Intelligent Design to be compulsory in Schools
Well, not actually or at least not yet, but there has been
much talk of God of late. God even made the cover of Time
magazine last year, which must say something of the times.
With characteristic lack of imagination though, and in a transparent
attempt to beef up a falling circulation, the publication
named “You” as the Person of The Year. It should
have been God, it probably would have done them more good.
I therefore enjoyed the recent courteous and informed exchange
on God in these pages between Bali Skeptic and the estimable
Bali Bubba. In contrast, I am constantly amazed at the ability
of educated men and women to argue at great length, and usually
with great heat, on matters over which, did they but listen,
they might find they are in essential agreement. All this
God talk, especially emanating from the corridors of power,
has the scientists and atheists, alarmed at a perceived threat
to their rational and secular world. Increasing numbers of
them have felt compelled to leap into print in defense of
Science and The Enlightenment. After all, wasn’t this
a long and hard battle against ignorance and superstition
fought and finally won some 250 years ago?
Armies of The Faithful Resurgent
Paleobiologist, evolutionist and Oxford professor Richard
Dawkins, has over the past decade become the self- appointed
leader for the defense of Science against the Armies of the
Faithful Resurgent, threatening, among other things, (Oh!
Heavens forbid!) to put Creationism back on the school curriculum.
His most recent polemic the “The God Delusion”
remains high on the New York Times bestseller list, preceded
there by “The End of Faith” and “Letter
to a Christian Nation” from neuroscientist Sam Harris,
“Breaking the Spell” from philosopher Daniel Dennet,
not to mention works related to the subject from academic
and scientific heavyweights like Marc Hauser, Lewis Wolpert,
Victor Stenger and the unpublished lectures on God from the
late astrophysicist, Carl Sagan, no less.
In the face of Christian, Islamic and Hindu fundamentalism,
Moslem immigration and non-assimilation to Europe, and the
international terrorism this has spawned, are they right and
do we need to worry about religious dogma intruding on public
life and our personal affairs?
Broadly speaking in the West (yes, even the US) and the Confucian/Buddhist
societies of Asia, I’d say not. As for the Middle East
and Central Asia it’s a harder call, but in the long
term, probably not. In some ways the world of Islam is reminiscent
of the religious turmoil leading up to the Thirty Years War
in Germany, whose horrors opened the door to a secular society
and individual choice in matters of personal faith. One has
to hope the transition there, which appears to me to be more
about cultural mores than it is about religion, is not as
lethal and does not suck us all in too, as it did the rest
of Europe in the first half of the 17th century.
Scratch any red-blooded atheist and they’ll most likely
tell you that though they don’t believe in God they
can’t actually prove he/she doesn’t exist and
that strictly speaking they would reluctantly have to describe
themselves as agnostics. Bertrand Russell certainly did, before
going on to explain, “Why I don’t believe in God”.
Even Richard Dawkins says, “there could be something
incredibly grand and incomprehensible beyond our present understanding”,
which he graciously allowed could be God. But not, he hastened
to add, likely to resemble any God dreamed up by our current
historical religions. I’d go along with that.
Dangerous Men….
So apart from those dangerous souls who absolutely know God
and would have us know him exactly as they know Him (and it
always is a him), when it comes down to basics most of us
can actually agree on the bigger picture.
Which brings us to The Mystery. The thing about a mystery,
of course is, that it is a mystery. You can’t know it.
I mean, before the Big Bang what? Multiverses? OK, but before
then, what? How can something come out of nothing? And, what
is nothing anyway? So in the end we come to God, Cosmic Consciousness,
call it what you will. Whatever it is, it is unknowable and
hence un-nameable. The esoteric traditions of all religions
have long known this. It is their exoteric practices that
get us humans in schtuck.
So science, as we are currently constructed, can only take
us so far. Today we know more about ourselves and the universe
than ever before. Year on year, at an accelerating pace, science
penetrates further and further into the dimensions of reality
and the Cosmos. That will no doubt continue, but as we do
so we are ever more confronted with the awesome majesty and
sheer cosmic scale of things - and thus our own nano-insignificance.
The cost we pay for this knowledge is a reduction in the meaning
and purpose of human life and science can’t give us
any solution, other than to tell us to lump it as best we
can and just admire the show,while they busy themselves working
on a Unified Theory of All Things.
Once Upon a Time….
Consider then, the following analogy for which I am indebted
to Richard Smoley for sharing:
Suppose two cells in your bloodstream possess a certain measure
of consciousness. They begin to reflect on the nature and
purpose of their existence, and they dimly begin to suspect
that they are part of a larger whole. What is this larger
entity, they ask each other? Is it a living thing like themselves?
Does it know of them, care about them, love them? Does it
respond to their needs, hopes and wishes?
What could one say to them? How could two cells, no matter
how precociously endowed, ever really understand the human
organism that is their universe? Is this entity a cell like
them? Yes and no. Like individual cells, a human organism
has life, purpose and intention. But it is far more than a
mere cell. Nonetheless, the life force that courses through
us is supremely conscious of each of these cells. It does
care for them, feed them, protect them, even though they die
off in their billions and our conscious minds have no part
in the process.
Such reflections, I suggest, should inspire a certain reticence
on our part in discussing the personhood of the divine entity
in whom we live, move and have our being. While there is nothing
to stop us reflecting or speculating about it, we should not
be too arrogant about our conclusions.
What then is left for us, now we have the glimmerings of the
scale of things? Other than awe, how do we make any sense
of it, feel we have a place in it? Wise men and women of old
and in all spiritual traditions have given us the answer,
“Know thyself”, “Go within, the answer lies
in you” (just be a bit selective these days about signing
up with who’s telling you this). Esotericism says we
are a microcosm of the universe, that we can come to know
ourselves by contemplating the grand scheme of things. Conversely,
we understand the universe by exploring our own inner makeup.
Astral Travel Anyone?
Whatever your spiritual persuasion, by going within, in your
mind’s eye every one of us, with or without guidance,
is capable of traveling out across the cosmic vastnesses until
we at last come to nothing, an inky darkness that is not lonely
but blissful and the sure knowledge that there is a loving
intelligence that you cannot know and cannot be named. This
is the first promise of Gnosis, an introduction to Cosmic
Consciousness and the transcendent aspect of God, that is
the Hebrew Ain Sof , the Ancient of Days.
I have immense respect for Richard Dawkins, his writing and
his work, but I rather suspect he would dismiss what I have
written here, if not as New Ageism then a mental crutch in
the face of the magnificence of the Cosmos, with no basis
in reality. Whether it is “real” or not I cannot
say, but if it is not, then so be it.
