I must admit, I used to think that science and religion were natural enemies. How can something that relies on faith not be in direct opposition to a practice which specifically relies on reason and evidence? The thing is, it wasn’t always like that, and to some it still isn’t. Of course, there are those who choose to create conflict, but conflict isn’t necessary. Historically, science grew from the church. The first scientists were clergy, and scientific research was sponsored by the church. The church wanted to understand God’s world, and science was one of the ways they tried to do that.
Before I really began looking into things myself, I thought that the only rational scientific view could be that God (as always, I use the term very loosely) does not exist. But there is so much magic in the universe that we can’t help but feel insignificant in it. Even if the universe does exist due to a cosmic fluke, that’s still pretty darn amazing and if we could ever truly understand that, I think that would be on par with a religious experience.
Arthur C. Clark’s famous quote “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” seems to be true not only of technology as we know it, but also the natural world around us, which possibly explains why many seem to believe the only option is that this world was created by a “sufficiently advanced being”. As our science advances, we discover more and more things that seem like magic – we continually discover new exciting things that seem completely unreal and magical. The quantum world, for example – even the greatest scientific minds still can’t fully grasp what happens in our world on a quantum level. As time goes on, our science progresses, and we understand these things differently, but that doesn’t make them any less amazing. While I accept that both science and spirituality/religion have limits to what they can explain, they both seem to be striving to understand this same magic.
Can’t science be a path to God? If God exists in all things (as is often claimed), then by understanding the world around us through science, we could begin to understand God. Sure, the God we might find wouldn’t be Yahweh, Allah or Jesus – but some parts of the bible have to be interpreted as metaphor, right?
After discussing Misquoting Jesus recently, I thought it was about time I talked about another book that’s had a profound impact on my views – “Conversations with God”. A 3-part (now, with many more1 ) work in which the author, Neale Donald Walsch, claims to be having an actual written dialogue with God.
“I was unhappy … and my life was feeling like a failure on all levels … This time, rather than another letter to another person I imagined to be vicimizing me, I thought I’d go straight to the source; … I decided to write a letter to God.”2
… and, God replies. The book follows with a written dialogue between Walsch and God, talking about prayer, love, divine inspiration and the nature of the bible, and all sorts of potentially controversial topics.
Now, if you haven’t already read these books, you’re probably thinking exactly what I thought when a friend first told me about them – “what kind of nut-job publishes a book claiming he actually had a conversation with God? He’s either nuts, or full of c#@p”. A perfectly valid position to take, but as you read further, you start to understand that it doesn’t matter if Walsch is actually having a conversation with God, if he’s a con artist, or even if he’s nuts – what matters is the book contains some very valid insights.
If God truly did inspire the bible, then why those people? Many of them “never met or saw Jesus in their lives, they lived many years after Jesus left the Earth”3. Some might suggest that the bible as we know it cannot be the word of God unless each of these writers, scribes, translators, etc. were all divinely inspired, which further complicates the issue. Walsch (or, God) suggests the answer to this problem is that the bible is not the only divinely inspired text – “everything in life is holy”4, and God’s inspiration is available to anyone who “listens”:
“Listen to your feelings. Listen to your Highest Thoughts. Listen to your experience. Whenever any of these differ from what you’ve been told by your teachers, or read in your books, forget the words. Words are the least reliable purveyor of Truth.”5
The God portrayed in “Conversations with God” is exactly the kind of higher power I could imagine being behind all the world’s religions. There’s no way any one religion has got it perfectly right, because each rely on the words that have been passed down through generations, which have been translated, changed and misinterpreted. Each “divinely inspired” text may have come from people who were more in touch with this “God”, and therefore came closer to God’s true message, but each writer had their own human flaws as well, and thus no text is perfect. In the later books, he hints at the idea that by being “in touch” with God, one is really in touch with oneself – God is not only “in” each of us, but we are (collectively) God.
The book certainly solves some of the issues with traditional religion, but possibly so much so that it’s incompatible with traditional religions (which is probably a good thing!). I mentioned in my previous post “Soft Atheist, Hard Agnostic”, that I am a “soft” agnostic when it comes to “spiritual” gods or other non-interfering higher powers. Despite the personal connection Walsch claims to have with this god, to me his ideas seem very close to these types of “gods”
The books are certainly a departure from the seemingly popular non-fiction books on religion and atheism today, but if you haven’t read anything like this before, it’s not a bad place to start.
While I happily bought the first three books, and I honestly believe they were written with good intentions, I can’t help but feel the multitudes of subsequent books are just an attempt to “cash in” on a franchise, and hence, I haven’t bought or read any of them. [↩]
I just came across a review of a book I’ve been reading off and on for the last month or so – Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why – on a couple of differentsites. The review itself (at Powell’s Books) gives a nice summary of Bart Ehrman’s arguments regarding the impossible task of obtaining and understanding the “original texts” of the bible.
Many people have a vague notion that all the original biblical texts are preserved in vaults somewhere, and translators work from those original texts. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. The earliest surviving versions of the gospels are handwritten copies dating from centuries after the original texts were written. Also, we don’t just have a single version of each gospel; we have many versions, and even more fragments. The trouble is, none of the versions agree with each other.1
If you haven’t read the book, I’d highly recommend it. Dawkins even mentions it in his recent “God Delusion” (so, it’s gotta be good, right?). Ehrman details many specific examples of differences between versions of the biblical texts, and also examines how the specific books were chosen and compiled.
Also, if there’s any Christians reading this – please, tell me – how DO you reconcile the problems Ehrman mentions? Were all of the copies of the bible divinely inspired? Was there one particular version that was divinely inspired? Please… I’m dying to know!
I found a link today which reminded me of a Rowan Atkinson sketch. I know there are different ideas about when the “Sabbath” actually is. Christians seems to set Sunday as the “holy” day, whereas Jews mark the time between sunset on Friday and Sunset on Saturday instead. Of course, it all comes down to biblical interpretation.
While not particularly relevant to the rest of us (although, I discovered recently on my travels to Adelaide – one of Australia’s smaller major cities1 – shops still aren’t allowed to open on Sundays, and I’m sure we can blame the Christians for that) I thought “Remember the Sabbath” was quite interesting.
Oh, and then – of course – the Rowan Atkinson sketch I was reminded of… (This was linked recently from one of the Atheist blogs I read – I forget where, but if you think it might have been you, let me know and I’ll link to you)
It seems a common claim that morality is impossible without religion. While I might agree that in some cases religion (or, more specifically, the fear of eternal damnation) can be a pretty good motivator, I think that a morality that doesn’t rely on religion is not just possible, but it’s a lot more desirable. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be outlining what some people think of morality without religion, why religion-based morality is potentially suspect, and my ideas on morality.
Some have claimed that atheism is responsible for immoral acts, and that lack of Christian morality (ignoring the possibility of other types of morality) in schools is responsible for school shootings. Both these articles describe various violent acts and crimes committed by young USAians1, and then jump right into blaming Atheists and Darwinists (perhaps I’m missing a step in the argument, but I can’t see it – although “How to build a bomb in the public school system” does have one piece of evidence – the words “Natural Selection” on one shooter’s T-shirt):
Now do you realize who the people are who are responsible for children having gotten so violent? The answer is ATHEISTS and other non-beleivers [sic.] in the true God. So you may ask how can this be? The reason why they are responsible is because they hate God and teach their children against God (which is the highest form of child abuse). For example: Atheists hate the TEN COMMANDMENTS because God is their Author. 2
Aside from the obvious problem that Atheists, by definition, are unable to hate God (because as far as they’re concerned God doesn’t even exist) I see no logical reason why someone couldn’t hate the Christian God, but still “love” the 10 commandments. Jews and Muslims still have the 10 commandments, but in this writers mind, I’m sure Jews and Muslims would classify as “non-believers in the true God” (even though, technically, all three religions have the same roots, and thus the same God). There’s also plenty of people who live arguably moral lives while breaking at least the first few commandments. Depending on your interpretation, it’s also possible that all Christians break the 1st commandment, if you read “thou shalt have no other Gods before me”3 as endorsing strict monotheism, given that Christianity (arguably) invokes three Gods4 – I think Jews and Muslims are safe, though. Then, of course, there’s those of us who choose not to kill, steal or commit adultery, and still manage to respect our parents every so often – I don’t need to love (or even believe in) the Christian God for that.
There may be many religion-hating Atheists (or, anti-theists – of which Richard Dawkins comes to mind – while I’ve seen him in documentaries, I have yet to actually read his work, though, so I could be wrong), but a God-hating Atheist is an oxymoron. I certainly don’t think taking issue with religion necessarily makes you amoral, just like I don’t think that following a religion (whatever it may be) necessarily makes you moral.
One final thought – how many “immoral” people do you think are out there in this world? 5%? 20%? 50%? Well, if you subscribe to the theory that without Christianity, you’re necessarily immoral, you are immediately saying that 67%5 are incapable of living moral lives – not including immoral “Christians”, of course. Is there really a God who would condemn the majority of the world’s population simply because they were raised in a religion other than Christianity?
(To Be Continued… – Morality Part 2 will be posted next Sunday)
Residents of the United States of America – often incorrectly (in my mind) called Americans. “The Americas” cover a lot more ground than just the U.S.A. [↩]
Suggested by AthiestWager, although I think it’s definitely possible to be Christian and follow the 1st commandment – it all comes down to interpretation [↩]
According to Wikipedia, only 33.06% of the world’s population are Christian [↩]
If you read my essay Reconciling Darwinian Natural Selection with Christian Theology (and you did, didn’t you?) You’d know that I think it’s entirely possible to believe in both Darwinian evolution, and the Christian God (not that I necessarily do, but the possibility isn’t entirely ruled out). There are different ways of accepting evolution and Christian theology, of course, and I’m sure even Christians who have reconciled their faith with evolution differ on the specifics, as I outlined by the two views expressed by Moore and Gray:
“Moore separated [special creation and evolutionist theories] by allowing them both to act in their own time periods. For Moore, special creation was the mode for primary creation, while evolution was the method by which species continued to diversify. Gray, on the other hand, separated them by purpose. While evolution was the guiding process by which species were created, God was still the driving force behind it.”1
One group that may not be convinced by either of these options, however, are those who believe that the bible is to be taken literally, and is infallible. Putting aside, for the moment, my views on this position as a whole, this raises another important question:
If the words in the bible are the true word of God, then which version of the words do we take as the ultimate truth?
As you are probably aware, the bible as we know it today didn’t come down written on stone tablets like the 10 commandments supposedly did – it was written by many different authors, over many years. Even worse, we don’t actually have many of these original writings. We have copies of copies of copies of copies, with god knows (irony intended) how many errors. Then, of course, we have the issues of translation. It’s one thing to say that the original scriptures were the infallible word of God, but that each and every version of the bible (however different) is also God’s infallible word?
Then, of course, there’s the issue of contradictions within the bible itself. If we assume these translations are trustworthy, how to we know which bits to follow when there are definite contradictions? “The Atheist’s Wager”2 examines one aspect of the problem noting that Jews and Christians seem to have very different ideas on what God actually thinks about homosexuality based on giving authority to certain words in the bible over others – how do we know which ones are really important?3 When is the last time you heard a Christian or Jew saying “I’m sorry, I can’t eat shrimp or oysters, the bible clearly states ‘all creatures in the seas or streams that do not have fins and scales … you are to detest. And since you are to detest them, you must not eat their meat’”4 Perhaps I’m wrong, perhaps people like this do actually exist – anyone met any? Of course, the seafood issue isn’t the only one – have a look at Skeptics Annotated Bible for just some of the “absurdities” that can be found within the word of God.
A book I’ve been reading recently5 goes much into much more detail about the problems with the issues associated with translation and access to the original biblical writings. So, even if we wanted to take the bible at its literal word, there seems to be no hope of doing this without significant problems in verification of what those words actually are.
“Christianity from the outset was a bookish religion that stressed certain texts as authoritative scripture… , however, we don’t actually have these authoritative texts… we can’t interpret the words of the New Testament if we don’t know what the words were.”6
We need to interpret the bible if it’s to have any real meaning. And in doing so, there will obviously be different interpretations. How can we know which interpretation is correct? Simply, we can’t – that’s why the bible should not be treated as a 100% factual account of history or the nature of god. It is definitely a valuable text, which has historical and spiritual significance, but I fail to see how it can logically be accepted as “gospel”.
I must admit, I used to think that science and religion were natural enemies. How can something that relies on faith not be in direct opposition to a practice which specifically relies on reason and evidence? The thing is, it wasn’t always like that, and to some it still isn’t. Of course, there are those who choose to create conflict, but conflict isn’t necessary. Historically, science grew from the church. The first scientists were clergy, and scientific research was sponsored by the church. The church wanted to understand God’s world, and science was one of the ways they tried to do that.
Arthur C. Clark’s famous quote “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” seems to be true not only of technology as we know it, but also the natural world around us, which possibly explains why many seem to believe the only option is that this world was created by a “sufficiently advanced being”. As our science advances, we discover more and more things that seem like magic – we continually discover new exciting things that seem completely unreal and magical. The quantum world, for example – even the greatest scientific minds still can’t fully grasp what happens in our world on a quantum level. As time goes on, our science progresses, and we understand these things differently, but that doesn’t make them any less amazing. While I accept that both science and spirituality/religion have limits to what they can explain, they both seem to be striving to understand this same magic.
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