Stanley Fish, from his perch on the New York Times editorial page, has a new column today on the topic of religion. I'm usually pretty skeptical of Fish's approach, particularly given his dismissal of the public role of religion in a liberal society. (Of course, I, unsurprisingly, think that religion both can and must play an important role in liberal society.)
Today, however, Fish draws our attention to two recent books, one on God and the Problem of Evil, and one by a famed atheist who has come to believe in the existence of God:
Bart D. Ehrman is a professor of religious studies and his book is titled “God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question – Why We Suffer.” A graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, Ehrman trained to be a scholar of New Testament Studies and a minister. Born-again as a teenager, devoted to the scriptures (he memorized entire books of the New Testament), strenuously devout, he nevertheless lost his faith because, he reports, “I could no longer reconcile the claims of faith with the fact of life . . . I came to the point where I simply could not believe that there is a good and kindly disposed Ruler who is in charge.” “The problem of suffering,” he recalls, “became for me the problem of faith.”
This is, as far as I'm concerned, the crucial question with regard to the possibility of religious faith. Influenced as I am by the theology of Jürgen Moltmann, I differ from Ehrman in terms of what I see as the solution to this "problem of faith," but I recognize it as a problem nonetheless.
I'm frequently amused when Christopher Hitchens, among others of the neo-atheist crowd, discuss the problem of evil as though it has never occurred to anybody before, or as though the paradoxes inherent in it as a problem have not been contemplated even by faithful Christians, who were able to remain faithful despite their recognition of the problem. In his recent debate with Alasdair McGrath, Hitchens virtually quotes Dostoevsky, without ever acknowledging that Dostoevsky posed the problem from a stance of belief, not unbelief.
Nevertheless, I'm sympathetic with Ehrman's position, and I tend to agree with Moltmann that his brand of "protest atheism" the really the only respectable reason for being an atheist. (Hitchens, on the other hand, of course, isn't so much interested in the problem of God and evil, but of religion and evil, and on that basis his position is far less compelling to me.) I'll be interested in reading Ehrman's book (particularly as a fellow PTS grad!), but I'm still very much anamored of Moltmann's position, that it is our freedom and God's solidarity with us in the midst of suffering that are the most important elements in understanding how religion can be justified in the face of evil.
The second book mentioned by Fish is Antony Flew's new book, "There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind." Flew, of course, has been recognized for years as one of the leading atheist thinkers in the English speaking world. It would actually be quite interesting to me to see a debate between Flew and someone like Dawkins or Hitchens, given their inveterate opposition to all things religious, and Flew's move on the issue.
When I first heard of Flew's "conversion" (which I put in quotes, because as he has made clear, and Fish reiterates, his belief in God was an intellectual, rather than a religious transformation, based on the arguments), I was actually a bit disappointed, because it seemed to be based on some fairly vulgar interpretations of the "Intelligent Design" argument. But as Fish presents it, it seems to be a far more sophisticated argument, which looks a lot more like the kinds of arguments that my old Princeton professor Diogenes Allen (isn't that a great name!) used to make. As Fish writes:
What exactly did he discover? That by interrogating atheism with the same rigor he had directed at theism, he could begin to shake the foundations of that dogmatism. He poses to his former fellow atheists the following question: “What would have to occur or have occurred to constitute for you a reason to at least consider the existence of a superior Mind.” He knows that a cornerstone of the atheist creed is an argument that he himself made many times – the sufficiency of the materialist natural world as an explanation of how things work. “I pointed out,” he recalls, that “even the most complex entities in the universe – human beings – are the products of unconscious physical and mechanical forces.”
But it is precisely the word “unconscious” that, in the end, sends Flew in another direction. How, he asks, do merely physical and mechanical forces – forces without mind, without consciousness – give rise to the world of purposes, thoughts and moral projects? “How can a universe of mindless matter produce beings with intrinsic ends [and] self-replication capabilities?” In short (this is the title of a chapter), “How Did Life Go Live?”
Flew does not deny the explanatory power of materialist thought when the question is how are we to understand the physical causes of this or that event or effect. He’s is just contending that what is explained by materialist thought – the intricate workings of nature – itself demands an explanation, and materialist thought cannot supply it. Scientists, he says, “are dealing with the interaction of chemicals, whereas our questions have to do with how something can be intrinsically purpose-driven and how matter can be managed by symbol processing?” These queries, Flew insists, exist on entirely different levels and the knowledge gained from the first can not be used to illuminate the second.
<snip>
The usual origin-of-life theories, Flew observes, are caught in an infinite regress that can only be stopped by an arbitrary statement of the kind he himself used to make: “ . . . our knowledge of the universe must stop with the big bang, which is to be seen as the ultimate fact.” Or, “The laws of physics are ‘lawless laws’ that arise from the void – end of discussion.” He is now persuaded that such pronouncements beg the crucial question – why is there something rather than nothing? – a question to which he replies with the very proposition he argued against for most of his life: “The only satisfactory explanation for the origin of such ‘end-directed, self-replicating’ life as we see on earth is an infinitely intelligent Mind.”
I think this is a completely intelligible argument for the existence of God. But, it should be noted, that even the most intelligible arguments will not lead most people from unbelief to belief. Rather, the most carefully crafted and strongly presented arguments can do is open one up to the possibility that one does not in fact have an adequate explanation for everything in the universe, and so perhaps religion has a valid perspective on the world. I can't for the life of me imagine that Christopher Hitchens would find Flew's new perspective convincing (particularly given the low level of sophistication in his own arguments), but if Flew's case succeeds in fending off the case against God, it at least leaves belief as an intellectually respectable option.
In the end, I think that Fish gets it right about the contribution of these two books:
Perhaps an individual reader of either will have his or her mind changed, but their chief value is that together they testify to the continuing vitality and significance of their shared subject. Both are serious inquiries into matters that have been discussed and debated by sincere and learned persons for many centuries. The project is an old one, but these authors pursue it with an energy and goodwill that invite further conversation with sympathetic and unsympathetic readers alike.
In short, these books neither trivialize their subject nor demonize those who have a different view of it, which is more than can be said for the efforts of those fashionable atheist writers whose major form of argument would seem to be ridicule.
And to that I can only add a hearty "Amen!"
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