Tag: evolution

Exploring the God Debate: Proofs for and Against Existence

THE GOD DELUSION: FACT OR FICTION?

    In 2003, a new book by Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, was climbing the bestseller charts and giving atheists everywhere powerful fuel for attacking religion. On November 9 eighty people attended a debate sponsored by the Humanist Association of London and Area on “Is There A Loving Creator God?” Here are the key points by the debaters Dr. Goldwin Emerson and Dr. Bruce Tallman.

    EMERSON: NO. THERE IS NO LOVING CREATOR GOD

    The Christian God is reputed to be an all-knowing, all-powerful, benevolent, supreme being who created the universe, answers prayer and influences events on Earth. He is also believed to have sent his son to Earth for the purpose of atoning for the sins of humankind. This description causes skeptics to ask the following:

  1. If the deity is all-knowing, he would know when disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes are about to happen, and if he is all-powerful, why does he not stop these catastrophes and prevent the death of innocent people? 

2. If this deity is powerful and benevolent, why does he allow humans to be born with defects and incurable diseases? 

3. Millions of believers pray to their deity, asking that he intervene in events on Earth. Why are so many prayers not answered? 

4. Why do Christians claim that Jesus is divine, requiring worship, when no other monotheistic religions make this claim for their prophets? 

 5. As scientific knowledge advances, we learn that many of the world’s problems of pollution, war, global warming, hunger, and disease are human-made problems which, if they are to be solved at all, will need to be solved by human-made solutions. Why is it that Christians claim that God is necessary for ethical behaviour?  Effective ethical codes were established in various early civilizations prior to the existence of Christianity. 

    When asked why their omnipotent, loving God allows so much misery in the world, believers say God moves in mysterious ways, or the universe is unfolding as it should.  These answers are hardly satisfying to skeptics, and one is tempted to side with Sigmund Freud (1870-1937), who said: “A personal god is nothing more than a father figure: desire for such a deity sprang from infantile yearnings for a powerful, protective father, for justice and fairness and life to go on forever. God is simply a projection of these desires, feared and worshiped by human beings out of a sense of helplessness.  Religion belongs to the infancy of the human race; it has been a necessary stage in the transition from childhood to maturity.  It has promoted ethical values which were essential to society. Now that humanity has come of age, however, it should be left behind.”                                                                  For non-theists, the conclusion is that there is no God. On the other hand, there are alternative ways of viewing what has been called God. In the seventeenth century, the Dutch philosopher Spinoza proposed that the belief in God’s activity in the world was merely a way of describing the world’s mathematical and causal principles. For Spinoza there was no need for the concept of divine law: the best guidance is the eternal laws of nature. The famous physicists Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein, and many more recent scientists and philosophers have expressed a similar view.

     Others may think of God as a quality within themselves, the Ultimate Reality or the Ground of All Being, instead of believing in the traditional Christian concept of God.

     Most liberal Christians accept the firm scientific evidence that the universe is billions of years old and that life on Earth evolved over millions of years; nevertheless, they may still believe that, in some mysterious way, God is a prime mover in this evolution. While religious people also credit God with the origin and existence of love, humanists believe love is a product of evolution. The emotion of love, particularly in mammals, enhances the survival potential of offspring. Considering God as a creator begs the obvious question: Who or what created God?  For humanists, the answer is simple: humans created God.

     It seems that primitive peoples looked for explanations of how the world works and created numerous spirits and gods to account for natural happenings. Over the centuries, many different gods were invented by ancient civilizations, including Egypt, Greece and Rome. One exception was the monotheistic God of the Hebrews. We now accept that the multitude of ancient pagan gods were created in the minds of humans. It is reasonable to conclude that Yahweh was also created in the minds of the Hebrews and became entrenched in the myths contained in the book of Genesis. Thus, humans created God in their own image rather than the other way around.

     Humanists are guided by the principles of rational thought, scientific inquiry, responsibility, ethics, compassion, fairness, and equality, and find it difficult to believe in the Christian concept of God. Instead, we believe that he was created in the minds of early Hebrews. Rather than worshiping the Christian God, humanists celebrate the opportunity of living on our wondrous planet and having the privilege of enjoying the many good fortunes available to us. In other words, they try to follow a philosophy of loving and revering life like believers love and revere God.

TALLMAN: YES. THERE IS A LOVING CREATOR GOD

    Nonbelievers usually do away with the idea of a Creator by ascribing God-like qualities such as infinity and eternity to the universe. However, Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton, the two greatest scientists who ever lived, both believed that the universe is finite, and modern astronomers all agree that the universe began with a Big Bang about fourteen billion years ago. They have also done computer projections that show that the universe will end in about one hundred billion years. Monotheistic religions believe that nothing caused God to exist, God exists infinitely and eternally by God’s own nature, and God caused the Big Bang.

    Believing scientists like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, an expert on the fossil remains of evolution, have noted that evolution on our planet has proceeded from matter (rocks and water) to life (plants and animals) to thought (humans) to spirit (the great religions that continue to spread across the world) because humans are “homo religiousus,” that is, “hardwired for God”. The fact that the whole natural world has evolved in a spiritual direction, from matter to life to thought to spirit, is evidence that God is directing the whole evolutionary process.

    Many nonbelievers say they only believe in things for which there is scientific evidence. Although we cannot scientifically prove there is a God, there is evidence of the creativity of a Creator all around us: the sun, lightning, rainbows, flowers, mountains, peacocks, giraffes, children, and on and on. It’s as if the whole creation is shouting, “There is a God!” As one contemplative said, “ If you want to see God, just open your eyes and wake up!”

    Just as there is plenty of evidence that there is a creator God, the evidence of a loving God is all around us. First of all, there is far more good than evil in the world. Evil is always only a corruption of something that was originally good. For example, illness is always only a corruption of original health. 

    Doctors estimate that only about three percent of the population has a major illness at any one time; health predominates by far. If there is seven percent unemployment, it means there is ninety-three percent employment. Criminologists estimate only two percent of the population are criminals, the other ninety-eight percent are law-abiding citizens. So good is foundational, and evil is secondary. We take the good for granted because it is just so everyday and commonplace. Again, we need to open our eyes.

    The greatest proof that there is a loving God is that love is the central thing in life. This requires no argument since lovers, poets, philosophers, and mystics have been proclaiming it for centuries, and we all know in our hearts that it is true. If there is no God of love, why is good far more predominant than evil, and why is love the central thing in life? Atheists have no good explanation for this.

    Although God is loving, all-powerful, and all-knowing, God is also self-limiting. Natural laws serve us well the vast majority of the time, so God chooses not to interfere with them. If God interfered with them every time they might cause suffering, the world would be chaotic. Similarly, God chooses not to take away our free will, even when we misuse it and cause suffering, because otherwise, we would be robots, and there would be no real love in the world.

    God constantly works within us, trying to motivate us to love one another, prevent suffering, and bring greater good out of evil. Indeed, life is full of the overcoming of suffering. However, sometimes, we disobey God and cause suffering on a massive scale, such as killing millions of innocent people in the twentieth century. The real question here is not “How can God allow suffering?” but “How can human beings allow it?”             

    God does allow suffering, but only so that the highest human virtues: compassion, wisdom, heroism, service to others, and self-sacrifice, can emerge in response. If God took away all suffering life would lose its profundity.

    The crucifixion of Christ is the great symbol that God suffers with us and is right in the center of our pain, trying to alleviate it. And the resurrection of Christ is the great symbol that all suffering is finally overcome by God in heaven.

    Life on Earth is evolving in a spiritual direction; religion and spirituality constantly spring up everywhere because we are hardwired for God, good is foundational, love is central, and there are answers to suffering. All these things testify that there is indeed a loving, creator God.

Concluding Remark

    The two statements represent different ways of viewing our universe. One is religious, the other non-religious. These two positions are offered so that readers may better understand both and make their own choices on these important concerns.

The Messy God in All Things

Raimon Pannikar and Paul Tillich support Teilhard’s view

that a new perspective of God is rising out of the old one –

a God more comfortable with the messiness of evolution

than with the order and structure of Greek metaphysics

the direction of evolution is now seen as 

towards the maximization of goodness

and thus towards the incarnation of God –

if Christ is the Divine Word as Creator

and if Christ is the Word Incarnate as Jesus

Christ Jesus is also the Redeemer –

what is created in Love is redeemed in Love

through prayer Love is received

and through miracles Love is expressed

prayer is the medium for miracles

our night dreams show us 

we contain in our unconscious 

the miracle of secret Aladdin caves 

a mythological world of jewels and ‘jinn’ –

spirits within that invite us into

the desire and dread of the human adventure –

to have our secure inner world dismantled/

deconstructed but also reconstructed

into a broader/more compassionate/

more fully human space

in general, it is better to approach God

through the Holy Spirit, as a living reality

than through theology as an abstract concept

self-abandonment to Divine Providence

in the present moment

begets faith

which helps us to see 

God hides God’s Self

so we develop a pure faith

that can see God in everything –

in all life

and all evolution. 

SCIENCE/STOICS/FEAR/LOVE

What the ancients called the ‘soul’

or the essence of personhood

emerged thru billions of years 

of converging and complex evolution

giving rise to ever greater consciousness:

matter/plants/animals/humans/

religions/sciences/Internet/smart phones/AI

but some religious people ignore common sense/

empirical science and develop utopian visions

and some scientists ignore the direction of evolution/ 

personal experience/religious wisdom

reducing humans to objects or machines

and some humanists in their quest

for self-fulfillment ignore the communal dimension/

traditional teachings about human nature –

dialogue between religion/science/humanism

is necessary for all of us to avoid our delusions

for everyone new knowledge can seem like an assault 

on our cherished idolatrous concepts –

even Einstein resisted the new knowledge

his own theories pointed to

however, he later admitted his resistance

to God playing dice with the universe

was his biggest mistake

Einstein claimed time and space are mental constructs –

its all going on in our minds, therefore

the only thing that makes things fearful is the fear itself – 

the fearfulness of things is in us not in them

as Seneca the Roman Stoic philosopher claimed

“Nothing is terrible in things except fear itself”

and Epictetus the Greek Stoic philosopher claimed

“It is not death or hardship that is a fearful thing

but the fear of death and hardship”

and Henri Nouwen the Roman Catholic mystic claimed

“Our greatest fear is intimacy with ourselves

and the greatest paradox is: 

the heart is where we are most ourselves 

and most alienated from ourselves

and since God is beyond even paradox 

and cannot be thought but only loved

we can approach God only in a cloud of unknowing.”

COSMIC SHIFTS IN CONSCIOUSNESS

The only direction of evolution is “convergence” –

which is both positive and creative –

the creation of evermore complex life forms

the “Axial Period” within that positive direction

happened between 800 and 200 years before Christ 

in China (Confucius and Lao Tzu)/India (Buddha)/

Persia (Zoroaster)/Israel (Prophets)

all arose and transformed everything

that human beings could be

Hugh and Richard Saint Victor

Christian philosophers/mystics 

wrote in the 12th century that there are three eyes:

the first eye of flesh gives us sight

the second eye of reason gives us meditation/reflection

and the third eye of contemplation gives us true understanding –

the ability to see with the eyes of the heart –

the brothers Saint Victor continued the God-given

unfolding of human consciousness

but in Buddhism and Christianity there has also always been

a “contemptus mundi” – a contempt for the world

however, churches in the postmodern world 

can no longer pretend they are the only sources of grace 

and that the Holy Spirit is not active in all civilizations

or churches will continue to become irrelevant/fringe groups  

the tradition of churches condemning their best thinkers 

like Meister Eckhart (who in 1329 was labelled a heretic)

means that the real victim was not Eckhart himself 

but Christianity since Eckhart’s “Creation Spirituality “

which is Jewish/biblical/prophetic

was replaced by an anti-intellectual asceticism

which is apolitical/dualistic/introverted not world-shaking

still, conscious evolution goes on – 

Christianity finally shifted from the fall/redemption 

Era of Peter from Constantine’s Holy Roman Empire 

in 310 AD to the 1960s – the beginning of the Era of John

a mystic of the Cosmic Christ

who promoted Cosmic Consciousness

and noted that even Peter was a mystic –

for he repeated three times

“Lord, you know that I love you” (John 21:15-17).

Preferring the Poor

If we believe that science and religion are incompatible

we will live in one world

and pray and believe in another

the Newtonian view of the world

did not include the human person –

everything was mechanical

and even when the new physics gave us a dynamic cosmos

religious consciousness was stuck in a medieval cosmos:

a perfect/immutable/unchanging/hierarchical/

anthropocentric world

evolution may be a painful movement forward

marked by dramatic suffering and losses

the losses cannot be ignored

but neither can the progress

from hunter-gatherer

to mythic religious empires

to pluralistic informational societies

spiritual regress happened with Nietzsche’s

“will-to-power”

which is not “will” in the psychological sense

nor power in the sociological sense –

for Nietzsche will-to-power

is ontological/basic reality/the way things are

spiritual progress happened after the death

of Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection in 1691

when his Abbott published Lawrence’s Practice of the Presence of God

and it exploded around the world

spiritual progress also occurred with Gustavo Gutierrez

and his radical theology of the poor –

theology from the perspective of poor people not victors

the polar opposite of Nietzsche’s will-to-power

and mirrored in the Second Vatican Council’s

“preferential option for the poor.”

 

THE ORIGIN AND GOAL OF LOVE

The End of all things – the Omega Point of Love

is the centering principle of the whole universe

integrates it all – draws all things to itself

and is present in the Beginning/Big Bang/Alpha Point of Love –

and the Union of all things with God –

the Omega Point of Love –

is the goal of all evolution

 

Love is an interdependent life force

all the way from quarks to God

Love is the origin and goal of meaning

 

every star/cell/flower/bird/animal/human

longs for wholeness/completeness

so it can rest in peace –

not die, but rest peacefully

 

just as, after the Big Bang, God rested –

God seeks repose

our souls seek repose –

repose is the Law of Pleasure

for all creatures

 

but even in repose God is at work

another religious paradox –

God’s Providence is at work

even if God lets us be miserable

and deprived of all light and love –

since the longing of holy people for God

increases in such situations

and this longing is God’s work too

 

God is being/resting/working/

becoming/evolving/loving

all the way from Alpha to Omega.

 

 

 

RELIGION/SCIENCE/POST-TRUTH

A major mistake for atheism and science advocates

is the massive fallacy of freezing all religion

at the pre-rational/mythic level

and believing modern science and culture

are purely rational

which war and science-used-for-war disproves

to some scientists evolution is a meaningless process

controlled by blind chance

whereas to some Christians evolution can give new depth

and richness to our view of God –

God works thru chaos and does not impose design

but gives nature the chance

to participate in its own creation

the universe intended life from the beginning –

if the Big Bang had happened a trillionth of a second

slower or faster the universe would have imploded

or flung apart into nothingness

whereas North American and European theologians

address the non-believer –

how can you speak of God in a scientific age? –

Latin and African liberation theologians

address the non-person –

how can you speak of God to the poor/marginalized?

over the course of centuries the Church

has worked out a body of principles based on the Gospel

regarding communal justice and equality –

and Vatican Council II in the 1960s

wanted to reinforce/enlarge these principles

particularly regarding communal economic development

as our culture turns in the “post-truth” era

towards the authority of experience

rather than the authority of religion or reason

it is good to remember that religion and reason

are part of human experience

and to be spiritual and religious

is to stitch human experience and wisdom together

so experience renews reason

with awe.

 

THE MAGIC ELIXIR

Tremendous change has happened since the Middle Ages:

Renaissance/Reformation/Enlightenment/Evolution/World Wars –

which makes theologians ask 

“What is modernity?/theology?/Christianity?”

but whatever it is, theology is secondary to liberating praxis –

solidarity with the poor must be the center of Christianity –

theology is subordinate to justice –

Jesus, like Buddha, came to liberate 

not speculate

another major development is Technology

which increases our ability to meet every human need

but hypnotizes the Masses into believing 

life is only about meeting economic needs –

we have gained the world 

but lost our souls

long before this, right back in biblical times

Christianity was corrupted by unconscious worldliness –

scholars agree on three “Pauls” in the Christian scriptures: 

the radical/conservative/reactionary Pauls –

Paul probably did not write Colossians and Ephesians –

fake authorship was common throughout the ancient world

and Paul goes from a theology of liberation in Romans/Corinthians

to a theological conservative in Colossians/Ephesians

who in these later books believes Christians can own slaves

for their own economic gain

but the Quran says “The riches and progeny of unbelievers

will profit them nothing when it comes to Allah –

they will inhabit the Fire –

believers put their trust in God”

so being Christian (or Muslim) never ceases to be challenging 

we always get pierced by the horns 

of scientific materialism or world-escaping piety

however modern theologians such as Ileo Delia 

avoid the conservatizing/privatizing/sickening of the Masses

and allow us to drink a magic elixir

made by swirling together central ideas from some august believers:

Merton/Teilhard/Panikkar/and Griffiths

that give us a robust/healthy modern faith.

THE EVOLUTION OF BELIEF

In 139 C.E. (Common Era), Ptolemy, a Greek astronomer,

developed a system of circles within circles

which became the primary astronomical model

for 1500 years!

 

for 15 centuries everyone believed

this was how the universe operated

but the accretion of more and more untested beliefs

along with increasingly sophisticated science/history/psychology

caused some Christians, desperately trying to keep up

to assert increasingly unbelievable things

like the existence of hell – a place of eternal torture –

what could anyone do in their brief lifespan to warrant that? –

this belief was the projection of our worst fear onto God

made God into an Absolute Demon/Monster

and created scepticism/atheism

 hell exists, but it is a God-forsaking mental state not a place

7 centuries before Teilhard de Chardin

St. Angela of Foligno saw the whole evolving creation as

a divine milieu – a universe pregnant with God – a heaven

 

in Fall/Redemption traditional spirituality

the quest is for perfection

and the goal is to keep the soul clean

but in Quantum Theology/Spirituality no perfection exists –

imperfection is integral to all nature –

and holiness is cosmic hospitality – welcoming all things –

and the goal is to keep the soul green/

evergreen/ever-growing

 

7 centuries before, and surprisingly like, Quantum Theology

Meister Eckhart’s writings on the soul

answered the fundamental philosophical/theological questions:

“who are we?/why do we exist?”

which supply the basic purpose/direction of our lives

 

no one but Meister Eckhart

according to Matthew Fox

so thoroughly integrated

biblical theology/spirituality/

prophecy/mysticism/

faith/reason/

art/life.

 

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE NEW ATHEISM

Justin Brierley, host of the “Unbelievable?” podcast, which hosts Christians and atheists in dialogue, likes to thank atheists for reviving Christian thinking.

    Brierley’s new book The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God: Why the New Atheism Grew Old and Secular Thinkers Are Considering Christianity Again is part of a new wave of tomes such as two by Alister McGrath: The Dawkins Delusion: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine and Coming to Faith Through Dawkins: Twelve Essays on the Pathway from New Atheism to Christianity in which a dozen secular thinkers found their way to belief in God through reading criticism of Richard Dawkins. Even Deepak Chopra weighs in with a chapter on “Dawkins and his Delusions” in his book The Future of God.

    The “four horsemen of the atheist apocalypse,” Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett were very popular from about 2000 to 2010 but have fallen out of vogue since then.

    The new atheism arose because of a perfect storm of events: American fundamentalist criticism of evolution, resulting in a ban on teaching the scientific theory in some schools; ongoing aggression by religious evangelists who considered atheists either foolish or evil; the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center by fundamentalist Muslims; and sex scandals perpetrated by priests and covered up by bishops.

    The storm resulted in a counter storm of books by atheist scientists such as Harris and Dawkins, notably Dawkins’ The God Delusion, and writers such as Dennett and Hitchens, notably Hitchens’ God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

    However, the atheist counter storm resulted in a counter storm from Protestant philosophers such as William Lane Craig, Alvin Plantinga, Tim Keller, and John Lennox.

   The new atheism came to be seen as deeply flawed for two main reasons. First, they cherry-picked their approach to religion, straw-manning their opponents by just focusing on the worst aspects of religion. Their simplistic approach to religious faith failed to take into account all the good religions have done for centuries: providing billions of people with deep meaning in their lives, pastoral care during hard times, and building charities, hospitals, schools, and universities around the world.

    Secondly, they failed to apply their critical standards to themselves. They only got as far as Kierkegaard’s ethical stage, and have not examined the shadow side of atheism, for example atheist political regimes in Soviet Russia and Communist China that slaughtered millions of people. They did not own their own sin, which Kierkegaard noted, prompts the next stage after ethics, the religious stage.

    Part of their problem was that, as Catholic Bishop Robert Barron pointed out, they were rhetoricians, great at arguing their point but naïve about the depths of theological thinking. Also, they were in love with “scientism,” the belief that science has all the answers, an unprovable hypothesis which is therefore rejected by true scientists.

    True scientists recognize the limits of science. Science can only answer “how questions,” for example, how we got here through evolution. It is incapable of answering “why questions,” for example, “what is the purpose of my life?” That is a meaning and value question which is in the realm of religion not science.

    As Bishop Barron also noted, when atheists try to formulate their values, they usually latch on to “the brotherhood of man” or other values that come from Christianity. So, they unconsciously criticize Christianity with Christian values. This is fair, since any religion is only as perfect or imperfect as the people who compose it. If they do not live up to their professed values, they deserve to be criticized.

    In short, the two big mistakes of the new atheists were to unfairly overdo their criticism of religion, and to not look at the dark side of atheism.                               

   

Bruce Tallman is a religious educator of adults, spiritual director, and marriage coach . http://www.brucetallman.com