by Ethan Johnson
April 3, 2007

I once interviewed Matthew Lesko, he of the regionally famous question-marked suits. He told me that the question marks were a message: It's not the answer that's important, he said, but the question.

I reflected on that comment as I read the following quote over at the must-read Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Novels blog:

The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead. The totalitarian world, whether founded on Marx, Islam or anything else, is a world of answers rather than questions. There, the novel has no place. In any case, it seems to me that all over the world people nowadays prefer to judge rather than to understand, to answer rather than ask, so that the voice of the novel can hardly be heard over the noisy foolishness of human certainties.

This quote resonated with me all the more as I have been sitting on a letter I found at Salon.com regarding The Gospel of Judas, and in what ways it may be significant. The full letter may be found here.

Someone rightly pointed out the prejudice many atheists receive from theists about their beliefs; but theists receive the same treatment from atheists. I've been on the receiving end of both sides of this. As a theist, I've been asked numerous versions of "You're intelligent - how can you believe that stuff?" Atheist friends seem to regard my faith as a strange aberration in someone they otherwise treat as smart and practical, whose advice in other areas they say they value. The concept that one can have an intelligent view of God seems beyond them.

Too true. It always amazed me back when listening to Air America locally was possible that Al Franken, who is otherwise a smart guy could get so whacked out about Israel. Of course, he is Jewish, so it shouldn't be so surprising. But I think I am getting too accustomed to lapsed followers of various religions. My innate expectation was that Franken had seen too much of the world to toe the party line in religious matters.

I don't believe in an old man in a heaven, I don't believe in intelligent design. My husband (PhD philosophy of religion, UVA) has actually presented on why intelligence design is both bad faith and bad science. I think those who question evolution and current cosmological theory are in deep denial about reality. Most of the religious people I know personally are not fundamentalists. They have a strong understanding of science, and don't want to impose their views on the rest of humanity. But we are tarred with the same brush as the vocal fundamentalist minority in the eyes of most atheists.

Unabashedly so, in some cases.

When atheists point to the prejudice of theists as a motivating factor in radicalizing atheism, they undermine their argument because they show the psychological roots of their own prejudice; when they don't acknowledge that the question itself is unanswerable, they show denial. When theists say their faith supersedes that of other humans, they show their own denial; when they get drawn into silliness like intelligent design, they betray a lack of understanding of their own faith. (As my husband wrote, "The god sought by intelligent design is not a god worshipped by any member of any living religion - he is the bloodless god of the gaps, the god of the philosophers. The God of worship is a living being.") My point is that there are first- and second-level thinkers on both sides.

In fairness to atheists, I think most vocal athiests rail against people who have jumped to the conclusion that [effect] was the direct result of "God". (Or Jesus, usually used interchangeably.) There is an old joke about this sort of behavior: "What's 2 + 2?" "Jesus." However, and this usually gets me taken off of the buddy list for the atheist crowd, atheists often come at this from the other direction. The least inflammatory analogy that comes to mind reads like so: Every time I see lights in the sky, they're either stars or airplanes. 100% of the time. They are UFOs 0% of the time. The question is, will they ever be something other than stars or airplanes? The atheist says "never", and therefore, stops looking at the lights in the sky, and in some cases, belittles those who cock their heads up skyward. The faithful, or the dreamer (etc) watches the lights and wonders if today is the day when things will be different. Of course, if can be argued that watching lights in the sky is hardly productive, as is arguing about how 100% of the time they're planes and stars so why bother.

First-level doesn't question itself, it questions others. It may have arrived at its beliefs through this process, but it holds its beliefs as "right" in contrast to another person's "wrong." Second-level digs a little deeper and questions itself. Second-level knows that at any given moment, it straddles the paradox of acting as if its beliefs are correct, but knowing they may at any time be undermined by a new understanding or fact. Irony, in other words.

Spend an afternoon in the blogosphere sometime for plenty of examples of what the author calls "first-level" thinking, and a relative dearth of second-level.

As I mull these weighty topics, here are what the arguments pro/con in popular religious/atheist thought generally boil down to:

• God said it, I believe it, that settles it!
• God didn't say it, I don't believe it, that settles it!

Now grab an empty bottle, fill it halfway with oil, then top if off with water. You have now encapsulated both sides of the argument and demonstrated the likelihood that it will ever be settled to the satisfaction of either party.

Another approach is to disclaim the existence of God in any form, based on the following method:

• I prayed to God for a pony.
• Nothing happened.
• There is no God.

Yes, I'm being a jerk by saying that, and yes, I am aware that atheists reach their individual conclusions based on other factors. But as I am seeing this form of argument quite a bit lately, such as "I blasphemed against God and dared Him to smite me. Nothing happened. There is no God." Two can play at this game:

• I prayed to the Moon for a pony.
• Nothing happened.
• There is no Moon.

Aha, but we can empirically point to the Moon and cite all sorts of evidence that the Moon does in fact exist. But it's not granting my wishes, so what good is it? Besides the tidal influence and light in the deep of night? By the way, add to the list of things that didn't grant my wishes: Water, air, your mother, George Bush, the Dalai Lama, Mount Olympos, and rattlesnakes.

I say this because it is not the nature of the above things to grant my wishes like a genie. If I took the approach of the king in The Little Prince and commanded the water to quench my thirst, I might be on to something. Thus, perhaps it is not the nature of God to grant wishes, even in the guise of prayers.

It is a fallacy to believe that those who believe in God conceptually reached this conclusion by reading a book, specifically a religious text. I have read the Bible several times, and to me it all reads as fiction. I routinely reject various forms of "isms", both politically and spiritually. Yet somehow I subscribe to the idea of God. To dispute my rationale for doing so is akin to telling me that it is impossible that my back hurts because the X-Rays and MRI came back negative, therefore I'm either a faker or delusional.

I ask this from time to time, and never get an answer: What if God were empirically proven to exist today, just as we can all agree that the Moon exists? What then? Will all atheists convert to some sort of religion? Will a particular religion be held above all others as the vanguard of truth and piety? Would wars end, hunger cease, poverty reverse? Or would we regard God as we do the Moon - nice to look at, provides benefits in its own way, and otherwise reassuring to see above us - yet ultimately signifying nothing? Bills still need to be paid, wars fought, mouths fed.

The human brain is not capable of fully understanding the universe, simply because it's not capable of fully perceiving it. To act as if your individual understanding of the world is "right" in comparison to another's reveals a lack of understanding of the meaning of being human.

Many thanks to all for the food for thought. I will of course have more thoughts about these sorts of topics over the coming months. <EM>