More on the Future of Theology

Faith and science are two approaches to understanding how the world works and our place in it. Religion starts from the premise that this information is essentially unknowable (so we have to be told). Science springs from the notion that we can figure it out. It turns out that faith has not done such a good job of explaining how the world works, and science is able to explain the “how,” but is so far silent on the “why” and “so what.”

It is easy to think that religion is the search for meaning, for transcendence – but I think that removes it from the original context of profound ignorance of the way that the natural world worked. I wonder if religion was much more like science to folks who struggled to survive though millennia when the natural world was an impenetrable veil. Religion filled in the “how” questions with spiritual beings, accounts of struggles between rival forces, and natural events synched to how well we obeyed the dictates of the gods. And yes, sometimes transcendence – the notion that there has to be something more than this brief life.

Nowadays, the transcendence part is what is left to religion – though billions still think that their lives are shaped by spiritual forces, and that many (most?) of the events of their lives are somehow influenced by how closely they adhere to the tenants of their faith.

This is in sharp contradistinction to modern science, which paints a picture of natural forces that so far leave no room for manipulation by God or gods. History and sociology answer for the rise and fall of peoples, nations and communities. Psychology, economics, family dynamics and heredity account for personality, and double-blind scientific trials look in vain for a demonstration of the power of prayer – or for that mater, any “spiritual” power.

And yet it is remarkable that we are here – apparently alone at the bottom of a gravity well in what is essentially an empty universe. We find ourselves bound to a spec of dirt, surrounded by light-years of space, inimical to life. We find ourselves the only self-aware beings in this universe. Who are we, that we should end up here, alone and without really understanding how we got here or where we are going?

And we treat each other so poorly – we commit genocide, engage in religious and civil wars, enslave each other, bully and exploit each other, we even find it hard to treat our friends and family with respect and honor for any length of time.

Science seems to suggest that this is what we should expect, given our history. Science seems to suggest that we probably are not alone, but we may be beyond reach of any other life (and so functionally alone). Science seems to suggest that if there is a God or gods, He or She makes no measurable impact in the natural world.

Still, billions of people do think that there is a transcendent part of us. Some part that endures past this life, some part that is tarnished or enhanced by how we live here – and so there is a reason to live up to a set of standards, even if it has little or no payback in this life. We find the idea that some part of us endures worth struggling for, and we find that a faith community keeps us pointed in the right direction.

Religion is in a time of transformation never before experienced. There have been clashes of religion, and conversions from one faith to another – but now we face a time when the very voice of faith is being questioned. Religion used to explain how the natural world functioned – but no longer. Religion used to explain how communities and people should interact – but its authority in this area has been severely eroded – we now feel it important to modify what religion teaches in light of what we have come to know about how people are made.

For example, just 500 years ago in Europe, the Bible would have been seen as the authoritative source for cosmology, geology, the origin of plants and animals, history, ethnography, sociology, psychology; predictive of future history, and descriptive of the future of the earth, nations and your and my soul. Now, at best, it speaks of personal morality (greatly circumscribed by advances in our understanding of biology, sociology and psychology) and a future that has been recast from concrete description of an imminent fate to figurative language largely suggestive of possible outcomes.

So religion is left to speak to us about immaterial things, future things, states only dimly grasped, and then only in imagination. Our exposure to other sects, faiths, cultures, histories have made it difficult to imagine that only we have truth – and on top of this we find we have no objective way to choose between your view of truth and my view of truth.

All the same, religion seems to be alive and well. We treat texts as rich sources of advise on how to live, how to treat one another, and how to shape our mind and character. Religion forms the basis for bedrock identities, and for identifying communities, compatible world-views and political and social agenda. Far more people consider themselves religious that not, and far more people think God exists that think He or She does not.

Is this just a brief flourish of growth before some massive die-back, or does it reflect that a faith position is worked into the human psyche at such a deep level that it will survive the transition from arbiter-of-all-truth to suggester-of-a-life-beyond-our-grasp?

I think faith will survive, because faith is recognition of an ultimate meaning. Most of us seek to understand patterns – it is one of the ways we deal with complexity and the rush of input. We sort, we categorize, retain the significant, dismiss the unimportant. For many of us, faith is what emerges when we sort the “big-picture” category. We experience connection, causality between our actions and how life goes for us, mysterious connections and synchronicities with other people and events that convince us that there is in fact a pattern just beyond our grasp. Often, we find a religion that articulates that pattern in a way that makes sense to us, and we take it on as our own grid by which we orient ourselves to our life, our times and eternity. When that happens, we become a person of faith - something I don't think will stop happening any time soon.