Georges Lemaitre – the Big Bang Cosmology and its metaphysical implications (II)

This is the second of two part. You can read the first part here.

Lemaitre‘s Cosmology and Stephen Gould’s NOMA

NOMA stands for Non-Overlapping Magisteria, meaning that science and religion simply should not or do not overlap. Therefore, there is only one responsible level of explanation at a given time, either the scientific one, for example, when it comes to evolution, fossils, molecular genetics, or the religious one, which helps to understand what the meaning of life is, whether there is a soul, and Heaven. (This is of course simplistic). NOMA can be criticized, just because there are overlaps, especially when it comes to us humans: just that he can think about abstract concepts such as NOMA suggests that there is something that exceeds the purely materialistic sphere of science. While Christians complain that NOMA gives science too much competence (“it is always religion that has to give way”), Atheists see in NOMA a cheap excuse to introduce a bit of religion through the back door.

While NOMA wants to achieve a mere juxtaposition, that is not one of Lemaitre’s goals. He is concerned with the clear separation of the categories “physics” (meaning all scientifically detectable things) and “meta-physics”, and both categories (or levels) must not be blurred or mixed. He is firmly anchored in the Thomistic viewpoint, which distinguishes between the first cause (God) and the second causes (the creatures in the broadest sense), which act according to their inherent (and ultimately God-given) qualities and possibilities.

Lemaitre sees both categories simultaneously present:

“Physics does not exclude Providence. Nothing happens without its order or permission, even if this gentle action is not miraculous. Evolution, whether of the universe or of the living world, could be made at random by quantum leaps or mutations. Nevertheless, this chance has, from a superior point of view, been directed towards a goal. For us Christians, it was oriented towards the appearance of life. In what was done, there was life, intelligence and life was light in man and finally in humanity by the incarnation of the Man-God: the true light that illuminated our darkness.

Chance does not exclude Providence. Perhaps chance provides the strokes mysteriously actuated by Providence.” [5]

God’s providential actions will not be rendered superfluous or non-existent due to scientific insights. But Providence remains often hidden to us, similarly as God Himself remains “a hidden God”

“Truly, you are a God who hides himself” (Is 45:15)

God is hidden behind and in His creation. He is a “hidden God”, transcending all our knowledge and cognition. “Truly, you are a God who hides himself“, as we read in Isaiah [Is 45:15].  We will find this term and concept often in Lemaitre’s writings. Already in 1931, Lemaitre writes:

“I think that everyone who believes in a supreme being supporting every being and every acting, believes also that God is essentially hidden and may be glad to see how present physics provides a veil hiding the creation”.

This sentence was thought probably as concluding remark to the 1931 Nature article [1], but was crossed out in the manuscript, likely by Lemaitre himself: Indeed, in the “Nature” journal, there should be no place for theological explanations.

 

Lemaitre also emphasized God’s transcendence to this world. Yes, this allows the non-believer to follow his worldview, but also impedes a deistic approach to God:

“As far as I see, such a theory [of the primeval atom] remains entirely outside any metaphysical or religious question. It leaves the materialist free to deny any transcendental Being. He may keep, for the bottom of space-time, the same attitude of mind he has been able to adopt for events occurring in non-singular places in space-time. For the believer, it removes any attempt to familiarity with God, as were Laplace’s chiquenaude* or Jeans’ finger**. It is consonant with the wording of Isaiah speaking of the ‘Hidden God’ hidden even in the beginning of the universe … ” [6] (Solvay Conference 1958)

And it is exactly the focus on God’s transcendence that forbids to the scientist to in God „just one cause among others” in our universe, as Lemaitre explains:

„He (the Christian researcher) knows that not one thing in all creation has been done without God, but he knows also that God nowhere takes the place of his creatures.
Omnipresent divine activity is everywhere essentially hidden.
It never had to be a question of reducing the supreme Being to the rank of a scientific hypothesis.“ [7]

And he advises Christian scientists as follows:

“(The scientist) must keep at the same distance from two extreme attitudes, one that would make him consider the two aspects of his life as two carefully isolated compartments from which he would then draw his science or his faith alternately according to the circumstances. The other extreme would be to mix and confuse things which must remain distinct in an inconsiderate and irreverent manner” [….] “The Christian researcher has to master and apply with sagacity the technique appropriate to his problem. His investigative means are the same as those of his non-believer colleague . . . In a sense, the researcher makes an abstraction of his faith in his researches. He does this not because his faith could involve him in difficulties, but because it has directly nothing in common with his scientific activity. After all, a Christian does not act differently from any non-believer as far as walking, or running, or swimming is concerned. “[8]

We may ask ourselves whether the Christian scientist has any advantage over his non-believing colleagues? Lemaitre is very cautious in this regard. But he admits:

“Maybe he even has some advantage over his fellow unbeliever. Both strive to decipher the intertwined palimpsest of nature, where traces of the various stages of the long evolution of the world have been overlaid and confused. The believer may have the advantage of knowing that the riddle has a solution, that the underlying writing is ultimately the work of an intelligent being, so that the problem posed by nature has been posed for to be resolved and that its difficulty is undoubtedly proportionate to the present and future capacity of humanity. This may not give him new resources for his investigation, but it will help him to maintain a healthy optimistic attitude, without which a sustained effort cannot be sustained for long.” [9]

We may conclude that the “hidden God” wants us scientists to solve the riddles of the created world. Science is one way to reach truth, and Revelation is the other: Lemaitre is thus rooted deeply in the Christian tradition, but his words remain current for our times.

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* It rather seems that the term “chiquenaude” or “flip” is here misattributed to Laplace, but the term was used by Pascal to refute Descartes’ form of theism. Pascal says: “Je ne puis pardonner à Descartes : il aurait bien voulu, dans toute sa philosophie, pouvoir se passer de Dieu ; mais il n’a pu s’empêcher de lui faire donner une chiquenaude pour mettre le monde en mouvement. (Blaise PASCAL, Pensées, I, 19, 51). Both, Descartes and Laplace, have a deistic view in common.

** Sir James Hopwood Jeans (1877 –1946]) was an English physicist, astronomer and mathematician. In 1929, he wrote the very popular book “The Universe around us”. In this book, the one and only refence to God is in the context of the creation of matter: in his words, “if we want a concrete picture of such a creation [of matter], we may think of the finger of God agitating the ether.” – It seems that also James Jeans has a deistic notion of God, as can be seen by another quotation from the same book: “From the intrinsic evidence of his creation, the Great Architect of the Universe now begins to appear as a pure mathematician.”

References:

[5] Georges Lemaitre, manuscript to [1]

[6] and [7] Godart and Heller, Cosmology of Lemaître, p. 174 and p. 177, reference in: Joseph R. Laracy, The Faith and Reason of Father George Lemaître

[8] and [9] G. Lemaître, La culture catholique et les sciences positives (séance du 10-09-1936) in Actes du VIème congrès catholique de Malines, vol. 5: Culture intellectuelle et sens chrétien, Bruxelles, A.S.B.L. Vlème Congrès catholique de Malines, 1936. In: Dominique Lambert, Monseigneur Georges Lemaître et le débat entre la cosmologie et la foi. Revue Théologique de Louvain, 1997. pp. 28-53; doi : 10.3406/thlou.1997.2867