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philosoraptor42Radical Theology and Atheism
Introduction: The New Atheists
Recently some popularist atheist writers have been producing work which, to be honest, has an apologetic quality similar to writings of Christian evangelists. The main writers have been labelled ‘The New Atheists’, all having written similar works in a very short space of time. The three works are “End Of Faith”, “Breaking The Spell” and “The God Delusion” by Sam Harris, Dan Dennett, and Richard Dawkins respectively.
The main problem most people have with these works is that they are quite hostile towards religious belief. Surprisingly enough, the harshest words come not from Dawkins, but from Harris. Here is one example:
“Moderates do not want to kill anyone in the name of God, but they want us to keep using the word “God” as though we knew what we were talking about. And they do not want anything too critical said about people who really believe in the God of their fathers, because tolerance, perhaps above all else, is sacred. To speak plainly and truthfully about the state of our world – to say, for instance, that the Bible and the Koran both contain mountains of life-destroying gibberish – is antithetical to tolerance as moderates currently conceive it. But we can no longer afford the luxury of such political correctness. We must finally recognize the price we are paying to maintain the iconography of our ignorance.”
The problem I find with this is not that it is too harsh towards religion, but rather that a great deal of religion does not seem to be relevant to Harris’ criticism.
As well as the view that those who do not belong to a religion ought to take scripture as ‘gibberish’ (which is rather confusing to those of us fascinated by Greek myths and works such as Homer’s Illiad), Harris also presumes that those who take a literalist view of scripture must be the ones who ‘really believe’.
Unfortunately this latter presumption is more and more often being taken as fact by atheists, agnostics, and religious believers alike. On the one hand people are asking ‘well if you don’t take all of it literally, how can you possibly take it seriously’ and on the other people are saying ‘we take it literally, and to do otherwise would be inconsistent.’
There are two important reasons why this view is wrong:
1) The more moderate religious believers tend to be the ones who take into account historical criticism, literary criticism, psychology, sociology, etc. They take the Bible as being written in a certain historical context, with varying literary styles, with a certain intended response for worshippers in a certain kind of society.
I read an article the other day about the rules on homosexuality in Leviticus (if you ever want to discredit the naivety of a literalist religious position, the best method is generally to do a quick search in the online journals. It is wrong to presume that a literalist is going to have an accurate understanding of contemporary theology). Within this article on Leviticus it was noted that the Israelites were almost certainly involved in a ethical system based upon honour and shame (which naturally we no longer have) and the belief that a man is shamed by being penetrated by another man would have been related to the common practice of the time where invading tribes would rape men specifically in order to shame them. The article also noted that this law would have no relevance to women (not much in the Old Testament does, unless it has some relevance to men too) and this law makes no judgement on men expressing sexual affection for one another outside of this particular act of penetration.
This is a fairly orthodox reading of scripture in a respected journal. The judgements it makes are based on historical evidence and in-depth study of the Biblical text, and yet for some reason there is a presumption that we should take the literalists word for it that this law in Leviticus is perfectly applicable to our modern society and that it condemns actions such as an erotic kiss between two people of the same sex.
Why is the literalist accepted as having the more valid position? Because his viewpoint has more conviction and rigour apparently… Making up your scripture on the spot involves rigour? I am not convinced by this. Conviction perhaps? The madman who thinks they are the second coming of Jesus has conviction, but we don’t normally think them more valid in their views as a result.
2) Literalism is quite a modern phenomenon. It is generally seen as originating in the nineteenth century. It follows from the reformation view of ‘sola scriptura’ which put a greater emphasis on the centrality of scripture to faith. Also the idea that beliefs are central to religion, as opposed to being an identifying factor uniting those of similar religious conviction, did not exist before the reformation.
So are we to suggest that literalism is a more sensible position because to deny it is to ignore the way Christianity has been throughout history? Clearly those who make such an absurd suggestion have not looked carefully into Christian history, but have more likely taken the views of literalists for granted. This is particularly frightening since it suggests that this modern atheistic apologetics is in danger of making many fundamentalist myths seem like common sense.
The scientist Stephen Jay Gould in his book Rock Of Ages in 1999 criticised the misrepresentation of religion by atheistic scientists (himself preferring the label of ‘agnostic’):
“I … include among my own scientific colleagues, some militant atheists whose blinkered concept of religion grasps none of the subtlety or diversity, and equates this magisterium with the silly and superstitious beliefs of those who think they have seen a divinely crafted image of the Virgin in the drying patterns of morning dew of the plate-glass windows of some auto showroom in New Jersey.”
Dan Dennett gives a good summary of Gould’s book and the reaction it received when it was published:
“In his book The Rocks Of Ages, the late Stephen Jay Gould defended the political hypothesis that science and religion are two non-overlapping magisteria” – two domains of concern and inquiry which can coexist peacefully as long as neither poaches on the other’s special province. The magisterium of science is factual truth, on all matters, and the magisterium of religion, he claimed, is the realm of morality and the meaning of life. Although Gould’s desire for peace between these often warring perspectives was laudable, his proposal found little favor on either side, since in the minds of the religious it proposed abandoning all religious claims to factual truth and understanding of the natural world (including the claims that God created the universe, or performs miracles, or listens to prayers), whereas in the minds of the secularists it granted too much authority to religion matters of ethics and meaning.”
Having read Gould’s book, however, does not stop Dennett from continuing to focus on a naïve strand of religious thought:
“If what they call God is really not an agent in their eyes, a being that can answer prayers, approve and disapprove, receive sacrifices, and mete out punishment or forgiveness, then although they may call this Being God, and stand in awe of it (not Him), their creed, whatever it is, is not really a religion according to my definition. It is, perhaps, a wonderful (or terrible) surrogate for religion, or a former religion, an offspring of a genuine religion that bears many family resemblances to religion, but it is another species altogether.”
Now it is worth asking ourselves to what extent any religious believer agrees with all of these. Do modern religious believers think that God intervenes with punishments during their life on earth? Do modern religious believers think that God will respond to their prayers by making their wishes come true? Certainly few modern Christians seem to expect their God to receive sacrifices nowadays. There is something worrying about the way anything which starts to sound sensible is ruled out in Dennett’s discussion of religion.
Towards the end of his book Gould strongly criticised the very approach these authors have used in their modern works of atheistic apologetics. He writes:
“I do get discouraged when some of my colleagues tout their private atheism (their right, of course, and in many ways my own suspicion as well) as a panacea for human progress against an absurd caricature of “religion”, erected as a straw man for rhetorical purposes. Religion just can’t be equated with Genesis literalism, the miracle of the liquefying blood of Saint Januarius, or the Bible codes of kabbalah and modern media hype. If these colleagues wish to fight superstition, irrationalism, philistinism, ignorance, dogma, and a host of other insults to the human intellect, then God bless them – but don’t call this enemy “religion”.”
What is ‘religion’? Well it seems to me that naïve religious views are one small portion of what we call religion, even if naïve religious views are as widespread as they appear to be. It is worth, at this point, returning to another quotation from Sam Harris. Harris gives a passionate explanation of why he is so hostile towards ‘religion’:
“With each passing year, do our religious beliefs conserve more and more of the data of human experience? If religion addresses a genuine sphere of understanding and human necessity, then it should be susceptible to progress; its doctrines should become more useful, rather than less. Progress in religion, as in other fields, would have to be a matter of present inquiry, not the mere reiteration of past doctrine. Whatever is true now should be discoverable now, and describable in terms that are not an outright affront to the rest of what we know about the world. By this measure, the entire project of religion seems perfectly backward. It cannot survive the changes that have come over us – culturally, technologically, and even ethically.”
Harris concludes his book by suggesting that mysticism has some ability to achieve this which religion does not. In this I think he is underestimating certain forms of religion as well as overestimating certain forms of mysticism. In this talk I wish to bring to your attention some of the more radical theology which I have come across in the Christian tradition. Forms of Christianity which have attempted to push the boundaries of religious thought and have really attempted to move Christianity forward in terms of culture, technology and ethics in just the way Harris thinks could not be possible.
The New Theology
Radical Christian views have generally been, for the most part, unknown to popular understanding of most British Christians. So when John Robison, the former bishop of Woolich, decided to address the changing understanding of God in academic Christianity in a book meant for ordinary Christians there was a great deal of controversy. It was thought that the clergy must be giving up on Christianity. Unfortunately this same backwards mentality still exists, and any questioning of orthodoxy is regularly taken as the end of religion rather than as an inevitable step in its revival. In Robinson’s book ‘Honest To God’ he refers to the works of three theologians: Paul Tillich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Rudolf Bultmann.
Paul Tillich’s ‘The Shaking Of The Foundations’ equates belief in God with the recognition of the ‘depth’ to life. Tillich makes a strong use of existentialism in this theology:
“If that word (God) has not much meaning for you, translate it, and speak of the depths of your life, of the source of your being, of your ultimate concern, of what you take seriously without any reservation. Perhaps, in order to do so, you must forget everything traditional that you have learned about God, perhaps even the word itself. For if you know that God means depth, you know much about Him. You cannot then call yourself an atheist or unbeliever. For you cannot think or say: Life has no depth! Life itself is shallow. Being itself it surface only. If you could say this in complete seriousness, you would be an atheist; but otherwise you are not. He who knows about depth knows about God.”
“Religious people speak of God when human knowledge (perhaps simply because they are too lazy to think) has come to an end, or when human resources fail – in fact it is always the deus ex machina that they bring on the scene, either for the apparent solution of insoluble problems, or as strength in human failure – always, that is to say, exploiting human weakness or human boundaries. Of necessity, that can do on only till people can by their own strength push these boundaries somewhat further out, so that God superfluous as a deus ex machina.”
Bonhoeffer also explains what ways God is wrongly used as a deus ex machina:
“Belief in the resurrection is not the ‘solution’ of the problem of death. God’s beyond is not the beyond of our cognitive faculties. The transcendence of epistemological theory has nothing to do with the transcendence of God.”
“The world picture of the New Testament is a mythical world picture. The world is a three-storey structure, with earth in the middle, heaven above it, and hell below it. Heaven is the dwelling place of God and of heavenly figures, the angels; the world below is hell, the place of torment. But even the earth is not simply the scene of natural day-to-day occurrences, of foresight and work that reckon with order and regularity; rather, it, too, is a theatre for the working of supernatural powers, God and his angels, Satan and his demons. These supernatural powers intervene in natural occurrences and in the thinking, willing, and acting of human beings; wonders are nothing unusual. Human beings are not their own masters; demons can possess them, and Satan can put bad ideas into their heads. But God, too, can direct their thinking and willing, send them heavenly visions, allow them to hear his commanding or comforting word, give them the supernatural power of his Spirit. History does not run its own steady, lawful course but is moved and guided by supernatural powers. This age stands under the power of Satan, sin, and death (which are precisely ‘powers’). It is hastening towards its imminent end, which will take place in a cosmic catastrophe. It stands before the ‘woes’ of the last days, the coming of the heavenly judge, the resurrection of the dead, and the final judgment to salvation or damnation.”
“All this is mythological talk, and the individual motifs may be easily traced to the contemporary mythology of Jewish Apocalypticism and of the Gnostic myth of redemption. Insofar as it is mythological talk it is incredible to men and women today because for them the mythical world picture is a thing of the past. Therefore, contemporary Christian proclamation is faced with the question whether when it demands faith from men and women, it expects them to acknowledge this mythical world picture of the past. If this is impossible, it then has to face the question whether the New Testament proclamation has a truth that is independent of the mythical world picture, in which case it would be the task of theology to demythologize the Christian proclamation.”
It is this request to demythologize which inspired many theologians since, including the aforementioned Paul Tillich. Bultmann is a major New Testament scholar and thus has little problem finding biblical verses to demonstrate how the New Testament portrays a mythological picture. Bultmann’s explanation is that myth represents a literary style which has become incommensurable with modern scientific understanding.
Take, for example, the ascension. Jesus ‘rises’ into the clouds and returns to heaven. Do we take this as meaning that heaven is in the sky, so rising into the clouds would allow us to reach heaven? Do we take this as meaning that Jesus flew into the sky in order to make the event memorable and then, once in the clouds, disappeared to heaven? Or do we take it as a literary style? After all, we still see the religious looking upwards when they pray – even though they know heaven is not in the sky. Bultmann fully recognises that the Bible writers were not stupid. He does not think that they were naïve enough to believe that heaven was in the sky but rather used this image as a metaphor to express Jesus’ status as ‘risen’. Modern knowledge that a rocket shot into the air does not go to heaven, but rather exits the atmosphere and then floats through space, simply confirms to the more superstitious believer that the idea that heaven is in the sky is a mistaken interpretation.
This is not to say that the modern understanding of heaven is the same as it was previously. Back then our lack of knowledge concerning planets, moons and the make-up of stars would have made the image of ‘a place in the sky’ much more helpful. But now this image is not simply fanciful, but actively contradicts our knowledge. This imagery depicting God and heaven in spatial terms is no longer any good to us. John Robinson takes up this line of thought and suggests that some modern believers have made the mistake of substituting God ‘up there’ with God ‘out there’. Seeing heaven and God as being in outer space somewhere. At the time when Robinson wrote his book there were many responses and C.S. Lewis in particular was quick to suggest that the idea that believers see God as being in outer space is nonsense. Nevertheless, just this year a computer game based on the Left Behind series of books (‘Left Behind: Eternal Forces’) depicted the ‘rapture’ (where pre-millennialists believe that, before the trials and tribulations of the end-times true believers will be snatched away to be with God while Jesus does all the hard work of establishing his kingdom of earth without them). The game showed Christians being snatched by angels and being flown gracefully into outer space. But of course, you’d have to be crazy to think heaven was in space, wouldn’t you?
Bultmann’s demythologizing is intended to deobjectify the language being used. Sin is no longer to be seen as an object which humans ‘carry’, eschatology (in other words ‘the concept of the end-times’) cannot be seen as referring to an event in space and time, rather than taking miracles as actual events they must be taken as stories with meanings, Jesus’ incarnation cannot be taken as involving some kind of ‘God-power’, the resurrection must not be seen as an event but as a symbol of Jesus’ glory in weakness which occurs in the crucifixion.
The reason Bultmann gives for not seeing God as objectified is simple. He claims:
“A God who could be disposed of by objectifying thinking would not be God.”
There will be some who would object to this by saying that a God and who makes some indent into the ordinary world of scientific and rational enquiry could not be disposed of by such an enquiry because that God exists. If anything, such an enquiry would prove that God existed. Here Bultmann’s arguments are limited by his Lutheran belief that salvation must come through faith not works. A demonstration of God’s existence would give an advantage through works to those clever enough to figure it out.
However, a more contemporary theologian has a different approach to this argument. Don Cupitt refers to an objectified religion as ‘realism’:
“The crucial objection to religious realism is that insofar as it succeeds in being realistic it necessarily ceases to be religious. The modern notions of fact, truth, and so on are religiously neutral, so that insofar as an apologist manages to establish a realist interpretation of some major doctrine he necessarily destroys it as religion.”
Consider someone involved in prayer. Is the issue of proportioning beliefs to evidence or the rationality of miracles really terribly important to this activity? Prayer is much more concerned with human needs, goals, and values. Religiosity, it seems, is more concerned with God as an expression of all that is held sacred than it is with the products of rational demonstration.
Cupitt’s alternative to the religious realism is proposed in his ‘non-realism’, but I shall refrain from explaining non-realism in any detail for now. The fact is that most people do not know about non-realism, and Cupitt accepts that without this knowledge atheism is an acceptable religious response to realism.
So what does it mean to speak of atheism as a religious response? Well the most obvious example is found in what is commonly known as the problem of evil. Stendhal, the French writer, famously summarised this atheistic response to suffering in the phrase:
“God's only excuse is that he does not exist”
Another religious reason might be one based on scriptural interpretation. If one comes to believe that scripture is revealing a scientifically incorrect description of the world (perhaps because of a literalist interpretation of Genesis for example) then this is a rejection which can take place within the context of engaging wholeheartedly with a scriptural text and becoming confounded by it.
Cupitt’s own stated reason for a rejection of the realist God is based on the idea of God as an unquestionable lawmaker:
“For us God is no longer a distinct person over against us who authoritatively and by his ipse dixit imposes the religious demands upon us. If he did so present himself we would have to reject him.”
To translate, a God who expected nothing more of his followers but to obey orders would be negating any possibility of genuine moral decision. In order to be moral agents we need to have autonomy; we need to choose to act in a good way and know why we consider those actions good. Blind obedience negates moral integrity.
So how is Cupitt not an atheist? If Cupitt does not wish to see God as ‘real’ then how exactly can he say that God exists in any way? Well, firstly Cupitt insists that God is a construct of our language. He explains that:
“In short, our religious beliefs and practices are an integral part of the evolving totality of culture, and must change with it. So we acknowledge that religion is human, historical and cultural all the way through.”
John Hick, also considered a radical theologian for different reasons than Cupitt, takes issue with the idea that God is not ‘real’, but nevertheless holds some common ground with Cupitt in the view that our understanding of God is inseparable from historical and cultural context:
“(I affirm) the transcendent divine reality which the theistic religions refer to as God, but (am) conscious that this reality is always thought and experienced by us in ways which are shaped and coloured by human concepts and images.”
John Hick is a major proponent of religious pluralism, suggesting that there is a divine reality which is common to all the major world religions, but appears different because of the difference in the cultures within which it is perceived. The most controversial consequence of this position is that Hick denies Jesus to be a unique incarnation (when many Christians would see this as an indispensable part of Christian doctrine). He sees the idea that the acceptance of Jesus’ incarnation is a unique and indispensable requirement for salvation, as an overly arrogant stumbling block for the loving and uniting force of Christianity.
Daphne Hampson is a feminist theologian. She too feels there is a divine transcending reality which religious practice attempts to engage with. However, unlike Hick who rejects Jesus as a unique incarnation and tries to continue to accept Christianity without this, Hampson recognises the importance of the incarnation to Christianity and thus rejects Christianity (referring to herself as ‘Post-Christian’). In a complaint against Don Cupitt’s non-realism she touches on a problem with both Cupitt’s theology and that of John Hick:
“The fact that the symbols, the metaphors, the creeds of Christianity are held by non-realists to be not actually true, does not help in the least. For it is precisely that masculinist symbol system which is so problematic.”
Both Hick and Cupitt accept that terms like ‘Father’, ‘Son’, ‘Lord’, ‘King’, and all the rest do not actually ‘refer’ but are rather used to express and nurture a cultural understanding. But these are all patriarchal terms and it is Hampson’s understanding that while we continue to insist on these masculine symbols, the religious expression of women will continually be silenced.
Grace Jantzen, a feminist philosopher of religion, while disagreeing with certain aspects of Hampson’s feminist theology, still agrees with her that a new symbol system is required for a truly feminist religious expression. She considers the common debates between theists and atheists to actually keep existing dogmas firmly established and prevent changes being made.
“So long as these are the characteristics associated with divinity, even if metaphorically, then whether or not one concludes that such a being exists, these are characteristics which are associated with the concept of supreme value.”
Each time the common arguments “run backwards and forwards over their particular grooves” the concept of the divine is re-stated and strengthened. In this way theists are able to reinforce their view of the divine so that alternate understandings of the divine become harder to propose. Theists thus do not just oppose atheism in the debate, but rather any position which does not fall in line with their own. Atheists involved in the debate once again highlight the contradictions, absurdities and unworthy attributes of the deity of the other side. In this way religiousness is dismissed as the irrational, superstitious and primitive adherence to a set of immoral and bizarre conventions and laws in honour of a cruel, hypocritical, and tyrannical deity. In this way, once again, not only is the opposing theistic position rejected but any theistic position which is unstated is dismissed without even having the chance to be heard. Those who embrace this format of debate most strongly and confidently will be those who feel most comfortable with it because their interests are served by it. The most moderate or unorthodox positions are inevitably silenced by the process.
Non-Realism On Trial
To recap, we have seen so far how radical theologians see the importance of choosing which religious symbols are made use of and how they are used. Cupitt and Hick see the symbols as validated by their history (as having passed the ‘test of time’), while Hampson and Jantzen see them as invalidated by their history (being related to the outdated power structures of their era). However, the issue still remains whether non-realists are right to consider the symbols not to refer to a metaphysically real God.
As well as Cupitt, another writer often taken as non-realist is D.Z. Phillips. He claims that we are best off understanding religious ideas by looking at the usage of the language. Phillips’ is inspired by Wittgenstein’s limited writings on religion. Wittgenstein reacted quite strongly to the claims of James George Frazer which tried to link religious beliefs with bad science. For example James George Frazer talks in great detail about the common tribal activity of the ‘rain dance’. Tribal warriors would use all sorts of methods of imitating rain, seemingly in the hope of encouraging it to fall. Some would cut open their arms and spray blood. Some would bang drums, make sparks with flint, and drip water from a wet branch to imitate a storm. Some would ride a chariot and throw out fiery torches. There are many examples, but Wittgenstein noted that these rituals took place just before the rainy season. They were not intended to produce rain, but rather to celebrate its arrival. If it was truly intended as magic, these primitives would not feel anything held them back from performing the rituals during the dry season.
So what are these rituals doing? They are means of expressing ourselves as human beings. When we punch a tree because we bumped into it, we do not expect the tree to feel worse for it, but rather we are expressing ourselves. Some of us will know what it is like to be somewhere you really don’t want to be, to close your eyes shut tightly, and to almost imagine that by doing so you could make the people surrounding you disappear. We express ourselves in ritualistic ways sometimes, but this does not necessarily mean we are deluded. It is D.Z. Phillips’ belief that superstition and religion can be separated. In his book ‘Religion without Explanation’ he explains how religion should be seen as a form of life rather than something which should be criticised, so long as it does not make claims which conflict with rational concerns (basically an acceptance of Gould’s NOMA theory). He explains how this works as follows:
“Suppose one witnesses a child falling overboard. One is unsure of one’s chances of saving him or of surviving the effort to do so. Suddenly, one may say to oneself, ‘Jump! Trust in God!’ This expression need not be connected with a belief that some supernatural agency is going to guarantee the safe return of either the child or oneself. No, it is a matter of not putting oneself first, weighing up the pros and cons. One gives oneself to what has to be done. It is this giving of oneself without reserve – trusting it – which gives force to the expression ‘Trust in God’ in this context.”
Non-realism is not meant to simply mean ‘God isn’t there’, but is meant to involve a general denial of metaphysics (as developed by Ludwig Witgenstein). One might argue that Phillips is a realist about the child in this example in a way that he is not about the God who might intervene. However, Phillips can reply that making the assertion “I ought to save that drowning child” is a participation in a form of life involving an understanding of what a child is and how to refer to them, an understanding of the child’s abilities and the effect of submersion on their wellbeing, as well as the recognition of certain ethical standards whereby the wellbeing of the child is valued. The way we understand a drowning child in our language is very different from the way we understand God. We can quite easily say of the drowning child “there she is!” but if asked about the object of our trust we could not point anywhere and say “there He is!” When we say “God is here” we are saying something radically different from when we say “that girl is drowning over there!”
Neither Hick nor Phillips would wish to say that God can be understood in spatial terms, but nevertheless Hick would want ‘trusting in God’ to involve a supernatural agency which Phillips denies. However, Hick denies that God explicitly intervenes by granting favourable weather or causing natural disasters, so even for Hick God’s ability to intervene seems rather limited.
Phillips’ limitations on religious claims becomes particularly hard for Hick to accept when he explicitly denies the possibility of life after death on the grounds that the idea is ‘riddled with confusions’. In his book “Death and Immortality” Phillips claims that the concept of ‘immortality’ can be accepted without a belief in life after death. He explains as follows:
“For the believer, his death, like his life is to be in God. For him, this is the life eternal which death cannot touch; the immortality which finally places the soul beyond the reach of the snares and temptations of this mortal life.”
Phillips fully recognises that he might get some criticism for this position and responds to potential criticism as follows:
“Someone may say that if the philosophical analysis of the notion of immortality I have attempted to give is anywhere near the truth, the whole notion is an illusion. He may say that there is no difference between the man who does and the man who does not believe in the life eternal: death is the end of both of them. Neither are going to survive their deaths. This is true, but why should we assume that the difference between a believer and an unbeliever consists in this? The objector may see no point in living according to God’s commands unless there is such a difference.”
However, Hick is not objecting because he thinks that the unbeliever deserves a worse fate than the believer, but rather because he believes denying survival after death is to envision a worse fate for all people. The fact that there will be no reward for either party is not Hick’s point.
In order to demonstrate that a denial of life after death is a rejection of the central positive message of religious doctrine Hick turns to a quote from Bertrand Russell, where Russell expresses pessimism concerning his worldview where life after death is not a reality:
“That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins--all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.”
It is worth noting that there are definitely parts of the Old Testament where the idea of the afterlife is rejected. Ecclesiastes is a notable example. Even so, there is no reason for Hick not to insist that those particular Old Testament writers were also rejecting the central positive message of religious belief. However, Hick might be wrong to suggest that an afterlife will solve all of Russell’s problems.
So far I’ve shown that radical theology can involve a dismissal of the supernatural, of the afterlife, God as an entity in time and space, the historicity of religious claims, and even challenge the religious symbols as currently accepted. Now I would like to consider something which I consider to be behind this quotation from Bertrand Russell. I think understanding this statement gets us closer to understanding the purpose of religion as a whole in a way that I think the new atheists we considered at the beginning of this talk seem to have missed.
I am now going to look at the concept of ‘absurdity’ as discussed by Thomas Nagel. The absurdity of life is rather awkward to explain since the situation is not absurd until we recognise it as such. Still, Nagel provides three ways in which people often try to express why life is absurd. Even though Nagel is able to dismiss each one as inconsistent, their familiarity makes them a good starting point when considering this issue.
The three reasons for absurdity are as follows:
1) In a million years nothing we do now will matter.
2) In comparison to the size of the universe and the total length of history we are tiny specks and our lives are mere instants.
3) Our petty concerns with things such as money, family and career are pointless since it inevitably ends in death (both our death and the death of everybody we know).
Hick might argue that he is better placed to deal with the above issues than Russell because of his religious beliefs. Firstly, the idea that the world and our destinies are being directed by a transcendent God might arguably mean that our actions in relation to that God are very important indeed. Secondly, God, being an entity transcending time and space, is not made absurd by the size and longevity of the universe. Since this God loves us, we might be seen as being given meaning by this transcending God. Thirdly, since all our concerns do not end in death but in fulfilment in an afterlife, we can see our lives as leading to a meaningful ending.
However, Nagel shows that each one of these claims for absurdity is internally inconsistent. If nothing we do now will matter in a million years, Nagel argues, then presumably nothing that happens in a million years matters now. Surely it could not matter either now or in a million years unless it simply mattered in-of-itself anyway?
The second example is best expressed through Douglas Adams’ ‘total perspective vortex’. In his science-fiction novel,
The third example was that there is no ultimate justification for our lives and “all of it is an elaborate journey leading nowhere.” But how could there be an external reason for ‘taking aspirin for a headache’, ‘attending an exhibition of the work of a painter one admires’, ‘stopping a child from putting his hand on a hot stove’? The justifications for these actions seem to be self-contained. An infinite chain of reasons seems no better equipped to justify anything than a finite chain of reasons; so if the reasons within life are incomplete, and any chain of reasons which comes to an end is incomplete, it seems impossible to supply any reasons at all.
If we return to Hick’s quotation from Russell, we can see these same reasons for absurdity being put forward. Russell begins with the fact that the causes for human actions had no prevision of the ends they would achieve, yet surely if they did everything would be determined and that would be far less desirable? Another concern of Russell’s is that our various capacities are made up of atoms, but that is simply to state clinically what we are made of. Speaking poetically, as he does, one wonders whether Russell would be so upset if he were to recognise that we are all made of stardust. That everything ends in death is the concluding point, but how does the fact that everything will end make it any less important while it is here? Naturally there still remains the misfortune that both our lives and our endeavours are limited by factors beyond our control, but this does not take anything away from what we do beforehand, so Russell seems to overstate the extent of despair warranted.
Nagel gives a definition of absurdity which avoids these inconsistencies, as follows:
“We cannot live human lives without energy and attention, nor without making choices which show that we take some things more seriously than others. Yet we have always available a point of view outside the particular forms of lives, from which the seriousness appears gratuitous. These two inescapable view-points collide in us, and that is what makes life absurd. It is absurd because we ignore the doubts that we know cannot be settled, continuing to live with nearly undiminished seriousness in spite of them.”
Radical theology seems to still recognise the need to hold the things we value in the form of gods and mythologies, but it does not feel the need to accept its views uncritically. Sometimes we need to give our values an eternal meaning and this does not necessarily involve embracing a superstitious belief in the supernatural or the otherworldly. Radical Christian theology is attempting to inject some adrenaline into religion and whether we consider it worth the effort or not, no one ought to dismiss their form of religious belief in the same breath as modern fundamentalism.
Then again, we must not be fooled into thinking that without some form of religious belief the horror of absurdity will take hold of us. As Nagel concludes:
