Bishop Barron on Stephen Hawking and Atheism

In this video on  Stephen Hawking and Atheism by Bishop Barron: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-yx5WN4efo

Barron argues that "Science pontificates about matters properly philosophical or religious." And with this claim, Barron asserts his authority to be qualified to "pontificate" about matters scientific, even though he is not a scientist, while then condemning scientists for "pontificating" about matters concerning religion, without first being a priest. That Barron is so comfortable practicing as a priest the very thing he condemns in the scientist, should raise a red flag for his audience. 

Barron continues, "

"There is a qualitative difference between science and philosophy."

 - Actually, this is not entirely true. Science and philosophy were always parts of the same discipline, even before the great Greek philosophers like Socrates and Plato, and especially Aristotle. In fact, it is incredibly ironic that Barron should argue that science and philosophy deal with "qualitatively" different realms of knowledge, since neither Aristotle nor St Aquinas would have agreed with his claim, as anyone familiar with either of the writings of these two men can readily attest.

In this way, Barron is simply relying on (or preying upon) the ignorance of his audience,  so they "believe" he is telling the "truth" when making this distinction, even though the "qualitative difference" he then tries to draw is one that is rather artificial.  Here, Barron suggests that faith reigns supreme over all, while science is as subordinate to that faith as Galileo was to the Catholic church. 

As Barron explains further:

"Science seeks after, and pursues events and objects and phenomenon, within the empirically observable and measurable universe. That's the proper purview of science. Philosophy and religion  seek after ultimate and final causes."

 This seems somewhat dishonest, quite frankly. 

The "qualitative difference" between "science" on the one hand and "philosophy and religion" on the other has never been as neatly compartmentalized as Barron claims here, as if "science" has never sought after, nor should it ever dare to seek after, "ultimate and final causes," unless those "causes" be strictly material. Barron also then tries to suggest that it is only those of a religious persuasion (such as himself) that have any real authority to "pontificate" about those things that exist, or may exist, outside of the box Barron has conveniently limited science too "pontificating" about.

This lie is a bold one, because it preys upon the hope that the audience does not know . For if audience knew the history of the relationship between philosophy, science and religion, they would also know fully well that both science and religion were always understood to be very much a part of philosophy, which is simply a pursuit of all forms of knowledge, in every realm of human understanding. They only began to branch off in different directions when religious claims began to be increasingly undermined by ever improving means of collecting scientific evidence.

Barron then argues that "science as such simply can not adjudicate questions that lie outside of its proper purview." This is only true, of course, if we accept both the box that Fr. Barron is insisting science and scientists must be limited to, and the assertion that religion alone should be relied upon to determine what the "proper purview" of science is and should be. And who gives Fr. Barron the power and authority to make such claims? Well, God of course, who else?

Of course, the dichotomy Barron creates by relegating science to its "proper purview" never stops priests like Barron from continually trying to use science in anyway possible to support their own religious claims, including and especially by pointing out all the scientists who profess to be Christians who believe in God. This, then, is the equivalent of  scientists pointing out the growing number of priests who are actually atheists, which recent reports suggest may be even more prevalent than scientists who proclaim to be theists. 

 In this way, Barron  acts like Lucy by casting science in the roll of Charlie Brown in Peanuts, and conveniently pulls the ball away before science can kick it through the goal posts (which religion continually moves all over the place already).  He does this by taking the issue of whether science can prove there is no God off the table. This seems like the move a person makes just before they are about to loose the game. Hence, he does not seem to really think science has nothing to say about religion or God. Far from it! Barron only really thinks that science has nothing to say about God when science is in anyway suggesting there is no need for a God (which is quite different from arguing that there is, in fact, no God),  but that science has plenty to say if and when it ever suggests that there is or must be a God.

Hence, Barron simply rejects that science is qualified to speak about God when science challenges Barron's "beliefs" about God, but accepts that science is qualified to speak about God when science supports Barron's "beliefs" about God. How convenient. 

Of course, religion never limits itself to any such limitations or "proper purview," since it feels perfectly authorized to define "events and objects and phenomenon within the empirically observable and measurable universe" as necessarily "miracles," whenever the limits of human understanding about such "events and objects and phenomenon" are breached (which is pretty often it turns out - read The Improbability Principle by David Hand ). Again, how convenient for Fr. Barron.

Where did the universe come from?

Then Barron argues about  the ex nihilo... (which I have discussed already here)

... while simply ignoring, or perhaps being simply ignorant of, the fact that our universe may be the result of another universe from which it sprang.  After all, why couldn't the whole of the universe have come from another universe, coughed up through a black hole, by forces and powers that we know nothing about? The assumption that the universe came 'from nothing' is as much a "belief" held by Barron as the belief that the universe must therefore have come from God. And by getting his audience to accept this false dichotomy, Barron manipulates them into accepting his answer as necessarily the only one that makes the most sense.

Nor have atheists ever claimed to "know" that the universe came from nothing, with anything like the authority with which Christians claim to "know" the universe came from God. Both the atheist and the Christian run into the same wall of ignorance at the threshold of existence, with the atheist claiming "nothing," which is simply a reflection of their own ideas about what lies beyond, while the Christian asserts forcefully "God," which is simply a reflection of how they see themselves.  

But what's the real difference between an atheist saying "the universe just popped into being from nothing" and a Christian saying" the universe popped into being from God"? 

The difference - and this is crucial - is that the latter thinks their answer gives them the right, and indeed the authority, and even an obligation upon which their eternal salvation necessarily depends, to not only pretend they know things that they absolutely know they do not know, but to use the things they pretend to know, to force people to conform to their "beliefs" about what it means to be a human being, and "godly." 

Believe in God if you wish, but this does not mean your belief in such a thing gives you the authority to "believe" you know more about morality and what it means to be a good person or even a human being, than anyone else.

Contingent vs Non-Contingent

Barron then argues that, to find our meaning we must find our origins. And by that he means, as he puts it, "we have to come to the thing that carries within itself the very reason for its own existence; who's very nature is to be."

Barron's use of the world "who's" here reveals his own underlying bias for something that looks and thinks just like he does, and that is the problem. He assumes, in short, that whatever may have caused the universe not only must have been something entirely external to everything in the universe (an assumption he feels no need to address let alone offer any evidence to support), but more importantly, that whatever "it" was, must necessarily be understood as a "who" and not simply as a "what." 

This difference between a "who" and a "what," where Barron necessarily assumes it is proper to anthropomorphize what he further assumes must be a "non-contingent" being,  is what Barron's entire argument for God, and specifically a Christian God, hinges on. 

Barron never considers, for example, that even if in fact the "thing" or "things" that were the immediate cause of our universe should properly be understood as a "being," and thus a "who," that such a "being" may, nevertheless, still be a contingent "being." Nor does he ever consider that, even if we accept his assumptions, this in no way verifies that we should think such a "being" has any of the same "intentions" or "reasons" that humans have, even though there is allegedly an infinite difference between God and homo sapiens.  

This, then, is like an ameba assuming the petri dish it inhabits was created specifically for it, rather than anything else that can be placed into such a dish, and for all of the same reasons as only the ameba can imagine.  And yet even the petri dish is created by a "god," that is the human being, who is further contingent upon their parents, and even the entire universe. But to the ameba who lives inside the universe of that "intelligently designed" petri dish, the scientist would be like a god, even though humans think nothing like amebas and are "beings" contingent a "God," according to Barron.