Is God Obsolete?
Sermon by Steve Edington
March 4, 2007
It's been a weird couple of weeks for news. Maybe no weirder than most weeks; maybe it just seems that way to me. In the midst of the ongoing horrors of a senseless war, a volatile stock market, devastating storms and tornados, and a full bore Presidential campaign a full 20 months prior to the actual election, we've also been treated to such timely matters as a truly bizarre courtroom battle over where to bury the body of a pop culture diva, and the shaved head of yet another pop culture diva who remains among the living. If all that weren't enough to keep us on the edge of our couches, we get the tomb of Jesus thrown in for good measure - apparently just in time for the Lenten season.
About the tomb of Jesus story: For all the heat and controversy this claim of such a discovery - highly dubious as it is - has generated, I found myself shrugging it off. As I've said on many occasions I find the New Testament accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus to be a very helpful guide for living a moral and ethical and, Godly if you will, life. I greatly admire the person portrayed in those accounts, even if I don't specifically know who he was. So, since I do not believe that Jesus was a specifically identifiable historical figure, and that whoever he was in the flesh is shrouded in legend and myth; and since I do not believe he physically rose from the dead, then I have no stake in whose bones are in that crypt or what the inscriptions on it supposedly say. My own faith and beliefs are simply not invested in whether or not there is such a thing as a tomb of Jesus, much less who or what is in it. So I'll watch a minute of two of a broadcast about it for the sake of curiosity and then change channels.
As I sort of followed this story, I became aware that my reaction to it was similar to my reaction to the book I'm basing my sermon on for today - The God Delusion by Dr. Richard Dawkins, a Professor of Science at Oxford University. In this tome Dr. Dawkins devotes nearly 400 pages of well-researched and often very passionate writing debunking the God in whom I have not believed for some time.
Why, then, would I base a sermon on a book that I can't get too terribly exercised about. Actually I did consider shelving it, but then decided to do a sermon on why I'm not all that exercised about it. But, true to my form, I have to back up and get a running start at it first. Since its publication last year Dawkins' book has shown up on some of the usual best-seller lists, and has generated a certain amount of buzz. It is part of an emerging genre of writing I'm beginning to detect that I call "the atheists fight back." A couple of books by Sam Harris titled The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation are of the same type, as it yet another one by Victor Stenger called God - The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist. What I noticed about these three books is that each of the authors offer book blurbs for the other two, as they all congratulate one another on having written a brilliant book.
Atheists, as Dawkins, Harris, and Stenger call themselves have, I will readily acknowledge, good reason to fight back these days. We have an intense religiosity, largely of the conservative Christian variety, in this country driving certain aspects of our domestic and foreign policy. I spoke to that last fall in the sermon I did called "Are We a Theocracy?". And there's a perverse kind of Islam that celebrates terror in the name of God. It's not a very pretty sight. We get a horrible act of terror inflicted upon us by persons fully believing that they are fulfilling the will of Allah. Then we invade Iraq after our President proclaims that it is the "will of the Almighty that the Iraqi people be free." It makes me think that perhaps the sub-title to what we in this country call The War on Terror should be "Our God Can Beat Up Your God," which is the same thing radical Islamists are saying to us.
Given this kind of climate - to which Dr. Dawkins devotes a good deal of his book decrying and denouncing - I can't blame him for saying it's time for atheists to come out of the closet and start wearing their atheism as badges of honor, as he forthrightly does. Page for page, as a matter of fact, I find very little to argue with him about when it comes to what he's saying. It is how he frames the debate that prompts my argument with him, as I'll explain in a minute.
If I were to boil this book down to a sound byte - trying being as fair as I can about it - it would go like this: The idea of a Supernatural Supreme Being who can work his (hers or its) will on the world and who is the ultimate source of morals and ethics is a delusion; and those who live, and have lived, under this delusion have caused, and continue to cause, all kinds of terribly bad things to happen all over the world. I could spend the rest of my time here this morning showing how Dawkins elaborates on all that, but I'd be largely preaching to the choir by way of a book report. What I just gave you is the big picture. If you want to fill in the details then go read the book - it's not a bad read at all.
What Dr. Dawkins has done - and this is where I spar with him - is to take a particular notion of God, put it in a box, and then blow the box up. Indeed, he states very early on, and very clearly, the God Hypothesis, as he calls it, that he sets out to debunk: "There exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us." He further claims that this is the only idea of God worth debating, which is to say, he's framing the debate on his own terms. To be fair to him, the God Hypothesis Dawkins sets forth is the most widely held and believed one out there. When most people say they believe in God, they are referring - with some variations here and there - to the God Dawkins describes. I readily give him that, and I admire the good job he does of debunking such a notion.
The thing is though, Dr. Dawkins is very careful and restrictive about what he puts in the box he blows up. He doesn't want to muddy up his God Hypothesis with anything having to do with naturalistic theology, for instance. Naturalistic theology holds that some sense of the holy, the sacred, the divine (which some of this school of thought call "God") can be found in the natural world and universe, with no need to look for anything beyond it. Just so you don't have to psych me out, this is the camp I find myself in these days.
Dawkins does cite, in a generally favorable way, the religious overtones in the writings of Albert Einstein and cosmologist Steven Hawking while insisting, quite correctly, that neither of these scientists is making a reference to the Supernatural when they occasionally invoke the word 'God.' What makes Dawkins mad, understandably so, is when the occasional God references that scientists like Einstein and Hawking make are mis-used to defend the idea of the Supernatural.
But what Dawkins wants to do is take anyone who, like him, rejects his God Hypothesis, and put them all in the atheist camp with him whether they want to be there or not. To cite one example, here is how he treats the work of the renowned cell biologist, Dr. Ursula Goodenough: "The cell biologist Ursula Goodenough, in (her book) The Sacred Depths of Nature, sounds more religious than Hawking or Einstein. She loves churches, mosques, (and) temples...She goes so far as to call herself a 'Religious Naturalist.' Yet a careful reading of her book shows that she is really as staunch as atheist as I am."
That I found to be a very telling passage. Not that I expect him to do this, but if Richard Dawkins were to go to our church's website and read a smattering of my sermons from the past 8-10 years, I'm convinced he'd say the same thing about me as he does of Dr. Goodenough. He would say that I, too, am a religious naturalist who is really a staunch atheist, but one who will not admit it. I readily accept and affirm - as I've already indicated - the label religious naturalist. As for the staunch atheist part, let's play with that one for a bit.
Here, as best I can determine it, is where the good and learned and scholarly Dr. Dawkins and I differ. It's not with the content of his book itself, since, as I've already said, I accept practically all of his arguments. But he regards his book and the argument he makes in it, as the end or the conclusion of a conversation or debate. For me, that point is only the beginning. For me, the issue is once you've decided that believing in a Supernatural Deity is a delusion then where to from there? Now where does the path lead? I would offer a couple of markers for such a path.
The first is from the writings the acclaimed biologist, Dr. E.O. Wilson, whom Dawkins very favorably cites, and whose work I have used in a few sermons myself. Dr. Wilson once noted, "The human mind has evolved to believe in gods and not in biology." That is a remarkable observation, coming as it does from a world renowned biologist. What I think Wilson means is that we are the species on this planet whose minds have developed to the point that they cause us, if not compel us, to reach and search beyond ourselves for some greater meaning. Our minds have evolved to the point that they allow us to conceive of our being a part of something greater than ourselves, even is we cannot fully comprehend or name it. Even if we disavow the Supernatural our minds push us to pursue that greater truth or meaning.
My second marker is from the writings of my friend and colleague in the UU ministry, the Rev. Forrest Church. In his book Born Again Unitarian Universalism he writes, "God is not God's name. It is my name for that which is greater than I know and whose name I do not know. It is my name for the power than is both within me and beyond me, and whose full nature I may never comprehend." [Or words to the effect - I may not have put it precisely, but that is Forrest's take on the matter.]
When I put these two markers together I get some direction on where to go after taking leave of the Supernatural. I am still going to look both within and beyond myself in coming to a better understanding of who I am, and my place in this world and universe, and how I am related to it all - and what that relationship means. And I'm still going to need some kind of language in order to speak to that kind of searching and to speak to that kind of relationship. I am still going to need some kind of language to speak to the mystery and the beauty and the tragedy and even the occasional times of meaningless I encounter as I seek to meaningfully live in this world and universe of ours. And there may well be times when a poetic or metaphorical reference to God will provide the language I need.
I resonate well with something Rev. John Haynes Holmes once wrote on this subject. Dr. Holmes was one of the premier Unitarian ministers of the 20th century. He was the minister of the Community Church of New York for 30 years from 1919 to 1949. He was among the founders of both the NAACP and the ACLU. In an essay in one of our denomination's earlier hymnals, published in 1935, The Beacon Song and Service Book Holmes wrote: "When I say 'God' it is poetry and not theology. Nothing that any theologian has written about God has helped me much, but everything the poets have written about flowers and birds and skies and seas and saviors of the race, and God - whoever He may be - has at one time or another reached my soul!...The theologians gather dust upon the shelves of my library but the poets are stained with my fingers and blotted by my tears." This, I know, is exactly the kind of God-talk that drives Dawkins crazy because it won't fit into the box he wants to blow up - but that's just going to have to be his problem.
I'll wrap up with this, which will involve a huge flight of fantasy to make what I hope is a realistic point. Let's suppose that tomorrow morning the entire world came around to Dr. Dawkins way of thinking when it comes to God as a Supernatural Supreme Being. What if the human race, in toto, were to decide, yes Mr. Dawkins you are right, it all is a delusion and a Supernatural God is indeed obsolete? I don't know how much would really change.
I think we would still have our human conflicts; and that certain individuals and groups and tribes and nations on this earth would continue find themselves at odds with other individuals, groups, tribes, and nations - terribly violent odds at times. I say this because I believe the territorial instinct - the notion that this is rightfully mine, or ours, and not yours - is deeply rooted in the human DNA, and was there before the first feeble concept of any kind of God or gods found its way into the earliest of human minds. It was when the idea of God later emerged that it was used to justify or rationalize that territorial drive and that proclivity towards violence that we all have in some measure or other. I also believe we would still act on our countervailing human instincts of caring and kindness and love for one another, because I believe these traits, too, were imprinted in us before they became attached to any notions of God.
What I'm saying is that if we as a human race were to collectively decide that a Supernatural God was obsolete, we'd still be left having to deal with our all too human selves in the only world we have in which to deal with them. We would still have to struggle to find ways to protect ourselves from our baser human instincts; and we would still search for ways to call ourselves to our more noble human instincts. I can't say that we'd do any better a job of it if we were to remove all belief in the Supernatural from the whole works. I can't prove this of course because there's no realistic way of testing such a hypothesis. I leave it to speculation.
But here's what I do know, and what I do not have to speculate about: Some thirty years ago I came to the same conclusion as does Dr. Dawkins about the non-existence of the Supernatural. I just didn't write a book about it. And once I reached this stance of non-theism, as I prefer to call it, the same world was still waiting for me when I woke up in the morning, and I was still the same guy who had to live in it. I still wondered about the same things I'd been wondering about for most of my life up to that point: Who am I? What is my reason for being here? How do I best live with my fellow human beings and with the earth itself? What does it mean to love, to care, to strive for greater justice in this world? Where do I find meaning? How do I face my mortality? The fact that one particular set of answers no longer worked for me did not get rid of the questions.
I also decided that these were religious questions - religious in the best sense of the term: Religion as the search for meaning, depth, and purpose in living. I further decided that such religious questions as these are best pursued in a religious community, rather than just by me on my own. I needed a community where I could pursue them freely without having to fit my answers into a pre-fabricated doctrine; and where belief in God was not required, but still an option and a possibility. I wanted to explore some alternative ways the notion of God might still be meaningful to me, even after I'd walked away from a Supernatural One.
Out of all that I decided to continue my journey, and bring my ministry which had already been going on for several years, to this free faith tradition we call Unitarian Universalism. It is good - it continues to be good - to be here.
Stephen Edington
March 4, 2007
