What has science to do with religion?

“What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? What between heretics and Christians? Our instruction comes from ‘the porch of Solomon.’…. Away with all attempts to produce a mottled Christianity of Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic composition!….With our faith, we desire no further belief.”    Tertullian (d. ca  220AD)

The relationship of Athens (philosophy, rationalism) to Jerusalem (God’s revelation) is a question that emerges in almost every generation of Christians because Christianity actively engages the culture and the time in which it is incarnate.   Church fathers answered the question about Athens and Jerusalem in various ways, but all affirmed the reliability of God’s revelation while assessing humanly derived knowledge with various degrees of approval and disapproval.  St. Justin the Philosopher and Martyr and others really did think all truth is Christian truth and so Christians should embrace truth whoever proclaims it or however it was derived.  St. Augustine and others warned against opposing reason with revelation surmising that such an opposition can end badly for the Christians when reason cannot be refuted.

One modern manifestation of the question is the relationship of science with religion, specifically the relationship between evolution and creation.   The debates between evolutionists and creationists has spawned a variety of opinions from those attempting to reconcile faith and reason to those convinced science and religion have no common ground whatsoever thus agreeing with Tertullian’s rhetorical assessment.

Michael Dowd, author of THANK GOD FOR EVOLUTION, describes himself as an evolution evangelist.  A former biblically literalist creationist, he came in his life time to accept the evidence of science and advocates for all believers to accept what scientists in overwhelming numbers embrace – the truth of evolution.    His publicists asked if I would read his book and comment on it. 

On a basic level one might say Dowd embraces a form of  process theology whereby our understanding of the universe as shaped by new scientific discoveries has changed our understanding of God and His revelation.  Dowd believes science is in fact broadening our knowledge of God’s revelation.    Genesis for example in his thinking represents a one time story looking at the world from the perspective of the ancient world through the eyes of one tribe.  It is a fixed story that doesn’t change with new knowledge; it tells us where we came from.  Science on the other hand, according to Dowd, looks at the world from the point of view of the ever changing present and thus looks back at the vast past of the universe and stares into the face of the future.    From Dowd’s perspective reading Genesis in a traditional way limits our understanding of humans to a tribal point of view – the us vs. them thinking of the Israelites for example.  He argues that the revelation which science has engendered is that we  think of the entire world and all its people as belonging to God, thus science reveals to us the true extent of God’s revelation as Lord of the universe and not just Lord of a tribe or a religion.   DNA more than Genesis reveals the common humanity of all people.

Science, so argues Dowd, sees the universe as an open text book which we are still learning how to read.  He argues that just as at one time all believers were absolutely convinced that the sun orbited the earth, an idea totally disproved by science, so too all the scientific evidence is there for evolution, though some believers won’t accept the fact because they think on this issue science must conform to a literal reading of the bible.  He thinks it but a matter of time before the truth of evolution is as accepted as the earth orbiting the sun.

Theologically Dowd has moved away from traditional Christianity to an eclectic view of religion and though he defends his Christian faith, he embraces some idea of a new revelation in which Christianity is but a small part as is any other belief system that might exist.  He is firm that evolution is true and then reads all religions and all history as being part of the real revelation which evolution alone gives us.   He is certain what he believes about science and he presents a decently argued thesis “that the marriage of science and religion will transform your life and our world.”   He points out quite succinctly some of the shortcomings of traditional religious thinking when confronted by what science has revealed about humanity and the world.   However in his view science swallows up religion – they don’t exactly co-exist though he does allow somehow for a notion that one can embrace the revelation of science while keeping “the best” of one’s quaint but antiquated beliefs.  He embraces a notion of revelation which brings science and religion together with a totally new horizon.  I was reminded of the line from the Akathist “Glory to God for all Things” about how scientists and poets are the new prophets speaking to us about what God is doing.   To accept Dowd one would have to abandon any notion of the mystery of the incarnation and how God totally changes the nature of His relationship to creation.    His ideas are very rational, but much harder to match with a notion of mystery and how a god who can be comprehended by human reason is any God at all, for in the end even God gets swallowed up by science and must be re-visioned in a way comprehensible to rational thinking and science.   Dowd sees the end of the science-religion antagonism occuring because science gives us a new understanding of revelation and of God.

God’s Existence: Not Dependent on Disproving Evolution

Visualization of the Internet

As I’ve mentioned before one of the benefits of blogging is that one does occasionally have opportunity to enter into discourse with someone who holds to idea or beliefs radically different from one’s own or even antithetical to one’s own.  From these exchanges it is possible to learn new ideas and information or to get insight into the mind of people with whom one disagrees.   Of course on the Internet there are  abundance partisan polemics and “ditto heads” who read nothing other than what they already believe and who have no interest in engaging debate to increase mutual understanding or to change opinions.  It always reminds me of the adage I once heard about Bible reading:  if you read only those passages which you like or with which you agree then you really you just go to the bible to find your own thoughts rather than to hear what the Lord of the universe might be saying to you. 

In one exchange on evolution with people whose worldview is almost exclusively scientific and atheistic and who were concerned about the views of religious fundamentalists being foisted on scientists and biological research, I offered the following thoughts (which I base in the notions that truth is truth, and all truth is also Christian truth):

Perhaps the attitude needed by scientists is “whether or not God exists, what do we know and what can we know about human origins and evolution?” If evolution is true, it will be true whether or not there is a God. Evolution is not dependent on God’s existence for its verification.

Conversely for believers, the existence of God is not dependent on the certainty or impossibility of evolution.

Of course, these ideas work if one is not an absolute biblical literalist.  If one places on the bible the condition that the

Dinosaur fossil skull

bible is valuable only if Genesis 1-3 is literally true, then one certainly places a limit on the revelation of God.  Additionally one puts one’s faith at the mercy of science which then tends to lead to one opposing some scientific research because it might challenge or question one’s beliefs.   If someone wants to be a biblical literalist regarding Genesis 1-3 and to claim it is science, it would seem more reasonable to then encourage scientific research to see if it affirms the bible.  But when one’s faith is then challenged by the findings or direction of scientific research, why oppose science since one made “scientific truth” the very foundation for one’s faith? 

If God exists, He exists whether or not evolution is true.   The existence of God is not dependent on the discoveries of science.  However a literal reading of Scriptures might make one’s faith in God dependent on scientific research.  It is not science’s fault if its findings do not confirm your faith.

It is important for believers to realize the Bible itself does not advocate absolute literalism in interpreting itself.  Take a look at St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans 5:14 -  “Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.”   Notice that St. Paul calls Adam “a type” of Christ.  St. Paul sees the significance of Adam not in deciding the literalness of the story but in how Adam is a type of Christ.  Adam can only be fully understood in and because of Christ.  God intended for us as readers of the story to get beyond the literalness of the story to its true importance and meaning.   We understand best who Jesus is when we understand that Adam is a model or foreshadowing of Christ’s coming.  The plan of God being unveiled in Genesis 2 cannot be understood apart from Christ.   The story of Adam is thus not just about the origins of humankind.  For Christ, the “new Adam” reveals true humanity and humanity’s true origins.    St. Paul is not very interested in Genesis as the scientific explanation of the origins of humanity.  For St. Paul the Genesis 2 story’s significance is only understood in Christ.   To read Genesis 2 apart from Christ or to read it as science is to misread it altogether.  That is the argument and thinking of St. Paul.   (You can see more ideas about “type” in 1 Corinthians 10:6-11 and Hebrews 8:5). 

A faith in God ultimately finds its justification in God, not in science.  We hope in God.  We look for ultimate meaning in God.  We understand creation (even the vastness of the universe) as being in God and thus on the grand scale of things only a small part of all that exists.   Science studies this small part of existence.   Faith is what puts this existence into the greater context of God’s own being.

Journey into the Unknown: Science and Religion

Physicist and author Brian Greene wrote an article in the May 2009 magazine WIRED entitled, “Journey into the Unknown: It’s the Questions, not the answers, that make science the ultimate adventure.”   In that article he captures what seems to me to be the very essence of science:  it is about exploring mystery without which science would come to an end.  He says science is not memorizing  facts, charts and equations, rather “science is the journey.”  His definition of science is how I normally conceive science, and not only science but theology as well.  Greene writes:

Science is about immersing ourselves in piercing uncertainty while struggling with the deepest of mysteries. It is the ultimate adventure. Against staggering odds, a species that has walked upright for only a few million years is trying to unravel puzzles that are billions of years in the making. How did the universe begin? How was life initiated? How did consciousness emerge? Einstein captured it best when he wrote, “the years of anxious searching in the dark for a truth that one feels but cannot express.” That’s what science is about.

For me it is also what theology is about for not only do we exist in a universe which we can explore and endeavor to discover its hidden truths, the universe also exists in God who has chosen to reveal Himself in and through the universe which He made.  Science and religion are both quests – science into the macro-cosmos and the microcosmic universe, and theology into the depths of the soul of humans as well as into the eternal life of the Triune God.  Greene says,

Established truths are comforting, but it is the mysteries that make the soul ache and render a life of exploration worth living.

The wrestling with mystery, not the ascension to resolution, defines who we are.

We all are in search of understanding what it means to be human, whether we consider the human to be created by the Divine or a purely material product of random natural forces.   Theology too is about trying to move us from what is known (the physical, material universe) into the unknown (the mysteries of God).   For many religion is nothing more than repeating ancient formuli:  “God said it. I believe it.  That settles it.”  I on the other hand along with so many others have experienced in theology a great sojourn often taking the answers to discover what is the right question?

Because I conceive science and theology the way that I do, I look to both science and theology to enrich my understanding of what it is to be human.  I see no need for the two to be in opposition to each other -  if they are seeking to find answers to the universal questions of humanity, they are going about it in different ways and making very different assumptions.  I don’t see any basic reason for science and religion to be in opposition to each other for they are both different ways of knowing the universe AND what they conceive of as ultimate reality are totally distinct.  In science ultimate reality is the material universe while in religion ultimate reality lies in God the creator of the material universe and who is not coterminous with this universe.  Our ability to know God may in some way be limited by our being part of the material universe, but we humans also have the roots of our being in God.

Taking these things into consideration I do not feel the threat or pressure from the arguments conducted between some scientists and some religious people who see God and science as being in opposition over such issues as evolution or the age of the universe.  While I have been interested in the writings of Intelligent Design folk in trying to bridge the gap between science and religion, I have not become convinced that have found the way to build the bridge.

I read two books earlier this year  which explore the relationship between science and religion on the issues of creation and evolution which I will comment on is this series of blogs.  The books are Denis Alexander’s CREATION OR EVOLUTION: DO WE HAVE TO CHOOSE?  and Ted Peters and Martinez Hewlett’s EVOLUTION FROM CREATION TO NEW CREATION: CONFLICT, CONVERSATION, AND CONVERGENCE.   Both books do a good job of using scientific fact and information and Christian theology to look at science, intelligent design and theology.  They propose slightly different solutions for how to hold science and religion together but both believe they are compatible.   The effort to insist that science and religion are in fact compatible is one that appeals to my own interests.  I have read at times Jerry Coyne’s blog Why Evolution is True and note his frequent criticisms of religious people who attack science and also his well expressed doubt that religious efforts (such as intelligent design) to find compatibility with science do so only by co-opting science and requiring that science abandon its own principles and logic. 

Next:  Creation or Evolution: Do We have to Choose?

The Truth about What we Believe

Stanley Fish wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times entitled God Talk, one paragraph of which I commented on in my blog The American Myth and Its God.   Fish’s opinion piece brought out a fair number of atheist critics who contrasted science, knowledge and reason to religion, opinion and faith.   Fish in turn responded with a second piece, God Talk Part 2 in which he notes :

According to recent surveys, somewhere between 79 and 92 percent of Americans believe in God. But if the responses to my column on Terry Eagleton’s “Faith, Reason and Revolution” constitute a representative sample, 95 percent of Times readers don’t. What they do believe, apparently, is that religion is a fairy tale, hogwash, balderdash, nonsense and a device for rationalizing horrible deeds.

It is interesting to note in a study of evolutionary biologists of about 150 who responded to a survey almost 80% identified themselves as atheists.   They certainly would have sided with Fish’s critics, but would still be in the minority in America.    Fish is also sometimes criticized by more traditional/conservative believers as his arguments aren’t always comforting to them either.   But Fish found a defender in Paul Campos who authored the opinion piece   The Atheist’s Dilemma.

Fish and Campos both made me think about my own spiritual sojourn.  For certainly at one time I considered myself an atheist and really did think that the only way to a better world was for everyone to be honest about everything, and if we were all honest everyone would have to admit they had never had an experience of God.    What I thought was an obvious and easy solution to all the debates about religion, turned out to be no basis for the discussion at all because some could not say they had never experienced God, or the divine, or angels, spirits or ghosts, because in fact they believed they had. 

Our sense of truth is shaped by what we believe.  This is as true for scientists as believers.  We are constantly trying to make sense of the universe around us and we make certain assumptions which shape what we think is true.  For example, no “miracle” will ever convince an atheist there is a God.  For if one does not believe God exists, one is not going to consider God as an explanation for what one sees.   Depending on what one believes one might see in any event an accident, a miracle, a random event, a cause – effect relationship, a mystery, nature at work, human error, luck or the hand of God.  

Countless witnesses of tragedies and traumas offer person testimony which is not an “objective” account of what happened but is an account filtered through their own ideas of what is true and how the universe works.  (Years ago I read a sci-fi novel – by Robert Heinlein?- in which there were people who were neutral/objective observers and had an ability to record in their minds events they observed almost camera like without interpreting them).   I remember reading once a claim made that the best observers of plane crashes were children who simply reported what they saw, while the reports of those with more aviation experience was often tainted by their own trying to make sense of what they saw and so often included ideas of “what must have happened”  rather than what actually happened.

Those who feel they rely only on proof for what they believe are not likely to be attracted to religion or faith in God, as they will never see proof.   (I one time head someone say to those claiming to accept things only on proof: do you think the sun is 93 million miles from earth?  Have you ever measured that yourself?  So then you do accept on faith the witness and testimony of others!)    There are many things we do accept on faith and we don’t personally prove everything science claims.  Science would still say, yes, but you could at least prove our claims if you had the scientific knowledge of how to conduct the experiments.  Yes, but if you don’t, and most of us don’t, we accept a lot of what science says on faith – we accept the testimony of the witnesses to the experiments.  (That by the way is what we Christians do as well).

Some years ago I began doing the addictive Sudoku puzzles.    Because there are a limited number of squares to fill (81) and since you know what has to go in each square (a number from 1 to 9) and there are established rules as  to how the numbers must be placed, one can assume that the puzzle is solvable by logic, and in fact it is.   However,  one can approach the puzzle “feeling lucky” and think it will be solved easily, or one can look at the rating of the puzzle and be challenged or discouraged by the level of difficulty.    Sudoku players develop various strategies for how to solve the puzzle, and because of the nature of the game there really are only so many strategies to follow and one can exhaust one’s strategies and get “stuck” on a puzzle where no amount of logic seems to resolve the puzzle.  Then one can try guessing (or relying on one’s feeling about a particular number) – just putting in a number and see if it solves the puzzle or not.  This guessing however is not completely random for it is also based on logic - the rules of the puzzle already limit the number of possibilities.   So even when you think you aren’t following logic but just trying numbers at random, you already know what the numbers are you can use, so you are relying on logic.

I mention Sudoku because I think it is a small model of how we approach life and whether we think we are looking at the world through eyes of faith or reason, science or religion, skill or luck, design or randomness.  Our ability to see is limited by the assumptions we make.  Even scientists, medical researchers, police investigators sometimes miss a clue or misunderstand the results of an experiment because they don’t know what they are looking at.  And then when the right frame of reference is given to them, they suddenly understand clearly what was right in front of their eyes.  This I think is how believers see the world differently from non-believers – it is not a matter of proof, it is the frame of reference. 

I eventually abandoned my atheism because I could not make sense out of what I was seeing in the world.  Something was missing; I could not find meaning in my life.   But if I did not have the frame of reference of meaning and seeking something more than scientific fact (I started college as a chemistry major), I might have been quite content in science because there too I was seeking truth.  It is just that I do not believe that reducing a human being to his or her exact chemical composition – no matter how exactly true those facts may be – really explains what it is to be human.

The “Missing Link” in Evolution

A 47 million year old lemur-like fossil was unveiled this week, and the media especially hailed the find as the “missing link” which connects humans to monkeys and apes back in history – an early branch in the fabled Darwinian tree of life.  The BBC proclaimed “Scientists Hail Stunning Fossil“, while elsewhere on the Internet a more subdued report headlined, “Early Skeleton Sheds Light on Evolution.”

Was this fossil find the earth shattering “missing link” that would prove evolution once for all or was this some kind of media show?

The unveiling, at New York’s Museum of Natural History, was promoted by a press release for the cable TV show History, which called it a “revolutionary scientific find that will change everything.”

There was a huge media blitz about the fossil find which also promoted among other things an upcoming television, soon to be published book and the Museum of Natural History in New York.   So the sensationalism was not purely (mostly?) the fossil find itself but all of the media promotion going on with other media products related to the fossil.

The scientific article in which the fossil find was reported did not herald all the claims that the media blitz was promoting.  In fact the title of the article is scientifically intimidating and completely lacks the glitz of a media blitz:  Complete Primate Skeleton from the Middle Eocen of Messel in Germany: Morphology and Paleobiology .    Hard for the entertainment addicted world to get excited over that title.

In Jerry Coyne’s Blog, Why Evolution is True, Gary Mayer addressed the recent fossil find adding his voice to those of other scientists who think the media presentation of the new fossil is potentially harmful to science – Darwinius:what’s at issue?

It does appear that what this fossil represents – a nearly intact 47 million year old specimen – is exciting for scientists indeed.  It is not bad science which is being promoted, but in a consumer and entertainment driven culture such as ours, it shows how even science can be co-opted for other purposes.

The fossil find will be one more piece in the evolutionary puzzle; it may push back a little the God-of-the-gaps promoters who say the evidence for evolution isn’t there.    It is an important scientific discovery and evolutionary evidence, but it doesn’t seem to “change everything” as some were proclaiming in the media.

Science in pursuit of truth continues to seek pieces of the puzzle and to put them into their place in the grand scheme of things.   The media thrives on news that is spectacular, bizarre or which can feed controversy or confrontation.  I just found it interesting that a number of scientists found the media play bizarre as they were distancing themselves from the media blitz and the comments of a few spokespersons.   

God, or some say the devil, is in the details.   It is important that we pay attention to the truth in the small details rather than to get lost in the hyped up claims of the media.  It is also important for those interested in the relationship between theology and science to take note again the role the media can play in presenting “information” to the public.  The media’s need to sensationalize news means those interested in serious dialogue have to see through the news media in order to understand the significance of what is happening in the world of science.  Culture wars are very attractive to the media as they make the media more self-important (and the media believes indispensible as the supposed sole source of information).    It is the very reason the media loves popular political pundits – they generate controversy and thus create “news” even if it is only about themselves (just think about how often they appear on each other’s shows – they have become the news).    In a democracy, certainly the opinion of the public is always important.  Scientists and theologians would do well to learn how to communicate what is important to them, not what is important to the needs of the media.  Also scientists and theologians need to know how to present their ideas without getting caught up in the media frenzy and circus and not acquiesce and allow the media to interpret the importance of what they are writing about in science or theology.

The real missing link for scientists in evolution is how to convey their findings to the public without having to rely on the media circus to make their ideas known.   The media has its own agenda and is trying to sell itself – it is thus not always the best way to bring scientific knowledge to the public.

Intelligent Design – Still a Matter of Faith

In the debate between secular humanist scientists and biblical literalist creationists, some creationists have offered what they see as a compromise – Intelligent Design (ID).  ID has been seen by many believers as a good way to deal with the otherwise unbridgeable contradictions between the discoveries of science and the claims biblical literalists say are the scientific truths of the Genesis creation story.   Because some believers accept the truth of secular science regarding the age of the earth and the mechanism of evolution, they have wanted to find a way to reconcile the discoveries of science with the Genesis story of creation.   Since there are some “gaps” in evidence for the theory of evolution, believers have proposed ID as the key to fill the gaps and explain the unfolding of the universe.  Secular scientists criticize ID as a “God of the gaps” idea, whose need shrinks with every new scientific discovery that fills one of the existing gaps in our knowledge.  

All of this introduction, which is simply restating this old debate, to get to the point of this blog.  While Intelligent Design seems like a good solution to many believers as they synthesize their beliefs from the bible with their knowledge of science, it has not proven itself to be a very useful tool for evangelism and outreach to secular scientists and atheists.  So while believers take comfort in it, if our goal is to preach the Gospel to all nations and peoples, we must be aware that ID is not convincing to many secular scientists and non-believers because it is not science.  Take for example the concluding comments of Harvard’s sociobiologist E.O. Wilson in his book written as an outreach to biblical literalists, THE CREATION: AN APPEAL TO SAVE LIFE ON EARTH:

“Much as I would like to think otherwise, I see no hope for compromise in the idea of Intelligent Design.  Simply put, this proposal agrees that evolution occurs but argues that it is guided by a supernatural intelligence.  The evidence for Intelligent Design, however, consists solely of a default argument.  Its logic is simply this: biologists have not yet explained how complex systems such as the human eye and spinning bacterial cilium could have evolved by themselves; therefore a higher intelligence must have guided the evolution.  Unfortunately, no positive evidence exists for Intelligent Design.  None has been proposed to test it.  No theory has been suggested, or even imagined, to explain the transcription from supernatural force to organic reality.  That is why statured scientists, those who have led in original research, unanimously agree that the theory of Intelligent Design does not qualify as science.  …  it is a dangerous step for theologians to summon the default argument of Intelligent Design as scientific support for religious belief.  …. In science, as in logic, a default argument can never replace positive evidence, but even a sliver of positive evidence can demolish a default argument.”

Wilson says the very glory of science is to propose theories and to prove or disprove them.  He says the person who could prove through scientific method the existence of God would gain instant fame and recognition.  So he dismisses the idea that scientists are simply closed minded to God, and says that instead since no theory or test has been proposed to prove ID’s claim of a God, it is de facto not science. 

My only point in this blog is to say as comforting as ID is to believers to help them reconcile biblical faith with secular scientific truth, ID at this time is not an effective evangelistic tool with which to bring the Gospel of Truth to secular scientists and atheists.  Let us not blind ourselves to scientific truth because we find ID reassuring to our shaky faith.  ID remains totally unconvincing to secularists.  And instead of us committing ourselves to ID as science and then trying to convince scientists that ID is science, we are better off acknowledging that ID belongs to the realm of faith not science.   Otherwise we believers are once again going to find ourselves trying to offer as truth something which science rejects – just like the biblically based claims that the earth doesn’t move, that the sun circles the earth, that the earth is the center of the universe – and we will be placed again in the odd position of arguing against the truth, and we will not bring secularists to faith in God.  It will simply be a modern version of the Copernicus/Galileo controversy all over again, and the Pope already apologized for that debacle.

The Open Mindedness Required to Believe in God

Some atheists and agnostics today ask why do believers continue to persist in believing in God, or even introduce God into discussions about the universe when the advances of science have time and time again managed to explain the universe in natural terms without having to introduce God into the picture/equation?  

One reason is that mystery still exists.   There are still a countless number of things that we do not understand about our world, our universe, our selves – on the cosmic scale and on the micro scale.  Even when science can offer explanations of how things work, there remains the question of why?  Why is there something rather than nothing?  Why are we aware of our existence?  Why do things happen in the natural world that defy human logic? 

“Kamerlingh Omnes discovered the totally unsuspected property of superconductivity in 1911.  More than fifty years elapsed before it was explained.  It could not have been understood in 1911, since it is an intrinsically quantum mechanical phenomenon and modern quantum theory was then unknown.  It would have been foolish to have taken its mysterious character as a reason for denying its existence.”    (John Polkinghorne,  THE FAITH OF A PHYSICIST)

The fact that there is mystery in the universe prompts the believer to use his or her creativity and aspirations to seek to understand the universe beyond the limits of science.  Scientific inquiry puts over us a ceiling and says we cannot understand anything beyond the empirical universe.  It is a ceiling that involves space, time, temperature, velocity, beyond which science cannot see.   Believers are not so limited because above that ceiling, the limits of scientific inquiry, and beyond space and time, we think there is more to the universe than can meet the eye.  We believe human aspiration is not leading  us to nothing but to something greater than ourselves and the empirical universe.

And just because our experience of the Divine leaves us with the sense of God’s mysteriousness, we do think it foolish to therefore deny the existence of a Creator.   Humanity has grown through history an ever increased capacity for abstract thinking.   This is obvious in the realm of algebra but also in physics.  Our worldview has changed and we have realized that things we thought were absolute truths which could not be transcended, have in fact been proven limited by further reflection and discovery.  Algebraic equations which at one time humans were sure could not be resolved, have in fact been resolved by the increased capacity for abstract thinking that has emerged in history.   The Newtonian science which allowed us to accomplish many great things has been shown to be limited and has been eclipsed by quantum mechanics.   And so, the believer, seeing this truth about human creativity and the growing capacity for abstract thinking, can imagine that even beyond our most sophisticated understanding, there is a logic in the universe which we have yet to grasp, and a Logician who said, “Let there be light” and what resulted was our ability to think beyond the limits of space and time. 

To be a believer in God requires one to be a lot more creative and open minded than being an atheist.  It requires embracing human aspiration and a level of abstract thinking which is not limited by the current theories of science.  Like Omnes, we see and experience that which humanity is not yet capable of comprehending.

The Enlightenment: Potentially and Potently Good and Evil

The Enlightenment is an historical period in Western European thought which came into vogue and power in the 18th Century, about the time that the United States was being formed as a nation.   The ideals of The Enlightenment greatly shaped the values of America’s founding fathers – Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Washington, etc.  The ideals of The Enlightenment shaped our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution, and are somewhat enshrined in American thinking and self perception.   The advocates of the Enlightenment had a goal which was to have individuals escape the constraints which history imposes on cultures - cultural and ethnic prejudices.  From their perspective history and culture tends to blind people by imposing assumptions on them. 

The Enlightenment really begins the form of thinking in which an individual is considered to be the smallest social unit, and the individual’s rights are defended against the rights or demands of any social group – family, clan, village, race, nation, religion. (We are so steeped in Enlightenment radical individualism that it is hard for us to even image a time and culture where people thought in terms of family, clan, people, rather than in individuals.  Who is your family? Who are your people? Are questions once commonly asked of those seeking marriage in a time when persons were seen as belonging to some social unit). The Enlightenment radicalizes the individual to the point that he/she is not even thought of as a social being with a family history as this imposes too many constraints on the person.   Generally Enlightenment thinkers felt the cultural prejudices imposed on individuals through tradition and custom had to be seen for what they were: not objective truths, but merely the prejudices and subjective opinions of a limited culture. Enlightenment thinkers generally assumed that education is what helped free a person from cultural and traditional determinism.  Thomas Jefferson for example described his ideal of “America” as a “crusade against ignorance.” 

Immanual Kant defined the Enlightenment as a time when humans realized they could use their own understanding to comprehend the universe and did not have to rely on the tutelage of others. This means every human authority and tradition was open to critical examination by everyone.  As a result the individual became valued over any social group and people began to speak more and more in terms of individual or human rights.  The beliefs, assumptions and traditions of society and religion all could then be questioned by an individual.  In some sense it became the individual not a social group which determined what is true, what is to be valued, what is to be believed.

Enlightenment thinking allowed people to question the very nature of truth as well as to question the assumptions and beliefs of established society and religion. It opened the door for the development of modern scientific thinking which is based in observation, skepticism, and the need for objective proofs.   In many modern societies science came to replace religion as the defining modem for truth.   The Enlightenment was a time in which people began to see a difference between truth based upon faith, and truth based upon testable and provable facts and reason.   The Enlightenment’s tension between faith and reason is somewhat the issue of whether we can find a “natural” explanation for everything, and thus don’t need a God to further explain the world.

The ideals of the Enlightenment in the United States also created the milieu in which the idea of the separation of church and state and the ideals of religious tolerance came to be seen as normative.   That process unfolded over many years and some see it as one of the great accomplishments of the Enlightenment.  The American Revolution caused the holders of different religious beliefs to lay aside their differences in order to work for the common good.  They reasoned that the vision which held them together superseded their faith differences.

However, today some religious leaders have viewed the Enlightenment in a negative or hostile manner.  Religious groups often think in terms of family or church/perish/congregation, and see all the members of a family as belonging to the religious group.   The Enlightenment thinkers would say no one is owned by anyone else – even your children don’t “belong” to you as they are really individuals in the making and they owe loyalty to no one.   The Enlightenment emphasis on the individual is thus sometimes in tension with the goal of religions to overcome the limits of self (and self centeredness) and to create community, brotherhood, or unity among people.

Human rights, the rights of the individual, are also ideas that have emerged from the Enlightenment.  The human rights emphasis on radical individualism has caused some religious traditions – Islam, Orthodox Christianity and Roman Catholicism – to question these Enlightenment ideals as being based not in God but in atheistic humanism.  Many modern religious criticisms of “secular humanism” are actually attacking Enlightenment principles. 

One critique of Enlightenment thinking is that it assumes all human problems can be solved by reason alone.  Evil in Enlightenment thinking is not real – it is merely an abstract idea that can be reasoned or educated away. But has human experience upheld such a notion of evil – that it is a mere idea that can be eliminated by enough education, or has evil proven itself to be quite real and really destructive and something beyond which education/enlightenment can correct?  The major Western religious tradition of Judaism, Christianity and Islam do not in general assume that ignorance is the main human problem.  All of these traditions see sin and evil at the heart of what ails humanity. 

Interestingly enough the Enlightenment’s drive to free individuals from the constraints of the past is going to give rise to the secular and atheistic ideals of 20^th Century fascism and communism.  In both these systems there was a drive to shape and govern nations by purely rationalistic principles – to use human reason freed from ancient philosophical constraint and from religious revelation to create a whole new world.   The end result of these two children of the Enlightenment (communism and Nazi fascism as embodied in their 20^th century leaders Stalin and Hitler) was a disastrous, destructive and deadly reign of terror in two nations which then engulfed the world in a holocaustic hell in which tens of millions perished.

To Believe or To Not Believe: For Americans Is there a Question?

Believers often take comfort in numbers, especially in America where people like to identify with winners.   And so the 23 June 2008 released Pew Forum poll on religion in America will be heartening to those believers especially those who suffer anxiety about holding a minority viewpoint when it comes to thinking about God.  And it does seem that many American believers find strength only in numbers or that somehow majority numbers prove the truthfulness of a proposition.   Is this the result of having even their religious thinking dominated by “democratic majority rules” ideas or is it some kind of “might is right” thinking?   One wonders how these Christians would have survived in the Roman Empire, under Islamic domination, or in the atheist Soviet Union, where Christians made up a distinct minority.     Do Americans really find strength in their faith or in God, or do they really rely on the majority opinion to determine what they believe?   Perhaps some of this explains why some American Christians find their “faith” so threatened by science, cosmology or evolution.

Ninety Two (92%) percent of Americans claim to believe in God or a universal spirit.  Strangely enough 21% of those claiming to be atheist also say they believe in a God or universal spirit.  That reminds me of the statistics I’ve seen in Russia where more Russians claim to be Orthodox Christians than claim to believe in God; or as one priest stated it, not all Russians who claim to be Orthodox  believe in God.   It all may only show how difficult it is to do a reliable poll on religious belief, especially when each person is self defining the terms he/she uses. 

Despite the obvious problems polling on religious topics may have, they do offer us some type of portrait of American beliefs.   The Pew fellows tend to emphasize American tolerance and flexibility in their beliefs as a good point.  A majority of those who actively pray tend to be more conservative in their values such as on issues of abortion and homosexuality. Interestingly 60% of those polled “want the government to do more to help the needy and support stronger environmental laws.”  All of these points I would think show that the religious faith of Americans do affect the moral values by which they live and engage the world.   There is a close connection between theological belief and personal morality.  Because of this connection and because of the number of people claiming a belief in God, religious discussion does have a proper role in our elections despite what some claim to the contrary.  And despite how some politicians and religious lobbies distort this proper role in public debate.

 And in this presidential election year, candidates might note that a majority of believers want the U.S. to concentrate more on domestic issues and think the U.S. is too focused on foreign issues. 

To see what the Pew Poll had to say about Orthodoxy see my Bilingual Orthodoxy

Faith and Reason: Proving God Exists

Ever since the 18^th Century European Enlightenment and the rise of the Age of Science, those who believe in God have been put to the test by non-believers who demand some kind of proof that God exists.  This has become standard fare in the debates between faith and reason, with believers having to explain on what basis their belief in God rests.  Believers often argue that ultimately God wants us to accept Him on faith and in love, not on scientifically verifiable evidence.  Faith in God is after all the ultimate sign of love given freely, not a reaction to what has been done for us, but an action of the will in which we respond in love to the Creator of the universe who exits beyond all proofs. The argument says God so respects human free will that He does nothing to force belief in Him; God has created us in love and invites us to love Him in return, but leaves the choice up to us.

This argument has often brought derision on believers from the non-believers – a price that we have to pay for choosing to believe in God.   And many believers would say that their faith is in fact based in personal experience, and so is based in fact.  Christianity for example is based in the claim of a number of witnesses who say that Jesus did rise from the dead.  We believe not only God, but also His chosen witnesses, the Apostles and the Church.

As a person who once considered himself an atheist, I find the criticisms of atheism regarding religion often to be valid and reasonable objections.  I sympathize with their incredulity as they really do have a different worldview than believers.  The gap between the two perspectives is not easily bridged as both begin with different assumptions and are reinforced by differing experiences.

I also must admit that one of the most humorous things I ever read poking fun at believers was written by Douglas Adams in his THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY.    This book is (in my opinion) a hilarious mix of science fiction and ultimate questions.  (Hilarious if you can appreciate the totally twisted, whacky bizarreness of the story).  In it there is the Babel fish described as “the oddest thing in the universe.”    The Babel fish when place in the ear enables you to understand the speech of any language in the universe.   Here is what Adams wrote about the amazing characteristic of the Babel fish:

“Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-boggingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the nonexistence of God.

‘The argument goes something like this: “I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”

‘”But,’ says Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it?  It could not have evolved by chance.  It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t.  QED.”

‘”Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.”

God is not a proposition that can be proven or disproven by logic or evidence or the scientific method.  But faith in God certainly is subject to human critical thinking and to rational discourse.   “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander”  (1Peter 3:15-16).