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The movement designated as “liberalism” is regarded as “liberal” only by its friends; to its opponents it seems to involve a narrow ignoring of many relevant facts. And indeed the movement is so various in its manifestations that one may almost despair of finding any common name which will apply to all its forms. But manifold as are the forms in which the movement appears, the root of the movement is one; the many varieties of modern liberal religion are rooted in naturalism — that is, in the denial of any entrance of the creative power of God (as distinguished from the ordinary course of nature)….

Hi Diamond! Thank you so much for the ping, and for the kind words about our book, Timothy. My co-author Alamo-Girl and I see no fatal contradiction between religion and natural science. To us, God’s four great revelations (Scripture, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and “the Book of Creation” — i.e., the natural world as it actually exists) are not contradicted by science at all.

Indeed, the scientific method (methodological naturalism) is a very limited tool for disclosing the nature of Reality. Science works on the surface appearance of things. That’s because science is based on direct observation — that is, on whatever can be perceived by our five senses. Perception is limited to surface appearance; direct perception never sees the substance of things (their hidden internal structure, in their full spatiotemporal extension rather than just the finite, discrete event that is the object of scientific observation and experiment), “in the round” so to speak, as they are in themselves, in their full context, natural and (we believe) spiritual.

As observers, we tend to operate at the event or pattern level; internal structure is rarely examined as a source of problems. Indeed, the internal structure of events is superfluous for many scientists today, who are basically happy to discover “what works,” and could care less about what it means. “Structure” is all the forces at play in a system; mental models are a key but hidden part of the structure. (QM tells us that the observer is part of the very same system that is being observed. He does not stand apart from it.) Thus direct observation by means of sense perception is a more limited tool than we are accustomed to think. Science may give reliable results, but only at the cost of ignoring the properties of objects that are extraneous to its purposes; it sees the part, but not the whole of which the part is a constituent.

We apprehend reality only through our five senses. There is no other way for us to gain access to the world external to us but via these five “filters.” A filter is something that screens out parts of an object. How, then, do we know that what we experience actually corresponds to the fullness of reality itself, since we ineluctably “reduce” reality in the process of observing it?

Immanuel Kant, the great transcendental idealist philosopher, maintained that we do not and cannot know on the basis of direct observation that our experience and reality actually do correspond. We simply take it for granted that they do; but this is a rough, “common sense” assumption whose basis in actual fact cannot be directly demonstrated.

Kant observed that what we experience via the five senses are the phenomenal aspects of the external world as they impinge on our sensory equipment. What we can never do is experience the “thing in itself,” the noumenon, or the essential, undivided reality of existent being of which we know nothing via sensory means.

By this Kant did not intend to disparage the value of science per se: After all, he was a highly regarded scientist and mathematician in his own day. He simply saw science — methodological naturalism — as restricted by its method (direct observation, replicability of experiments, etc.) to the phenomenal world only. The non-phenomenal dimensions of reality simply cannot be accessed by this method.

Or to use philosophical terminology, science is restricted to the “accidents” of entia (existent things); not to their “substance” (the thing-in-itself).

But unlike the increasingly fashionable view of our own time, Kant’s insight did not mean that the universe can be reduced to “accidents,” to the phenomenal aspect exclusively; he did not mean that anything that is not directly observable does not exist; that everything that exists “reduces” to matter and mechanics — which can be directly observed and measured. Rather he thought the noumenal aspects of reality would give reality’s fullest, or “complete” description, were it possible to access them. Which we cannot do via sense experience. Yet actually, thinking human beings reasonably can gain some idea of noumenal reality; just not via the scientific method. [See below for an example.]

Since we cannot directly validate the assumption that our sense experience exactly correlates with the thing-in-itself, the next best thing we can do is to try to validate our human equipment — sense perception (experience) and reason — for these are the only tools which we as thinkers have to work with in gaining reliable knowledge of the world.

As Dinesh D’Souza notes (in his new book, What's So Great About Christianity?, 2007), “our knowledge of external reality comes to us from two sources: the external object and our internal apparatus of perception. Reality does not come directly to us but is ‘filtered’ through a lens that we ourselves provide.” Thus we are brought to “the astounding realization that human knowledge is limited not merely by how much reality there is out there, but also by the limited sensory apparatus of perception we bring to that reality.”

Thus: “Reason,” he says, “in order to be reasonable, must investigate its own parameters.” This was the mission of the School at Athens, whose maxim was “Know thyself.” This self-knowledge is gained by means of study and analysis of our experience and the operations of our own minds, not by direct perception of the external world, but through a wholly internal process known as introspection. It is through this process that reason finds its true foundation in our minds.

Earlier I promised an example of an idea of noumenal reality that we can access from purely internal sources, based on reason and “feeling.” According to Antonio Rosmini, “Feeling” includes several basic meanings: (1) direct sense perception; (2) subjective awareness of our inner psychic state; (3) subjective awareness of our identity as a stable, substantial, persistent self or “I”; and (4) emotion — “qualia.” As we have maintained, direct sense perception can give us no contact with noumenal reality, the “substance” of things as they are in themselves. So in the following example, feeling, experience, and reason must carry the burden.

Of course, I picked the biggest, most spectacular example I could find. This is from the above-mentioned Antonio Rosmini, (1797–1855), Italian priest, philosopher, theologian, and patriot. [On November 18, 2007, Rosmini was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church — meaning that he is on-track to become a Saint and, presumably in his case, a Doctor of the Church.]

First, the preliminaries:

“…[N]othing is given to human beings by nature except feeling and the intuition of being. All cognitions are only the development of these two principles, which themselves are the materials making up the edifice of what is knowable. What is not contained in these principles cannot be developed from them. They contain in germ all human cognitions without exception and indistinctly. Reasoning distinguishes them, seemingly creating them before the eyes of the mind. Being, therefore, as object of the mind, and feeling are the two rudiments of all human cognitions without exception…. [Psychology, Durham [U.K.]: Rosmini House, 1999; p. 20]
“‘I intuit being; I do not deduce it. I feel; feeling is not the consequence of any reasoning, nor indeed of any cognition.’
“It is in these final two rudiments of all human information, therefore, that we have to seek the justification and certainty of what we know. If these primal data are certain, other information found in them through reasoning is also certain because the very principles of reasoning are contained in the idea. We have shown the certainty of all the rest of what is humanly knowable from the certainty of its two unshakeable foundations. We have shown that in them no error is possible; that man, relative to them, is infallible because they do not depend on his will, but on his nature”…. [Ibid., p. 21]

Now for the example:

“As an example of cognition that our feeling cannot reach, let us take the teaching about God, which we can have through reason.
“We know of God’s subsistence by means of ontological relationships with that which we know through feeling. These are relationships with the world. We realize that the world must have a cause because it is, and would not be if it had no cause. Being known to us through nature tells us all this; it is to being that we refer the world given us by feeling.
“In the same way, infinity, necessity, simplicity and so on are ontological relationships pertaining to the cause of the world. The cause of the world subsists, but it could not subsist without these determinations. Therefore it has them. We know that it could not subsist, that is, could not in these circumstances be ens precisely because we know what ens is and hence what is needed for it to be ens, and to be this kind of ens.”

[NOTE: “Ens” (plural: entia) refers to an existent or finite entity — not to being itself, which subsists a se eternally (as the great American pragmatist philosopher and psychologist William James describes it, in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), from the perspective of the Catholic scholastic tradition of which Rosmini himself is representative). The finite ens is a participation in infinite being. If it were not, the ens would not exist. Still, all we humans can know from feeling, from direct experience, is ens, not being itself. We therefore take “ens” as our model, and ask the following question:]

“What kind of concept is the concept of an infinite ens? There is no doubt that it must have all degrees of being; it must not be dead, but have feeling and intelligence to the highest degree. But how do we know the essence of feeling and intelligence? We know it through experience of what happens in ourselves, through our own proper feeling. How then can we know the feeling and intelligence of God? Only through analogy between what must be present in him and the feeling and intelligence which are present in us.
“Likewise we understand, through analogy between the supreme being and all entia seen in the light of being known to us through nature, that the supreme being cannot lack reality, ideality, or morality.
“But we understand (knowing being) that it would not be absolute being unless it were being itself in its three forms [reality, ideality, morality]. Thus the concept of infinite, absolute being — already illustrated by means of the analogies we have mentioned and referred to the idea of being we have through nature — is transformed for us into the very being which subsists undivided in the three forms. This seems to me to be the highest concept that human intelligence can make for itself about God without reference to revelation.” [Ibid., p. 25f]

I have noticed that many Christians feel pretty beaten down these days by the skepticism of modern-day scientists with regard to certain tenets of the Christian faith such as, for instance, miracles. Scientists say that miracles cannot exist because they appear to defy the physical laws of nature. But when they say this, please note: They see only the surface presentation of the miracle. Beyond that, they really don't know a single thing about it; nor do they really have any method to “falsify” it.

Yet one cannot account for the authenticity of a miracle on the basis of its visible aspect; for as we have already shown, the deeper, noumenal reality of the miracle, just as in the case of any ordinary object, is beyond the means of detection by the physical sciences.

For all the foregoing reasons, I do not believe the world can be accounted for on the basis of materialist doctrine. Reality is composed not just of matter (mass/energy), but of spirit as well. This well accords analogically with the ancient classical and Christian understanding of man as comprised of spirit — soul — and body, with soul understood as the eternal FORM of the body. At death, the FORM is abstracted; and thus the body has no organizing principle by means of which it can continue to exist. Thus the body becomes susceptible to the tender mercies of the Second Law of Thermodynamics: It decomposes into its constituting elements (i.e., it returns to “dust”).

In short, neither mind nor soul are “epiphenomena” of bodily existence. On the Christian understanding, it would be more correct to say the body is the epiphenomenon of the soul….

Must leave things here for now, since I’ve run on so long already. Just to conclude, I believe that it is foolish to try to justify religious belief by means of science. It would make more sense to me to justify science by the Logos of God, which He lays out for us in the Holy Scriptures, and makes manifest in the revelation of Creation.

Thank you ever so much for writing, Diamond!