I usually speak to you about issues in personal and spiritual growth. But you all keep handing me books. Lately they’ve been books by atheists. Popular atheists, in fact. A trinity of these books are riding high just now. THE END OF FAITH, by Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins’ THE GOD DELUSION, and if that’s not enough, GOD IS NOT GREAT: HOW RELIGION POISONS EVERYTHING, By Christopher Hitchen. Sheesh. It’s time for me to weigh in a little, so here goes. There is much to hate and also much to like from these guys. See if you don’t agree.

In the Nov. 13, 2006 issue of NEWSWEEK, Sam Harris wrote the following,

Despite a full century of scientific insights attesting to the antiquity of life and the greater antiquity of the Earth, more than half the American population believes that the entire cosmos was created 6,000 years ago. This is, incidentally, about a thousand years after the Sumerians invented glue. Those with the power to elect presidents and congressmen—and many who themselves get elected—believe that dinosaurs lived two by two upon Noah's Ark, that light from distant galaxies was created en route to the Earth and that the first members of our species were fashioned out of dirt and divine breath, in a garden with a talking snake, by the hand of an invisible God.

This is embarrassing. But add to this comedy of false certainties the fact that 44 percent of Americans are confident that Jesus will return to Earth sometime in the next 50 years, and you will glimpse the terrible liability of this sort of thinking. Given the most common interpretation of Biblical prophecy, it is not an exaggeration to say that nearly half the American population is eagerly anticipating the end of the world. It should be clear that this faith-based nihilism provides its adherents with absolutely no incentive to build a sustainable civilization economically, environmentally or geopolitically. Some of these people are lunatics, of course, but they are not the lunatic fringe. We are talking about the explicit views of Christian ministers who have congregations numbering in the tens of thousands. These are some of the most influential, politically connected and well-funded people in our society.

It is, of course, taboo to criticize a person's religious beliefs. The problem, however, is that much of what people believe in the name of religion is intrinsically divisive, unreasonable and incompatible with genuine morality. . . .

A case in point: embryonic-stem-cell research is one of the most promising developments in the last century of medicine. It could offer therapeutic breakthroughs for every human ailment (for the simple reason that stem cells can become any tissue in the human body), including diabetes, Parkinson's disease, severe burns, etc.

[Wrong-headed theology leading to wrong-headed public policy] is prolonging the scarcely endurable misery of tens of millions of human beings.

Harris makes some important points here. I like what he says, but I don’t like that he lumps all Christians together and ignores Christians, like many of us here, who read the Bible critically (see our own Paul Sohl’s book, RESURRECTING EVE) and who have no trouble at all with stem cell research.

When it comes to religion Harris and the other high profile atheists are throwing the baby out with the bath water. The best person out there making this point for us is professor Stanley Fish –

In the last month Stanley Fish has written 3 columns for the New York Times about these books.

The last of his columns asks the question -- Is Religion Man-Made?

His answer: “Sure it is. Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens think that this fact about religion is enough to invalidate its claims.”

“[R]eligion and the churches,” declares Hitchens “are manufactured, and this salient fact is too obvious to ignore.” . . . Harris finds a historical origin for religion and religious traditions, and it is not flattering: “The Bible, it seems certain, was the work of sand-strewn men and women who thought the earth was flat and for whom a wheelbarrow would have been a breathtaking example of emerging technology” . . .

Hitchens adds that “the sciences of textual criticism, archaeology, physics, and molecular biology have shown religious myths to be false and man-made.” And yet, wonders Harris, “nearly 230 million Americans believe that a book showing neither unity of style nor internal consistency was authored by an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent deity.”

So there’s the triple-pronged case. Religions are humanly constructed traditions and at their center are corrupted texts that were cobbled together by provincial, ignorant men who knew less about the world than any high-school teenager alive today. Sounds devastating, but when you get right down to it, all it amounts to is the assertion that God didn’t write the books or establish the terms of worship, men did, and that the results are (to put it charitably) less than perfect.

But that is exactly what you would expect. It is God (if there is one) who is perfect and infinite; men are finite and confined within historical perspectives. And any effort to apprehend him – including the efforts of the compilers of the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Koran – will necessarily fall short of a transparency that will be achieved . . . only at a future moment of beatific vision. Now – any now, whether it be 2007 or 6,000 years ago – we see through a glass darkly (1 Corinthians, 13:12); one day, it is hoped, we shall see face to face.

In short, it is the unfathomable and unbridgeable distance between deity and creature that assures the failure of the creature to comprehend or prove . . the deity.

Does the claim that religion is man made debunk God?

“No,” says Fish, “it undermines the divinity of man, which is, after all, the entire point of religion: man is not divine, but mortal (capable of death), and he is dependent upon a creator who by definition cannot be contained within human categories of perception and description.

“How unsearchable are his Judgments and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counselor” (Romans, 11:33-34). It is no wonder, then, that the attempts to contain him – in scriptures, in ceremonies, in prayer – are flawed, incomplete and forever inadequate. . .

If divinity, by definition, exceeds human measure, the demand that the existence of God be proven makes no sense because the machinery of proof, whatever it was, could not extend itself far enough to apprehend him.

Proving the existence of God would be possible only if God were an item in his own field; that is, if he were the kind of object that could be brought into view by a very large telescope or an incredibly powerful microscope. God, however – again if there is a God – is not in the world; the world is in him; and therefore there is no perspective, however technologically sophisticated, from which he could be spied.

The criticism made by atheists that the existence of God cannot be demonstrated is no criticism at all; for a God whose existence could be demonstrated wouldn’t be a God; he would just be another object in the field of human vision. . . .

At various points Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens all testify to their admiration for Shakespeare, who, they seem to think, is more godly than God. They would do well to remember one of the bard’s most famous lines, uttered by Hamlet: “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Touchee. Over and over the Bible makes the point that God’s ways are unsearchable. This, in fact, under-girds the integrity of the Bible. So does a story like the one from today’s reading about Elijah.

Elijah was depressed when he heard there was a price on his head. He went into a cave to hide. And God left him in there a while to catch his breath. You’d think winning the contest against the foreign prophets would bolster him, but such things never mean that much in the long run. They don’t move the heart.
So God set out to touch Elijah and an angel called the prophet out the edge of his cave for a true demonstration of who God was.

Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after . the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.

The best arguments about God are always negative. They tell who God isn’t.

And the last word was no word or act at all. It was simply silence. Sheer utter, resonant silence. Majestic silence; a silence that breathes power and a holy terror

God is more inconspicuously present here than anywhere else in the Bible.

Elijah learns in his bones who is really worthy of fear, and it's not Queen Jezebel.

“Stop,” the spirit of the text says. “Be still and know that I am God.”

The great 11th century theologian, Thomas Aquinas, toward the end of his life, quit writing. He had written a multivolume SUMMA THEOLOGICA. Summing up everything one could no about God, or so he thought, at first. He even quit talking. Like Elijah, he had seen. I had thought he kept that famous silence of his for only a couple of months, but it went on for years. He realized he had made a fool of himself, trying to contain God in books, and he said so explicitly.

It's like the old story of the green mango. If you had never tasted a green mango and you ask me, "What does it taste like?" I'd say to you, "Sour," but in giving you a word, I've put you off the track. Right?

Most people aren't very wise when it comes to God; they seize upon the words of scripture and they get it all wrong.

"Sour," I say, and you ask, "Sour like vinegar, sour like a lemon?" No, not sour like a lemon, but sour like a mango.

"But I never tasted one," you say. Too bad! But you go ahead and write a doctoral thesis on it. You wouldn't have if you had tasted it. And the day you finally taste a green mango, you say, "Gawd, I made a fool of myself. I shouldn't have written that thesis." That's exactly what Thomas Aquinas did.

Thomas Aquinas realized that his many words about God were more an expression of his doubt than of his faith.

In his famous commentary on Boethius' De Sancta Trinitate Aquinas says there are three ways of knowing God: (1) in the creation, (2) in God's actions through history, and (3) in the highest form of the knowledge of God -- to know God tamquam ignotum (to know God as the unknown). The highest form of talking about the Trinity is to know that one does not know. Now, this is not an Oriental Zen master speaking. This is a canonized saint of the Roman Catholic Church, the prince of theologians for centuries. To know God as unknown. That would set at rest so many questions people have because we're always living under the illusion that we know. We don't. We cannot know.

What is scripture, then? It's a hint, a clue, not a description. And wind and fire and earthquakes. They’re just natural phenomena.

This is important because the fanaticism of one sincere believer who thinks he knows can cause more evil than the united efforts of a hundred thousand atheists. It's terrifying to see what sincere believers will do with airplanes and skyscrapers because they think they know.

In Athens, a city that adored philosophy, the Christian genius, Paul, was being goaded by skeptic to say too much about God and make a fool of himself. Instead of falling for their trap he cunningly quoted one of their own when he said, “In God we live and move and have our being.”

What could be better than that? When it comes to God, human beings are like fish swimming in the ocean. God is so much a part of our lives we can’t even sense God.

Well, Christianity says that some of the simpler people of the first century sensed God in a certain Palestinian peasant. Something about his eyes, the sound of his voice, his wisdom. He was like none they’d ever known.

Ironically, the religious people, the people who believed they “knew” what God was really like, felt threatened by him and got rid of him as fast as they could.

Religion, at its best, is about us being honest about our lack of awareness, but also being honest about our hunches. It’s about waking up. Look what we've degenerated into. Jews and Palestinians at war. Shiites killing Sunnis. On and on.

"The one who knows, does not say; the one who says, does not know."

All revelations, however divine, are never any more than a finger pointing to the moon. As they say in the East, "When the sage points to the moon, all the idiot sees is the finger."

Jean Guiton, a very pious and orthodox French writer, adds a terrifying comment: "Humans often use that finger to gouge eyes out." How appalling.

But, that said, we don’t ever need to apologize to anyone for our faith. For the sneaking feeling that this world is not just some random collection of molecules.
The burden of proof about God’s non-existence is on the backs of the atheists, not the believers.

In God we do live and move and have our being. Hamlet was right, there is so much more to this world than will ever be summed up in anyone’s philosophy.