The Divine Universe

The publication by leading biologist, Richard Dawkins, of new book vilifying religion and belief in God in a rather ignorant and arrogant way prompts me to depart from my usual theme about heaven.

From his previous writings I cannot doubt Dawkins’ intelligence and wit, but he could make a more useful contribution to the study of religion if he approached the subject scientifically rather than ideologically. Instead of engaging in polemic against the evils of what one might call ‘religion abuse’ he might ask the basic scientific question made famous by Professor Julius Sumner Miller: “Why is it so?”

Religion is one of the seminal elements in human cultural development. Its origins go back seemingly almost to the beginning of what we think of as the distinctive feature of human consciousness – the awareness of self in relation to other persons and powers. Why is it so? Why is there religion?

You don’t have to be religious in any formal sense to address this question. Non-religious psychologists, anthropologists as well as religious ones who study human nature have offered valuable observations and insights that are of value to any open minded person interested in what some call the Big Questions. But Dawkins’ treatment of religion is equivalent to the creationist’s treatment of evolution – deliberate selection of data in pursuit of a foregone conclusion. Anything less scientific than his recent diatribe against religion, THE GOD DELUSION, would be hard to imagine. His knowledge of religion is patchy, to say the least, and his ignorance of theology appears to be encyclopaedic.

Religion per se is neither good nor bad. Like evolution, it is an undeniable phenomenon and a fact of life. As with evolution, theories about it are still developing. Religion has itself evolved over, possibly, hundreds of thousands of years, depending on how you define it, so theories about religion and theories about evolution are related. Religion has sometimes been creative, enlightening and ennobling, and sometimes destructive and brutalising, darkening the mind and corrupting intention. It can enrich and empower people or it can impoverish and enslave them.

Sense of the sacred and the religions arising from it are together one of the mysteries of human life, like love or the appreciation of beauty. But instead of asking bold questions and searching, by intuition, experiment and reason, for a deeper understanding, like a proper scientist, Dawkins selects his data in a very biased and unprofessional way and arrives prematurely at a flawed conclusion.

I share his natural horror at the grotesque abuses and inane silliness of some religion, but Dawkins convinces himself that that is all religion is: an abuse and debasement of human nature. For him all religious people are murderous fanatics, predatory exploiters, deluded fools or victims of fraud.

Religion begins with awareness and naming of mysterious powers within nature and ends up in the search for ultimate reality. It moves on to deism and theism when the Ultimate is personified and often anthropomorphised. Religion offers a relationship with a personal Divinity, transcendent to and, in the major traditions of both East and West, also immanent in all things.

Closely associated with religion, but often in conflict with it, are seers, prophets and mystics. Not all mystics have a specific religion and quite a number today are scientists. The numinous experience of being one with everything is not confined to those seeking a personified god. And scientists are good at intuitively sensing a relationship, a unity between things hitherto thought to be quite separate. The mystical experience of union with everything is not outside the scientific realm. The search for words or symbols to describe ultimate reality is as much the work of scientists as it is of theologians, though the language is different. Layer by layer they probe more and more deeply into the fundamental nature of matter, energy, space and time, towards the goal of a unified understanding of everything – a “grand unified theory”. Science and theology overlap. The late Stephen J Gould, a much more open-minded atheist than Dawkins, referred to it as “interdigitation”.

Scientists also create images, though not personal ones. The image of Rutherford’s atom and the DNA molecule are familiar to everyone; high school students create computer images of black holes. Science, like religion, seeks to give expression to the inexpressible; it seeks, through visual art, to give mysteries visible forms. Where an object emits light or measurable radiation, it can be observed, but such visibility fades as one goes more deeply into matter or out into space-time. Science needs myths and images. The Big Bang story is one of the richest legends of our day.

Some theologians are not content to study particular theories about God. Like theoretical physicists, they seek a unified understanding of reality. They are unsatisfied with the ancient dualism of God/creation. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity, with its recognition of the incarnation or embodiment of God in the cosmic Christ, the sum total of all things, is a powerful tool in the search for a unified theory of Total Reality. God is seen but only through divine embodiment or ‘incarnation’ in material objects and the forces of physical nature.

Religion has inspired a tremendous wealth of painting, sculpture, architecture, music, poetry, dance, drama and every form of art. In fact it is probably true to say that the majority of art is connected with religion and mystical experience. Science has also inspired works of art, both in the laboratory and beyond, but not on the same scale. It is impossible to respond emotionally to aesthetic beauty without recognising that there is more to existence than solids, liquids and gases. We cannot do without the word spirit, however unsure we may be of its meaning; and God is one logical conclusion of whatever that meaning is. In fact we cannot even use the word inspired without hinting at a so far unidentified field of energy or source of knowledge. The recognition that spirit and matter are part of one total reality leads logically (though not imperatively) to religion of one kind or another. It is also leading many scientists to set their sights beyond the artificial walls that conventionally surround their own field of study.

But not Dawkins. Sadly, Dawkins remains imprisoned by nineteenth century materialism – what Paul Davies calls “nothing butism”. He obviously has quite a passionate interest in religion and theories about God, but he settles for an ideology every bit as blinkered and irrational as the creationist who stubbornly refuses to recognise the fact of evolution or respect the validity and nobility of real science.