God
- The trust they've placed in their community. Think about it: if your parents or your pastor or someone else you trusted taught you that there's an irreconcilable conflict between science and faith, you might distrust anyone who said otherwise. It might help such students to go back to that community and ask the question I posed above. This may take time, because there's a lot at stake here.
- An even bigger concern is the question of human dignity. I think that's what's behind the old complaint that "I'm not descended from monkeys." If the student is simply concerned about being descended from unwashed furry critters, they should probably look more closely at their family trees. Monkeys are often nicer than our actual relatives.
- But there's another concern here that's actually quite positive, because it means that they care about ethics, and they're trying to preserve that in the face of a perceived threat. Some students correctly intuit that what's at stake in evolution is not merely a theory of descent but a whole theory of knowledge, and of metaphysics. Natural sciences rest upon an assumption of methodological naturalism. That is, they assume that it is possible to explain natural phenomena by appeal to nature and nothing else. So far, so good. But sometimes we then make a little leap to saying that therefore whatever naturalism cannot explain is unknowable or nonexistent. This is not just naturalism but a kind of reductionistic naturalism, and it's tricky territory, because it might imply that there is no real basis for ethics, or for valuing others' lives. I'm not saying we're not free to value others' lives; I'm just saying that some of these students want to believe that there are good reasons to expect everyone to value everyone, not merely a world of subjective interests. And many of them are reasonably suspicious that reductionistic naturalism cannot itself be supported by science; after all, how could natural science prove that what it can't see isn't there? Such claims sound a bit like the misdirection of Wizard of Oz: "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" We'd be better off avoiding such claims, both because we cannot prove them and because they do a disservice to science.
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Is Thinking Real? Peirce On Neuro-Determinism
"Tell me, upon sufficient authority, that all cerebration depends upon
movements of neurites that strictly obey certain physical laws, and that
thus all expressions of thought, both external and internal, receive a
physical explanation, and I shall be ready to believe you. But if you go
on to say that this explodes the theory that my neighbour and myself
are governed by reason, and are thinking beings, I must frankly say that
it will not give me a high opinion of your intelligence."
Charles Sanders Peirce, "A Neglected Argument For The Reality Of God."
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Proofs of God's Existence
Every time we encounter a proof of God's existence or non-existence, we should use it as an opportunity to ask: why is this proof being offered?
Too often I have seen Anselm's "ontological" argument abstracted from its context, as though the fact that his Proslogion begins with a prayer were inconsequential to the argument; or Descartes' proofs abstracted from his Meditations, as though it were not important that "God" serves an instrumental purpose for Descartes, allowing for the re-establishment of the world after he doubts its existence.
Anselm already believes when he writes his argument. He has arrived at his belief in some way other than argumentation, and there is no shame in that. Most of us arrive at most of our beliefs in less-than-purely-rational ways, and as William James has argued, we have the right to do so. It looks to me like Anselm is writing not in order to defeat all atheism (though that may be one of his aims) but in order to see if his faith and his understanding can be in agreement with one another.
Descartes might believe or he might not; I don't know how I could know. God matters in his Meditations because God offers an "Archimedean point," a fulcrum on which to rest the lever of reason, allowing Descartes to lift the world anew from the ruins of doubt. Whether or not Descartes believes in God's existence, God is useful to Descartes.
My point is that it is mistaken to assume that arguments about God - for or against God - are detached and detachable from other concerns, and when we neglect those concerns we might just be missing the most important aspect of those arguments, namely the human aspect. When we argue about God, we are usually also arguing about something else.
Too often I have seen Anselm's "ontological" argument abstracted from its context, as though the fact that his Proslogion begins with a prayer were inconsequential to the argument; or Descartes' proofs abstracted from his Meditations, as though it were not important that "God" serves an instrumental purpose for Descartes, allowing for the re-establishment of the world after he doubts its existence.
Anselm already believes when he writes his argument. He has arrived at his belief in some way other than argumentation, and there is no shame in that. Most of us arrive at most of our beliefs in less-than-purely-rational ways, and as William James has argued, we have the right to do so. It looks to me like Anselm is writing not in order to defeat all atheism (though that may be one of his aims) but in order to see if his faith and his understanding can be in agreement with one another.
Descartes might believe or he might not; I don't know how I could know. God matters in his Meditations because God offers an "Archimedean point," a fulcrum on which to rest the lever of reason, allowing Descartes to lift the world anew from the ruins of doubt. Whether or not Descartes believes in God's existence, God is useful to Descartes.
My point is that it is mistaken to assume that arguments about God - for or against God - are detached and detachable from other concerns, and when we neglect those concerns we might just be missing the most important aspect of those arguments, namely the human aspect. When we argue about God, we are usually also arguing about something else.
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Evolution and Education
Sometimes I meet students who are afraid that evolutionary science poses a threat to their belief in God. I think it is helpful for them to ask themselves this question:
Of course, this doesn't clear up all the obstacles to reconciling religious belief and confidence in science, but it's a start.
If you're a teacher of students who also grapple with this, and you don't understand them, this might help. Some of them will certainly be unreasonable. For them, sometimes all you can do is be an example of reasonable beliefs and hope it sinks in someday. But many of them are concerned about a few big questions, like these:
Acknowledging your students' concerns will help them to see that you care about them as people and not just as names or numbers on a page. Which will already begin to address their deepest concerns.Is God capable of creating through natural processes?There are only two answers to this question. If you say no, you make God too small to be worth worshiping. If you say yes, then you see that there's no prima facie reason why belief in God and belief in evolution need to be opposed to one another.
Of course, this doesn't clear up all the obstacles to reconciling religious belief and confidence in science, but it's a start.
*****
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If you're a teacher of students who also grapple with this, and you don't understand them, this might help. Some of them will certainly be unreasonable. For them, sometimes all you can do is be an example of reasonable beliefs and hope it sinks in someday. But many of them are concerned about a few big questions, like these:
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In the opening entry of The Inward Morning, Henry Bugbee writes
Bugbee and the Tillage of the Soul
In the opening entry of The Inward Morning, Henry Bugbee writes
“I have yet to discover how to say what moves me to the
endless search and research, the reflective turning over in my mind of
experience. The turning over is
all so much tilling….All this tilling can be but a burying deeper of what ought
to be coming out. The moments in
which something reliable has seemed to come of it all have impressed me as
sudden. Insight is earned, to be
sure, but it is not steered, and it must find its own articulate form. If it is to become more than sporadic
and utterly ephemeral, one must pay attention to it, it must be worked out.”
(Athens
and London: University of Georgia Press, 1999), pp.33-34.
This is as much about philosophy as
about mysticism; but it is a philosophic attention to mysticism. The difficulty is not discovering
what moves me to search; that is already known, albeit in a way that is not
easily said. The difficulty is in
learning how to say it. “God” and “the
soul” and “eternity” all present themselves as shorthand for this motive. It is enough to say them, sometimes,
but they are placeholders. They
must not be said in vain. We do
not possess God; we seek God. God
is, as Eriugena intimated (in his description of what it means to create), both that which we seek and that which impels our
seeking. God’s creativity and
origin-ality are complex, even if God is simple.
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"Come, Let Us Reason Together": Thinking About God
A student in my philosophy of religion class recently asked me, "Do we really need to put this much thought into God? Is it not okay for me to believe without all the philosophical questions?"
On the one hand, yes, it is okay for you to believe without being a philosopher. As William James points out, we often decide to believe religious, ethical, and aesthetic propositions on insufficient evidence, and we often do so justly. Sometimes you've just got to choose, even if you can't prove you've made the right choice.
And I'm sympathetic with this student's position. Faith can be, as James puts it, passional. When people question our passions, or put restrictions on them, that can feel like a violation of something very personal and intimate. In those times we feel that the person telling us we may not believe is a dogmatist and a tyrant.
On the other hand, I think there are some good reasons to spend time thinking philosophically about God. Here are five reasons why I think religious people - and specifically but not exclusively Christians - ought to do so.
First, if your belief is based in Jewish and Christian scriptures, you might find the commandment to "love the Lord your God with all your...mind" to be sufficient reason. If you love God, why would you withhold your mind from your worship? And if you claim to be giving your whole self in worship but withhold your reason, aren't you in danger of committing the error of Ananias and Sapphira?
Second, thinking about God brings us into community with others. It's a way of putting our beliefs into words, and when we do that, we invite others to consider them with us.
Third, lots of people have opinions about God, and some opinions about God lead people to do violent things to others. If we disagree with that violence, and want to stop it, we have two choices: we can oppose it with equal and opposite violence, or we can try to reason with others. Perhaps more importantly, we can reason with those who might one day become violent and help them form reasonable and peaceable beliefs. It's hard to reason about others' opinions if we aren't able to reason about our own opinions.
Fourth, even if our reasoning about God is inconclusive (as it often is!) it is a kind of exercise for the mind, one that might prepare us for the conversations I just mentioned and also for solving lots of other kinds of problems.
Finally, thinking about God can help us discover idols in our own thinking. It's a kind of self-examination. If you take God seriously, then you probably want to make sure you don't worship the wrong thing. My experience tells me that when I think about very difficult problems, part of me gets tired and wants to settle on any old solution so that I can be done thinking. But that settling on a workable solution might well get in the way of finding the best solution. Similarly, settling for an easy theology might get in the way of finding the best theology. Will I ever find the best theology? I admit I'm not sanguine about this. But why should that keep me from longing and trying to make the theology I have better? At any rate, surely I should try to avoid believing in the wrong thing. I find Merold Westphal's position to be a helpful one: skeptics of religion are often better idol-detectors than I am.
What do you think?
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Using God As A Weapon?
Gandhi once wrote that “the Satyagrahi’s only weapon is God.” (A Satyagrahi is one who practices Satyagraha, Gandhi’s peaceful and powerful version of civil disobedience.)
Some of religion’s most vocal (I do not say best) contemporary critics argue that religion is either irrelevant or dangerous. It’s irrelevant, they say, because it is just an evolutionary holdover that we no longer need. It’s dangerous, they say, because it allows people to use God as a weapon.
Gandhi and many others remind us that there are two ways of using God as a weapon. If we use God to justify using other weapons to kill or oppress people, we turn God into a tool or an idol. At that point, religious people would do well to ask just what it is they’re fighting for, since it can no longer be piety.
Gandhi illustrates the other way, in which God is that which can never be taken away from us, and that which is ultimately worth living and dying for. In this way, God is not a “weapon” we wield to harm people, but one that serves to fight against injustice.
Tyrants set themselves up as gods on earth; belief in a God above the tyrant can deflate the tyrant’s power and give the Satyagrahi the necessary soul-force to “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with her God.” Against such things, it seems to me, only would-be tyrants and their servants will argue.