Thu 5 Nov 2009
In my last post, I presented 10 responses to the question: “God: Who Needs Him (or Her)?”, which my pal Garry Dobbins and I recently debated at Stevens. One of my responses was this: “Childhood cancer. Tsunamis. Earthquakes. If God is all-powerful and loves us, why do bad things happen to totally innocent people? This is the problem of evil. No theology has ever answered this question adequately. The philosopher of religion Huston Smith calls the problem of evil ‘the shoal on which all theologies founder.’”
I also said that I’m an agnostic. When asked if God exists, the agnostic answers: I don’t know. Believers and atheists often criticize agnostics as too lazy or apathetic to decide one way or the other. My friend Harold Dorn, who teaches history of science here at Stevens and is an atheist and proud of it, thinks my agnosticism stems from my sentimental attachment to Catholicism, the religion of my childhood.
Actually, I have two good reasons for being an agnostic rather than an atheist. One is what I call the problem of fun, which is the flip side of the problem of evil. Life isn’t always painful and unfair. Sometimes it’s, well, fun. Joyful, beautiful, wonderful, exciting, cool–pick your adjective. Just as believers in a good God should be haunted by the problem of evil, so atheists should be haunted by the problem of fun, as well as friendship, love, truth, humor—all the things that make life worth living.
Life is also so dramatic, with such an astonishing story line—from the Big Bang through dinosaurs and Neanderthals right up to life as we find it here in 2009—that I have a hard time accepting that it’s just an accident. Although nobody has come up with a theology that makes any sense to me, I can’t be absolutely sure that there isn’t some plan and hence planner behind this whole crazy show. By the way, the British biologist and religion-basher Richard Dawkins, who’s often called an atheist, once told me that he’s actually an agnostic, for this same can’t-be-absolutely-sure reason.
My other reason for rejecting atheism is that atheists can be just as dogmatic and unyielding as many religious believers are, and I reject this sort of ideological self-righteousness, no matter what the ideology. After all, rejection of religion and adherence to a supposedly scientific worldview aren’t sure-fire ways to achieve salvation. We should never forget that the two most vicious regimes in history, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Stalin, were inspired by the pseudo-scientific ideologies eugenics and Marxism. Secular faith can be just as deadly as the religious variety.
Opposing self-righteousness is easier said than done. How do you denounce dogmatism in others without succumbing to it yourself? One philosopher who tumbled into this pitfall was Karl Popper, who railed against certainty in science, philosophy, religion, and politics and yet was notoriously dogmatic. I once asked Popper, who called his stance critical rationalism, about charges that he would not brook criticism of his ideas in his classroom. He replied indignantly that he welcomed students’ criticism; only if they persisted in arguing with him would he banish them from the classroom.
Of course we feel validated when others see the world as we do. But when it comes to the really Big Questions—Does God exist? What’s the purpose of life? What’s the best way for us to live together?–we should resist the compulsion to insist that we have The Answer. Especially since the best answer to these Big Questions is: I don’t know.
