Ratzinger's Opposite Number

This Salon interview with Richard "Evolution is a fact" Dawkins is a marvelous litmus or Rorschach test. It either makes you feel "validated and hopeful," like Tamar, or angry and scathing, as I know it will make my culture-warrior friend Jeff Schwartz, or, if you're like True Ancestor (in Tamar's comments) and me, it makes you feel weary and depressed, as you sink into the barren, shell-pocked quicksand of the DMZ between fundamentalist religion and dogmatic scientism, each in its own way so literal-minded. In that DMZ a subtler truth, at once scientific and mystical, keeps trying to take root, but every time it rears its head it's mistaken by each side for the other.

Listen to Dawkins:

Design can never be an ultimate explanation for anything. It can only be a proximate explanation. A plane or a car is explained by a designer but that's because the designer himself, the engineer, is explained by natural selection.

There is just no evidence for the existence of God. Evolution by natural selection is a process that works up from simple beginnings, and simple beginnings are easy to explain. The engineer or any other living thing is difficult to explain -- but it is explicable by evolution by natural selection. So the relevance of evolutionary biology to atheism is that evolutionary biology gives us the only known mechanism whereby the illusion of design, or apparent design, could ever come into the universe anywhere.

This is as ex cathedra a declaration as anything from the Pope. It is so because Dawkins says it is so. I don't see an "explanation" here. I don't find any honest engagement with the real gaps in neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory that Intelligent Design-ers have pointed out. (Not that they've proposed anything remotely like a testable scientific theory in its place.) This is a pronouncement, a dismissal, an excommunication of heretics. Dawkins, whose official title is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, is the head of the scientific establishment's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

It reminds me of the conversation I had this weekend with two old friends **[conversation is removed because friends were offended to be blogged about, and, they say, misrepresented.]**

The assumption is that science is the last word. Now, science is wondrous. It's probing deeper and deeper, discovering more and more of the what and how of life and the cosmos, but virtually nothing of the why, which is inseparably bound up with the how of first origins. I happen not to think that Biblical literalism explains much of anything, either. Both fundamentalisms, religious and scientific, assume that the important answers are already known! That chokes off inquiry and denies the fact of how very little we still know, even as our knowledge of how things work is exploding. Method -- scientific or meditative -- can do only so much. Without openness, we'll only find what we already expect to find.

Dawkins points out that "You won't find any opposition to the idea of evolution among sophisticated, educated theologians." Very true. He fails to consider that the reverse may also be true -- that some of the most brilliant and cultured scientists have allowed their sense of wonder to spill over the strict boundaries of what Dawkins approvingly calls "a materialist, mechanist, naturalistic worldview." When Einstein used the word "God," Dawkins insists that he wasn't trying to get at anything more transcendent than an "emotional response to the natural world." Einstein isn't here to ask, but he did express himself on the subject. In the quotes posted here, the evidence is ambiguous. See what you think:

"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings." Upon being asked if he believed in God by Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of the Institutional Synagogue, New York, April 24, 1921, Einstein: The Life and Times, Ronald W. Clark, Page 502.

"Our situation on this earth seems strange. Every one of us appears here involuntary and uninvited for a short stay, without knowing the whys and the wherefore. In our daily lives we only feel that man is here for the sake of others, for those whom we love and for many other beings whose fate is connected with our own." ... "The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavour in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. [Emphasis added] To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is." Einstein's speech 'My Credo' to the German League of Human Rights, Berlin, autumn 1932, Einstein: A Life in Science, Michael White and John Gribbin, Page 262.

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." - Albert Einstein in Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas (Einstein's secretary) and Banesh Hoffman, and published by Princeton University Press.

My own impression is that Einstein revered something less (or shall we say more?!) than the Biblical God, but also something more than just "materialist, mechanist."

As an ironic postscript, listen carefully to Dawkins again for a moment:

(The interviewer asked, "How would we be better off without religion?")

We'd all be freed to concentrate on the only life we are ever going to have. We'd be free to exult in the privilege -- the remarkable good fortune -- that each one of us enjoys through having been being born. An astronomically overwhelming majority of the people who could be born never will be. You are one of the tiny minority whose number came up. Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one. The world would be a better place if we all had this positive attitude to life. It would also be a better place if morality was all about doing good to others and refraining from hurting them, rather than religion's morbid obsession with private sin and the evils of sexual enjoyment. . . .

We are amazingly privileged to be born at all and to be granted a few decades -- before we die forever -- in which we can understand, appreciate and enjoy the universe. And those of us fortunate enough to be living today are even more privileged than those of earlier times. We have the benefit of those earlier centuries of scientific exploration. Through no talent of our own, we have the privilege of knowing far more than past centuries. Aristotle would be blown away by what any schoolchild could tell him today. That's the kind of privileged century in which we live. That's what gives my life meaning. And the fact that my life is finite, and that it's the only life I've got, makes me all the more eager to get up each morning and set about the business of understanding more about the world into which I am so privileged to have been born.

If I didn't know better, I'd think that was an argument against abortion.

- amba

Comments

[Tamar]

Amba,
I was amused by the story you tell of your friends trying to convince you that there is no god. I was amused because the reverse has been happening to me so much lately. Not only from the media, our administration and colleagues at the end of my presentations. But really close friends have been begging me to see the light - to believe in an afterlife and they *all* are convinced they have been with me in a former life, even though their religious beliefs differ. In a way it has been touching and flattering because they truly care about me and want what is best for me. Plus I understand that they have found something really wonderful that has enriched their lives and they want to share it with me. They don't come at it in arrogance or a "holier than thou" manner as your friends seem to have done. I usually sit quietly and listen. I even attend their churches, synagogues or whatever they are into. I chant with them, and accept that this is where they are in their lives, feelings, ideas. I am even happy for them that they are happy. But there just seems to be so little respect for my view or, even, any interest in if I have a different view at all. And if I do talk about it (and I seldom do with friends) there seems to be so much anger at me.

A blogger friend once wrote this to me:
"I seem to be in a minority on this, most particularly now during America's trend toward Christian McCarthyism, but I believe one's faith, religion or lack thereof, to be at least as personal as one's sexual practices and for anyone to try to persuade another to his/her beliefs without being invited is out of human bounds. I don't have a lot of rules about other people's behavior, but that is one I don't tolerate and have been known to be quite 'un Christian' in my response."

I guess I agree with that blogger about this except that I am more accepting when people come at me with religion. Like the time I wrote to my colleague who had given me a bible:
http://tamarika.typepad.com/in_and_out_of_confidence/2005/02/today_i_was_rea.html

I guess my post on Dawkins was offensive to some people and I am truly sorry about that. It was not my intention. As my friend wrote to me in my "update" today, I am in the minority and perhaps have been hiding frightened in the closet. My "coming out" might have been a shock to some. But I'm not a bigot, even though some people have said that some people who come out of closets are bigots! Gee, I so hope they are not refering to me.

[Tamar]

Oops. I see that the URL didn't come out...
I'll try it again:

http://tamarika.typepad.com/in_and_out_of_confidence/2005/02/today_i_was_rea.html

[david]

Me sis:
This is a brilliant post, putting its finger exactly on the sore and tender spot where the two sides of this "argument" -- the two lobes of our spiritual brain, chambers of our heart, etc. -- are painfully but necessarily joined.

As long as the word "belief" comes up -- as it does with both atheists and religionists -- there is no room for one to feel superior to the other. Both are pursuing knowledge, each has something to offer -- no -- each is **dependent** on the other for perspective, worldview, humility, even something to define themselves against. Neither rests in certainty.

My brother-in-law/boss/business partner is a strident atheist. I have learned more from him about the perils of religion -- **and** the lopsidedness of rationality "uber alles" -- than anyone.

It's interesting to note that he insisted his wife convert to Judaism and that his children be raised Jewish. I'm not sure what it means, but it's interesting to note that rationality cannot suffice even in his life, to explain or guide every aspect of his every decision.

Thanks.

[Tamar]

Oy I am so glad Tom and I have never asked each other to convert to anything!

This past post between us all with all the comments and debate has been great for Tom and I. We have been chatting, discussing and sharing our views with each other, over glasses of wine and with great love, instead of watching re-runs of West Wing with dinner on our laps!

Check out Blaugustine's cartoon link that I added to my update. She's terrific!

[Richard Lawrence Cohen]

I don't know whose blog to comment on, your or Tamar's! I guess I'll have to do both. Wonderful discussion. I've had problems with Dawkins for a long time -- I think there are fundamental flaws in his concept of the selfish gene. And he fails Einstein's test, which you've put in boldface, and which, if we set aside the divisive concept of religion, is simply a test of sensibility: Dawkins can't grant the possibility that there's anything in the universe his 2000 AD primate mind can't grasp.

[Danny]

With thanks to AmbivaBlog for your thoughts on this subject and for hosting this response to the comment above:

Tamar, I don't think anyone found your POST offensive—au contraire, I think everyone would agree that it stimulated quite a fascinating discussion! It's just that some people, myself included, took issue with what was said by Dawkins in the excerpts you included. And I sure hope you don't count me as one of the friends who is "begging you to see the light!" I have no interest in you seeing anyone's light but your own! Please forgive the tongue-in-cheek references to your faith that I've made over the years as if I don't really BELIEVE that you're an atheist. That's just me struggling to understand your point of view and overlaying some of my own observations and assumptions. But I realize it could sound like a smug "I know you better than you know yourself" which is obviously not true. Maybe Dawkins is right in that we need to release the vise-grip we have on these labels! I hope you're not mistaking passion for anger in the comments you received—I'm actually quite jealous that you were able to whip up such a frenzy on your blog. I've been hoping to do that for ages but somehow no one seems to get as excited about Doris Day or the Waltons.

[Tamar]

Danny,
This has been a great discussion, I agree. Thanks for letting me know that I haven't offended anyone. I knew that Dawkins would have an affect on people because he sounds so harsh, unrelenting and radical. I have been honored that you all have shared your views so totally and completely. But more than that, it forced me to try and clarify what it is *I* think and feel about all of this. And I am happy to say that I still am "wandering" and don't feel "lost." I know that puts me at risk for all the sides and "isms" and "ists" to grab me for *their* camp. However, I love that people share with me what they believe and feel about stuff because that enhances the human connection and relationships - i.e. the more I know about you the more I can share about me. I guess using Dawkins to shield me, was a tad provocative. I have suffered from an extreme purist education and for now I need to bend towards confusion and against absolute truthes.

I have not mistaken passion for anger in this discussion and do not lump you in with friends and colleagues who have been wanting me to take on their faith. Oh Danny, you are the least smug person I have ever had the good fortune to meet.

And why don't we get all riled up about Doris Day and Waltons, I wonder!