Viewing Religion/Theology Through the Lens of Science

1. Viewing Religion/Theology Through the Lens of Science FreeThought AZ Thomas J. Lindell 13 May 2012

2. Defining the “Lens” of Science

3. COSMOLOGY BIG BANG A probable quantum event for which there is no predictable outcome. MULTIVERSE A multitude of potential universes, of which ours has the “right stuff” i.e., gravity, electromagnetism, weak and strong nuclear forces. OUR UNIVERSE Inflation (1070 ) expansion to allow cooling for the four physical forces to become manifest. ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE Calling attention to the “fine tuning” of the universe, otherwise meaningless. ACCELERATED EXPANSION...

4. EVOLUTION About 3.8 B-yrs. ago, life emerged on earth in a serendipitous way. Life was precarious and unpredictable. Perpetuation of life was related to an ability to reproduce. Trial and Error prevailed. There is no intentionality, directionality or teleos. Multiple mechanisms (not just mutations) subsequently contributed to evolutionary diversity.

5. EVOLUTION This process [evolution] may be rapid, but it’s not elegant. Instead of inventing new features from scratch, evolution works with what it has [contingency], modifying existing structures by trial and error. The result is a messy legacy of complicated biochemical pathways and body parts that are more serviceable than sleekly designed. Although proponents of intelligent design hold that organisms are too “perfect” to have arisen by chance, science shows that organisms don’t work perfectly at all; they just work. Thomas Hayden, US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, July 29, 2002, pp. 42-50.

6. Message from Cosmology and Evolution • Cosmology reveals that we share an interconnection with the universe because everything originated from the same point in space-time. • Evolution reveals an interrelationship with all life. We are related to everything that has ever survived to reproduce.

7. What Role God?(Assumptions) • There is NO indication that God had any role in the initiation of the universe, nor privileged life on planet earth (or elsewhere). Both are scientific mysteries. • This is the starting point for my scientific perspective (“lens”) on religion and theology.

8. Emergence Why is self-organization so beautiful to my atheistic self? Because if complex, adaptive systems don’t require a blue-print, they don’t require a blue-print maker. If they don’t require lightening bolts, they don’t require Someone hurtling lightening bolts. Robert Sopolsky, in response to the question, “What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?”, posed by Edge.org (Feb. 9, 2012). And life, in the sense of molecular reproduction, would be expected, not incredibly improbable. If so, our view of life changes radically. Not only does life not need special intervention by a creator God, it is a natural, emergent expression of the routine creativity of the universe. Stuart Kauffman, Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion, Basic Books, New York, 2008, p. 59.

9. What is Religion? Religion is one thing to the anthropologist, another to the sociologist, another to the psychologist (and another to the next psychologist), another to the Marxist, another to the mystic, another to the Zen Buddhist, and yet another to the Jew or Christian. As a result there is a great variety of religious theories of the nature of religion. There is, consequently, no universally accepted definition of religion, and quite possibly there never will be. John Hick, Philosophy of Religion, 4th ed., Prentice Hall, NJ, 1990, p. 2.

10. Deconstructing Religion • All religions are man-made. • All religions are archaic. • All religions are myth-based, as such cannot be literally true. They are characterized through stories that are told and retold. It matters not whether they are absolutely true. • Religious language is replete with metaphor, which also defies literal interpretation. • Stereotypes are prevalent in describing religious traditions. As such, they are often misunderstood. • Most, if not all, exhibit idolatrous tendencies in worship.

11. Deconstructing Religion (cont) • In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Bible is NOT the literal “Word of God”. It is a collection of stories written by multiple authors who recorded how they thought God was perceived by humans. • The Hebrew scriptures tell the myth of the Jews exodus from persecution in Egypt, which scholars believe never happened--at least according to the biblical story. • The New Testament Gospels recall myths of Jesus of Nazareth, all of which were written 40-70 years after his death. Each of the Gospels was written as the voice of different Middle-Eastern communities (and for different audiences). None of the authors actually knew Jesus, or are known. (The Gospels were named in the 2nd century.)

12. THE BIBLE "[T]he Bible is a book descriptive not of the acts of God but of Hebrew religion...[It] is a book of the acts Hebrews believed God might have said and the words he might have said had he done and said them-but of course we recognize he did not." L. B. Gilkey, The Journal of Religion, 41, 197, 1961.

13. Deconstructing Religion (cont.) • Jesus of Nazareth lived and died as an observant Jew. He did not set about to start a new religion. • The stories of his virgin birth and divinity are myths based on pre-existing mythologies and biblical prophecy. • Jesus was prophetic and radical with regard to those in control (Rome). He was killed for sedition. He did not “die to take away our sins”. • Stories of miracles, crucifixion, resurrection, and physical reappearance did not appear in some of the earliest strains of writing (Q and the Gospel of Thomas). Paul based his theology around deification of Jesus and resurrection. The early church was clearly persuaded by his perspective.

14. Evolving Christianity Within decades of his death, the message of the real Jesus was transferred from its Semitic (Aramaic/Hebrew) linguistic context, its Galilean/Palestinian geographical setting, and its Jewish religious framework, to alien surroundings. In other words, the emigration of the Jesus movement from its Jewish home territory to the primarily Greek-speaking pagan Mediterranean world of classical cultural background occurred at too early a stage. The aims, ideas and style of life of Christianity had no time properly to crystallize and develop. The clay was soft and malleable; it could still be easily molded into any shape the potter cared to choose. As a result the new church, by then mostly Gentile, soon lost its awareness of being Jewish; indeed, it became progressively anti-Jewish.Jesus the religious man with an irresistible charismatic charm, was metamorphosed into Jesus the Christ, the transcendent object of the Christian religion. The distant fiery prophet from Nazareth proclaiming the nearness of the Kingdom of God did not mean much to the average new recruit from Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth or Rome. Their gaze was directed towards a universal saviour and even towards the eternal yet incarnate Word of God who was God. Geza Vermes, The Changing Faces of Jesus, Penguin, London, 2001, pp. 263-264.

15. Reconstructing Religion Religion as an institution is diminishing as a major influence, despite a prevalent notion of “spirituality”--however that is defined. There are attempts to reclaim an original memory of Jesus of Nazareth as radical revolutionary, as opposed to the image of Jesus as the “gentle shepherd of the sheep”. Robin R. Meyers, Saving Jesus from the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus, HarperOne, 2009. Robin R. Meyers, The Underground Church: Reclaiming the Subversive Way of Jesus, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2012. Diarmuid O’Murchu, Christianity’s Dangerous Memory: A Rediscovery of the Revolutionary Jesus, Crossroad, New York, 2011.

16. Reconstructing Religion (cont.) The emphasis of this new spirituality is on praxis or action. It is not about the correctness of belief, rather, it is about how that belief is internalized and put into practice. In this sense, Jesus of Nazareth is more a role model as opposed to one who is worshiped as God or part of the Trinity (Father, Son, Spirit). This is not a religion of comfort--rather, one of proaction with no rewards at the end of the road.

17. Deconstructing God “In the beginning, human beings created a God who was the First Cause of all things and Ruler of heaven and earth.” Karen Armstrong, A History of God, Ballantine, New York, 1993, p. 3.

18. “Tell me your image of God, and I will tell you your theology.” MARCUS BORG, The God we Never Knew, HarperCollins, San Francisco, 1997. “Tell me how you think and act politically and I will tell you in which God you believe.” DOROTHY SOLLE, Thinking About God, Trinity Press, Philadelphia, 1991, p.8.

19. One of the problems with being human is that we are always seeking to define everything, to reify everything and place it in a “box” if we can because it reduces the chaos of our personal universe, thereby reducing our anxiety. We do it because it gives us comfort. Michael Shermer, who is editor of The Skeptic magazine, describes humans beings as “pattern seeking animals”. He goes on to describe that this is a principal reason why we have developed a god-concept: “God is a myth, one of the most sublime and sacred myths ever constructed by the mythmaking animal…People believe in God because we are pattern-seeking, storytelling, mythmaking, religious, moral animals”. However, once this god-concept was conceived, humans turned over control of everything to this god. We then actually chose to become “supplicants”, some might even say “victims” of our own creation. If God is in control, we do not have to do anything. Michael Shermer, How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science, W.H. Freeman, New York, 2000, pp. 169-170.

20. Attributes (Stereotypes) of God • Almighty (omnipotent); can do anything • All-knowing (omniscient); knows everything • All-present (omnipresent); is everywhere • Everlasting (eternal); without beginning or end • Unchangeable (immutable); forever the same • Limitless (infinite); inexhaustible Ray Billington, Religion Without God, Routledge, London, 2002, p. 27.

22. “Straw Man” Launching a philosophical argument against something conceptual implies that we know, or think we know, what that something is. Arguments for and against God are examples. Viewpoints from a theist and an atheist are offered:

23. Theist Theism: A view of God that is “something like a person without a body, who is eternal, free, able to do anything, knows everything, is perfectly good, is the proper object of human worship and obedience, the creator and sustainer of the universe.” Richard Swinburn, The Coherence of Theism, Oxford U. Press, 1977, p. 1.

24. Atheist I would propose the following definition of God...it’s only purpose is to allow us to agree on the object of debate: “By God, I mean an eternal, spiritual and transcendent being, both exterior and superior to nature, who consciously and voluntarily created the universe. He is assumed to be perfect and blessed, omniscient and omnipotent. Infinitely kind and just, the Creator being his own cause, is himself uncreated. He is the Supreme Being upon whom everything depends and who himself depends on nothing. He is the enactment and the personification of the absolute.” Andre Comte-Sponville, The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality, Penguin, New York, 2008, p. 68.

25. God Imagery • No one has seen God. How is it that people think they “know” who/what God is? • Is it even possible to have a conversation about God? To do so requires that we speak in metaphor(s). • Is there a metaphor that approaches anything that makes sense according to one’s world-view? • Is God a viable concept? Options: • God IS (believer) • God is NOT (atheist) • Don’t know (agnostic)

26. For me, God IS and has no gender (pronouns are just another metaphor). • Can I prove it? NO • If forced, is there a metaphor that makes sense? YES • LOVE (agape), a one-way, unmerited, undeserved gift. God simply loved the creation into existence and let it be. God is therefore not the “Creator”, nor did God privilege life. • If I comprehend this unidirectional “gift”, can I give anything back to God? NO. However, I can give what I feel I have received away to my fellow humans, responsibly using my gifts and talents in the service of others.

27. Characteristics of this God • God does not intervene (is NOT the Creator). • Humans are not created in the image of God (imago dei). • God has nothing to do with natural or human caused suffering and evil. • God is not the “King”, “Judge”, “Ruler”, or the “firer of Thunderbolts”. • Is this not just another rationalization? YES • Does this God concept have any utility? Perhaps only if it is internalized and leads to responsible, altruistic behavior. • Can one be good without a God concept? YES, but when practiced in community there is mutual altruism.

28. What is Theology? • Theology is simply God-talk. • Unfortunately, few have rationally attempted to examine their theology, accepting what others or institutions have promulgated. • Apophatic (negative) theology implies that one can only say what God is not.

29. TWO Ways (directions) to Approach Theology: Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience + Context => Theology Context + Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience => Theology

30. WHAT GOOD IS THEOLOGY? “If it is any good at all, it is going to have to answer to the normal standards of public discourse. It is going to have to articulate itself in such a way as to be understood by any well-meaning reader, its arguments are going to have to be rational, its use of evidence appropriate, its interpretations compelling, its visions imaginable…” George Pattison, The End of Theology—And the Task of Thinking About God, SCM Press, London, 1998, pp. 5-6.

31. Ten Theses On God • We can never know for certain whether God ‘exists’ or does ‘not exist’. • The question of God is not a matter of a dispute about • evidence…it is rather a question concerning each person’s response to the whole of their existence. • 3. The cosmos might reveal a Creator, or it might have been self- regulating. Religiously speaking, the cosmos is ambiguous. • 4. Religious doctrines do not reveal an extra-worldly Being or special insight into another ‘world’ after this one—they are each a specific community’s attempt to give voice to its experience of the sacred as encountered in history. • 5. God is not a ‘Being’ which can be conceptualized in philosophy or theology, any word or thought. Each attempt to grasp God is idolatry. • 6. Each encounter with the most profound depth of our co-dependent selves, with each other, with the natural world which produced us and on which we depend, is an encounter with ‘God’—transcendence and immanence are one.

32. 7. Where ‘God’ is used by believers of any theistic religion as the legitimation of any form of violence—physical, mental, or socio-cultural, then ‘God’ must be rejected in the name of humanity. 8. ‘God’ is a symbol or metaphor for the totality of everything we consider to be of absolute value and meaning for us. Concrete religious traditions, with their prayers, rituals, symbols, doctrines, are necessary human historical expressions of particular communities’ encounter with this totality. 9. Pain and suffering are part of the nature of the universe we inhabit. We should abandon anthropomorphic ideas of God which expect outside intervention to alter the laws of nature in response to our pleading. 10. When we turn to God-as-God (and not as an idol), silence is the most profound response. James Bryne, GOD: Thoughts In An Age of Uncertainty, Continuum, London, 2001, pp. 159-160.

33. Reconstructing Theology In my estimation, any attempt to do theology in this day and age must withstand scientific rigor. When “push comes to shove”, on the science religion/theology interface, the deconstruction of religion is of paramount concern. However, this is also the most sensitive area for most people of religious persuasion. Unfortunately, suggestions that attempt to introduce rational theological considerations to preexisting mythologies fall on deaf ears as most do not question their religion or the leaders of their tradition. We are indeed “pattern-seeking animals” as Michael Shermer suggested.

34. Theologians in the age of modernity... have resisted the suggestion that Christian faith is a mode of imagination. Is this because critics of faith have contrasted the world of imagination with the real world? It is time to acknowledge unapologetically that all religion (including Christianity) learn to speak the language of imagination. ...the job of theology is to articulate the grammar of Christian imagination. Theology must become imaginative, for it must understand itself to speak the language of imagination, and it must pursue its task with imaginative creativity. In short, it must articulate the grammar of Christian imagination imaginatively! For God has chosen to be revealed in the world in a manner accessible only to the imagination. Garrett Green, Theology, Hermeneutics and Imagination, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000, pp. 205,6.

35. Rationalizing Religion You would be within your right to question how I can even participate in a traditional religious institution, and the worship of that tradition. I tolerate the traditional religious language only because I recognize that it represents what I refer to as the “Christian myth” which employs metaphorical language that has the potential to stimulate the imagination. Again, unfortunately, many (if not most), do not view things in this way. There is much room for education and this is why I remain within a tradition. I do not hesitate to invite people into thinking about what they believe and why--knowing that there is no single answer.

36. Death (Eschatology) Death is not a destination (Heaven or Hell), it is the final act in the evolution of one’s life. Because we are comprised of matter and energy, thermodynamics informs us that the matter and energy that define us cannot be destroyed. Therefore, we will never, not be part of the universe. Evolutionary biologist William Hamilton is more erudite:

37. Noted evolutionary theorist William Hamilton (1936-2000), who loved insects, said that when he died, he wanted to buried by the great Coprophanaeus beetle. His poetic vision is a fitting epitaph: They will enter, will bury, will live on my flesh; and in the shape of their children and mine, I will escape death. No worm for me or sordid fly, I will buzz in the dusk like a huge bumble-bee. I will be many, buzz even as a swarm of motorbikes, be bourne, body by flying body out into the Brazilian wilderness beneath the stars, lofted under those beautiful and unfused elytra which we will all hold over our backs. So finally I too will shine like a violet ground beetle under a stone. The Coprophanaeus beetle is a burying beetle whose larvae feed on carcasses that their parents have buried. The larvae then metamorphose into beautiful iridescent adults. W. D. Hamilton, “My intended burial and why,” Insectarium 28, 20 (1991) [in Japanese]

38. Concluding Remarks Scientists do not routinely view science in terms of Myth, Metaphor, & Imagination, yet how do scientists relate to those who are not scientists? Do scientists use a different language when they speak to lay audiences? Do scientists also employ metaphorical language? Do scientists exercise their imagination?

39. SCIENCE’S FICTION Fact versus Fiction (The Stereotype). Is there a more entrenched opposition? It underlies our very conception of science, which investigates solid facts of the world, in contrast to art and poetry, which produce fictitious creations of the mind.  [Therefore], Rejecting fiction is meant to insure the positivity of scientific knowledge against the risk of uncontrolled imagination.  [However,] The physicist, as does the novelist, invents worlds and tells stories. The scientist is an unrepentant dreamer—far from sticking to factual observations, he must imagine fictitious situations [hypotheses], which may, from time to time, prove to be veracious.Scientists deal with the facts. But they wouldn’t get anywhere without dreaming up stories first. Jean-Marc Levy-Leblond, NATURE, 413, 573 (2001).

40. Stories Scientists Tell Erwin Schrodinger: “Schrodinger’s Cat” as a description of quantum uncertainty. Albert Einstein’s “Twin Paradox” to describe special relativity (space travel). Cell Biologist Al Gilman’s description of G-Proteins:“Cells need to know…most of the agents convey information through intermediaries. They issue orders…relay the information to a series of intercellular middlemen…”

41. How many of you grew up having someone read bedtime stories to you? How many of you have read bedtime stories to your own children?

42. And yet, over the years, scientists and philosophers have denigrated imagination as wistfulness and fantasy. Philosopher Paul Ricoeur has identified the so-called “Masters of Suspicion” who contributed to the demise of religious imagination: FEUERBACH (1804-72): Religion’s primal error is its reliance on imagination. MARX (1818-83): Religion as illusion. NIETZSCHE (1844-1900): Religion is “bad imagination”. FREUD (1856-1939): Religion as projection.

43. Einstein on Imagination • If you want your children to be brilliant, tell them fairy tales. If you want them to be very brilliant, tell them even more fairy tales.

44. “You may read bedtime stories to children for ten years-stories about witches and giants, magic and talking animals, stories with a most elaborate supernatural apparatus-but never once will you hear your children complain about the implausibility of the stories. They accept them without demur, and understand exactly how to take the stories, where to file them away, and what future use to make of them.” Don Cupitt, After God, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, 1997, p. 43.

45. Segue to Religion/Theology “Our scientifically orientated knowledge seeks to master reality, explain it, and bring it under the control of reason, but a delight in unknowing has also been part of the human experience. Even today, poets, philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists find that the contemplation of the insoluble is a source of joy, astonishment, and commitment. One of the peculiar characteristics of the human mind is its ability to have ideas and experiences that exceed our conceptual grasp.” Karen Armstrong, The Case for God, Knopf, New York, 2009, p. xiv.

46. “As physics comes increasingly to deal with invisibles such as subatomic particles, behaviors of entities that must be imagined rather than observed, it finds itself in a position similar to poetry and religion in that it must attempt to understand the unknown in terms of known models.” Sallie McFague, Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language, Fortress, Philadelphia, 1982, p. 24.

47. Many scientists have problems with things of a religious or theological nature because they lack factual accountability, also, because they are significantly myth-based. Is it possible to begin to bridge this possible commonality between things theological and things scientific? They both emanate from the richness of the imagination. They both use metaphorical language. They both relate mythological stories.

48. Utterly Humbled by Mystery “I believe in mystery and multiplicity…My very belief and experience of a loving and endlessly creative God has led me to trust both…This life journey has led me to love mystery and not feel the need to change it or make it un-mysterious. This has put me at odds with many other believers I know who seem to need explanations for everything. Religious belief has made me comfortable with ambiguity…Paradoxes don’t scare me anymore…My scientist friends…are willing to live inside imagined hypotheses and theories. But many religious folks insist on answersthat are always true. We love closure, resolution, and clarity, while thinking we are people of “faith”! People who have really met the Holy are always humble…People who’ve had any genuine spiritual experience always know they don’t know…They are in awe before the abyss of it all, in wonder at eternity and depth, and Love, which is incomprehensible to the mind…My belief and comfort is in the depths of Mystery, which should be the very task of religion.” Richard Rohr, Morning Edition, “This I Believe”, December 18, 2006.

49. Anger with God, or why continue to Believe in God? Scott Simon: [As a Holocaust survivor] How can you believe in God? Elie Wiesel: It is impossible, I cannot divorce God. For peace I have faith. I question God…And furthermore my father had faith, my grandfather had faith, my grandmother, my ancestors…what right do I have to be the last one—to break the chain.

50. Conclusion • There are adequate reasons to be skeptical of monotheistic religions or philosophical positions that preach certainty. • All religions are not the same, cannot be stereotyped. • We need to ask “What is the theology behind the belief?” • At the end of the day, the Golden Rule is sufficient. • Tension is good, conflict is counterproductive. • Playfulness, rather than strident positions, should prevail.