Perhaps in response to Stephen Hawking's own recent declaration that God isn't necessary for explaining the existence of the universe, Pope Benedict wants to remind everybody that the church's voice remains as necessary and vital as ever in addressing the fundamental matters of life.
The Telegraph reported that the Pope, speaking to an audience at St Mary's University College in Twickenham, southwest London, said that while studies in the human and natural sciences provide us with an "invaluable understanding" of aspects of our existence, the disciplines cannot satisfy the "fundamental" question about why we exist. "They cannot satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart, they cannot fully explain to us our origin and our destiny, why and for what purpose we exist, nor indeed can they provide us with an exhaustive answer to the question 'Why is there something rather than nothing?'"
The Pope was reasserting the church's long held view, put briskly as well by the Protestant, Westminster Shorter Catechism: "Question: What is the chief end of man? Answer: Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever." The Shorter Catechism itself formalizes a central Christian theme going back through St. Aquinas (in his beatific vision) to St. Augustine's prayer in his Confessions: "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." And, the Apostle Paul: that we must grope in the dark for God (Acts 17: 26 - 27). Not to forget Rick Warren's own updated and folksy take on the matter, described in his book, The Purpose Driven Life.
As uplifting as the religious assurances can be to some, on closer inspection, matters don't seem to be so self-evident. Many who believe they have found God, never realize Augustine's promised accompanying "rest." To the contrary, even deeper feelings of emptiness and depression accompany their faith. Having grown up in a conservative Christian environment, and having seen and tried organized religion's recipe, I know first hand that being religious doesn't always impart such existential assurances and deliverances. I've come to believe that neurologists are right about depression, happiness, angst and elation being more about the chemicals bathing our brains than angels ministering to our souls.
The failure of belief in God to grant me the meaning of life and what my ultimate purpose is here need not be celebrated by the likes of the New Atheists and assorted skeptics. This failure, so to speak, doesn't mean that religion poisons everything or that it is delusional. It's really the failure of religious leaders to make such promises and to pick unnecessary fights with philosophers and scientists, not the failure of religion itself. Religion should not hold out the prize of granting the consummate meaning of life or that it will endow certain meta-teleology in our lives here. In fact, religion might be one way of coping with the feelings of loss of meaning and purpose in the midst of one's immortality.
But our skeptical friends do have a couple important points here too, and the sooner religious people come to appreciate them, the culture war over religion might be mollified. For the sake of argument, consider that you think only religion can grant meaning and purpose to life. Then imagine that one day you wake up and, for whatever reason, explicable or not, you no longer believe in God. As hypothetical and unlikely as such an occurrence might seem to you, if this happened, what do you think would result in your life? Getting out of bed, would you feel an utter loss of meaning and purpose in your life, and seeing your elderly, live-in mother walking down the hall, would you be compelled to trip her? Would you then callously step on the cat's tail to have it yowl? Would you, without sting of shame, begin to slap your kids around or sell them into slavery? Albeit sensing a bit bewildered in your loss of religious faith, would you, as a consequence, shun all loves, friends and acquaintances, interests, passions, hobbies and career? Would even your "me-time" at Starbucks lose all meaning and purpose? This is all very unlikely. Life without belief in God doesn't mean that we must be relegated to a nihilistic and depressing existence.
This is because it seems quite clear that even without belief in God we can have great meanings and significant purposes in life. Indeed, if this is the only life there is, then I might have even more reason to cling tighter to my children, parents, family, loved ones and friends. As for purposes, rather than being consumed solely by my career, I might consider how I could, in light of the quickly passing years, more wisely spend my time. The range is infinite: I could endeavor, as my all consuming passion, to dedicate my life to alleviating human suffering or, because of my circumstances, to be the best parent possible.
Whether we can have meaning and purpose in life really isn't a religious/secular debate. All reflective people can find important and meanings and purposes. It's really about another associated quality we should all inculcate, reflected best in Horace's (65 - 8 B.C.) longstanding, pre-Christian, advice: "Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero" -- "Seize the Day, trusting as little as possible in the future."
G. Elijah Dann holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Waterloo and a Doctorat en Théologie from the Université de Strasbourg, France. He teaches philosophy and religion for the Seniors Program at Simon Fraser University, and is Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. He is author of the books God and the Public Square and After Rorty: The Possibilities for Ethics and Religious Belief. He is co-author of An Ethics for Today: Finding Common Ground Between Philosophy and Religion and editor of Leaving Fundamentalism.
Deepak Chopra: A New Creation Story: Beyond Religion and Science
You react against the idea that religion is necessary for meaningful living; but what I see in the Pope's statement is just the assertion that natural science is insufficient for meaningfulness, while religion is sufficient. This leaves open the possibility that religion isn't necessary, because other alternatives can also be sufficient. In that sense religion could just be a vocabulary or symbol-system for accomplishing what can also be accomplished with different, perhaps less elaborate means.
Against this possibility you have the quote that "Man's chief end is to glorify God". Here's where I would say the translation comes in. Instead of assuming that this is some kind of metaphysical claim that hinges on the "fact" of God's existence/nonexistence, or on the holding of religious "beliefs" in an unspecified sense, what if we took "glorifying God" simply to MEAN living a life of meaning and optimism, informed by a moral understanding and sense of gratitude? In that case some who "glorify God" might do so without being a member of a religion or even using religious language at all.
You also argue that religion is NOT sufficient for meaningfulness, which is obviously true. But it is also true of all other strategies, whether originating in secular traditions, common-sense maxims, or clinical psychology.
So religion is neither necessary nor sufficient, but neither is anything else.
If we accept your stipulation of God - and I do - then by all means a real sense of meaning can be found there too. In that respect religion is sufficient for meaningfulness. The fact that we can find meaning elsewhere, however, shows that my original position is sound: Religion isn't the only means to a meaningful and purposeful life.
And I agreed with you that meaning can be provided by other things than religion, which I expressed by saying that religion isn't sufficient for a meaningful life.
By "sufficient" I meant that it alone would guarantee meaningfulness, as when we say that if A is sufficient to produce B, then the presence of A guarantees B. In this sense natural science also can't be sufficient: studying science doesn't guarantee a meaningful life. Nothing does.
So my assertion was that no particular recipe is the only recipe, while recipes that work in some cases don't work in other cases. That's what I meant by "neither necessary nor sufficient".
By the way, I looked into your Rorty book online and think I would like it. I published an article 20 years ago arguing some similar points -- agreeing with Rorty about metaphysics but denying that the absence of metaphysical knowledge has the pessimistic consequences he drew.
Without God we wouldn't have morals to do good.
Religions take us away from the communion with God.
It is when the ego takes on a relationship with the Holy, that we start to become selfish.
Christians need to become followers of Christ-be his hands and feet.
The more ascetic you become, the closer to God and the spirit world you will become.
Study indeginous tribes. They get spiriuality and don't give a hoot about science.
I always wondered why the Pope rode in a bullet proof car? Is he afraid of dying or does the Vatican just not want to go through the whole election process?
"Religion without science is blind; science without religion is lame."Albert Einstein
That's the sense of worshipping the world's "creator" -- a personification of our positive feelings about life.
If I woke up tommorow suddely bereft of my belief in God (not something I think entirely possible because I think if anyone can shed a belief like they would a coat, they probably never held to it strongly in the first place) - I wouldn't start tripping people and abuse animals - but I probably would reach for a suicide-knife. Then, I am bipolar, which is why neither religion or non-religion is going to make me steadily "happy." Currently, I have a lot of personal meaning bound up in Eternity, a Creator and a general "plot to existance." But, that's just selfish little me. I wouldn't be so arrogant as to say another must find their meaning in the place I've found mine. I sometimes even treat my views as weakness, just for the sake of being polite.
Okay, suppose there is no inherent meaning and any meaning we derive as individuals is purely subjective. This does not mean that subjective meaning is merely an illusion. If that were the case than anything that is a product of the mind is also merely illusion, which is obviously not true, in that these products have impact on objects and people, most especially oursevles and those in our immediate influence.
The meaning that I derive from the love of my family goes back to them and others in my life from actions that I undertake as a result of the meaning I derive from that love.
So what that the universe doesn't care and or Mother Earth. They are inanimate and CANNOT care anyway. And so what if I am here by accident. That in no way means that my life is not purposeful, that I cannot have a positive impact on others.
It is my choice to find meaning in my life. Meaning in this world, is more than plentiful. All you need to do is look.
Family is a basic generator of purpose and meaning. But so are larger social units, and some of the most intense feelings of purpose come from involvement in social movements. Furthermore, many people get a sense of meaning from the natural environment, especially in connection with the social project of saving it from human destruction.
So we can find the world around us to be meaningful without imagining a creator or cosmic intelligence, but also without reducing meaning to a private, subjective phenomenon. (You say that it can be "subjective" without being "illusory". I agree but also suggest that the "subjective" meaning has intersubjective validity and objective underpinnings.)
This relation to the world is the point of connection with religion, which uses mythic imagery to express a global perspective of optimism and meaning. It gets confused, IMO, by saying that to have such a perspective is to believe that the myths are "true" (factually true, rather than just having psychological validity).
If one thinks of God as a sky fairy in a long robe, well--that fairy does not exist. If one thinks of God as the author and guiding force of the universe, well, yes, that God does exist.
What is guaranteed not to exist is a god that humans can tame or understand. Science allows us to understand physical reality, even reality we can't see, and this can give us insights into God. The closest definition to God that I think humans can understand is that God is truth.
As to God's love for His creation, that is unproveable. I take it on faith.
So the closest definition of "God" you have is "truth." Does truth love?
When you say author and guiding force...how is that accomplished. For example, when I use guiding force to power my bicycle, I use energy generated in my muscles to push on the pedals. Does your God have muscles? If not muscles, does he use some other kind of energy-generating mechanism to guide the universe? Like does he blast gamma rays or something? If so, how does he produce the gamma rays. I'm really interested in how this authoring and guiding happens.
And no, God is not simply male. God is male, female, neither, both, and infinitely more. He is just the shortest to write.
I have wondered about evil, which does exist. I ask myself if humanity would be happier or more spiritually whole with out either evil or free will, because as long as we do have free will, some will choose evil. I guess God thinks that freedom is more important than safely.
God is not like a physical thing or force. I know that much, so I do not try to define God as I would a subatomic particle.
great line and great article. life with belief in god can incline one toward a nihilistic outlook too i think. what matters in life if a merciful and forgiving god is ready to absolve me of any sin i might commit. and what matters in life if anything good i do is just a drop in the bucket of god's infinite goodness. maybe some of us need god's absence in order to feel important.
Many, who embrace science, will never experience the promised clarity and certainty. Many, who found love, never experience the transforming power of love.
Yet we carry on, because it is never the human person in his or her individuality who will ever experience either the “promised ‘rest,’†the promised clarity and certainty or the transforming power of love. Only the combined effort of human existence is able offer such experiences to the individual (only a community can make an individual), by reaching beyond its space and time limitations.
You are right: ultimately, we all operate on faith. The question is not whether we have faith, but rather what is the ‘object’ of our faith: what makes us get up in the morning, what makes us behave in a certain way and not in another way.
The problem with Hawking’s statement that “God isn't necessary for explaining the existence of the universe†is that it is a tautology. A fundamental truth of theology is that faith in God is a gift: God does not force it on anyone by necessity. Therefore, Hawking is right, whether I accept this gift or not, the world will go on, with or without me. Also, Hawking is committing a category mistake: he is either using this theological statement as a scientific statement, or he is trying to talk about God within the language game of science.
Hawking was weighing in on an age-old sibling-rivalry.
This article was not a rebuttal of religion itself. It is mearly saying that religion cannot assure "meaning" for our lives. Like Mr. Dann, I lost my faith after years of depression which God was apparently to busy to help me out with. And when I stopped believing, I didn't lose my depression, but I didn't fall apart either. My life still had meaning. My love for my friends, my family and my soldiers was just as strong, and they needed me. They needed me to keep leading, and teaching and loving them. My kids needed me to teach them to hit a baseball and ride a bike. And I believe that my world needs me too.
I love humanity. I love sports and politics and philosophy and law. I love life, even now as I go through yet another tragedy. I don't need the divine to have meaning. Thats all Mr. Dann was trying to say. There are many ways to find motivation.
If I was a believer, I'd pray for you; as I'm not, I offer my sincere best wishes. Love is always reciprocated.
God certainly does force faith on us, according to theology. What are the consequences of not having faith in him? Eternal fire. How is this not cohersion?
It is not Hawking who brought God into the language game of science but religious people who insist and continue to insist that God takes real action in this world and that his wants and needs should be observed in our political discourse. Given this state of affairs, it becomes incumbent on scientists and other right-thinking people to point out that God doesn't live here.