That churches, synagogues, temples, etc., participate in food pantries, ecological advocacy, restorative justice programs, and whatnot is indeed a not-conservative agenda when measured against the right wing obsession with abortion and homosexuality. But for the most part, it bounces off many people as being not particularly political, but just what churches do. So, give away food or collect donations for AIDS relief in Africa: that’s religion. Issue bellicose statements in defense of a particular vision of family values: that’s politics.

And, from a post on Street Prophets being covered in the news (because of Netroots Nation):

“Some people think that the progressive side of things doesn’t respect religion too much,” said Dan Schultz, known as “Pastor Dan” and host of “Street Prophets,” a diary on the popular national lefty blog DailyKos. “I think that’s really overstated. What I see as much more of a problem are the conservative types who say you can’t be a Christian if you don’t believe in these 15 different things, most of which come right off the GOP playbook.”

I think that these two quotes state well the difference between how the right and the left treat religious discourse, and specifically the difference between how the right and the left react to the fact of religious pluralism. The right has formed a political-theological position based on a certain type of exclusivism, i.e.: “[Y]ou can’t be a Christian if you don’t believe in these 15 different things, most of which come right off the GOP playbook”. The right was very successful in making their version of Christianity appear to be the only legitimate one to their adherents and in convincing its adherents that other religious are invalid. The religious right has, in many respects, convinced the adherents of the Christian right that Christianity is identical to Republicanism, and that the tenets of Christianity are the same as the policy positions of the Republican party.

The left went a different route: the secularization of political discussion. Specifically, making religion a private rather than public affair, and thus a non-political one. Giving away food or collecting donations for AIDS relief came to be seen as religious (private) actions, while talking about policy changes came to be seen as political activities and, thus, necessarily separate from religious activities. The religious left, in many ways, appears to have bought into this separation of the religious and the political. I would suggest that it is not so much the media who has hidden our light under a bushel, but we ourselves.

These, of course, are generalizations. Not all of those on the religious right are shills for the Republican Party. Likewise, not all of those on the religious left are so reluctant to speak openly about the connection between faith and politics. That these are issues that face us, however, is well known, and I’m not pointing out anything new by saying these things. What I do want to say that, while not news to the religious left, may be news to those who are interested in the privatization of religion and the secularization of political conversation on the left is that both the religio-political exclusivism of the right and the privatization/secularization of the left are anti-pluralist and undemocratic-with-a-small-d.

Small-d democratic discourse is dependent upon there being an open public square in which ideas can be discussed. A major concept of secularization is that there is some sort of common reason - both foundational ideas shared by all who enter the public square and a universal method of inferring further ideas from those foundations - that all participants in the public square must share. In other words, if a person is justified in holding a commitment (whether metaphysical, ethical, etc.), that person ought to be able to justify that commitment to everyone in the public sphere. Over the past few years, adherence to this rather undefined common reason has become known simply as being rational or reality-based, i.e.: those who do not adhere to common reason can simply be dismissed as irrational, and thus as not being legitimate participants in the public square. Of course, since we appear never to have been able to define or describe the content of this public reason, I’m less than eager to suggest that those who do not adhere to it are deficient and illegitimate participants in the public square. Indeed, I suspect that appeals to public reason are far too often statements along the line of “You disagree with me, so I will assume you are irrational and dismiss you.” It’s a lot easier than actually making an argument.

A small-d democratic society should, I think, be based on the idea that different people from different social contexts may have different ideas that are justifiable within those particular concepts. In other words, that there is a difference between my being able to justify something to myself and my being able to justify that same thing to everybody else, and I am not willing to believe that my inability to justify certain ideas to everybody is the result in a deficiency in either myself or everybody else. What I would suggest is that different people really do have a different history, different stories, different experiences of the world, different ways of organizing core values (and, in some cases, different core values), different ways of making inferences from those core values on out, and different areas in which it is viewed as important to reason out one’s beliefs for one’s self rather than taking another’s word for some belief. A truly small-d democratic, pluralist society must find not a way to determine the common beliefs of all people (and write off the rest), but a way to civilly navigate the real differences that exist among people.

The privatization and depoliticization of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, or class would be rightly seen as ridiculous. Similarly, saying that, say, an environmentalist should not argue from their viewpoint as an environmentalist, but only from some common reason that an anti-environmentalist will accept, would also be seen as ridiculous (I hope). This gets me to what I mean when I say that I would like to change the conversation that appears on the left when religion is discussed: that I would like to see political discourse on the left accept the fact of religious pluralism in American society and in the world without privatizing religion. I want to further suggest that this is necessary for Pastor Dan’s own goal of dragging the religious conversation leftward: as long as the conversation about religion on the left is privatized, or, as one person in the Street Prophets Caucus at Netroots Nation put it (to paraphrase), “ghettoized”, shifting the religious conversation to the left is going to have the effect of putting religion in the private sphere rather than changing the religious conversation in the public sphere.

Overcoming this, I think, requires overcoming the idea that public discourse should be secular and moving towards a public discourse and accepts and, I dare say, celebrates actual pluralism - including religious pluralism - in true small-d democratic discourse. This, in turn, requires what I have been calling political theology, by which I simply mean the making explicit of the connections between a community’s theological commitments and its political commitments.

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In the case of Pastor Dan: “Because the Beltway Villagers have decided in their wisdom that the religious left is all about chasing the votes of awesome Evangelicals who aren’t actually liberals.”

In the case of Cameron, a commenter here:

I’d prefer to take the ‘left/right’ out of the equation, but I suspect the answer is this: some people want to have a whinge, and others want to do something useful. When it’s a matter of other people’s private morality, you can only really complain. The media likes to pick up on that.

On the other hand, if you see a problem and do something to help, it doesn’t generate the sound bites the media wants. In religious terms, this is about pleasing God, not the media. So when we do see these folk letting their light shine, we can praise our Father in heaven for their good work (Matt. 5:16)

Most of these activities are simple consequences of the Golden Rule. I think the problem lies in the fact that ‘the left’ has become (in the popular mind) synonymous with ‘anyone who shares.’ I suspect it’s more to do with the way ‘left’ and ‘right’ are delineated in the media.

Okay… fine. But, why the immediate jump to the ‘Beltway Villagers’? Organizations, movements, and people on the religious left are working in communities across the country - heck, across the world. Why do so many people seem to forget that the churches, mosques, synagogues, temples, and so forth in their own neighborhood are doing the kind of work for charity and justice that most of the left supports? Certainly, the media plays a role in shaping the cultural landscape, but I suspect there’s something more going on here… and that something more is precisely the thing that the religious left actually has the power to change.

That being said, I can now follow on last week’s post and re-ask the question: Why don’t people know what the religious left is doing?

Okay, well, obviously the media have something to do with it. After all, the media - especially that beast known as the Mainstream Media - have a huge influence on the public perception of people, issues, ideas, events, and so forth. When the media play it as though religion is a province of the right, and focuses on the relation of religion to homophobic and anti-choice movements, we shouldn’t be surprised that so many people seem to perceive religion the same way.

Let’s face it, when you mention ‘religious leaders’ to most people in America, they think of religious conservatives. Everyone can name more than a few religious conservatives - people like Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell (though he’s dead), Tim Lahaye, Ralph Reed, John Hagee, Fred Phelps, etc. People can also name organizations of the religious right: The Christian Coalition, the American Family Association, the Eagle Forum, Operation Rescue, and so on. This shouldn’t be a surprise, according to a 2007 study by Media Matters for America, conservative religious leaders were quoted, mentioned, or interviewed 2.8 times as often as liberal/progressive leaders in newspaper and television combined (3.8 times as often on television and 2.7 times as often in newspapers). Need a religious person’s perspective on an issue? Then you turn to the conservatives… at least, you do if you work for a major newspaper or television news outlet. This despite the fact that most religious Americans are moderate or liberal. Of course tilted media coverage on this is going to shape the public perception of religion.

Of course, some not-so-conservative (but not necessarily really progressive) religious leaders get the occasional spotlight: Jim Wallis, Tony Campolo, Brian McLaren, and Jay Bakker, for example. Of course, none of these names are as well recognized as those on the right. Moreover, I’m not sure that any of these people are really on the left as much as they’re not in the pocket of the right.

We can, naturally, place the blame on the media, on the Beltway Villagers. It’s easy to do that, and certainly there is some blame to be placed there. However, there are two important things to remember when assigning that blame: First, while the media have a large amount of influence, it isn’t the sole influence on public perception. According to a recent Pew survey, 83% of Americans are religiously affiliated and 92% of Americans believe in God. When asked to describer their political positions from among the choices of conservative, moderate, and liberal, Protestants, Catholics, and Mormons broke, overall, toward the conservative end. Other religious groups tended toward moderate or liberal, many describing themselves as moderate.

This self description belies an important point: On actual issues there are a lot of liberal positions being taken by religious people. When asked to identify their party affiliation, members of most religious groups are either Democratic or lean Democratic (Evangelical Christians and Mormons being the exceptions). A surprising number of religious groups are either closely split about preferring a larger government with more services or a smaller government with fewer services, or prefer the larger government. On abortion, most Christian groups are fairly evenly split on legality/non-legality (Evangelical Christians, Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses being the major exceptions), while other religious groups support legality in most cases at the least. Most mainline Protestants appear to be pro-choice. Except for Evangelical Christians, members of historically Black churches, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Muslims, pluralities or majorities of religious groups believe that homosexuality should be accepted. Pluralities or majorities of most religious groups worry that the government is getting too involved in issues of morality (though without a definition of ‘morality’ the question is kind of meaningless). Majorities of every religious tradition believe that we should do more to protect the environment. Majorities of all religious traditions except Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses are religiously pluralistic (at least to some degree, though there may be some issues with the question). The same is true on the question if intra-religious pluralism (is there more than one way to interpret the teachings of one’s own religion). Among all religious traditions pluralities or majorities believe the government should do more to help the poor, even if it means going deeper into debt (mostly majorities).

This is, of course, a quick glance at the statistics, so please excuse (and correct) any errors you fine. But it appears that, despite the religious left not being well-known or widely recognized, a huge number of religious people, perhaps most, are members of it, at least on some issues. Perhaps there is something to what Pastor Dan says - maybe the media do focus mostly on the 26 to 27% of the population that is Evangelical Christians.

The second point, and it’s important, is that the media are not representative voices. At least, what we think of as the mainstream media are not. They do not act democratically, allowing a voice to all people, even though there is sometimes that pretension. The mainstream media have their own interests, and are owned by corporations that have interests, and tend, I rather suspect, to represent those interests. They are simply another set of voices in democratic discourse, and we need not rely on them in order to get our voices heard, nor should we rely on them. It is perhaps for this reason that so-called new media - especially blogs - have been so advantageous to the religious left: they have opened up the media landscape somewhat.

What I want to suggest is not that we on the religious left somehow need to build our own media empires, though utilizing alternative media is good, nor that we should concentrate on delivering votes as Pastor Dan suggests in the first comment on his post. What I think we should do, and what I will begin discussing next week, is build the educational infrastructure necessary to successfully produce political theologies on the left in a democratic fashion and work to alter the sort of conversation that appears on the left when religion is discussed.

But more on that later.

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How many people know that religious folks, including a student from my alma mater, are still going to jail for protesting at the School of the Americas?

How many people know that Christian Peacemaker Teams are still working in Iraq, Palestine, Colombia, the Mexican border, and elsewhere to give the oppressed and underprivileged what they need to survive?

How many people know that Catholic Worker Houses are still providing communities around the United States with tens of thousands of meals every week, along with toiletries, blankets, transitional housing, other needed items, listening ears, and connections to social services?

How many people know about the Center for Progressive Christianity or The Christian Alliance for Progress and their work on progressive issues like economic justice, peacemaking, environmental stewardship, and LGBTQ equality? Of course, those are just Christian organizations, but there are progressive organizations and movements in every religion.

How many people know that the church, the synagogue, the mosque, or the temple in their neighborhood is running a homeless shelter or a food pantry or a free clinic? While we’re at it, how many people know how much of the budget of their local religious community goes towards supporting those in need? How many people know that the person standing next to them at their last protest or rally was a member of a religious community?

It would be far too laborious a task to list everything that those in the religious left do, because it gets done everyday and in a variety of ways. The religious left is made up of bloggers and activists and lobbyists and front-liners. We write, we call congress, we ladle out soup. There are religious people involved in every aspect of the broader progressive movement - sometimes for the same reasons as the secular people involved, sometimes for different reasons.

So why don’t people know? What do we do about it?

I’ll get to that over the next few weeks.

Minor Update: Since this is a post in a series, I suppose I should link it to the previous post.

Kind of Important Update: Fixed the links.

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• Revolution in Jesusland: A Rising Social Movement of Ordinary Radicals (Saturday, July 19, 10:30AM, Room 11): A progressive social movement is rising among evangelical and born-again Christians committed to eliminating poverty, saving the environment, protecting separation of church and state, aiding immigrants and promoting justice across racial, gender and class lines. Zack Exley and Jamie Moffett will facilitate a discussion about how all progressives can work with better understanding of each other across the Evangelical divide.
• Whatever Happened to the Religious Left? (Saturday, July 19, 4:30PM, Ballroom E): There is nothing on the left corresponding to the politically dynamic religious right. But there are some promising elements with the potential to become greater than the sum of their parts. This panel seeks to address what’s going on and what should happen next. We will discuss how common approaches to electoral politics can be found and practiced in a way that respects the unique character of progressive faith.

And, of course, there’s the multi-faith service on Sunday at 9AM in Room 12.

Finally, given how conversations about religion (and, often, everything else)tend to go in Left Blogsylvania, there’s a panel called “Different Tones and Wider Nets” on Friday, July 19 at 9AM in Ballroom E. The description given is: “One of the great debates of blogging is the general rudeness and shrillness acceptable within the discourse. Does profanity exempt you from being taken seriously? Are you necessarily “calmer” because you don’t drop a few four-letter words? We’ll discuss the tone and attitude of various pockets of bloggers, and also why, no matter what, Michelle Malkin is still worse.”

For this post, though, let me focus on the question asked in the title of one of the panels: Whatever Happened to the Religious Left?

Well, we started asking questions like that, for one thing.

The assumption on the left seems to have long been that either (a) there has never been a substantial religious movement on the left, or (b) there used to be one but then the religious right won out and now there is no such movement. Impression (a) can be dispensed of easily - we could all name a few movements on the left with, at the very least, a substantial religious base: the Social Gospel Movement, for example, worked toward better health care, universal education, and end to child labor, and shorter working hours, as well as providing the poor with things like healthcare, education, daycare, and so on. I might also name the abolitionist and civil rights movements among those with a large religious base on the left, or the Catholic Worker Movement. Indeed, many people today recognize the teachings of Jesus as rather leftist (and, indeed, sometimes radically so). I suspect that, on a careful reading of the letters of Paul, or even of Leviticus, most people would find quite a few ideas that are embraced by the left.

The problem comes when we look around today and don’t see something like the Religious Right on the political left. It becomes easy to say, “Well, there once was this Religious Left thing, and then it vanished.” The religious left hasn’t gone anywhere… a fact that I find myself amazed I have to point out whenever I have to do so. The issue isn’t that the religious left has disappeared, only that it has learned to be invisible. Most people don’t know, for example, that Christian Peacemaker Teams exist, or that they’ve been working in Iraq longer since before the US invasion, or that Interfaith Youth Core works to bring youth of different faiths (and no faith) together to serve the wider community. There are, I suspect, four major reasons for this invisibility:

First, the religious left is not and never will be the same kind of movement as the Religious Right. The Religious Right is primarily a political movement led by a few well-recognized people - Pat Robertson, James Dobson, etc. No one seems to argue when these people are held up as the leaders of a right wing movement of religious people anymore than people argue when Karl Rove is allowed to speak for the Republican Party. The left just doesn’t, in general, seem to work like that. While Senator Obama might speak from the left and to the left, he just isn’t in a position to speak for it, and other people on the left will happily disagree with him publicly. Likewise, which Pastor Dan or Jim Wallis can speak from the religious left and to the religious left, I don’t think that anyone would pretend that they speak for the religious left. As a diverse, big-tent, people-powered collection of movements, we’re simply never going to be the sort of monolithic movement that the Religious Right is (or, at least, has tried to be for the last couple of decades).

Second, the popular conception of what counts as a religious issue remains stuck on the wedge issues of abortion and LGBTQ rights. Poverty, environmentalism, anti-war movements, and so forth get left out of the mix. Moreover, when those two ‘religious issues’ are discussed in the national media, the religious voices are damn near invariably those that are anti-choice and/or anti-LGBTQ equality. Part of overcoming the invisibility of the religious left, then, is convincing those who control our national discourse that the religious are concerned with much more than two issues, and that the religious sit on all sides of different issues. Of course, this by itself will probably end up showing that categories like ‘left’ and ‘right’ don’t define people all by themselves, and people who are ‘on the left’ are, on some issues, more to the right, and vice versa. The point for those who are both religious and mostly on the left give voice on all issues, and a variety of voices at that.

Third, and counter to the previous paragraph, most people on the religious left don’t seem to be particularly interested in showing how good religious people are by acting for the general good. In other words, the people on the Christian Peacemaker Teams, or working with Interfaith Youth Core or the Catholic Worker Movement aren’t doing it because they want cookies, but because they believe that it’s the right thing to do. They, as it were, pray in their closets. To a degree, and perhaps with a faithful appropriateness, the invisibility of the religious left is self-imposed.

Fourth, however, is that many of us on the religious left have learned to be invisible for the sake of our own sanity. While it isn’t very nice to have to bring this up in so many conversations about religion and the left, we do have to face the fact that the left is often less than friendly to religion when it’s anything more than a list of empty platitudes. While very few people would argue that religious people ought to be kept off the political landscape, it is true that religious people’s policy ideas - even when derived from a particular religion - need to be open to public, secular reason and persuasion. Quite simply, even when one’s ideas are founded upon the principles of a specific religion, there’s little reason to bring up that fact when it is presumed that the political sphere is supposed to be religion-free. Indeed, we’re probably all familiar with the charges of irrationality that can come from naming one’s ideas as religious. There just doesn’t seem to be much of a point in being openly religious in the largely secular conversations that occur among the left netroots - not because of any hostility, but just because it doesn’t do anything to get one’s ideas across.

So, whatever happened to the religious left:

• There Never Was a THE Religious Left: What there have been are many, many movements on the left with strong religious bases. I also strongly suspect that there will be a THE Religious Left, only groups on the left with strong religious bases that have learned to work well together and with the secular left.
• The Frame of Religious Issues is Still Too Narrow: At least, that’s true in the popular conception of ‘religious issues’. In order for the religious left (recognizing that the term isn’t perfect) to have any sort of influence, the popular conception of ‘religious issues’ is going to have to grow to include poverty, war, the environment, free trade, healthcare, and everything else that we care about.
• We’re Silent: Obviously, we’re not completely silent - organizations within the religious left have been maimed, jailed, and killed for speaking and acting out, and that will continue to happen. While those on the religious left should not seek praise for out work, so as not to cheapen it, there does need to be better publicity around it for only one reason: better publicity means wider education on the issues and the movements that are working on them, which gets more people working on them, which leads to a higher success rate in ending things like slavery, poverty, etc.
• We’ve Gotten Secular: I think that too many religious people on the left have bought into the idea that political discourse must avoid the religious - even if the culturally religious is still okay. We’ve accepted that public discourse must be of a particular kind. However, in a pluralistic society, it is important to remember that people may hold ideas from a variety of sources, and that people who start from different sources can work together successfully. Moreover, a recognition that different sources exist can help us to better argue our (the left’s) point to those who start from different points. Think about it this way: an argument based upon a certain reading of the New Testament is unlikely to win over a Muslim or an atheist. On the other hand, an argument based solely on non-religious arguments is unlikely to win over a moderate to liberal evangelical Christian. By recognizing the value of translating our ideas and arguments into a variety of religious and non-religious languages, we can broaden the liberal/progressive coalition and put more people behind achieving our goals

“Whatever Happened to the Religious Left?” is simply the wrong sort of question… a better one would be “What is the Religious Left Doing?” and “How Can We Do It Better?” In other words, the very questions that the actual panel is going to be exploring. I’ll try to offer my own answers over the next couple of weeks.

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There are a number of angles that one can approach the issue, but for the church the theological and the pastoral are deeply connected. At one level, we who are clergy, and the church itself, is faced with the pastoral question — if society is offering the opportunity, do we share in it? That is, even if the church isn’t required to bless such unions, when approached by members or the public seeking our involvement in such unions, what shall we do? As I told people yesterday, I’ve not been asked, and I’m moving to Michigan in less than 2 weeks, so the possibility of being asked is limited. But what if?

The pastoral is rooted in the theological — the core theological values that form and inform the life of the church. We are, after all, a people formed by our heritage and in our case by Scripture. The questions that we have wrestled with down through the ages have to do with interpretation and application. As Larry Keene, a Disciples minister, says in a clip from the film For the Bible Tells Me So, it’s not a matter of what the Bible says, but how the Bible reads. We can agree that the Bible says this or that — in terms of pure literal words — but how should it be read? What do we bring to the table that influences interpretation and application?

Today, in the LA Times, there is an interesting article that raises just these issues. We read about a variety of starting points, from right to left. The person representing the conservative position is the president of my alma mater, Fuller Theological Seminary, Richard Mouw. In the quotes here, he makes the same point as in the documentary, Romans 1 speaks specifically about the “natural use.” He goes on in this article to speak about the “orders of creation.” In other words, human beings are not designed for homo-erotic relations. And in a sense he’s right. If marriage is linked completely to the possibilities of procreation, then gay marriage would seem to be “unnatural.” But is procreation the sole criteria for determining the right to marry?

As I read Mouw’s statements about natural use and orders of creation, I became worried. My worries lie in the fact that the same arguments have been used against women’s ordination and for a subordinate place in society for women. Indeed, as a Fuller student 20 plus years ago, we dispensed with arguments about nature as rooted in an ancient culture. In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul speaks of a man’s hair and says:

Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is degrading to him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her for a covering. (1 Cor. 11:14-15)

Interestingly, Paul seems to recognize the problems that his argument presents and continues:

But if anyone is disposed to be contentious –we have no such custom, nor do the churches of God. (1 Cor. 11:16).

So, what is the natural use? Is it something that seemed natural/unnatural then — to Jews but not necessarily Greeks? If short hair is natural . . .

As for the orders of creation, that is an even more problematic issue. People like Bill Gothard used this argument — that has medieval roots — to argue for a family relationship that requires male headship/female submission. I know for a fact that such a position doesn’t reflect Fuller’s positions — at least it didn’t 20 years ago.

So how then do we read Romans 1:26 - 27:

For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanging natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another.

What is natural? And, has the definition of nature changed in 2000 years?

Previously published at Ponderings on a Faith Journey.

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One of the arguments used against atheists is that they haven’t studied religion. The theists maintain that there are very sophisticated arguments for the existence of God and that we atheists are just ignoring all those good argumnts [sic] in order to score points against the simplistic arguments of the hoi polloi.

I’ve been asking for examples of these “sophisticated” arguments for some time without success. (Larry Moran)

or,

Somebody somewhere is going to have to someday point me to some intelligent arguments for gods, because I’ve sure never found them. And I know, someone is going to complain that I always pick on the weak arguments…while not bothering to tell me what the strong ones are. (PZ Myers)

I understand the concern. We’ve all been in those conversations or debates where our interlocutor presents an incredibly weak or stupid argument and then, when caught in it, says that there are much stronger ones but won’t share them.

So allow me to try to shed some meager light on this.

Let me begin with a few caveats: First, as far as I know this conversation has died out, so if anyone knows where it’s still going on, please link to it in the comments. Perhaps, though, this is just to late. Oh, well, I’ve been busy with other things.

Second, I don’t believe that there is a strong argument for God/gods if by ‘strong argument’ we mean mathematical proof. That is, I don’t think that there is any argument for God/gods that’s going to start from a set of universally accepted premises, go through the gymnastics of logic (hey, let’s go modal!), and end with an undeniable conclusion that God/gods exist. Indeed, in my admittedly limited experience, discussions that attempt this end up going to AVAP (Argument Valid, Argue Premises). We shouldn’t, though, be surprised by this. After all, there don’t seem to be any mathematical proofs for the existence of the platypus either, and we know they exist.

Third, and following from the second, I’m not going to present such an argument here. Rather, I want to point out why arguments about the existence of God/gods simply don’t mean that much to many more ‘sophisticated’ theologians. Or, at least, why they don’t mean much if we define ‘god’ as ‘a supernatural being’.

Transcendence, Immanence, and the Supernatural

The ‘supernatural’ seems often to be defined as that which is above or beyond nature. As such, it cannot be investigated or analyzed by the natural sciences, although there might be natural occurrences caused by a supernatural being. That is, God (for my purposes here, please always read ‘God’ as either singular plural: God/the gods) cannot be directly investigates, but s/he can cause natural events which violate natural laws or principles and thus might be taken as evidence of the supernatural. Of course, in principle, God could also be the cause of events that don’t violates the laws or principles of nature, but oh well.

The emphasis on God being above or beyond nature is an emphasis on what theologians would call the transcendence of God. By transcendence, I mean that God one the one hand exceeds nature - that is, that there is something beyond nature, and that is God - and, on the other hand, that God exceeds our conceptual categories - that is, that whatever we can think of, God is also beyond that. In general, enlightenment understandings of God have a certain tendency to focus on the transcendence of God… his/her beyond-ness. Often, though, this is to the point of insisting that God must be separate from nature, or the world, or the universe. This move from transcendence to separation can take many forms, of course, from the watchmaker God who creates the natural world and then leaves it alone to the puppeteer God who ‘lives’ outside the natural world and occasionally pulls a string or two.

What gets missed here is the other aspect that goes along with transcendence: immanence. The immanent God is always present in the world, in some way, shape, or form. This is the God of unique manifestation in the natural world (as in Genesis 18:1-15 or the numerous other times God appears to Abraham, or Moses, or, in the Christian tradition, when God becomes human in Christ), or the God of powers in the natural world (such as when relics are believed to be infused with God’s power), or the God who underlies reality (as in Tillich’s work). Indeed, this is the God of all three of these ideas, and any number of others - the God who is within the natural world.

This is why, when I write of transcendence, I write of an excess rather than a separation. It is not that God is either immanent or transcendent… God is both, there is no contradiction between the two. Perhaps a good word would be ‘sublime’ - the feeling of the sublime being that which we have when we encounter something (and because we encounter it, it must be immanent) that we cannot adequately represent to ourselves (and it therefore transcends our conceptual universe), or, according to Jean-Francois Lyotard, the sublime presents the existence of something unpresentable.

Thus, for many theologians, or at least Christian theologians, the presentation of God as something outside of the natural is neither part of traditional Christian thinking (and, indeed, was not possible until the ‘disenchantment’ of the world during the sixteenth century) nor is it a part of much current theology. Likewise, the God who is completely comprehensible is neither traditional nor current. Rather, God always remains present by ungraspable. In short, as long as supernatural indicates separate, God is not supernatural.

Being

The second issue is ‘being’. Just as God is not caught up in the duality of transcendence and immanence - God is, as it were, transcendence, immanent, both transcendent and immanent, and neither transcendence nor immanent; God denies the categorization - so God is not ‘a being’, but nor is God not not a being. As Paul Tillich would have it, God is the Ground of Being - that which lies behind being and makes being itself possibility. Jean-Luc Marion would argue that God transcends the category of Being, in part precisely because Being is a category of human thought, and placing God firmly within that category would deny God’s sublime nature.

Sallie McFague writes about metaphors of God, pointing out (repeatedly) that the most we can do when it comes to God is make models or speak in metaphors, which should never be confused with God qua God. The models and metaphors are always inadequate. What we often fail to realize, though, is that Being as a category of thought, and an ill-defined one at that (what does it mean for something to exist? Certainly numerals exist, but do numbers? Sound exists, but do words? Neuro-chemical interactions exist, but do emotions? Torture exists, but in what sense do human rights? Etc.), and can only be applied to God as (part of) a model or metaphor. This is probably the most difficult concept of current theology to grasp for those who think of ‘being’ and ‘existence’ as obvious, common-sensical properties.

Obviously, I hope, this is far too complex an idea to throw in a single blog post. I simply want to point out that, despite the ease with which words like ‘being’ and ‘exist’ are tossed about in everyday discourse, they are troubled words… words which acts as conceptual categories that are poorly defined. Allow me to give a short example: As I said above, torture exists. We can easily say that, we can observe waterboarding or stress positions. We might even say that these sorts of actions violate a subject’s human rights. But what are human rights? Do they exist? Certainly they are words, and they (supposedly) have the force of international law behind them. But, can you show me a human right? Can you demonstrate that they are anything more than an abstract idea that might, tomorrow, be abandoned? Do they, in short, have any existence separate from our assent to their existence and, if they do not, in what sense do they exist? Certainly not in the sense that the chair I sit on exists. Indeed, we could go over to Lacan and Zizek (though I might be misunderstanding some concepts of theirs here) and ask the question: do human rights exist when they are not being violated? We could, indeed, ask similar questions of torture. Insofar as torture shocks human conscience, does it exist for those whose consciences aren’t shocked? The actions, certainly, exist, but in what sense does torture? Is it merely a question of value?

Of course, this might be getting a bit over-philosophical. The point is simply this: Being is not, at the end of the day, a simple, obvious concept. It is, rather, one that theologians are willing to play with, and that they are willing to allow God to transcend (and not transcend).

Atheism and Theology

Larry Moran wrote on James McGrath’s Blog:

I’m perfectly happy to accept that there may be modern theologians (like McGrath?) who do not believe in the existence of things outside of the natural world. In fact, one such person is a good friend of mine. He is a Professor in the Faculty of Divinity at one of our colleges.

I’m having trouble distinguishing such a belief from atheism. (My friend is proud to call himself an atheist.) If such a position is indistinguishable from atheism then why make such a fuss about the “new atheists”?

If that belief isn’t atheism, then what is it? It seems to me that you want to have your cake and eat it too. You want to embrace religion while rejecting any substantive definition of God. At the same time, you want to reject atheism because it doesn’t reflect your sophisticated theology.

I don’t think I’m being unreasonable when I ask you to clarify your position. If your version of god is just “being itself” or the wonders of nature, then why call that a “theology” and why pretend that it’s a sophisticated argument against atheism?

It is quite true that, so long as theism is thought of as assent to the truth of the proposition ‘there exists at least one supernatural being’, then many current theologians - and, honestly, a lot of classical theologians as well - are atheists. The problem here, though, is that some of us (well, at least one of us) don’t equate ‘supernatural being’ with ‘God’, nor do we equate the above proposition with ‘theism’, nor do we equate ‘exists’ with ‘is’. Nor, in fact, do we equate ‘rejects the supernatural’ with ‘atheist’. In short, if we who think that concepts like ‘natural’, ‘supernatural’, ‘existence’, and ‘being’ are more slippery than most people seem to think and therefore at least trouble these concepts if not reject them altogether are atheists, then we’re a radically different sort of atheist than the so-called New Atheists.

The distinguishing factor is that at least some of us (or, again, at least one of us) operated in a different conceptual world, where speaking of God apart from such concepts as ‘the supernatural’ or ‘Being’ makes sense, where the stories of wonders and miracles are not meaningless because they fail to comport to our understanding of the natural, where rejecting any substantive definition of God is not problematic (just as I can offer a substantive definition of ‘wife’ and yet can only describe my wife… if I tried to define her there would always be some excess, something left out of the definition). It is not, in short, that we don’t have faith in God - faith here having its historical meaning of ‘trust’ - it’s that we have a radically different understanding of what the word ‘God’ means.

Conclusion

I have no doubt that, should Larry Moran or PZ Meyers or any number of other people happen across this post, their reaction will be ‘I don’t get it’ or ‘well, if you don’t think that the supernatural exists then you’re an atheist’ or ‘this isn’t sophisticated, it’s meaningless’. I can only urge such people to understand that ‘sophisticated’ theology (though I’m not certain that the word ‘sophisticated’ is the right one) isn’t going to be gotten by reading a blog post. At least, it’s not going to be gotten via blog post any more than the intricacies of quantum mechanics are going to be. I might suggest that they look into some of the theorists who deal with concepts similar to those that many ‘sophisticated’ theologians use: Charles Taylor provides some good points on how we moved to a separation between the natural and supernatural in A Secular Age, for example, and familiarizing oneself with the ideas of Foucault, Derrida, Lacan, Saussure, Levi-Strauss, Buber, Levinas, Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard, etc. would be useful. Reading or re-reading some actual theologians would also be good: Augustine, Aquinas, Origen, Iranaeus, and so on for certain, as well as Luther, Calvin, Wesley, etc., and on to Barth, Tillich, Moltmann, Marion, McFague, and other more modern theorists. While your at it, read or re-read the Bible - slowly and carefully this time - and look at how the idea of God is actually deployed… observe worship in some religious community and observe how they deploy the concept… don’t just ask how it’s deployed (although do ask), but observe its deployment.

Perhaps that’s a bit much, so let me make this point simply: understanding religion is more than just comprehending the surface meaning of a few short sentences like ‘God exists’ or ‘Jesus loves me’, it requires observing and playing with some incredibly complex ideas in some incredibly complex relationships with one another and the wider world. Many religious people ‘get it’ intuitively, by living in communities where these ideas are regularly used. You don’t have to become part of that community, but getting what ‘sophisticated’ theology is, or comprehending what ‘sophisticated’ theologians think or believe, or understanding why ‘sophisticated’ theology isn’t the same as atheism is going to take some serious work, far more than a blog post or two or a dozen.

That’s why I suspect a lot of us think of the so-called New Atheists as unsophisticated: they don’t get close to that which they want to critique, but stand at a distance and complain that it’s too hard to see. Of course, I’m not asking anyone to believe, or anyone to convert. I’m just suggesting that understanding a phenomenon as complex and ancient as religion (or an idea as complex and ancient as ‘god’) might take some actual work.

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I’m neither a Muslim nor a woman, so I really can’t comment on the importance of hijab or, perhaps more importantly, khimar. What I can say is that the practice of wearing some form of modesty dress is important to many Muslim women, whether it’s in the form of a simple headscarf - as we often see in the West - or something more severe. Perhaps it’s odd in the West for us to think that some women might consider covering up certain parts of their body important… it’s easy for us to think of those who wear too much, or something unflattering, as inappropriately prudish. It is the case, however, that other cultures view clothing differently, and for at least some percentage of Muslim women, wearing a headscarf is seen both as a religious duty (something done to show devotion) and as an identity marker (something that signals their ‘Muslimness’ to the outside world).

What is incredibly difficult for me to understand is why some nations find it important to prevent women from wearing the clothes they want. The French, as we all should know, banned headscarves - and large crosses, yarmulkes, and presumably turbans and kufi as well - in schools in 2004. That, though, was about keeping religious symbols where the French think they belong: anywhere but in the public eye… not to mention a quasi-racist view that being a real French citizen means giving up anything - in public anyway - that might make you seem too different, or at least different in the wrong way. The banning of religious symbols in schools is being considered in Ireland as well. Hell, even in Turkey, a majority Muslim country, the idea of lifting the ban on headscarves is stirring debate… in this case the Constitutional Court rules that allowing women to wear an item of clothing in schools, in universities, and on other government property threatened the principle of secularism. Other countries and states, such as parts of Germany, are considering such bans. All of these seem to view the headscarf as at least something of a political symbol, rather than a strictly religious choice.

Never mind the subtle racism as work in this - even the ban in Turkey probably has something to do with keeping Kurdish turbans out of sight. Never mind that this has very little, if anything, to do with the health or safety of anyone. Never mind that there is no credible argument that wearing a symbol of religious adherence is a threat to secularism - even secularism in the style of continental Europe. Can someone - anyone - please explain to me why we would forbid people (in these cases mostly women) to wear an item of clothing that they consider necessary for showing modesty? Can someone - anyone - explain to me why we would forbid people to wear an item of clothing that identifies them as a member of a certain group (“No, I’m sorry, you must remove your shirt, it has the flag of your home country on it, instead of the proper flag”)?

Now, I know that Europe treats freedom of expression differently than we do in the United States, but can someone - anyone - explain how banning certain items of clothing, worn mostly by women, a.) isn’t sexist, b.) isn’t racist, and c.) doesn’t promote the segregation of a minority group and thus participate in their disenfranchisement?

Anyone?

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The Bobby Kennedy we remember today, was a human being, born November 20, 1925, the 7th child of Joe and Rose Kennedy. He was the third brother in line. Joe, Jr. died in World War II and John died of an assassin’s bullet himself. Bobby, of course, died from gun shot wounds inflicted by Sirhan B. Sirhan, in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, on June 6, 1968. He was 42. Had he lived, he would be 82 years old.

But Bobby Kennedy, like Martin Luther King Jr. and his own brother, died young – too young. As the song “Abraham, Martin, and John” put it: “Why must the good die young?” He wasn’t a perfect man, but he was willing to put his life on the line to change a nation. As we remember his life and his death, let his commit ourselves to his cause – that our world might be a better place for all.

As the song, Abraham Martin and John puts it:

Has anybody here seen my old friend Abraham?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
You know, I just looked around and he’s gone.

Anybody here seen my old friend John?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
I just looked around and he’s gone.

 Anybody here seen my old friend Martin?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
I just looked ’round and he’s gone.

Didn’t you love the things that they stood for?
Didn’t they try to find some good for you and me?
And we’ll be free
Some day soon, and it’s a-gonna be one day …

Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
I thought I saw him walkin’ up over the hill,
With Abraham, Martin and John.

 Lyrics – Dick Holler, 1968

Previously published at Ponderings on a Faith Journey

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After nearly seventeen posts on Dawkins’ The God Delusion over nearly five months covering several of the themes of Dawkins’ book, I think it’s time to wrap things up. Obviously, there’s a lot more that could be written about The God Delusion, and I will leave that to others. In particular, I’d recommend Mike Higton over at kai euthus, as he seems more willing to go through section by section and really dig into issues rather than skim over major themes, which is what I’ve been doing.

I’m not going to spend time here going over what I’ve already covered, but instead will sum up some of the major issues that I have with Dawkins’ book and give my final thoughts.

The Definition of ‘God’

Dawkins is working, as we all do when speaking about such things, with a particular concept of ‘god’. To state the potentially obvious, the word (or signifier) /god/ signifies a certain concept ‘god’. This is true regardless of whether a referent God exists. The word /god/, for Dawkins, signifies the concept “a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us” (p. 52). There are two broad problems with this definition, I think.

First, there are several things in this definition that are themselves somewhat in need in definition. Notably, superhuman, supernatural, intelligence, design, and create, all stand, I think, in need of some further definition. What does it mean to design or create? What is the difference between deliberate design and creation and non-deliberate design and creation? What does it mean for something to be intelligent? What so the terms superhuman and supernatural indicate (and here there is another problem, since the definition of these two terms that Dawkins gives on pp. 98-99 are mutually exclusive, involving two different provenances)? Why wouldn’t we expect flaws in designed things (p. 161)? What, exactly, designates something as a flaw?

It is rather as though Dawkins has taken what we sees as a common-sensical concept of ‘god’ and, without further examination, gone after it. Unfortunately, he ends up also giving the impression that he’s not entirely certain of what he means ‘god’, and thus what he is arguing against. This is one area in which learning a bit more about theology - and how what theologians and others make of terms like superhuman, supernatural, etc. - would have served him well.

Second, I’m not entirely confident that Dawkins’ creation-centric concept of ‘god’ actually capture what most people mean when they use the word /god/. Certainly, people sometimes speak of ‘god’ as a creator. However, many other images exist both in religious texts and theological statements (whether in worship, prayer, or other situations): father, mother, lover, friend, rock, breath, savior, redeemer, eternal, etc. are all available images in various traditions. Indeed, those few I listed are all accepted Biblical images. Dawkins’ definition is a narrow, creation-centric version - the kind likely to be employed by creationists when arguing against evolution - rather than a robust version reflective of the variety of ways in which believers deploy the word /god/.

Dawkins himself seems to recognize that his definition is inadequate, as he often adds other attributes to ‘god’ when they serve his argument. Thus, ‘god’ listens and responds to prayer (p. 184), is appropriate for us to worship (p. 33), continuously monitors and controls every particle in the universe (p. 178), and so on. Of course, these add-ons raise questions such as who claims ‘god’ monitors and controls every particle in the universe and what, precisely, that means, but they at least show that Dawkins is somewhat aware that his sort-of-official definition (for the purposes of The God Delusion) doesn’t quite to the job.

This is another area where Dawkins would have done well to consult theologians. Or, at least, to consult people who actually study religion and god-concepts (even if from a secular point of view). For Dawkins to create a concept of ‘god’ is fine, but if he wants to give a scathing critique of other people’s ideas of ‘god’, he would do well to investigate - perhaps even scientifically investigate - what other people actually mean when they use the word /god/.

’God’ as Scientific Hypothesis

Dawkins wants to treat ‘god’ as a hypothesis: “there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us”. In principle, this means that we should have a clear definition of ‘god’ (which, as I’ve stated, I’m not sure Dawkins has really provided), not unlike a scientific definition of a ‘proton’: ‘a subatomic particle with an electric charge of one positive fundamental unit (1.60217653(14)×10?19 C), a diameter of about 1.65×10?15 m, and a mass of 938.272309(28) MeV/c2 (1.6726×10?27 kg), 1.007276466(13) u’. See how nicely and neatly ‘proton’ is defined? Every term in the definition can also be neatly defined. This allows us to know precisely what entity we would be seeking where we trying to demonstrate the hypothesis: ‘there exists a subatomic particle…”. On even this basic requirement of a hypothesis, I’m not satisfied that Dawkins has succeeded.

But there is another requirement for a scientific hypothesis: there should be at least some hypothetical set of observations that would tend to confirm the truth of the hypothesis, as well as some hypothetical set of observations that would tend to disconfirm it. That any proposition, in order to be a hypothesis, must be falsifiable in principle is generally accepted, and is one of the charges most often brought against religious belief. Of course, this also means that the negation of that proposition must be falsifiable. That is, that there should be some evidence, in principle, that would tend to confirm the original hypothesis. In order to be scientific, in other words, there should be some conceivable observations that would tend to confirm the God Hypothesis and some that would tend to disconfirm it.

Dawkins, unsurprisingly, has no difficulty finding evidence against the God Hypothesis (e.g.: there are ‘flaws’ in the universe, p. 161). After reading The God Delusion twice, and rereading several portions many more times, I still have no idea at all what sort of observations might lend credibility to the God Hypothesis. This is especially clear when Dawkins approaches the ‘argument from personal experience’ (pp. 112-117), when he proposes what I call the ‘malfunctiong wetware’ argument for why religion persists (190-240, the whole of chapter 5), and when he at least comes close to claiming that everything can be understood naturalistically (“If there is something that appears to lie beyond the natural world as it is now imperfectly understood, we hope eventually to understand it and embrace it within the natural.” p. 35). In other words, everything can, in principle, be explained without reference to ‘god’, even if we cannot so explain it now. Moreover, anything that in principle cannot be explained naturalistically is simply a misinterpretation of what we observe, a hallucination, perhaps, or a mirage. Anything - any observation at all - that would tend to confirm the God Hypothesis is easily dismissed as a misunderstanding of the universe… or a software error of the brain.

Dawkins, in short, is not treating the so-called God Hypothesis as a scientific hypothesis at all. Rather, he seems to be setting up a naturalistic (and to him, I suspect, that is synonymous with ‘atheistic’) universe as an ideological construct. By this I mean that this ‘naturalistic universe’ - which to Dawkins seems to be obviously without God (as referent, even if the concept exists) - contains the entire horizon of thought. Anything that stands outside of this, anything that cannot be embraced within the ‘natural’, is summarily dismissed as nonsensical, irrational, unthinkable, etc. Any idea that denies that “there is only one kind of stuff in the universe and it is physical [and that] out of this stuff comes minds, beauty, emotions, moral values - in short the full gamut of phenomena that gives richness to human life” (p. 34) must be dismissed, not because it is bad thought on its face, but because it fails to fit in to this naturalistic ideology.

Dawkins’ Argument Against ‘God’

Dawkins spends a portion of The God Delusion setting up, first, a strawman definition/description of ‘god’ - one that I suspect he firmly believes most religious people would assent to, but that does not reflect the wide usages and meaning of the word /god/ as religious people in fact use it in real life. Second, he sets up, a bit under the table as it were, a naturalistic ideology that, being defined by Dawkins as supernatural, ‘god’ cannot possibly fit into. Unfortunately, Dawkins’ argument against ‘god’ can only be successful if one has already bought into his ideological field. Even then, though, it does not necessarily succeed.

The sum-up version of Dawkins’ argument against ‘god’ (remembering that this is nothing more that ‘god’ as ‘creator’), is found on pp. 188-189 and is more or less as follows:

• One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect, over the centuries, has been to explain how the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises.
• The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself.
• The temptation is a false one, because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer… We need a ‘crane’, not a ‘skyhook’, for only a crane can do the business of working up gradually and plausibly from simplicity to otherwise improbably complexity.
• The most ingenious and powerful crane so far discovered is Darwinian evolution by natural selection… We can now safely say that the illusion of design in living creatures is just that - an illusion.
• We don’t yet have an equivalent crane for physics. Some kind of multiverse could in principle do for physics the same explanatory work as Darwinism does for biology. This kind of explanation is superficially less satisfying that the biological version of Darwinism, because it makes heavier demands on luck. But the anthropic principle entitles us to postulate far more luck that our limited human intuition is comfortable with.
• [A better crane might arise in physics.] But even in the absence of a strongly satisfying crane… the relatively weak cranes we have at present are, when abetted by the anthropic principle, self-evidently better than the self-defeating skyhook hypothesis of an intelligent designer.

I’ve covered this at length already, and don’t wish to do so again here, if only for the sake of space. I will, therefore, simply give an outline of my issues with this argument, and let those who wish to see the longer critique follow the link.

First, I suspect that the problem of ‘who designed the designer’ only arises if we propose a designer who shares important affinities with the designed. If the natural world - and it is all of that world that is claimed to stand in some need of explanation - needs an explanation precisely because it is natural and natural things have causes/explanation, then any natural designer or creator that is proposed would also require the same sort of explanation. Since Dawkins has already defined ‘god’ as supernatural, however, I’m not sure just why ‘god’ would need a similar explanation. This is especially true given that Dawkins locates part of the definition of the supernatural in its provenance (p. 98-99). I think Dawkins’ definition of ‘god’ works against him here.

Second, and likewise, if we accept the idea that complex things (if, and it’s a big if, we stipulate that ‘god’ is complex) require explanations, we base that assumption on our observation of natural things. Again, Dawkins’ definition of ‘god’ as supernatural, works against him. What might be a skyhook among the natural, after all, might have a crane amongst the supernatural. We cannot presume that the logic of the natural will operate outside the natural. After all, if it did, what would be the difference between natural and supernatural?

Third, Dawkins’ alternative ‘explanation’ for the universe doesn’t really work. He seems to want to use the anthropic principle and a multiverse theory. The anthropic principle states, more or less, that ‘wherever an entity exists, the conditions necessary for the existence of that entity must also exist.’ In other words, it says that we shouldn’t be surprised that the conditions necessary for our existence do, in fact, exist, and that we shouldn’t be surprised to see them. However, this is neither a hypothesis (p. 165) or an answer (p. 172) for the question of why those conditions exist in the first place. The multiverse theory, rather than providing an answer to the question, simply moves the question up one level. It proposes that the reason the universe exists is that it was caused by some event in a multiverse (an environment that contains many universes). Of course, if ‘god’ requires an explanation, so does a multiverse. The argument that the multiverse is simple really doesn’t relieve it of the need for an explanation. After all, we are talking about an explanation for all of nature, even the simple bits. Proposing more nature does not serve any explanatory purpose.

Fourth, Dawkins proposes quite a bit of luck, making a crane for physics “superficially less satisfying” (p. 188) than the crane for biology (evolution by natural selection). Dawkins seems to propose luck not only for the origin of the universe (through the Logic of Really Big Numbers… I mean, the multiverse theory) and the origin of life (p. 168), but also the origin of the eukaryotic cell and consciousness (p. 168). I simply can’t see ‘luck’ as an explanation of anything at all, and it seems like the only reason that Dawkins can propose it as a “self-evidently better” ‘hypothesis’ than ‘god’ is because of a naturalistic ideology that rules out ‘god’ ab initio. Of course, the real fun is that, if we suppose that ‘god’ is incredibly unlikely, we can say ‘Oh well, there’s only one, perhaps it was luck!’

Fifth, and finally, I suspect that Dawkins is rapidly approaching a fallacy petitio principii. To assume that a naturalistic explanation based on the multiverse theory, the anthropic principle, and luck is self-evidently better than ‘god’ requires that we assume ‘god’ is less likely than some sort of ‘pure’ luck. In other words, we have to assume that ‘god’ is incredibly unlikely, that ‘god’ almost certainly does not exist, in order to accept the premise that luck is a better explanation. Of course, that ‘god’ almost certainly does not exist is precisely what Dawkins is attempting to show.

Morality

Morality is an area where Dawkins does rather better. Religious people can, obviously, be jerks and haters. Non-religious people can be noble and virtuous. Most people fall in the middle. Moreover, if ‘god’ were shown, absolutely, for certain, not to exist, I’ve no doubt that a lot of people would continue to live more or less along the same moral lines as they do now. Dawkins doesn’t seem to disagree with most modern moral standards, he just thinks that we don’t need ‘god’ to underpin them.

Now, I’m slightly unclear on what it would mean to Dawkins that ‘god’ is the source of morality. He does seem to view morality as a set of rules, more or less, and this is certainly not how I, when wearing my theologian (or, at least, theologue) hat, would describe ‘god’ as underpinning morality. That is, I don’t take the statement “‘God’ is the source of morality” to be the equivalent of “‘God’ provides a set of rules that we everyone has to follow in all times and at all places”. Indeed, I would contend that this latter statement is a comparatively recent development in the West, arising perhaps only in the last four hundred years. If that seems like a long time, just remember the entire span of human civilization (perhaps some 7000 years) or human culture (the origin of which is lost in the mists of time). I would, rather, say that ‘god’ being the source of morality means that, when we do good, we are somehow participating in - or at least standing in a closer relationship - with ‘god’.

Regardless, whatever Dawkins means by morality or ‘god’ being the source of morality, he clearly wants to make at least two points. First, there are better explanations for morality (such as natural selection, which provides, according to Dawkins, a broad moral consensus) and better ways of theorizing morality (such as utilitarianism). Second, that we are on a long and unmistakable, if somewhat sawtoothed, progressive trend in morality (p. 307). This idea, I think, relies somewhat on a transcendent idea of morality. That is, an idea of of morality that transcends current reality and draws us into the future. Many religious people, I suspect, would include this in a description of ‘god’. Dawkins, of course, does not have recourse to ‘god’, and must insist on another explanation… “biological science, especially evolution” which allows us to see our common humanity (p. 307).

Two quick problems here. First, if the theory of evolution shows us our common humanity and allows us to go on a moral upswing, then we should expect that upswing to begin only when enough people - especially the elite - have accepted evolution. In other words, since sometime in the 19th century (remembering that ‘evolution’ and ‘natural selection’ are historically separate). Of course, any historian can tell you that ideas of the moral Zeitgeist were changing well before the 19th century. Indeed, than moral standards have always been in flux, but perhaps they weren’t always improving. Moreover, awareness of common humanity was not non-existent before the theory of evolution was accepted, and historians can tell us that the content of the category ‘human’ has changed over time, both expanding and contracting.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, I could certainly use some explanation of how Dawkins knows we are on a moral upswing. There are those reactionaries who, of course, would argue that we are not, and I and Dawkins would both disagree with their assessments. However, the growing gap between the rich and poor, both within particular nations and globally, and the growing number of the poor, the destruction of the environment, more and more lethal methods of warfare, growing problems with hunger and disease, a lack of potable water in the third world, and so forth, might lead one to suggest that it isn’t so much that our morals have improved overall as it is that we’ve stopped doing some horrible things and started doing others (or, at least, have simply become more efficient at others).

In short, I would be very interested to hear what Dawkins means by ‘better’ when it comes to morality, and how he defends that definition.

Conclusion

The most interesting books, as far as I’m concerned (your mileage may vary), are those in which the author is wrestling with the same questions that she or he asks the reader to wrestle with. This is the joy of science, of course, and of much of philosophy and theology, and indeed all of the humanities and arts: the researcher doesn’t know what he or she will discover over the course of working on the question or problem. Dawkins, unfortunately, engages us in that most uninteresting sort of reading: he knows the answer, and is simply trying to find a way, any way, of getting to it. To do this, he engages in shallow research (and thus shallow argumentation) and what I think of as the shotgun approach to argument.

The shallowness of research is where I began this rather long trip into The God Delusion. Dawkins provides us with a rather creationist definition of ‘god’, without considering how religious people actually use that word and concept in real life. Moreover, going deeper into Dawkins’ own definition - which isn’t incredibly deep - I’m not confident that Dawkins knows what he means by the word. He certainly doesn’t bother to think about what is meant by such things as ‘creation’, ‘design’, ‘intelligence’, and so on, and his discussions of ‘superhuman’ and ‘supernatural’ are weak and yield mutually exclusive ideas. He hasn’t bothered to consider what religious people mean by morality, or how morality relates to ‘god’. He doesn’t seem to have given much thought to what he himself means by morality. He throws all of these terms around as though their meanings are obvious - commonsensical. The problem, as those who study such things can tell you, is that the meanings are not obvious, and that we use such terms in wildly different ways at different times and in different contexts. That Dawkins is aware of the thought of others is bad enough (and that he mis-states the ideas of others is worse), but his appearance of being so unreflective about his own thought makes this books smack of the kind of arguments I remember having at three in the morning, in the dorm, freshman year. This only carries over into his sense of history, sociology, philosophy, and other disciplines… he seems to simply believe that every statement he makes is correct, even as many of them show an utter ignorance.

His argument, as well, is unreflective. The notes in the margins of my copy of The God Delusion are a near continuous rant about oversimplification, shallowness, inconsistency, misrepresentation of others, lack of definition, failure to follow one’s arguments very far, and so forth. It all appears as though Dawkins was just throwing out ideas without any heed being given to the idea of a line of argument. This was even true after going back and rereading sections multiple times, fearing that I had missed some crucial point that would make it all make sense. It is as though Dawkins had no idea what he was arguing, but simply kept lobbing assertions without reflection, convinced that, if he tossed enough of them, something would deal a lethal blow to the idea of ‘god’.

This is what I mean by the shotgun approach to argument: First, simply tossing out assertions or short arguments in the hope that something will be a deadly blow to one’s opponents. Second, demanding that one’s opponents, when they say ‘You haven’t hurt us’, explain why each and every assertion and short argument, and every combination thereof fails to be that lethal shot. It becomes a constant refrain of “But what about…”, and no religious person is going to be able to answer all of those, if only for lack of time. Again, shades of freshman year.

In the end, I’m left with the impression that Dawkins and I are beginning with separate premises about the world, different intuitions of what the world is and how it operates. I’m also left with the impression that Dawkins isn’t aware that his premises, his intuition, aren’t accepted by everyone, that they, themselves, require reflection and defense. This marks a severe difference between Dawkins and, say, the philosopher Peter Singer. While I may agree with some aspects of Singer’s work and disagree with others, I sincerely doubt that Singer would assume that I should accept his arguments or else be branded as irrational, or worse, “immune to argument” (p. 28).

In his own field, Dawkins is brilliant, and very adept at rendering complex ideas for popular audiences - though after this book I am inclined to question is ability to do even that. It is difficult to find a phrase that would do to describe how utterly, utterly disappointed I am that such a great intellectual - a man who has been so exquisite in his own field - would write a book so devoid of research, argument, or reflection.

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Those who wished for a “MacArthurian Regency” in Baghdad that would reign for fifty years forgot one important historical fact: After World War II, General Douglas MacArthur did not even set foot on Japanese soil until the Emperor had officially announced Japan’s surrender. MacArthur then carefully preserved the structure of the Japanese system and governed through it. By contrast, the government of Iraq was decapitated without a government to replace it, and its main political party was eliminated. Our occupying troops in Japan immediately became the friends of the Japanese people. In Iraq they immediately became terrorist targets on a daily basis, the most visible symbols of an unfinished violence brought upon Iraq from the outside. From the first months after our invasion, insurgents from a variety of ethnic groups, all of which resented an American occupation, worked hard to kill them. . . . Iraq is smack-dab in the middle of an overwhelmingly volatile region. (p. 161).

As we listen to John McCain talk about “success” in Iraq, much of it is fanciful. At the same time that he touts the successes of Iraq he wags a finger at Iran and promises harsh sanctions. Webb notes in the book that for some time Iran and China have had a strong relationship, which suggests that even as we try to put the screws on Iraq’s meddlesome neighbor, they are looking for help to China, which is eager to buy its oil to fuel it’s every growing economy.

As Webb points out, and as I found in my own online searches, the idea of a Neo-Con MacArthur like regency, assumes at minimum the long term presence of US bases in Iraq (as we now have in South Korea and Germany). But, is that wise? Does this suggest any understanding of Islam? Although it has been severed, McCain’s connection with Rod Parsley suggests that the GOP candidate doesn’t understand very well the realities of Islam or of the Middle East. If nothing else, Iraq is the Arab/Islamic heartland. Next to Mecca and Medina, few cities are as important to Muslim heritage as Baghdad, the site of an ancient caliphate. With that in mind, does it really make sense to put US armed forces in Iraq for a long term?

The path that John McCain is setting out for America is a dangerous one. If he wins in November it’s quite possible that the costly war we’re fighting will only escalate. Remember that the Vietnam War spread beyond its borders to Cambodia and Laos, before it came to an inglorious end.

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However, I did say that I would not travel there now due to tensions with the Kurds and Iraq. My co-worker disagreed and said she would travel there now anyway. She also mentioned that her and mom had a great time on a trip to the Middle East last summer.

These comments reminded me of an article I read by a BBC news writer who wrote about how great it was to travel in Pakistan…this past January. This was almost right after Bhutto was killed; tension and violence in the country during this time were at a high! Yet, this travel writer wrote about how if you stayed in the country or the mountains you wouldn’t be near any of the violence and actually how you won’t “notice” it at all.

To be honest I found this quite appalling! In my mind, to be so ignorant of world affairs so you can have a relaxing vacation is completely selfish and ethnocentric! However, from the comments of my co-worker, not everyone feels this way.

So, what do you think of traveling in conflicted areas? Do you think we (as U.S. citizens or permanent residents) have the “right” to go wherever we want whenever we want?

Please feel free to share comments so we can have an open discussion here!

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The theme of morality is one where Dawkins makes some good points. Unfortunately, I think that he ends up rather farther from his goal that he would like.

First, I rather suspect that the sort of universal moral absolutism to which Dawkins objects is not as ancient a phenomenon as he would like to believe, nor is it necessarily tied to religion - at least insofar as religion involves some connection to the transcendent or sacred. If we accept the sacred, as I argued earlier, we always have the possibility of needing to violate whatever moral absolutes we conceive of in order to satisfy the demands of transcendent justice. Sacred times, places, and acts operate under different rules than the everyday, and at times may result in a radical transformation of the everyday. In short, the sort of universal moral absolutism that Dawkins despises is more a result of a kind of secularization - a kind of flattening of the moral world so that all times, places, and acts are governed by the same rules - than of a sense of the sacred.

Second, Dawkins treatment of the Bible is just pathetic. I won’t rehash it here, but it just is. Regardless, even if Dawkins had managed to show that the Bible is not a place where people get their sense of morality from, he would not have shown that no scripture is - or could be - such a place. Of course, many religious people would argue, and I might be one of them, that while the Bible is a possible source of moral guidance, it is not the only one. After all, there is recognition in the Bible itself that different people can be moral, even those who do not have a formal connection to the Jewish God (Romans 2:12-16). There is, as it were, a natural moral law that many people follow, Of course, there is also the argument that all this usually amounts to is our not actively seeking to do evil, rather than humans generally seeking to do good.

Third, and most importantly I think, this is an area where Dawkins’ definition of ‘god’ begins to show some real problems. As far as Dawkins defines ‘god’, ‘god’ is of course unnecessary in order to be, more or less, good (or, at least, not actively evil). Just as the gentiles in Romans 2 do not need a specific concept of ‘god’ in order to be good (or not evil), neither does anyone else. However, to say that there need be no ‘god’ confuses the matter. Certainly, there need be no personal “superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us” (p. 52) in order for us to be good. I want to suggest, however, that this definition of ‘god’ is not the totality of that which is normally deployed by theists - though it is the one normally deployed by deists. ‘God’ in the theistic understanding, I suggest, is also the end towards which we move, the good towards which we are headed, whether through gradual moral development (as Dawkins would have it) or through somewhat chaotic inbreakings of the sacred into the world (as I would tend to have it). ‘God’, in this sense, also serves as that goodness which we occasionally encounter in the normal course of events - not simply in the sense of the non-evil, but in the sense of positive good - and there are major theologians who would agree with me. My point here is simply that the concept of ‘god’ and the concept of ‘good’ are, in some sense, related, and Dawkins fails to see why (some) theists argue that God is necessary for goodness (even if the concept is not) because he fails to appreciate this relationship.

That Dawkins believes, or seems to believe, that we are inexorably progressing towards greater and greater morality suggests that, at least in some sense, he also believes in something like ‘god’ in terms of a transcendent (perhaps even sacred) call towards the good… the sort of ‘god’ discussed by many theologians. Not a ‘god’ who can be said to be a person, a thing, an entity, etc… perhaps not a ‘god’ who can be said to ‘exist’ in the common sense of the word. Rather a ‘god’ that is the material and final cause of our capacity for goodness, and, indeed, the goodness that we experience itself and in which we participate, that is justice and righteousness beyond human understanding, that is the inspiration of goodness and beauty. Of course, he would probably say that we’re all saying it wrong.

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MYSPACE TO SACRED SPACE: God for a New Generation. By Christian Piatt and Amy Piatt. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2007. 167 pp.

Young adults, that group of Americans under the age of forty, have become an increasingly difficult target for churches to reach. The cultural, social, and generational differences of this cohort are striking when compared with the cohorts that have come before them. Christian and Amy Piatt write from within this generational matrix about issues of faith and culture, offering words of warning and of hope.

Christian is a writer and consultant, while his wife, Amy, is founding pastor of a Disciples of Christ congregation in Pueblo, Colorado. They bring to this book years of working with youth and young adults, and their own experiences inhabiting this generation. They make use of statistics and stories to bring to life the spiritual realities of those adults under forty. Unlike the book, UnChristian, Christian and Amy are sympathetic to the life choices and concerns of this generation. They’re realistic but not judgmental – indeed, even as the authors of UnChristian recognize, this generation is turned off by judgmental and hypocritical religion. They also affirm the spiritual quest of a generation that is truly “spiritual but not religious.”

The book’s title is key to the book’s message. Social networking sites, like MySpace and Facebook, are front and center in the life stories of this generation. This is a digital world, even virtual world. Communication is instantaneous, and yet community is often difficult to create. This is a generation that is reachable, but it’s unlikely to come to the church – to reach them the church must go looking for them. But, in inviting them into the community, older generations must understand that the physical plant, rituals and history are of less importance. Sacred space can be created wherever this generation gathers. All of this makes communication between generations difficult. The authors write:

Today’s twenty-year old generally has less in common with someone twice his or her age than ever before. Further, people resist traditional definitions and labels, creating a fuzzier notion of what exactly we’re talking about with regard to young adults (p. 5).

In spite of these differences and difficulties, it’s possible to reach out to those aged 18-40. But, to do so requires listening before talking.

In a series of chapters, the Piatts take us into the lives and needs of this cohort. They help us understand their longings and concerns. As other studies have told us, this is a group that eschews absolutes and is comfortable with differences. For mainline churches to reach them, space must be made for diversity. Churches that put less focus on creeds – churches such as the Disciples – will benefit, as will churches that allow them to tell their stories. As for God, Young Adults often see a disconnect between their view of God and Christianity as a whole. They believe in God, but not in the church and its definitions. Utilizing the Baylor University matrix of God -types, they suggest that the most likely views of God in this generation are either the Authoritarian God or the Distant God, but they’re interested in connecting relationally with God – they’re just not sure how this can happen, and they don’t think the church can help them.

In seeking to reach them, we must be aware that prepackaged ideas don’t often work. And just because they like Starbucks doesn’t mean they’ll come to Christian coffeehouses. To connect churches must provide community, support, welcome, and an encouragement of the imagination. Ironically, while traditional church might not connect well, ritual has its place – but only if it allows for the release of the imagination. More than anything, there is a seeming need for connection with the generations that came before. In many ways this is a generation that has not developed strong personal habits –especially in regard to sexuality and money — and they long for mentors who will help them wrestle with important issues in their lives. Indeed, churches that will address such issues with openness and grace can find important entrees into their lives.

In a chapter on addiction, the Piatts point out the real problems that young adults are having with addiction – whether it is issues of drugs, alcohol, gambling, and eating disorders. They ask the important question: Where is the church? That is, why isn’t the church taking proactive steps to reach out to and support those facing addiction.

Why must we wait for the judicial system to say that these young people need help? Do they have to be arrested in order to receive treatment? Is this the message we send? In a haplessly reactive culure, the church must be a proactive source of hope and healing for these young people, empowering them with the tools they require for self-care before they face these high-risk factors. We must also be there for their families, both before and after a crisis is recognized. We should be on the front lines, helping teachers, parents, and other caretakers collectively identify risky and self-destructive behavior before it eve becomes an issue relegated to the court system (p. 105-106).

Here is a way of connecting, but only if it’s authentic care.

Of course in a book speaking to connecting with young adults, it’s appropriate to talk about music. Music is and always will be a primary expression of spiritual energy and ideals. That churches have been fighting for years over what is appropriate is almost a truism. We recognize it to be true, but find it difficult to have a conversation. In addressing this issue, Christian Piatt writes as one who is a musician and who has spent time working in the music business. He has a strong sense of the role music plays in our lives, and reminds us that much of what passes as Christian music is deficient in quality and content. The issue addressed here is an important one, because the church faces the question of the degree to which music must be distinctly sacred in order for it to be appropriate for church. He suggests four different views, ranging from purist to separatist, while he finds himself somewhere in the middle, in positions he refers to as spiritual reflective and incidentalist.

There is a chapter that wrestles with the question of who is called to serve. Not only is there a looming crisis in ministry – an aging clergy isn’t being replaced by younger clergy – but the definition of who might serve is changing. That is, the ordination of both women and gays is in play, and for the most part the views of young adults are open and expansive. Finally, in a chapter entitled “Church of the Prodigal Child,” the Piatts discuss their research methodology, tell some stories of young adults who are open to the church, but who also tend to be disassfected. In essence they return to the premise that this is a generation that is more spiritual than it is religious. It is a generation open to alternative spiritualities, but also wants to pray, study, engage in community and social justice. Looking at American history, they discern five themes that define America’s religious instincts, instincts that are very present in this generation: 1) “Personal autonomy”; 2) “Sensibility over creeds”; 3) “Impatience with organized religion”; 4) “Present applicability”; 5) “Fascination with the metaphysical” (p. 156).

We often talk about young adults as the church of the future, but in reality they are the church of the present. If the church doesn’t engage them – which involves listening with respect – there won’t be a church in the future. The Piatts offer us an excellent primer on the faith and desires of this broadly defined cohort. They write with energy and commitment. This is a book full of compassion and grace. They call a spade a spade, but do so without judgmentalism. Anyone wanting to connect with younger adults will want to read this excellent book. That the Piatts are Disciples, like me, only makes it better!

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Go Ellen!!

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John McCain’s attempts to connect with a religious group he once called them agents of religious intolerance, but in 2008 he has sought to rebuild the bridges he once seemed to burn. Besides courting Jerry Falwell, he went after other right wing voices including Rod Parsley and John Hagee. Hagee’s embrace has become a liability of late, first as word of his anti-Catholic tirades became known. Now excerpts of sermons suggesting that God used Hitler and the Holocaust to push Jews to Palestine — so that the foundations of the second coming of Christ could be put in place — have become public. Today word comes that not only has McCain broken with Hagee, but Hagee has withdrawn his endorsement. McCain suggests that his relationship with Hagee is different from that of Barack Obama with Jeremiah Wright. This is true, Hagee wasn’t McCain’s pastor, but McCain did seek his support, probably because of Hagee’s Christian Zionism made him seem like a supporter of Israel. What McCain seems not to have understood is that Christian Zionism doesn’t support Israel out of a love of Judaism, but because a restored Israel is needed to start Armaggedon.

More problematic for McCain is the support he has sought from Rod Parsley, a rabidly anti-Muslim megachurch pastor from Ohio. Hagee is caught up in his end times scenarios, while Parsley echoes medieval calls for an anti-Muslim crusade. If John McCain wants to ever bring troops home from Iraq, choosing support from Parsley makes that infinitely more difficult. McCain’s camp has said that they didn’t properly vet Hagee, obviously they’ve not properly vetted Parsley either.

One thing to point out regarding Obama, Obama never sought his pastor’s political endorsement. Indeed, he’s made it clear that he didn’t seek his pastor’s poltical advice, though Wright’s commitment to social justice does influence his own commitment to social justice. Politically, however, they have taken different routes to accomplish this task.

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Dawkins would like us to believe that there is some general ethical consensus that most people today hold, and that changes over time:

How, then, do we decide what is right and what is wrong? No matter how we answer that question, there is a consensus about what we do as a matter of fact consider right and wrong: a consensus that prevails surprisingly widely. The consensus has no obvious connection with religion. It extends, however, to most religious people, whether or not they think their morals come from scripture. With notable exceptions such as the Afghan Taliban and the American Christian equivalent, most people pay lip service to the same broad liberal consensus of ethical principles. (p. 298)

This may, broadly, be true, within any given society. I am fully prepared to believe that most North Americans live by generally the same moral principles, and that there in turn are mostly shared with most Europeans. I would, however, argue that the practice of such moral principles - that is, how such moral principles are applied to specific situations - varies quite a bit. Let’s take a simple example, Dawkins provides a somewhat random list of ten ‘new’ commandments from an atheist website. I say random because Dawkins simply selected the first set that came up after typing “New Ten Commandments” into a search engine. According to him, it’s the “sort of list that any ordinary, decent person today would come up with.” (p. 299)

Ignore, for a moment, the words ‘ordinary’ and ‘decent’, except to note that we’re not given any metrics for these (What does it mean to be ordinary? What does it mean to be decent?). Most of the commandments appear fairly banal… exactly the sort of thing that we would expect someone to come up with. The first one, for example, is “Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you.” (p. 298). This is, of course, the famous ethic of reciprocity, found in religions and philosophies from around the world. This version is fairly close to that proposed by the Jewish sage Hillel.

Objections to this ethic, however, abound, having been proposed by Popper, Kent, Nietzsche, and Russell, among others. The objections come in a few different flavors: it doesn’t go far enough (should I do to others as they wish to have done to them rather than as I do/don’t want to have done to me?), or that it doesn’t take circumstances into account (should we not punish criminals because we would not want to be punished?), for example. I want to look at this, though, in terms of application: Dawkins, no doubt, would rather not have a 400+ page book written assailing and mocking his most deeply held beliefs, and yet he writes one doing just that to the beliefs of others. On the other hand, he might want to be corrected by reasonable argument, which is what he sees himself as doing. Which of these desires of his own should take precedence? When we ourselves are conflicted about what we ourselves would want in a particular situation, how do we make the call?

Perhaps needless to say, reducing our moral and ethical principles to top ten lists might not be a particularly productive project. Moreover, it’s somewhat difficult to demonstrate - perhaps maddeningly so - to determine a broad, cross-cultural moral Zeitgeist based on a few abstract principles (though I hasten to point out that the Biblical ten commandments, which are merely a part of a much larger legal system, are not broad principles, but rather specific laws, which are further defined in the rest of the Law).

It is not enough, though, for Dawkins to propose that there is a broad moral consensus, which is an idea that could be held in some doubt as it is. Rather, he proposes that it is also advancing… that is, that they are becoming better: “The shift [in the moral Zeitgeist] is in a recognizably consistent direction, which most of us would judge as improvement.” (p. 304). This shift is on a bit of a sawtooth, perhaps, not a smooth incline, but an incline nonetheless (p. 307).

This is, of course, not true if one does not consider the same acts or principles ‘moral’ or ‘ethical’, and we know that there are those who would argue that or moral culture is on a decline… perhaps, however, these people are neither decent nor ordinary. However, even if we accept the same things as moral or ethical (and I suspect that Dawkins and I share a great deal in common in our ethical principles), is there really a reason to suspect that we are on an overarching incline? Certainly overt racism has waned over the years, and yet it is still a reality in most of America and Europe (tell me that the Dutch partij voor de vrijheid, or Italy’s lega nord aren’t racist, or that European and American attitudes towards immigration aren’t fueled by racism). Moreover, one could point out that most of the ‘first world’ or ‘developed’ word is white, while most of the ‘third world’ is not, and that white people control most of the global political and economic power. Overt racism may be on the way out, but the lived experience of racism is still very real and to some degree supported (though never as racist) by much of the (white) industrialized world.

It’s also true that we no longer have legal slavery in the West, though we do probably benefit from the fact that 1 in 250 people around the world are in slavery, and that many, many more live in economic conditions that probably make the slave/non-slave distinction meaningless. We may shrink in horror at the civilian casualties that come out of Iraq, but surprisingly few people are working on the lack of food and potable water for the poorest of the poor, which results in far more deaths (it’s also worth pointing out, of course, that only in modern times has it become a goal of weaponry to cause agonizing death, rather than quick). Conservation of the environment may have become an accepted value (as it should be), but concrete changes are slow in coming. We champion sexual freedom in the West and yet do surprisingly little about HIV in sub-Saharan Africa (10% of the population, 60% of worldwide cases of HIV). The short version of this is that, despite more progressive moral attitudes in the West, one could make a case - I think a fairly compelling one - that the moral/ethical situation has probably not improved as much as it has simply changed, one sin exchanged with another. Perhaps, though, I’m overly pessimistic about humanity’s ability to overcome our propensity to screw one another over.

Grand Narratives

What I suspect Dawkins is attempting here is the construction of a grand narrative - some story that manages to give a framework to the human experience, (almost) always stating that we are inexorably moving ‘upward’ towards liberation or salvation or some other utopian fantasy. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Dawkins is laying the groundwork for such a narrative… he does not, after all, claim to know why we are on this journey towards greater and greater moral attitudes. He simply knows that it does not so move because of religion. I suspect that, if Dawkins were to propose a grand narrative, it would have something to do with the decline of religion and the rise and morality (given the contents of chapter 9).

Unfortunately, grand narratives are notoriously fragile. An easy example is the narrative provided by nineteenth century liberal theology, which held that European civilization was moving closer and closer, through its own power, to God’s eschatological promise. The destruction caused to Europe by World War I resulted in serious challenges to this view, though it still holds on in some segments of society. If European civilization was constantly improving, becoming better and better, indeed more and more moral/ethical, how could it do so much damage to itself? How could the most moral civilization in history commit such atrocities?

Communism supplies another such narrative, which collapsed as the people revolted against the party that was supposed to be representing and supporting their interests precisely because it was not resulting in the glories that Communism promised. Laissez-Faire Capitalism was called into serious question by the stock-market crashes of the late 1920’s. So-called free-market capitalism/free-trade may be meeting its resistance as national markets collapse under its weight. The list could go one, but all of these failures share one thing in common: the world was clearly not on a path to more and more human flourishing.

Of course, that we are on a path towards a more moral world is dubious at best, but that would require considerably more study, not to mention an agreement on precisely what moral framework we are using and against which we measuring moral progress. Dawkins, unfortunately, does not provide us with such a framework.

Are Religion or God Necessary for Morality?

Any framework that proposes that humanity will reach a moral/ethical apex as a result of a gradual moral/ethical evolution, as Dawkins seems to be suggesting (we are, after all, on a “progressive trend [that] is unmistakable and… will continue” (p. 307)) requires some idea of, at least, a hypothetical moral ultimate - how else would we measure how much better we are getting (there are shades here of the argument from degree by Aquinas that Dawkins dismissed on p. 102), or that we are ‘improving’ at all? Note that I am not suggesting that some ultimate good must actually exist, only that we must have some concept of ‘better’ and ‘worse’ in order to claim that we are getting better.

Do we need religion in order to have such a concept of ‘good’? Well… that depends on how one defines ‘religion’. Since Dawkins doesn’t seem to define ‘religion’ anywhere, I’ll simply say this: if one conceives of ‘religion’ as ‘belief in the supernatural’ (which I suspect Dawkins would), then no. If one conceives of ‘religion’ as a connection to the transcendent or (possibly) the sacred, then I would say yes. Of course, this latter form of ‘religion’ is much, much broader than what Dawkins would probably accept.

Is ‘god’ necessary to have such a concept of ‘good’? No. At least, not insofar as we accept Dawkins’ definition of ‘god’ as a “superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us” (p. 52). If, however, we accept ‘god’ as that transcendent or (possibly) sacred to which we (might) be connected - and this is the description that I suspect is actually deployed by most people - then yes. After all, how could we begin to transcend the morality that we have (and move towards the ‘better’) without some transcendent towards which we are moving? Even if we are not moving forward due to a conscious movement - that is, even if we are doing so because of some non-conscious natural propensity - there must be something towards which we are moving that transcends the current moral reality.

The difficulty here is that, in a sense, Dawkins is correct that religion and ‘god’ have nothing to do with morality: certainly we do not need either in order to live by whatever the current moral Zeitgeist is, and we don’t need them as Dawkins defines (or, in the case of religion, as I suspect he would define) them in order to improve morally. This is, perhaps, especially true if we consider that upward movement to be something that we do not consciously control: if the upward movement, as it were, is preprogrammed (by whatever means), the creator is not needed in order for it to continue on its path. By the terms in which ‘god’ has been defined by Dawkins, ‘god’ is not necessary for morality or for moral evolution.

The theme of morality is one where I think Dawkins gets it at least partially right: we do not need some concept of ‘god’ in order to be, more or less, good. I should be clear, however, that I rather strongly suspect that ‘good’ for most people is a sort of banal goodness. That is, it isn’t so much that most people are positively good as much as we don’t generally try to be evil. Certainly, most of us in the West benefit immensely from global systems that are not good, and may, indeed, qualify as evil. But, overall, most of us operate passively in these systems.

My issue here is that this idea, that we are, at least, non-actively-evil without a concept of ‘god’ applies to the definition of ‘god’ that Dawkins gives: a “superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us” (p. 52). This is where Dawkins fails to recognize, I strongly suspect, the description of ‘god’ that most people deploy most of the time. While it is useful to define ‘god’ purely in terms of creation in order to refute creationists, it doesn’t begin to capture the entire sense of the term. ‘God’ also denotes an end to the world - and to humanity. This not in the sense of a cataclysmic destruction, but in terms of an overarching goal towards which we move.

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Literally: calming, reconciling, acquiring peace by way of concessions or gifts (the verb ‘to pay’ also goes back to the Latin ‘pax’ = peace). Most commonly, appeasement is used for the policy of accepting the imposed conditions of an aggressor in lieu of armed resistance, usually at the sacrifice of principles.

I think that’s a pretty good definition. President Bush used a most unlikely pulpit to suggest that certain parties in America – Barack Obama and the Democrats – were akin to Neville Chamberlain and other “appeasers” of Hitler. How is it, that they have become appeasers, well, they’re willing to talk with enemies. Talking doesn’t mean giving in. Talking means having a conversation that might lead to the outcome desired. Appeasement usually happens when one gives in to the stronger foe. Excuse me, but since when did either Syria or Iran come to be on the same level militarily or economically as the US – or even of Israel?

The debate that the Bush diatribe launched has been taken up by the two presumptive candidates for the presidency (as I write this Barack Obama is nearing but has not clinched the nomination). The conversation has become increasingly heated, with Barack Obama saying that under certain circumstances, with the proper preparation, he would be willing to talk to leaders of nations with which we’re not on friendly terms. John McCain, taking up the Bush mantle, calls this naïve and akin to appeasement. My question is, if talking is naïve, what is the alternative? We’ve had an embargo in place surrounding Cuba for five decades, but has it made much of a difference? Last I looked, the Castros were still in power.

As a Christian who seeks peace, but who’s also a realist (I think that Niebuhr needs to be listened to as well as Hauerwas and others), I believe we need to engage those who have opposed us. Some of those “foes,” including Syria could be brought around. I doubt that Syria is committed to its relationship with Iran, it’s just being realistic. Syria and Iran are two very different countries, with different ideologies. Syria is a secular government – dictatorial yes but still secular. Iran is a democracy that is controlled by the religious leaders. Its president is a saber rattler, but has problems at home. Our problem is that after 7 years of Bush leadership we no longer have influence in that region.

So, once again: Is talking appeasement? The answer is – in my mind – no! What we need to do is start talking, and do it quickly – while we can still talk from a position of strength.

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This one seems even far more extreme than Pastor John Hagee. Once again Senator McCain courted Pastor Rod Parsley’s endorsement and seeks a political alliance with him. With words like this coming out of his mouth I am not entirely sure why. One of Andrew Sullivan’s readers wrote in regarding McCain’s pastor problems compared to Senator Obama’s relationship with Rev. Wright.

Senator Obama had a pastoral relationship with Jeremiah Wright; Senator McCain has a political relationship with Rod Parsley –the only thing bringing them together is a shared political agenda. That, I think, should make Rod Parsley’s odious political rantings far more relevant to the presidential campaign than those of Jeremiah Wright.

In my mind this is spot on especially when one looks just a little bit further and sees that Parsley’s view that America was founded in some way to destroy Islam is the furtherest thing from the truth. Where in our history do we declare war on Islam expect in the minds of these right right pastors that McCain is seeking endorsements from?

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The Webb-Hagel “Post-9/11 Veterans’ Educational Assistance Act” (S.22 in the Senate, H.R.2702 in the House) embodies the comprehensive “21st Century” benefits called for in the veterans’ independent budget. Under the bill, service members returning from Iraq or Afghanistan could earn up to 36 months of benefits, equivalent to four academic years, which would include payment of tuition, books and fees, as well as a $1,000 a month living stipend for those veterans whose military service qualifies them for the program.

Now that is a bill that is updated to better reflect the current cost of living for so many veterans. So why is it that Bush is threatening to veto it and that Senator John McCain doesn’t want to support and neither does Senator John Cornyn who is in a tough challenge against veteran Rick Noriega.

Vote Vets is asking just that with two similar commercials but equally affective in calling out these two Senators who don’t want to give our veterans update and much needed benefits after their honorable service.

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It’s to carry on a legacy of a man who put everything he had into his community. Pat campaigned on behalf of good quality candidates and he wouldn’t take on the people who he didn’t believe in himself. He was a man of integrity, honor, patriotism and was selfless in teaching other’s how to do the same. Let’s finish the end of the week strong and put us over the top.

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I make this statement because I’m troubled by an effort by the politically and religiously conservative advocacy group – the Alliance Defense Fund – a group founded by such luminaries as James Dobson, Bill Bright, James Kennedy and others. The group has launched an initiative to encourage clergy to defy IRS rules and discuss from the pulpit political candidates and their positions. They are saying that this initiative is to encourage preachers to exercise their “First Amendment Rights” of free speech.

In a statement from the ADF website we can read:

“Pastors have a right to speak about biblical values from the pulpit without fear of punishment. No one should be able to use the government to intimidate pastors into giving up their constitutional rights,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Erik Stanley. “The government can’t demand that a church give up its right to tax-exempt status simply because the pastor exercises his First Amendment rights in the pulpit. Groups like Americans United intentionally trigger IRS investigations that will silence churches through fear, intimidation, and disinformation.”

The new initiative will equip, protect, and defend pastors who wish to exercise their First Amendment right to openly discuss the positions of political candidates and other moral and social issues from the pulpit. Participating pastors across the country will deliver a sermon along these lines in their own churches Sept. 28.

This is clearly an attempt to push the boundaries. While the lines are crossed regularly – from left to right – this is clearly an attempt to establish precedent. Indeed, its almost a declaration of war. While I believe clergy need to have the freedom to speak to the issues they believe are important – whether it be abortion or poverty or any other issue – using the pulpit to endorse candidates or try to handle their positions in the pulpit can easily lead to manipulation. It’s not good for the nation and its certainly not good for the church.

I may write regularly about my favorite candidate on my blog, but I make very clear that I speak for myself and no one else. Yes, it might be a fine line, but it’s a line that needs to be drawn.

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The joyous things in this world come in many forms, and a joy that we all celebrated this past weekend was mother’s day.  The mothers of the world make it a good place.  There is the old saying that you can’t go home again, and I know my mom wouldn’t let me go home again if I tried - but where ever my mother is I know there will be a piece of home there.  Think at this moment, what are the things your mom does that makes your life better?  Hopefully the list is long…

But, there are those whose mothers have passed on, or who for one reason or another have never known their birth mother.  This is increasingly the case since so many of our families are touched by breast cancer and other diseases.  Also, there are fractured relationships that occur.  But even in the absence of a biological mother or in the midst of strained relationships, what constitutes a “mom” can come in different forms.  Maybe it is a mentor, or a friend, or a grand-mother or aunt, or maybe it is a teacher.  I have one mother, but I have many moms.

While you’re thinking about it, get on the phone and ring whoever it is you call mom and let her know that she is appreciated and loved!

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That’s why I am thoroughly impressed with the new campaign initiative from Tom Perriello’s bid for Congress. They just launched a 10% tithe of volunteer hours to go back towards the community and service projects around the district (Devilstower beat me to it). The campaign kick started the idea with 42 volunteer hours over the past weekend by constructing a house for Habitat for Humanity in Charlottesville, participated in a food drive and serving food to the hungry at a church.

In the interview that I had with Tom a few weeks back I was struck by this:

Q: How has your faith tradition helped shaped your political and social views?

A: I grew up in a church that preached the social justice message of the Gospels and called me to the teaching of Mathew 25. Sunday was a time that we heard about poverty, torture, and war and our moral obligation to care for and love our neighbor. My political views and my efforts to live a life of service were shaped by the prophetic call in Micah to serve the least among us and to “do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” As a Catholic, I know I will always fall short of this aspiration, but it remains my guiding light.

With this new initiative it seems that Tom and his campaign are further practicing what they preach. They are actually taking time away from campaigning to help out in the community. Granted the community service is good publicity for the campaign and is in a way campaigning the overall effects are moving towards the common good in Virginia’s fifth district. I think it’s a testament to the kind of representative that he would be in D.C.

Now take a look at Tom on location of building a house for Habitat for Humanity.

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Even with two incomes in a household we are saving nearly nothing and spending more than we did just a generation ago. Mortgages, health care, a second car, child care and taxes are costing the middle class more than they did 30 years ago. Bush’s tax cuts certainly have not help the middle class, only hurt it further as the richest one percent have just gotten richer. Its kinda crazy stuff.

Warren delves further into it as we see that today’s household of two income earners with two children that are lucky enough to not face life’s uncertainties still have 75% of their income going towards their mortgage, health care, and day care. 30 years ago it was 50% with one income earner. Then throw in that you now must earn a college education with its own skyrocketing costs to the mix and the middle class is even further burdened.

She worries that the middle class is going to disappear and her metaphors do not bode well for us.

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If you don’t take my word. Go read Rob’s posts and then donate your five dollars!

Fundraiser: Keep your friendly neighborhood Dems up & running

Wheeling Dems donor drive - 50 state strategy in action

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