The recent debate between Archbishop Rowan Williams and Richard Dawkins (you may watch it at the bottom of the post) inspired me to a few reflections on the discussion, if not conflict, which goes on between ‘religious people’ of various sorts and the representatives of scientific materialism. The below is thus not a response to any concrete points that were raised in the debate in Oxford. I would like, however, to say a few words about it. First of all, I am very glad that it was organized, because the debaters showed mutual respect and great personal culture. This is something one can start to seriously doubt is possible when looking at the countless similar discussions on the internet, and not only there. I must say, however, that I was a bit disappointed in it – it seemed to be very superficial, as a debate slightly over one hour probably has to be, and the really interesting points were not elaborated on and in the end of the day the essence of the questions posed was not touched upon, in my humble opinion. It was nice to watch, it was needed, but in no way ground-breaking.
Agnostics or atheists whose worldview is based on sciences represent a very coherent and logical standpoint (at least the more conscious and educated of them). They claim that there is no need to refer to a concept of a deity, of the transcendent, for it only complicates things and doesn’t in fact add anything to the equation. If one believes in God, one may as well believe that the world is eternal and has no beginning, and that there is no cause behind it. The only difference is that the empirical data, which is the most plausible, accessible and obvious kind of data we have, doesn’t seem to produce any indication that there is a God or any transcendence. Of course, this stance requires making philosophical assumptions (basically that the world we perceive is real and that our senses are a workable means of exploring it), but these are the simplest ones we can make, and simplicity is both pragmatic and beautiful (this view is especially pertinent to the Anglo-Saxon tradition). These people, thus, accept that they might be wrong but at the same time are convinced that what they do is the most sincere, most fruitful and useful way of seeking the Truth.
Now, how can one respond to that? I doubt if we can produce a truly convincing argument. This phenomenon is related to the direction our culture has taken and can be perhaps best described by the words Alan Jones, an excellent Anglican theologian, put as a kind of motto on his website : “we have lost the sense of the sacred”. People just don’t experience it and luck the instruments to ‘touch’ the spiritual/transcendent/supra-empirical reality. This is what Steiner and the school of Antrhoposophy he created wanted to remedy: he claimed this ‘sense’, this ability to come in contact with and explore the spiritual, was lost somewhere about the fall of the symbolic ‘Atlantis’ and can be regained in our time, among other things, through the abilities and insights that his ‘spiritual science’, and other traditions of initiation, can offer. This reminds me of a philosophical tale I once heard, which corresponds well with Steiner’s concern, even though it doesn’t have any Anthroposophical origins (this concern has been in fact widely shared – I decided to mention Steiner because of his approach which was meant to be scientifical):
There was a group of settlers whose ship wrecked near an uninhibited island. They settled there and created a community. It so happened that members of one family, the most numerous one, suffered from a condition which didn’t allow them to see any colours – for them the world was monochromatic. This gene dominated the population and after a few generations had come and gone everyone lost the ability to see colours. But from time to time, due to natural mutation, a child was born who could see colours and would try to communicate what he or she saw to others. The community would blind this child thinking that he or she was suffering from a dangerous pathology causing delusions, which distorted the correct view of the world.
There is a risk we might be just like that community.
If I were debating someone like Dawkins, I would only like to show a few things, without attempting to produce any definitive argument. First of all, that science is in fact the daughter of philosophy and that doubting ‘the obvious’, inquiring into the reality beyond what is apparent, has been and should remain a valuable pursuit. Then, that our vision of the world depends in fact on basic decisions/assumptions we make and is actually a matter of belief (this applies equally to a God-centered cosmology and a random order of matter which we take as the only plausible basis of any judgments concerning reality, because the “I” has to reflect on certain things prior to the scientific evidence – like the nature of perception, its relationship with the world, with other conscious beings, etc.). I would also like to point out, and this is perhaps the most important thing, that God isn’t there for religious people to ‘fill the gaps’ which science may later claim (as happened with thunders, etc.). He/She is to be found inside, in the experience of a relationship, in trust and in love, which cannot – and shouldn’t – be explained, and which in themselves do not fulfil any pragmatic function: they simply are. Just as for a scientific pragmatist the world is simply as it seems to be.
There is one more thing worth noting, I believe: the critics of religion emphasise its destructive influence on human creativity, intellectual freedom, boldness to be critical and inquiring, etc, and additionally that it fosters the worst traits, brings about wars, hatred and prejudice. I do not think this is the right way to put this. I’m convinced these things stem from a deeper level, from certain general features of the human nature – greed, intellectual laziness, will to find a safe haven and a system of beliefs which will secure certainty and safety from challenges and questions, tendency to seek ‘the absolute truth’, to submit to the ‘libido dominandi’, etc. People who are not critical about religion and submit to their instincts within its framework wouldn’t turn out to be better with respect to scientific or philosophical convictions. It is just that people like Dawkins seem to be dogmatists themselves and assume that if one is critical and willing to confront their questions and doubts, they will ultimately turn to the materialistic/”scientific” paradigm. This is obviously not the truth, and we know that from both the history of philosophy and religion, and especially from the time when those where intertwined with science itself.
We can believe in God or not. That is a matter of experience, trust and a sense of relationship, which we cannot impose on anyone. But we shouldn’t act like the only people bold enough to confront the truth are the materialists and that everyone else is in fact deluded.
On the other hand, religious people who try to argue that God is a necessity, who try to show that the cosmological, teleological, ethical or any other argument they come up with should convince us of God’s existence, miss the point of religion, I think. This kind of reasoning may obscure what religion is all about – a personal relationship. Never have I felt more distant to God than when I was listening to an apologist arguing the logical necessity of a personal being behind the universe, because I had a sense this was like substituting rape and stalking for a love story. Would I be fundamentally wrong to say this is metaphysical porn? We should concentrate on the existential dimension, I believe, and try to show how simple acceptance of the world as it seems to be at the first glance fails to answer our existential experiences and questions, how it is fundamentally unable to go deep enough into the nature of our being and the reality, and how these experiences may not be explained away by neuroscience, because it operates on a totally different level. A god who is a perfect system which puts the world into a neat hierarchical order and explains everything, leaving room only for duty and obedience and eliminating any tension or doubts is most likely to be just a product of our imagination, and atheists are most right to suggest (and we should be grateful for their insights) that this is in fact an imaginary friend we designed to compensate for uncertainties in life rather than a person who is a true mystery and who we can, and should, approach with all questions of this life, creatively and with trust (as opposed to a conviction). Such a vision of god is rightly criticized as in fact immoral, since it leads to ethical experience and intuitions being subject to fear of punishment, stifled.
