There is a fascinating series of posts and subsequent debate on atheism underway at Sam Norton’s blog. Essentially, Sam is arguing that the prevalent form of atheism (which he labels ‘humourless’) is irrational and highly damaging while also arguing that Christianity, when properly understood, is not irrational. He states that these two things do not entail that all Christianity is more rational than all atheism (particularly the atheism he labels 'sophisticated') but does believe that Christian theology is the highest and most exalted expression of the Western intellectual genius, and that it is truth which sets us free. To see where this argument has got to so far, click here.
I got involved in the debate following a statement from Sam that religious belief does not assert that God exists in terms of scientific measurements. Sam, it seemed to me, was asserting that religious and scientific beliefs are not the same and, as a result, that scientific measurement is not a relevant means of assessing the wisdom emerging from religious belief. In modernism, scientific belief was viewed as an objective metanarrative that superseded and overrode other forms of knowing. Many atheists remain stuck in such modernist mindsets and seem unable to deal with the diversity of means of knowing that postmodernism celebrates.
In my comments I argued for a broad rationality that takes adequate account of received experience. To my mind, 'aspect blind' atheism jettisons too much of human experience by insisting on scientific measurement as the only measure of reality. For example, in a evolutionary framework love tends to be understood primarily as part of the survival instinct in humanity, the means by which we perpetuate the species. But, while perpetuating the species is clearly an aspect of our human experience of love, it seems to me to be reductive to argue that the richness of human experience of love (as revealed in life, literature and the Arts) can be explained simply in terms that fit within the means of scientific measurement.
I want an understanding of love that celebrates that richness without reducing it simply to a survival mechanism and I believe that religious and artistic understandings of love provide that broader framework and rationality. In other words, they capture more of the richness and breadth of our human experience of love (including scientific understandings alongside other understandings) than scientific explanations alone do (for all their veracity within the limits of their narrow framework).
It is the same when it comes to both my own personal experience of relationship with God and my engagement with the whole human history of encounter and non-encounter with God, I want a frame of reference that responds to that richness on its own terms not one which seeks again to reduce the richness of that experience to survival mechanisms and the limits of scientific measurement.
To do that, we need more languages for describing and influencing human experience that just the language/metaphor/belief system of scientific measurement. At the end of the day, I think that religious languages and frameworks can, at their best, encompass scientific understandings of the world without perverting the science while scientific understandings of religion tend to reduce our lived experience of relationship with God to narrow perceptions that do not resonate with the richness of that experience. It is the broader of the two rationalities that makes most sense to me.
I am saying that there are things that cannot be measured mathematically and occasions when atheists describe experiences of being awestruck would seem to bear this out. The language that they naturally reach for in order to describe such experiences – “beauty”, “wonder”, “emotion”, “awestruck”, “mystery”, “deep” – is not the language of science and does not have the precision required by scientific experiment. However, they clearly value these experiences and don’t appear to be concerned by the vagueness or lack of precision that is needed in order to adequately describe them, so why should religious people then be criticized for vagueness when such phrases are used to speak of God?
It seems to me that there are, at least, three possible responses to experiences that require a language other than the language of science in order to adequately describe them. The first is to try to lock them up again within the narrow framework of scientific language but this, it seems to me, is reductionist and doesn’t do justice to what we actually feel about such experiences.
The second is to acknowledge that scientific language cannot adequately describe such experiences but to argue that this reveals the inadequacy of our science and that, in time, as our scientific knowledge grows we will be able to adequately describe them. This is a perfectly reasonable position but involves a non-scientific leap of faith as it does not follow that, just because we can measure and describe some things scientifically, we will, in time, be able to measure and describe all things in this way.
The third is simply to acknowledge that scientific language has its limits and that other forms of language are needed in order to adequately describe some experiences. Taking this position does not mean that religious language has to be used to describe these experiences but it does open up the possibility that the languages of religion may provide justifiable descriptions of these experiences. I would argue that this third response is a perfectly reasonable position to hold and, beyond that, that religious languages do provide an adequate language for describing for such experiences.
As a writer and painter it has always seemed to me that there is much in life that cannot be simply described in words or images. When George Herbert wrote a poem about prayer he used 26 different images and still could not capture all that prayer can be for the believer. As an artist and a believer I want to celebrate multiplicity of meanings and paradox in language and life as a form of richness. The precision in language that characterises scientific experiment is a utilitarian necessity within its limited frame of reference but, if it is the only allowable language, then the world is drained of colour, energy, life, richness and meaningfulness. If it is the only allowable language then we are unable to describe the moments when we have been awestruck in terms of “beauty”, “wonder”, “emotion”, “awe”, or “mystery”.
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The Reese Project - The Colour of Love.
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