The End of Christianity (35 page)

Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shown it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they [unbelievers] are without excuse. (Rom. 1:19–20)

So those who willfully reject belief are culpable because, though God has shown his existence to them, and even “his eternal power and Godhead,” yet they sinfully refuse to acknowledge him. By saying that “that which may be known of God” is “manifest in them,” I take Paul to mean “obvious to them.” Paul even says that unbelievers
know
God yet fail to honor him:

Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. (Rom. 1:21)

The problem with any claim of obviousness is that it unavoidably comes with a tacit “to me” clause attached. God's existence and indeed his “eternal power and Godhead” may seem obvious to Paul but it does not to me or billions of others. When informed that I do not find obvious what he does, Paul would probably take this as evidence of how far I had sunk into reprobation. What is the appropriate reply to those who insist that you are a reprobate if you do not find obvious what they do? Probably the most apposite response would be to thumb one's nose and make a razzing noise. More politely, I'll just say, “Nonsense!”

Further, anyone making claims of obviousness cannot object when the reply is that it is obviously not obvious. In general, if Christians are allowed to assert claims of obviousness, others can too. Contrary to claims like Paul's, it is obvious to me that there are very many people who nonculpably reject Christian claims. There are billions of people who have heard the Christian message yet choose to remain Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, pagans, atheists, and agnostics. Committed Christians, those who live and move and have their being in the faith, probably cannot even imagine how implausible their beliefs appear to an outsider. Their faith is so deep and its significance so clear to them, that those who reject it must seem simply perverse.

It is important to clarify a point here: it is not that people generally
choose
not to accept Christian claims. Speaking personally, I do not
choose
not to believe the Christian story; I
cannot.
It seems utterly fantastic to me, no more believable than Tolkien's tales about hobbits, orcs, and wizards. My nonbelief is not willful, because it is no more within my power to believe, for instance, that Christ died for my sins than it is to believe that Frodo saved Middle Earth by destroying the Dark Lord's evil ring.

The upshot is that unless the creedal claims necessary for salvation are in some sense obviously true, then it is unreasonable to impose a doxastic requirement. Unless Christians are willing to regard as simply perverse all those who cannot accept Christian teaching, their imposition of a doxastic requirement is itself perverse. If they do make such an assumption, they should not be surprised if the rest of us regard
them
as the ones incapable of seeing straight.

Perhaps, though, there is a way that Christianity's doxastic requirement can be made tolerable. In his book
Heaven, the Logic of Eternal Bliss
, Professor Jerry Walls considers the fact that many people throughout their lives are in a position of epistemic disadvantage with respect to the Christian message.
¹⁹
We can imagine a large number of such circumstances: Some perhaps never hear the Gospel, or only hear of it in a badly distorted or trite version. Others may be raised in traditions that so deeply imbue them with contrary beliefs that they are invincibly ignorant-psychologically incapable of giving Christianity a fair hearing. Others might have the Gospel preached at them, but only by persons of such blatant hypocrisy, sanctimony, or hatefulness, that the evil of the messenger taints the message. What will a loving God, whom scripture characterizes as desiring the salvation of all, do to redress the inequity, to level the epistemological playing field, as Walls puts it?

Walls proposes that God will compensate for epistemological inequities in the present life with “eschatological evangelism” in the next. That is, after death, those who have not had the opportunity of a full and fair hearing of the “truth about Christ” will be vouchsafed such a second chance. Walls is not clear on the exact form this postmortem proselytizing will take (How could he be?), but he thinks that everyone who has “blind spots” with respect to the Christian message will get an opportunity to hear the undistorted Christian message and will be freed of any psychological constraints or ingrained biases against that message. He thinks that even after death people will be able to reject Christianity, but that after receiving postmortem evangelization such a rejection will no longer be excusable, but can only be due to “concupiscence and wickedness of heart.”

Walls's view is an appealing one, but it only leaves us with more questions: If God's grace is so bountiful that he will make the “truth about Christ” plain to all in the next life, why does he not do so in this life? Conversely, why doesn't the fact that God clearly tolerates epistemological inequities in this life count against the claim that he will set things right in the next life? Is there any reason to think that God, the God of the Bible, is interested in equity or fairness at all? The whole point of the Book of Job is that God is not fair but often smites the innocent, and we are not to ask why but to shut up (the splendor of Job's poetry almost makes you overlook the harshness of the message). Also, the Bible is rife with tales of gross unfairness committed or endorsed by God. In 2 Kings 2, the prophet Elisha curses some unruly children in the name of the Lord, and two she-bears are sent to maul forty-two of the children. In 2 Samuel 15, God orders the utter destruction of the Amalekites, men, women, children, and infants. The Flood of Noah drowns the whole earth except for Noah and his family, causing many small children, infants, mentally impaired people, and nonhuman animals to suffer a miserable death. The biblical God is often portrayed as unfairly causing suffering and death. Why should Walls expect God to be fair to us in the afterlife?

Finally, Walls assumes that the “truth about Christ” is so plainly true that once it is given a full and fair hearing, only the irremediably wicked and unregenerate will reject it. Can Walls even begin to conceive how insufferably arrogant this sounds to thoughtful nonbelievers? Really, it affects us in about the same way that thoughtful Christians are affected when Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris tells them that all believers are suckers or nitwits. And in any case, by Walls's logic, we don't need to be Christians anyway, not a one of us. We can all make that decision
after
we die.

CONCLUSION

Since the defenses of the doctrine of hell by some of the most eminent Christian apologists are so transparently thin, or at least leave us with far more questions than answers, we have to ask why orthodox Christianity is still intent on maintaining a doctrine of hell. Why maintain a doctrine that is, to all appearances, an eternal glorification of vindictiveness? What moral authority can the Christian Church claim if it rests upon such a damnable doctrine? How can an institution claim to be the Light of the World if one of its central doctrines is, to all appearances, an expression of the deepest darkness in the human heart?

Actually, you do not have to dig too deep to find the answers to these questions. You don't need that much moral authority if you can scare the hell into people. In fact, it is safe to say that Christianity would never have amounted to much without a doctrine of hell. The bright promise of salvation-and the terrifying threat of hell-have all along been the biggest guns in the Christian arsenal. It is simply inconceivable that there would now be two billion Christians had Christianity lacked a doctrine of hell. Not only will the threat of hell prompt you to become a Christian, it will lead you to be a
submissive
one. All the stuff about faith, hope, and charity aside,
obedience
has always been the prime Christian virtue (which is why kings, emperors, and czars have so often been ardent supporters of the Church). “There is no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey,” says the old hymn. Indeed, the threat of hell will motivate not just external obedience but internal self-control as well. There are many people today who cannot entertain honest doubts about Christianity without catching a whiff of brimstone. A doctrine that can not only frighten people into belief and obedience but that can even squelch doubt is a zealot's dream come true. The doctrine of hell is the ultimate
ad baculum.
do what we say, and, indeed, believe what we believe, or suffer consequences too terrible to contemplate. Without hell to intimidate people into belief, Christianity would have to sell itself on its merits in the marketplace of ideas. And it's a safe bet its stock would then decline precipitously.

When this book was in the planning stage and we had the title
The End of Christianity
, I suggested a subtitle of
Why 2,000 Years Are Enough.
Sadly, the publisher declined my suggestion. With respect to the doctrine of hell, two thousand years are far more than enough. The damage this horrific and contemptible fantasy has done cannot be estimated. Surely torturers and inquisitors through the centuries justified their own atrocities with reference to hell. After all, the torment they inflicted was nothing in comparison to the torment God inflicts on the damned. Cruel dogmas make cruel people. Humans have made some progress through the ages. We no longer think of the deranged as demoniacs, and we do not respond to a sudden outbreak of illness by burning old women. Perhaps even conservative Christians will part from the doctrine, but I fear there will always be those, like Peter Kreeft and Roland Tacelli, who insist that if you deny hell you must deny Christianity as well.
²⁰
If that is our only choice, we should toss Christianity-and hell-into history's landfill.

by Dr. David Eller

F
rancis Collins is a prominent American scientist, former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, and, at the time of writing, director of the National Institutes of Health. He is also a Christian and author of
The Language of God
¹
The Reverend John Polkinghorne, former professor of physics at the University of Cambridge, became an Anglican priest in 1982 and has written several books on physics and religion.
²
In fact, in a survey conducted by Elaine Howard Ecklund (and funded by the Templeton Foundation, which actively pursues research on science and religion), two-thirds of scientists hold a belief in God, including 59 percent of biologists.
³
So if the question is “Can religion coexist with science, in the same society or even inside the same head?” the answer is clearly yes.

On the other hand, scientist Richard Dawkins is an outspoken atheist and energetic denouncer of religion,
⁴
and the roll of high-profile scientists publically avowing a disbelief in god(s) includes Francis Crick (the codiscoverer of DNA), linguist Steven Pinker, physicists Stephen Weinberg and Victor Stenger, neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky, and sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson. In fact, to interrogate Ecklund's research more closely, less than 50 percent of scientists have a religious affiliation, whereas almost 86 percent of the US population does, and scientists are much less likely to be evangelical or fundamentalist Christians (1.5 percent versus 13.6 percent) or traditional Catholics (0.7 percent versus 6.9 percent) and are much more likely to be Jewish (15.3 percent versus 1.8 percent) or Buddhist (1.8 percent versus 0.3 percent) than the general population. So if the question is “Does a scientific outlook coexist easily (and to the same degree as a nonscientific worldview) with religion?” the answer is apparently no.

Finally, Stephen Jay Gould has proposed that science and religion do not even occupy the same conceptual space, so that as long as each stays within its own “nonoverlapping magisterium,” everything is fine—but when they invade each other's territory, conflict ensues.
⁵
In other words, the compatibility of religion depends on how sequestered the two are from each other—under some conditions yes, under other conditions no.

A question that can simultaneously be answered “yes,” “no,” and “sometimes,” is a question that is asked wrong. The problem with the question “Is religion compatible with science?” is that there is no agreement, not even much self-awareness, about what the question even means. Ultimately, a sensible answer depends on defining our terms: What is religion, what is science, and what is compatible? After providing these much-needed definitions, I will argue that, while religion and science can undeniably coexist (since they do), they are actually
not
compatible; further, science has no need for religion since religion has no relevance for science (and vice versa), and science can only proceed when it is liberated from the specific claims and the general mindset of religion. This was true in Galileo's time, and it is true today.

RELIGION

It is unfortunate, and almost inevitable, that when we talk about religion we quite literally do not know what we are talking about.

—Pascal Boyer,
Religion Explained
⁶

In most of the squabbles between religion and science, religion is never defined, because, since most of the squabbles are occurring in majority Christian societies, the assumption is that “religion” means “Christianity.” Worse yet, the assumption is usually that “religion” means “traditional Christianity” or “evangelical/fundamentalist Christianity.” Substituting one of these terms for “religion” in our original question yields the highly problematic inquiry: Is traditional/evangelical/fundamentalist Christianity compatible with science? The first problem, of course, is that even if it is not, then perhaps some other form—some modernist or liberal form—of Christianity
is
compatible with science; perhaps Christianity can be adjusted and juked to fit with science. The second and more profound problem is that even if traditional/evangelical/ fundamentalist Christianity or any version of Christianity whatsoever is not compatible with science, perhaps some other religion—say, Hinduism or Wicca or ancient Mayan religion or Scientology—is. Yet you will notice that almost no one asks, and almost no one in the United States or any other Christian-dominated society cares, whether Hinduism or ancient Mayan religion is compatible with science, since few people know or care about Hinduism or ancient Mayan religion. The tempest over religion and science is thus quite a local and parochial brouhaha, people fighting for
their particular religion
against (some version or idea of) science.

If we were to try to be more inclusive and say that the dispute is between
theism
and science, we would still not be correct, since not all religions are theisms and certainly not
mono
theisms. Maybe monotheism is incompatible with science, but polytheism is not. Or maybe all theisms, all god-based religions, are incompatible with science, but other kinds of religions-religions based on nature spirits or dead ancestors or impersonal forces like
chi
or
mana
are not. Honestly, a religious concept like chi or mana is more scientifically useful (and testable) than a concept like “original sin” or “heaven,” and indeed Chinese civilization
has
used the concept of chi in a virtually scientific or at least pragmatic way, organizing practices from medicine to diet to home furnishing (feng shui) around it. What possible practical applications can “original sin” ever conceivably have?

“Religion” does not and cannot mean any specific religion, any more than “language” means any specific language, or “game” means any specific game. What, then, is “religion”? There have been many attempted answers, almost all of which have fallen short in one or both of two ways: they purport to define religion in terms of some equally undefined religious notion (in other words, they are circular), or they define religion in such a way as to make it indistinguishable from nonreligion. An example of the first failure is the definition given by the great early sociologist Émile Durkheim, who imagined it as “a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set aside and forbidden-beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.”
⁷
The difficulty here is “sacred”: What exactly does
that
mean? Aside from the fact that not all religions in the world necessarily contain the concept of “sacred” (that is, it may be, once again, a distinctly Judeo-Christian idea), the word is generally taken to refer to something supernatural or holy or divine. Webster's defines
sacred
as “dedicated or set apart for the service or worship of deity,” “worthy of religious veneration,” and most uselessly of all, “of or relating to religion.” Therefore, religion is a system of beliefs and practices relative to things of or relating to religion, which defines nothing!

The second failure of definitions of religion is best exemplified by the famous characterization offered by the anthropologist Clifford Geertz, who considered it to be

(1) a system of symbols which act to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.
⁸

The objection to this approach is that, while Durkheim's definition was too religion-dependent, Geertz's is too religion-independent. There is nothing in the sentence that refers to anything uniquely religious, and no doubt it could apply to a number of nonreligious or secular phenomena as well. Patriotic symbols like flags and anthems also establish moods and motivations and make things (like a country such as the United States) seem uniquely real; for others, gang colors, sports emblems, or military insignia may have the same effect. Mark Pendergrast has argued that, based on Geertz's view, Coca-Cola is a religion, since it has its symbols, attempts to represent a way of life, and tries to make that lifestyle seem real.
⁹
Sadly, Durkheim's perspective actually commits this error along with the error of circularity, since “sacred” often means in practice whatever people feel very strongly about, so that they may use it to refer to the flag or the Constitution or money or their favorite sports team-or potentially reason or science itself.

In order to make any progress on the question of religion and science, we must understand religion in a way that includes all variations of religion (theisms and nontheisms, nature spirits, dead ancestors, and supernatural forces) and that effectively distinguishes religion from everything else. In the real world, this is probably not entirely possible: religions are so diverse (with some things on the boundary between religion and nonreligion), and religions so totally penetrate the secular and mundane world that no sharp, satisfactory line can be drawn. Nevertheless, there are, critically, some qualities that religions share that nonreligions do not. Whatever else they include (and they include much else), the nineteenth-century ethnologist E. B Tylor suggested that religions have one minimal characteristic that makes them religions as opposed to something other than religions-“the doctrine of souls and other spiritual beings in general”
¹⁰
-leading him to his minimal definition of religion as the belief in spiritual beings. By spiritual beings he meant beings without a material presence or “body” (at least some of the time, since they might materialize on occasion, as even Yahweh reportedly did). Almost a century later, anthropologist Anthony Wallace concurred that, all of its other details and permutations notwithstanding, religion starts with a single premise: the “supernatural premise” that “souls, supernatural beings, and supernatural forces exist.”
¹¹

Tylor called this most basic doctrine of religion “animism” and regarded it as a type (and the most primitive type) of religion, but subsequent thinkers have recognized it not as a type but as the
essence
of religion. For Pascal Boyer,
¹²
Scott Atran,
¹³
and Stewart Guthrie
¹⁴
among others, the key to spiritual beings, and thus to religion, has been characterized as
agency
, the possession of “mind” or “will” or “intention.” Agents, of which humans are one kind, act for their own reasons or, more importantly,
purposes
; they are not merely objects to be acted on but subjects that act and have their own viewpoints. They are like “persons” in the way that counts the most; in fact, they
are
persons. Graham Harvey, who has recently championed a return to the idea of animism, puts it as follows:

Persons are those with whom other persons interact with varying degrees of reciprocity. Persons may be spoken
with.
Objects, by contrast, are usually spoken
about.
Persons are volitional, relational, cultural, and social beings. They demonstrate intentionality and agency with varying degrees of autonomy and freedom. That some persons look like objects [or do not have visible appearance at all] is of little more value to an understanding of [religion] than the notion that some acts, characteristics, qualia, and so on may appear humanlike to some observers. Neither material form nor spiritual or mental faculties are definitive.
¹⁵

This, then, finally allows us to define religion in a productive and significant way. A religion is a particular system of thought that posits nonhuman and, in certain manners, superhuman agents or persons in the world along with humans. These non/superhuman beings share the quality of mind or intentionality or personality and personhood with humans; in other words, in religious thought, humans are not the only persons in the world. But this religious mode of thought implies much more: if there are non/superhuman persons out there, then we humans can
and must
enter into personal and social relationships with them. We cannot treat them like objects, like things, and we definitely cannot disregard them. This is what the theologian Martin Buber meant when he stressed that we must approach a spiritual being (he referred specifically to the Judeo-Christian God) as an “it” but as a “thou,” as a mindful and willful person like any other person we know, only more so.
¹⁶
The ultimate outcome of this understanding is a definition of religion that places humans in a social relationship with immaterial but intelligent beings, like the definition proffered by Robin Horton a half-century ago:

In every situation commonly labeled religious we are dealing with action directed towards objects which are believed to respond in terms of certain categories-in our own culture those of purpose, intelligence, and emotion-which are also the distinctive categories for the description of human action. The application of these categories leads us to say that such objects are “personified.” The relationship between human beings and religious objects can be further defined as governed by certain ideas of patterning and obligation such as characterize relationships among human beings. In short, Religion can be looked upon as an extension of the field of people's social relationships beyond the confines of purely human society. And for completeness's sake, we should perhaps add the rider that this extension must be one in which human beings involved see themselves in a dependent position vis-à-vis their nonhuman alters—a qualification necessary to exclude pets from the pantheon of gods.
¹⁷