No God, No Science.. Theology, Cosmology, Biology

Michael Hanby's "No God, No Science" presents a provocative thesis that modern science's methodological naturalism contains an implicit theology that undermines both genuine scientific inquiry and coherent theology. The work argues that the exclusion of formal and final causality from scientific method, originating in the mechanistic revolution of the seventeenth century, represents not merely a methodological choice but a substantive metaphysical commitment with profound theological implications.

Hanby traces how the rejection of Aristotelian teleology in favor of mechanism effectively presupposes a particular understanding of divine action—one where God relates to creation extrinsically rather than through immanent formal and final causes. This mechanistic framework, he contends, paradoxically requires a voluntarist conception of God as external designer while simultaneously rendering such a God explanatorily superfluous. The work engages critically with both intelligent design theory and neo-Darwinian evolution, arguing that both operate within the same impoverished metaphysical framework that reduces questions of being to questions of mechanical function.

The argument develops through detailed engagement with the history of science, particularly the transformations in concepts of motion, causation, and substance from Aristotle through Newton to contemporary biology. Hanby demonstrates how modern biology's gene-centric paradigm exemplifies the deeper problem: by reducing organisms to mechanisms and information to code, it loses sight of the irreducible wholeness and intrinsic teleology of living beings. This critique extends to contemporary debates between scientific materialism and intelligent design, which Hanby views as false alternatives sharing the same mechanistic assumptions.

Drawing on the Thomistic tradition, particularly through engagement with thinkers like David L. Schindler and Benedict XVI, Hanby argues for recovering an analogical understanding of being that recognizes intrinsic teleology without compromising either scientific rigor or divine transcendence. The work's significance lies in its challenge to standard narratives about science-religion conflict, suggesting that the real issue concerns competing metaphysical frameworks rather than empirical discoveries. By arguing that authentic scientific inquiry requires openness to formal and final causality—and thus implicitly to God as the source of intelligibility—Hanby reframes contemporary debates about cosmological and design arguments, moving beyond their typical modern formulations to recover classical metaphysical insights.