Very interesting Salon interview with John Haught. Very good questions and good answers I, for the most part, agree with. An excerpt:
What do you say to the atheists who demand evidence or proof of the existence of a transcendent reality?
The hidden assumption behind such a statement is often that faith is belief without evidence. Therefore, since there's no scientific evidence for the divine, we should not believe in God. But that statement itself -- that evidence is necessary -- holds a further hidden premise that all evidence worth examining has to be scientific evidence. And beneath that assumption, there's the deeper worldview -- it's a kind of dogma -- that science is the only reliable way to truth. But that itself is a faith statement. It's a deep faith commitment because there's no way you can set up a series of scientific experiments to prove that science is the only reliable guide to truth. It's a creed.
Are you're saying scientists are themselves practicing a kind of religion?
The new atheists have made science the only road to truth. They have a belief, which I call "scientific naturalism," that there's nothing beyond nature -- no transcendent dimension -- that every cause has to be a natural cause, that there's no purpose in the universe, and that scientific explanations, especially in their Darwinian forms, can account for everything living. But the idea that science alone can lead us to truth is questionable. There's no scientific proof for that. Those are commitments that I would place in the category of faith. So the proposal by the new atheists that we should eliminate faith in all its forms would also apply to scientific naturalism. But they don't want to go that far. So there's a self-contradiction there.
Do you accept Gould's idea of "non-overlapping magisteria" -- that science covers the empirical realm of facts and theories about the universe, while religion deals with ultimate meaning and moral value?
I think he's too simplistic. I don't think we want to remain stuck in this standoff position. First of all, Gould defines religion as simply concern about values and meanings. He implicitly denies that religion can put us in touch with truth.
By truth, are you talking about reality?
Yes, I'm talking about what is real, or what has being. The traditions of religion and philosophy have always maintained that the most important dimensions of reality are going to be least accessible to scientific control. There's going to be something fuzzy and elusive about them. The only way we can talk about them is through symbolic and metaphoric language -- in other words, the language of religion. Traditionally, we never apologized for the fact that we used fuzzy language to refer to the real because the deepest aspect of reality grasps us more than we grasp it. So we can never get our minds around it.
Then later the discussion migrates to Teilhard:
Teilhard argued that the universe is still evolving. Wasn't that the cosmic process he was trying to explain?
He put the Darwinian story of nature in the larger context of cosmic evolution. He saw the emergence of what he called "more" coming in gradually from the time of the big bang. Atoms become molecules. Molecules become cells. Cells become organisms. Organisms become vertebrates with a complex nervous system. Nervous tissue developed and eventually became complex in humans. He saw this process of growing complexity as something that's still going on. This planet is itself becoming more complex. And the process is accelerating today at an enormous pace because of communications technology, engineering, economics and politics. The globe is shrinking. We're able to connect instantaneously with other parts of the Earth, in the same way that nerve fibers carry an electronic message from one part of the body to the other. We should place what's happening now in the context of the previous phases of evolution and the cosmos. And we should expect -- and hope for -- the universe to keep becoming "more."
Earlier, you said cosmic purpose is a question that lies outside of science. But it sounds like you're bringing it into science. If you want to look for purpose -- whether it's in evolution or the larger universe -- you'll find it in this inexorable drive toward greater complexity.
We have to distinguish between science as a method and what science produces in the way of discovery. As a method, science does not ask questions of purpose. But it's something different to look at the cumulative results of scientific thought and technology. From a theological point of view, that's a part of the world that we have to integrate into our religious visions. That set of discoveries is not at all suggestive of a purposeless universe. Just the opposite. And what is the purpose? The purpose seems to be, from the very beginning, the intensification of consciousness. If you understand purpose as actualizing something that's unquestionably good, then consciousness certainly fits. It's cynical of scientists to say, off-handedly, there's obviously no purpose in the universe. If purpose means realizing a value, consciousness is a value that none of us can deny.
Are you suggesting there's some kind of cosmic consciousness -- a consciousness pervading the universe that has some connection to God?I'm looking for an explanation that's robust enough to account for the kind of universe that is able, from within itself, to develop and unfold in this ongoing process of complexification. So the idea that some sort of providential presence is accompanying this process seems not at all irrational. And I like to think of God in these terms.
I might disagree a little with what he has to say later in the interview about human consciousness being exclusively brain-based. I see the brain as a filtering mechanism that limits what a much larger pre-existing consciousness can be aware of in conditions of incarnation. The long-term evolutionary objective is for this larger consciousness to develop a brain whose range of cognitions is gradually expanded, but that's another discussion. I do agree with what he has to say about the inadequacy of intelligent design, the importance of theistic personalism, prayer, and the Resurrection. The resurrection took place in sacred time, which is real time without all the avidya-- the noise and static that clouds true perception. Not something accessible to normal brain consciousness, and to cameras.
The whole interview is stimulating reading. If you don't have access to Salon, email me, and I'll email it to you. For my earlier posts on this subject see S v.N I, S v.N II, S v.N III.
UPDATE: I just started scanning the letters in response to the Haught interview--mostly negative, at least among the one's I've read. There are 545 of them at this point; it's just amazing to me how this kind of thing strikes a nerve--one guy saying that he canceled his subscription because of articles like this. Why not just shrug your shoulders and say, whatever, and move on? Why do people find themselves to violently reject this kind of thinking. Why should they care so much?
I think it's because they're responding to this comment earlier in the interview:
Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus would have cringed at "the new atheism" because they would see it as dropping God like Santa Claus, and going on with the same old values. The new atheists don't want to think out the implications of a complete absence of deity. Nietzsche, as well as Sartre and Camus, all expressed it quite correctly. The implications should be nihilism.
I agree with this; that's why Nietzsche and Camus have my profoundest respect. They understood the enormity of the atheism they embraced with all the implications. Many self-professed atheists don't think of themselves as nihilists, but I think it's the inevitable consequence of their metaphysics. They don't acknowledge their debt to religious tradition for the values they think they are just making up. And Haught is right, that while there are exceptions, I think that the God idea is indeed for most professed atheists analogous to the Santa Claus idea--a fantasy one has to grow out of. That so trivializes any discussion on the topic, it's almost impossible to discuss it at all. It's amusing that all these people writing into Salon think of themselves as more advanced in their thinking than many of the greatest minds that have ever lived.