We Need to Believe

I heard an interesting quote today: "Fear is a poor counselor."

Many folks, perhaps reacting to fear (crime, the economy, terrorism), perhaps lacking a decent education, perhaps mislead by their religious leaders (many of them know better, but fear to speak out, while others buy the creationist lies) believe that a return to a traditional faith is the only hope for a moral society, and that any enemy of religion must be their enemy as well.

Science, especially in its articulation of evolution, confronts us with a much different cosmology than the spirit-driven mystery that is the world of faith. For those who hold a religious worldview, faith's bona fides are all about us - tornadoes are retribution, an earthquake is punishment, spring rain a numinous act of blessing - aimed directly at me and my community. Parking spaces are held open, synchonicities abound, everything happens for a reason.

Science has cracked open that perspective, and lays bare a series of natural processes. No storehouses of snow, no god striding the dome of heaven, hurling thunderbolts at the wicked. That the earth is simply following a process, is indifferent to us, has no conscious awareness of us, no message for us, no lesson to teach us - is not something people want to accept or bear.

People believe creationism because it is a lie they want to be true- and they'd rather accept that lie than face the implications of the universe we actually live in. They find the lie of creationism actually fits their experience of life better than the truth of evolution.

Given that science (which was embraced because folks understood it to offer a secular version of the Prosperity Gospel) has failed to offer a coherent narrative and ethic to replace religion, why should we be surprised that folks go back to faith? After all, we are literally evolved to embrace a supernatural view of the world, and if science steadfastly refuses to offer anything to believe in, then people will have to find their own beliefs (for we will believe). For some, this is traditional religion, but for others it is new age mysticism, UFO-ology, resurgent nationalism, paganism - something, anything, rather than nothing.

So I think that science does need to articulate a coherent story, and put it into terms that can be comprehended by our brains as they evolved, not as we might wish them to be.

There is design, just not an intelligent designer. Even the ID folks understand the distinction - which is why they did not simply call their idea Design Theory. They know things are designed - by evolution. They needed to go further and stipulate that world we see is the work of not just evolution, but as well, the occasional intervention of an Intelligent Designer. Our response ought to be to acknowledge the design, but also to demonstrate the power of evolution as a designer. And then go further, and demonstrate that the world-as-it-is-designed fits much better with the idea of evolution-as-designer than with an intelligent-being-as-designer.