Cosmology Without God?: The Problematic Theology Inherent in Modern Cosmology (Veritas Book 35)

by David Alcalde

In this initial chapter, I have argued that modern science operates under extrinsicist theological and metaphysical presuppositions. This is so because nature is assumed from the beginning to be essentially indifferent to God. Whether God exists or not makes no difference to the natural world. Therefore, God is presupposed in such a manner that he can only be extrinsically related to the world. This presupposition is the core idea of methodological naturalism, which is accepted by virtually every scientist. The extrinsicism present in modern science is wrong for several reasons. First, it falsifies both the concept of God and the concept of nature. On the one hand, God’s transcendence is lost because God is reduced to an external agent acting on the same level as any natural agent. On the other hand, nature loses its own interiority and unity; it is reduced to a mechanism composed of unrelated parts.228 Second, it contradicts science’s self-understanding as indifferent to both metaphysics and theology because science is indeed intrinsically related to metaphysics and theology. Third, it makes the dialogue between theology and science impossible because of the reduced notions of God and nature assumed. Theological extrinsicism can be seen everywhere, from the theologians using science to give scientific evidence for the existence of God to the atheistic scientists using their science to negate the existence of God. Hanby has shown and criticized this problematic theological...