It might seem odd that an atheist
would post a "help-sheet" for believers who
have encountered difficulty in reconciling some
aspects of their faith with physical evidence.
Why wouldn't I, like some other disbelievers, simply
advise religious people to "give up and renounce
belief"?
One reason is that I
was once a believer myself, so I understand the
strong hold and seeming comfort of religious belief,
and have experienced the frustration of trying to
blend it with modern scientific knowledge.
After all, it must be conceded that there are
intellectual and emotional reasons for religious
belief, and while some of us have found viable
alternatives, others are more comfortable with a
traditional approach.
Second, as a humanist,
I feel it's best to help others work out their
troubles in a way that appeals to them, so long as
doing so doesn't substantially conflict with the
overall well-being of our species. Though I
sincerely feel most people would ultimately find shucking religion to be to
their advantage and long-term happiness, in most cases nothing will persuade
the faithful to shed their comfy cocoon of
religion. So, rather than wasting energy
shooting for the impossible, it's better to help
people the best we can within the framework of what's
realistically achievable.
Finally, I have nothing
to gain by converting others. Being comfortably
secure in my disbelief, I feel no threat from
contrary views, and can even (if I put my mind to it)
discuss them with a degree of detachment. I am
content to let others believe as they will, so long
as they grant me the same courtesy.
Now, as to the business
of reconciliation, there are strategies which many
use successfully to reconcile faith with fact.
Because my own experience is with Christianity, the
methods I present are outlined in that context.
However, I suspect some of the methods will apply to
other religions as well, at least to those emphasizing supernatural entities or states of
existence.
Nowadays, most
difficulties spring from conflicts, between
scientific observation and theory, and religious
teachings as expressed in scripture. There are
various concepts of the source of religious
scripture, and these can be distilled into three
general views:
- Scripture was
conceived and written solely by man, to
institute order and justice in society.
- Scripture was
written by man, but he was guided and
inspired by God in his labor.
- Scripture is the
product of the mind and hand of God alone,
without any help from man.
Because these views are
mutually exclusive, different approaches are
necessary for resolving the difficulties with
each. I have arranged them order of increasing
difficulty of resolution, since the last is quite
problematic, and its resolution less effective,
despite entailing greater explanation and perhaps a
measure of brute force.
The first view:
scripture as solely the product of man
If we hold the first
view, then there is little point in proceeding further, for scientific discovery does not represent a
threat to existing beliefs as understood in this context. We may understand
the scriptures as the product of people who were
earnestly trying to explain things the best way they could,
considering that they did not have the benefits of modern science,
mathematics, and sociology at their disposal. We may suppose
that scriptural laws were written with the intent of keeping
order in tribal nomadic and agrarian societies, that
the accounts of wars, migrations, and disasters were
written (much as they are today) portraying "the
good guys" (the scribe's boss and friends) in
the most favorable light, and "the bad guys"
(the competition) as unmitigated villains, agents of evil.
Prophets and messiahs were people attempting to adapt
outdated codes to the situations of the day.
And creation stories were satisfying tales
cooked up in order to "explain" that which
could not possibly be known with whatever might have passed for "science"
in those
times.
Under the first view,
we might either believe or disbelieve in divinity,
but regard scripture (not only Judeo-Christian, but
all other forms as well) as the imaginative product
of perhaps well-meaning but fallible men, of a time
and society quite different from our own.
Accordingly, we might judiciously sift the scriptures
for ideas which have continuing merit today, and
reject those which appear obsolete or even
harmful. And creation stories can be
appreciated for their entertainment value, for their historical
comparisons to other mythologies, as well as
for the insight they give us into the worldviews of
our ancestors.
The second view:
scripture as written by man but inspired by God
This view is perhaps most
typical of today's religious mainstream. Here
most scriptural conflicts and omissions can be
plausibly attributed to human error. Prophets,
compilers, scribes, and interpreters, confined to the
limited worldly knowledge of their own time and the
imprecision of human language, understandably failed
in some way to comprehend and express some of the
finer and deeper nuances of God's grand meaning and
purpose. An alternate possibility is that God
wisely refrained from telling our ancestors about
such things as precise mathematics and a spherical
earth, telescopes and microscopes, gunpowder and
nuclear power, television and computers, democracy
and capitalism, or relativity and biological
evolution, since such information would obviously
have bewildered the ancients beyond comprehension,
and would therefore have interfered with God's purpose at the
moment.
Although some
scriptural events and personalities appear to be
fictional, exaggerated, or misstated (e.g., Moses's
fabulous Red Sea crossing having occurred rather at
the Sea of Reeds—actually a swamp, not a real
sea—with consequently much less spectacle than
advertised), corroboration and dating for others (e.g.,
Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, Cyrus of Persia, and Herod
of Judea) by independent records is reassuring.
However, we are still
left with such discomfiting puzzles as how fossil
remains of hundred-million-year-old plants and
animals come to be found in rock strata, and how
images of galaxies billions of light-years distant
show up in telescopes, in a universe which scripture
implies to be only a few thousand years old. In
other words, although most scripture seems to fit in
passably with current evidence, the creation myths conflict directly with
actual observation and measurement. Many people
(even such authorities as the Pope) neatly skirt the
difficulty, by treating stories exhibiting such
incongruities as allegory—fiction, but with
important moral lessons relevant to other religious tenets and to the human
condition.
With this view, we can
accept scriptural laws as valid in the context of the
time in which they were written, and perhaps in our
own time with some updating (e.g., the
burning of witches and the stoning of heretics having
become unfashionable in the Western world).
Scriptural events, whether factual, embellished, or
purely fictional, may be read as lessons (updating
"swords" and "spears" to "guns" and "bombs" as
necessary for present day audiences). Creation
stories can be accounted for as allegorical fiction
providing a basis for morality in a form accessible and palatable to
the ancients. Such an approach works quite well
for many religious people, even for those whose
day-to-day lives bring them into routine contact with
the concepts of modern culture and science.
The third view:
scripture as the literal and inerrant word of God
I have saved the
literal absolutist view for last, for it represents a
paradigm shift from what most people of the modern
age consider "common sense." In the
first two views, we examined attitudes which,
regardless of whether belief in deity is involved,
accept that the reality of the physical world is, for
practical purposes, pretty much as our senses and
reason tell us it is. The third view instead
purports to accept scriptural dogma literally and without question.
Whenever dichotomies arise between scripture and the
observed physical universe, it is the physical
universe which is questioned rather than
scripture. Particularly, the third view rejects
much observation, method, and thought developed since
the European Renaissance, especially scientific
evidence and reasoning which show that some aspects
of a literal interpretation of religious scripture
are not consistent with what is actually
observed. Indeed, the literalist view places so
many obstacles between itself and what most of us
perceive as reality, that genuine reconciliation is
probably beyond achieving.
At this point, it might
be helpful to divide fundamentalists into two groups:
those to whom such discrepancies are truly puzzling
and perhaps even fascinating, and those who couldn't
care less about them. There are some people
who, though they enjoy the fruits of scientific
process, such as electricity, television, telephones,
cars, computers, increasingly safe jobs, and modern
health care, haven't the foggiest notion what science
is all about. If they think about it at all,
they regard it (as they have been instructed by their
ministers) with suspicion and fear, as diabolical
sorcery practiced in mysterious laboratories run by
godless liberals. It is not likely that such
people can be reached (short of a "religious
experience" which prompts them to question what
"truth" really is), and in any case it is
beyond the scope of this article to make such an
attempt.
On the other hand, we
find a fair number of fundamentalists with some
inkling, if not of the methods of science, at least
of its importance. Even though they may
disagree strongly with some of the ideas which have
come out of science, they nevertheless appreciate its
reputation for providing reliable answers to many
questions, for its notable discoveries, and for its
development of workable ideas and helpful
inventions. Indeed, this sometimes grudging
esteem for science is reflected in the term
"Creation Science," applied by
fundamentalists to their many attempts to reconcile
some of the serious discrepancies between scientific
theory and scriptural literalism.
However, sticking the
word "science" on an idea like creationism
does not make it a true science, any more than
calling an elephant's trunk and tail "legs," and its ears
"wings,"
makes the pachyderm a big, gray grasshopper. In hopes
of garnering credibility, "creation
scientists" try to paint science as a mystical
art or as a kind of religion, when in fact it is
nothing of the sort. Science methodically
observes nature, and formulates and tests conclusions
based on the evidence thus acquired; conclusions
which fail to meet science's rigorous and impartial
testing are rejected. In contrast, religion
(particularly the fundamentalist variety) attempts to
do the opposite: it starts with a conclusion, and
then selects, rejects, or ignores evidence, not on
the basis of the merits and reliability of the
evidence, but on whether it seems to support or
undermine the chosen conclusion. So-called
"creation science" does not qualify as a
true science for the same reason; its strategy is to
accept or even invent evidence that seems to support
its ideas, and to distort or ignore real evidence which
contradicts them. Not only is this not good
science, it is simply not science—period.
Even so, some motivated
creationists (those who insist in the truth of a
scriptural account of the origin of the universe and
man) have attempted it. Indeed, some of the
methods employed to make the facts seem to fit a literal interpretation of
Genesis have been
marvelously creative—though also marvelously
dubious.
First of all, there are those who are absolutely convinced that
their favorite translation of scripture (usually the King James
Version, in the US Bible-belt) is the inspired, literal, and
absolutely inerrant word of God himself. If you're one of
these, I can't help you. Despite that Jesus himself couldn't have
understood the KJV (since the English language
itself didn't exist until nearly a thousand years after the
crucifixion), you're not going to let any
inconvenient facts like this get in the way of your
belief, because you're too terrified of ending up in
Hell if you dare consider any other possibility.
The only advice I can offer
to such as these is this: If you believe that
God places any value at all on your life and
your family's happiness, stay away from people who
insist that you can go straight to Heaven if you just drown your
kids, shoot up a schoolyard, blow up an office
building, or murder someone at an abortion clinic. We all know what
really happens to folks who
do stuff like this, so let's try not to be like them,
okay?
Having
thus dismissed the obviously psychotic and
brain-damaged, we may now address those who earnestly
subscribe to the literal truth of scripture, but are
nevertheless concerned about some disturbing ideas
which have arisen in the scientific community during
the past four centuries.
What is obvious is that most of the
Bible is not a dry listing of historical facts and laws, but is an
attempt to engage the minds, hearts, and consciences of human
beings. As such, it often employs figurative language.
For example, when Jesus claims to be "the morning star," the meaning
is that he has some quality like the morning star, such as
that he brings light (enlightenment), or that his spirit has an
assigned place in the heavens. It does not mean that
Jesus
actually is the morning star, the celestial object we know as
the planet Venus, which would reflect a strictly literal
interpretation. No one gazes at the bright object in the
pre-dawn eastern sky and mistakes it for Jesus; and no one
interprets the gospels to mean that Jesus is a planet orbiting the
sun. It's not literal truth, but a metaphorical image, whose
purpose is to convey some deeper message, to give people a handle on
a concept that's too grand to assimilate all at once.
Likewise, many biblical stories, such as Jesus's
parables, are clearly fictional tales to teach various lessons.
(Consider, if he had ever encountered an actual man who'd been set
upon by thieves, would Jesus have waited for a Samaritan to come
along, or would he have immediately helped the poor fellow himself?)
Indeed, there are even entire books of scripture (such as Job and
Esther) in this category of enlightening and instructive fiction.
Obviously, then, we can't escape the fact that some of
scripture, being metaphor or fiction, is not verbatim literal truth.
If we insist that it is, and become preoccupied with that
contention, then we are liable to overlook the real truth of
scripture, whose purpose is not to study nature and do science, but
to guide our thoughts about morality, duty, and behavior. And
if we miss that truth, and fall into quibbling over the origin of
humans or the age of the universe, then we've missed the whole
point.
