Monotheism and physical science

Natural science is often blamed for demolishing religious faith. Yet a book might be written about how developments in physical science have been consistent with monotheistic religion, though as far as I know only some isolated aspects of this subject have been discussed in print. Here are some of the ideas that such a book might cover:

(1.) Physics seeks a simple unity underlying the apparent messiness of the observed world. This seems to require a basically monotheistic outlook: before monotheism, gods were independent actors within the universe, frequently in conflict with one another; there was no perception of any underlying unity. (I think someone pointed out that the fact of the regular motions of celestial bodies converted St. Augustine to monotheism.) The continued success of the program of unification of physical law—for example, in demonstrating how electricity and magnetism are aspects of a single phenomenon—tends to substantiate the monotheistic world view.

(2.) Specifically, Newtonian physics showed how the same laws governing the motion of the planets could be applied to mundane events on earth as well. At the time of Aristotle, for example, the planets were considered to be deities, part of a separate transcendent world from our own. The unification of the two worlds can be interpreted either as a "profanization" of heaven or as a divinization of the earth, though the former is the more obvious.

(3.) There is a considerable amount of material now available (though I haven't followed it) about the apparent extreme unlikelihood of physical laws and conditions which happen to take the form necessary to produce a cosmos capable of producing intelligent life such as ourselves. See e.g. Penrose's Emperor's New Mind. This seems to support the idea of a benevolent God.

(4.) The fact of evolution towards higher or more complex forms of life, as recorded in fossils (as opposed to the theory of evolution by natural selection of purely randomly generated genetic variants), is stunning evidence in favour of the idea of progress in history over a very long time span. Progress is not just a naive nineteenth-century dogma resulting from temporary fortunate economic conditions. Belief in progress, or at any rate in a meaning in history, is, in turn, associated with the monotheistic religions.

(5.) Relativistic physics introduces the idea of spacetime, which can be regarded as representing the "eternal now" of the Divine view of the world, as conceived by Christian philosophy. (See my post on Boethius.)

(6.) Thermodynamics tells us that on the physical level there is an inherent tendency towards chaos which must be counteracted by some extraneous ordering force (or intelligence). This is not just an observation of physical laws of mysterious origin: it is self-evident if one considers the mathematics of probability in detail. There is no need to invoke a "malevolent" chaos-producing force. Extending this observation to the spiritual realm, one would not be puzzled by darkness, but rather amazed at the presence of light. It would be rather difficult, in light of such intellectual developments, to reintroduce Manichaean dualism; yet at one time this might have presented a serious challenge to monotheism.

(7.) The Buddha somewhere advises his followers to regard human bodies as bags of excrement. Did he actually believe this or was it just an exercise for turning their attention to more spiritual things? At any rate, in light of what we now know about the miraculous hidden ordered processes necessary to sustain the life of the body, the Buddha's attitude seems like . . . ignorant blasphemy. On the other hand, the western monotheistic religions have always regarded man as made in the Divine image (though not necessarily on the physical level); it should not be surprising to them that even the physical body of man is a miraculous object.