Robert Lawrence Kuhn and Sean Carroll, both educated in the sciences and public intellectuals, discussed the fundamental laws of physics and cosmological origins, in the context of theism. Despite their broad agreement, they found themselves at an impasse regarding the limits of scientific explanation, with Kuhn arguing that there are such limits, and Carroll defending the historical trend of ever increasing scientific reach.

Without going so far as to agree with the Church, Kuhn insisted that theology has successfully taken a defensive position on specifically two questions. Why are the laws of physics what they are, and what is consciousness? Presumably, the answers are Creation and the Soul.

Physicists fall back on a pragmatist refusal to consider the first question on the basis that it makes no difference to the evidence. And neuroscientists are rapidly approaching a theory that at least correlates brain states with our subjective experiences, but will prove to have little to say about the experiences themselves inasmuch as they are purely subjective.

What the theologians are really defending is teleology and subjectivity, and claiming that science will leave these untouched because it is dogmatically mechanistic and objective. Even if science has nothing to say here, reflection on the nature of teleology and subjectivity may bring about answers more sympathetic to scientific theory.

It may turn out that there isn’t a cosmic final cause but that the appearance of design is all the same a product of natural selection in both biology and cosmology. And it may turn out that there is no subjectivity as opposed to objectivity, and instead that what appears to be private and immediate is a product of mind itself being an object.

It is not difficult to imagine that were these mysteries undone, so that they were now no more mysterious than life, after Darwin, Watson, and Crick, there would remain more principled questions. Even admitting that the laws are mechanical and that privacy is an illusion, why is there something rather than nothing, and why does this something appear to me as it does?

What is nagging here is more subtle than identifying whatever theoretical challenges still elude the scientists, and surprisingly this nag may be shared by many of the scientists themselves. It is a question of principle, ultimately, and for the scientist and theologian alike, principle rests with explanation. The difficulty for the scientist is that the theologian has helped himself to greater means for explanation than are available to the scientist. Explanations must come to an end, and the physicist may have to admit the arbitrariness of the laws, but the theologian has explanations that end with divine necessity. Similarly, explanations must be communicable, and the physicist may have to admit that communication is always objective, but the theologian has more intimate means of divine communion.

Denying the theologian this last refuge has less to do with providing these ultimate explanations, and more to do with learning to live with contingency, for which there is no explanation.