An Inadvertent Thomist

                                                                                                       by Brother Dismas Bartolo Baume

I had no momentous conversion event. There is no rock bottom, no near-death experience, no joyful
moment that yet, somehow, seemed lacking. Nothing so glamorous as all that. Nope. I just spent a lot of time in a windowless room, in near total darkness, collecting data for my dissertation. A computer did most of the heavy lifting on the data collection; I was there to set up the little plastic plates with
nematodes and switch them out under the microscope connected to the computer. The behavioral
analysis came later. Even then, nematodes (a fancy name for worms) only have so many behaviors to
analyze. It was often monotonous, but monotony creates ample time for thinking.

Most of these thoughts were related to my dissertation, of course, but a couple embarrassingly
pretentious topics unrelated to the dissertation always seemed to turn up for further rumination. The
first nagging topic concerned what I perceived to be a hole in Cell Theory. The second recurring topic,
because this first was inadequately pompous, was about the nature of infinity.

Cell Theory states all organisms consist of at least one cell, the cell is the fundamental organizational
unit of an organism, and that all cells are derived from pre-existing cells. It is this third statement
wherein we find the hole in Cell Theory: all cells are derived from pre-existing cells except the first cell.
There had to be, for lack of a better phrase, an “Adam cell” – a cell that was not derived from a cell that
already existed. To be clear, nothing about this statement disproves Cell Theory. Cell Theory is a fact,
but something pushed non-life into life. There are laboratories throughout the world doing amazing
research to explain the mechanism for the movement from non-life into life. It’s mesmerizing, to be
frank. It’s also such an incredible grace that God, who is reason, gives us enough capacity for reason that we can apply the scientific method to understand His creation more fully.

How does the nature of infinity fit into this conversion story? In the simplest terms, it amazed me when I realized infinity is not unidirectional. While the magnitude of what it means for something to never end can be challenging to grasp, most people can imagine it. Down the street from where I grew up, there was a gas station on the corner. Eventually, the gas station closed, and bakery went into that building. Over the ensuing decades, many businesses have come and gone from that site, yet I persist. I am not infinite, of course, but that is enough of a microcosm of infinity for me to grasp the idea of something never ending. The real challenge in understanding infinity is moving in the other direction: grasping the idea that something could exist without ever beginning. This is so incredibly challenging because there exists nothing in the observable universe for which this is true. Everything had a beginning – even the universe itself, at the Big Bang. So, if everything in the universe had a beginning, including the universe itself, whatever started all that mass and stardust spinning must exist outside the observable universe.

It was in trying to find the error in my reasoning about the nature of infinity that I discovered the Five
Ways of St Thomas Aquinas. I went to Catholic elementary and secondary schools. I had heard of
Aquinas but all I really knew about him was in a broad sense that he had been a big deal medieval
theologian who wrote a book to teach Dominican friars how to be preachers. I have since come to
develop a more nuanced appreciation of both St Thomas and his writings, but what are his Five Ways?

1. The Argument from First Mover
2. The Argument from Universal Causation
3. The Argument from Contingency
4. The Argument from Degree
5. The Argument from Final Cause or Ends

I have no training in philosophy or theology, so I’m grossly underequipped to defend or explain these
arguments. Scores of books, essays, and reflections will serve you better than I could. However, even my rudimentary understanding of them made it clear that the first three, the cosmological arguments,
address my insights regarding Cell Theory and the nature of infinity. If God is not a moved mover, a
caused cause, or a contingent contingency, then the hole in Cell Theory is resolved and the nature of
infinity becomes a gift of grace to allow us an insight into the ineffability of God. It demonstrates God
wants us to know Him, despite our utter lack of ability ever to do so fully.

From all of this, I came to understand that science is not at odds with religion. Faith and reason coexist
because God is reason, so believing in God necessitates believing science. The scientific method draws
conclusions from reproducible results based on hypothesis testing in the observable universe. Science is how we come to know and appreciate creation, the observable universe within space and time. God
exists outside the observable universe and, even more importantly, outside of time, where science has
no game. However, this is exactly where philosophy brings its best game; to explain how everything was created from nothing with a bang.

It was here, at the beginning of all things, where science and philosophy must come together, that I
became an inadvertent Thomist and found my way back to faith.