More me preachy

Some more reflections on "science v. religion", fueled by a video I just watched....

Preeminent physicist and atheist author Richard Dawkins, in an interview with his fellow Oxford intellectual and Christian scientist/theologian Alister McGrath that was cut from the final edit of Dawkins's documentary The Root of All Evil? (in which he confronts various religious believers in his quest to better understand faith so that he might better assault its foundations), claims that as the eye in its complexity is "improbable" and only explained by long, gradual evolutionary refinement, so God must be subject to the same kind of explanation. Nothing can just pop into existence. Both Dawkins and McGrath (who comes out looking a little weak in the interview unfortunately, but mostly because Dawkins is leading the discussion and doing so rather aggressively though cordially) agree that this is a logical imperative.

I of course must contend the demand that theists have an explanation for God's existence readily at hand (the idea of mortals "explaining" God! as if he were not the one who must explain what we are!). The "idea" of God certainly did not just appear in the mind of one unwitting caveman, at least not as we understand the term "God". Our conception of the monotheistic creator is the result of a very complicated tradition of serious contemplation and wrestling with faith through the midst of arduous circumstances. Notice what I'm saying though: our conception is a natural product, not the object of our conception. The widespread attestation to some external reality which acts upon the observable reality is strong enough, I think, to warrant legitimate credibility. The question that arises then is which voice among the throng speaks clearest of the reality itself--and that is a strictly religious (maybe philosophical) issue for which this brief rant has no use. My point is, there are reasons for taking seriously the supernatural witness. Another point that needs to be stressed is that if there is in fact a "God" as he is understood within theology and philosophy, as being the ground of all reality, the absolute and uncaused first principle, then he cannot be lumped in the same category of things created; so the insistence that God must be able to be explained in the same fashion as the eye, is actually rather stupid and disturbingly ignorant of a rather simple categorical distinction. God is a means by which all things are explained--indeed, in my view, the very standard against which all reality is weighed--not another item among trillions to be deduced, argued for, or apprehended. (Nor as the source of being does his being demand, let alone allow for, causation or rationalization.) Rather, belief in God follows a full paradigm shift, a complete repositioning of one's outlook, that is only accomplished through what we can rightly label "faith".

Pure naturalism exercises a great deal of faith of its own. Faith of course is not necessarily "blind", but is built upon particular reasons or experiences, and serves to make an adjudication on the data where no further data exists to objectively rule on the "hard" evidence. So atheistic/agnostic science looks at the whole panaroma of nature and says, "This is all there is." That of course is not "definitive". That is a worldview-based judgment cast in lieu of "definitive" proof that, after all, the natural order is the only objective reality. (What's really boggling is that naturalists use the sciences, which by definition study the empirically observable and testable, to determine that there is nothing beyond the empirical--isn't this a misuse of science? Isn't this rather like expecting a thermometer to tell you whether there is rain on the other side of the world? All analogies fall apart when talking about God of course, but that in itself is much the point--God is totally beyond the realm of itemization, totally beyond compare, for he is the source of all distinctions.) How can we ever objectively prove such a bold statement, when we have already seen that reality as we know it is itself infinitely mysterious?--unless of course we say that science gives us all we need, and thus is all-sufficient, and thus the All? But that is a highly contentious claim right there. Purely naturalistic understanding, the ability to "see through" everything, gives no real substance to anything, provides humanity no grasp of what its existence serves in the long run, or why it should have these feelings of purpose and destiny.

And how can we so quickly dismiss the testimony of millions who say that there is something more than what the eye can see or the mind can even logically make sense of? Naturalists who relegate all notions of virtue, value, and spirituality to mere ideas are, in my estimation, more hard-pressed to offer "proofs" of their position than the believers who say that there is a realm beyond our own whence we derive such notions--for the power of those "ideas" has in fact determined the entire shape and substance of human society, and have so proven to encourage meaningful relationships and produce a real sense of identity, that it is doubtful they are mere illusions of human fancy. Blind, cold evolution itself could not dictate that spirituality, or the arts, or romance, or self-sacrifice, any of it, should be the order of the day. There may very well be more at work than the unfeeling natural laws. The act of loving engagement itself, or rational engagement for the sake thereof, makes no final sense with appeal only to the sciences, but rather points beyond the tangible and the chemical and the neurotic to some objective principle of cognizant relationality. (Miracles could be offered as further "evidence" of religions' claims, whatever the skeptics may say in advance about their probability; indeed, it is their improbability that make them such witnesses to a reality beyond the observable. Witness to truly bizarre occurrences that have no apparent cause in the "regular order of things" cannot always of course be counted reliable, as ignorance of the more quirky (quark-y?) facets of nature can lead to superstitious assumption. But there are such things as "miracle healings" where even doctors are baffled. And if we are to take the Gospels seriously....That being said, I do not think miracles are arbitrary cessations of universal order. They are rather rooted in the overarching, interconnected purposes of God that hold all the universe together and make it what it actually is.)

Science cannot be the measure of all things, for science cannot measure the principles of virtue and value, which, from the powerful collective testimony of conscience and the objective appreciation of such abstracts as aesthetic beauty, hold out as being realities distinguishable from human conjuring, forcing themselves upon us from without. Of course our awareness of virtue and value, of morality and responsibility, even our tendency for relationship, all arises from "natural" developments and long pyschological evolution--this is the means by which all things within the physical world come to be. But that says nothing about whether there is an external "force" acting upon the reality we inhabit, eliciting from the evolutionary process these reactions of praise and humility. The sheer complexity of our sense of morality and aesthetics, which from a strictly biological or physical standpoint is neither necessary nor even always preferable (compassion for the weak may lead the strong to drown in the same boat; a recognition of nature as beautiful can easily mask its harmful tendencies), can reasonably suggest that perhaps the long roiling hit-and-miss evolutionary adventure was purposefully "set up" in the primary intent of bringing about such qualities.

What I want to stress most of all is that our understanding of the empirical processes which give birth to all things physical (and psychosomatic) can say nothing of itself about whether or not there is a deity "willing" all these things to be, whatever that might mean in practice. Yes, the remarkable rational and relational traits exhibited by the higher forms of consciousness are a deep mystery, and some more sober-minded cynics may claim that there is no knowing how it all came about; but I believe that it is in seriously, honestly focusing upon that mystery, as well as looking beyond the universe itself to wonder why there is something rather than nothing in the first place, that we behold a Face. And if it were our own face projected into the cosmic screen of ignorance, why then have we not yet been able to look away?