The Divine Universe

This odd idea was in an article against religion by an atheist who asserted that belief in God is like believing there is a teapot orbiting Pluto. I suppose it was his image of the god he doesn’t believe in. I am religious, but I would certainly agree with him. I don’t believe in his god either. But he is wrong if he thinks that a teapot orbiting Pluto, or any other object floating around in outer space, is the Christian object of faith.

Debating belief in God has to begin with trying to describe what you mean by the word. When I hear about the gods that atheists don’t believe in I have always so far found myself entirely in agreement. Most of them are unmistakably objects in outer space. Even if we skip the old man sitting on a throne, surrounded by androgynous young people with trumpets and harps, we usually end up with an object in the sky. I don’t believe that God is that.

When abstract concepts are involved, metaphors, myth and parable are necessary. This is true of science as well as religion. The best scientists have fertile imaginations but they don’t like us to refer to myth or parable. In the 19th century, science and “enlightened greed” drove the industrial revolution and capitalist commercial enterprise, bringing significant benefits to the middle and upper classes, and seeming to offer, potentially, a better life for everyone. In the process however, it generated a materialistic mindset that robbed people of their appreciation of myth and mystery. Scientists appeared to believe that the images and descriptions of the atomic and subatomic world were pictures of the real thing and, later, that the language of big bang theory was simple historical narrative. The distinction between the world of myth and imagination and the world of sense became blurred. It didn’t matter too much in science, perhaps, but the God of European Christianity was degraded to a kind of cosmic watchmaker, with his fingers poised to twiddle with the mechanism if it went wrong.

For more than five hundred years there has been conflict between science and religion. Copernicus’ theory that the earth went round the sun was thought to contradict Holy Scripture. The Church authorities felt threatened. Then, in the 19th century, geologists discovered that the earth was more than a few thousand years old and had taken more than six days to form. This provoked an uproar of indignant protest from churchmen and, adding fuel to the fire, Charles Darwin proposed his theory of the process of biological evolution. The embers of this explosion are still being fanned by the wealthy, American based Creation Science organisation.

By the beginning of the present century dark clouds of disillusionment were gathering. Industrialisation, economic rationalism and consumerism had failed to deliver the promised Utopia. World poverty and crime were escalating; globally, health was deteriorating and the average world life expectancy shrinking. Natural resources were being rapaciously destroyed. Science seemed to be getting hijacked by the agents of death and destruction. Social morale was sinking in the rising waters of selfish individualism.

Even so, in 2000 most people still claimed some kind of belief in God, however vague and smudgy. It seemed that people were dissatisfied with a radically materialistic philosophy of life and sought for a deeper meaning of existence than objects floating about in space. People seemed to feel the need for some kind of spiritual basis for living, perhaps even more than they did when churchgoing was the conventional norm.

A religious supermarket emerged in response to popular demand. Sitting on the shelves are offerings from everyone from violent fanatics and hard-line extremists, cranks and weirdos to learned theologians and philosophers. Some ancient occult traditions have been revived and some novel movements have appeared. And not all of these even focus on a god. The diversity is enormous.

Bizarre religious movements and paranoid cover-up theories about UFOs have a greater public appeal than serious theology and science. Biblical literalists lobby government at the highest level. Some politicians do not know the difference between real and bogus science, and a number of them are biblical fundamentalists themselves. Genuine science is under threat from the right-wing religious lobby, and this has given renewed energy to the old conflict between religion and science, and promoted atheism among all educated people, not only scientists.

Of all aspects of culture, it is in religion that we find the greatest resistance to novelty or change. This may indicate the importance of religion in the human mind while, at the same time, it increases the risk of it becoming irrelevant. In religious circles there is always a painful tension between progressive and conservative thinkers. Dogma is easier to handle than debate, and this gives conservatives an advantage in terms of popular appeal. It means that, while a few intellectuals have moved a long way theologically, the bulk of religious people have changed their notions of God very little in the last five hundred years.

There is now a general recognition that science is different from what it was a hundred years ago, but only a small minority of the public realise just how far reaching, philosophically and theologically, the implications of relativity and quantum theory are. This is hardly recognised by scientists themselves, few of whom have the time or inclination to study philosophy, metaphysics or theology. Also, most philosophers and theologians and most scientific theorists live in academic enclaves and communicate little with each other or the outside world.

Just as most mainstream clergy have caught up with 19th century modernism, scientists and philosophers are moving into a still indistinct post-modern era. The religious response to this has been either to fiercely defend past tradition or to launch into ‘new age’ spiritual movements.

A few adventurous theologians, philosophers and scientists do share ideas creatively, however, but conservative religionists cry “apostasy!” and atheists cry “foul!” Atheists’ favourite target continues to be the god images of medieval or modernist religion and they feel betrayed by theologians who threaten to dismantle those targets. They cannot get a bead on post-modern images of God. Where is the kindly old dad in the clouds or the ferocious old tyrant on his seat of judgement? However, a teapot orbiting Pluto is one of the sillier images of God I have encountered. Surely atheists can do better than that.