designed by a divine hand! The problem is that we can’t prove it, and I don’t think we ever could prove it. It would probably be bad scientific practice as such normalized scientific conclusions could stifle exploration and discovery.

There Are Many Exceptions!

Before closing, I want to reiterate: There are exceptions to these dogmas! When I say they are dogmas, I’m not referring to people, but schools of thought. Without these fundamental biases, the schools of thought collapse.

To name one example, there are many theistic scientists who believe that the world was designed by God, and that it’s our job as humans to explore it as much as possible. One of the best debunkers of intelligent design, a pseudo-scientific creationist theory, Dr. Kenneth Miller, is a Roman Catholic.⁸

All of this is to say, we are human beings, not incarnated ideologies. There are more to these arguments than scientific facts and logic.

And that’s why I get kind of tired of specific analytic debates on religion, as they evolve into something that is wholly separated from what makes both philosophy and religion.

Edit: I decided to not write the post I teased here originally (lol)

1. Sure, there are reports of supernatural occurrences all the time, but too many of them are debunked to be taken too seriously.

2. You could also call this a dogma.

3. As an interesting side note of this data, there seems to be a major correlation with the respondents who said they believe a designer is a good explanation for the universe, as they also give the same answers on other philosophical issues. Those answers map on what you’d expect conservative Christians to answer. That’s not to say that makes them right or wrong, but that this poll seems support the hypothesis that non-philosophical selection effects influence the academic consensus.

4. So if the car barely misses me, praise the Lord! The miracle happened there and not in a compulsion to lose internet arguments.

5. Either in a journal or by citing a blog post like Bentham’s Newsletter

6. And I have to reiterate here, the FTA masquerades as a scientific argument. It’s not a great theory for various reasons, but it can’t pretend it’s not trying to be scientific.

7. Once again, the dogma is the naturalist school, not my own.

8. I imagine some Christians will not be pleased with my characterization. Cry more. Read actual science