Barry's Blog

Barbara Bradley Hagerty, the religion correspondent for NPR, reported in a recent USA Today article, "The God Choice," of an interesting exchange a few years ago in at Cambridge University in England. She, along with nine other journalists, were attending a Templeton fellowship meeting where the guest speaker was John Barrow, a Cambridge mathematician. She reports that almost as an aside to his lecture, Barrow make mention that the astonishing precision of the universe was evidence for "divine action." At that moment, Hagerty reports, Richard Dawkins, the Oxford biologist and one of the leaders in the vanguard of the new atheist movement, nearly leapt from his seat and objected: "But why would you want to look for evidence of divine action?" chided Dawkins. "For the same reason someone might not want to," Barrow responded with a wry grin.

In was at that moment that Hagerty confesses, "In that instant, I thought, there it is. God is a choice. You can look at the evidence and see life unfolding as a wholly material process, or you can see the hand of God." She goes on to describe how for the last century, "science" has seen fit to jettison any serious thinking about the reality of God, and to understand all religious claims as delusional, akin to Freud's psychological "wishful thinking." Consequently, with a worldview that sees the idea of God as sheer wish fulfillment, even all of our "spiritual" moments, events, thoughts, even free will, are relegated through material means.

Yet despite such a prevalent notion of most science over the past century, she reports that a revolution is occurring in the scientific community. It is a discipline referred to as "neurotheology," and it is sparking researchers from prominent universities across America. These researchers are now raising the question that perhaps God is not merely a figment of our brain chemistry. These neurotheologists are raising the question that our brain chemistry may reflect a genuine encounter with the Divine.

Hagerty raises a helpful analogy to help us understand the issue. She writes: "How you come down on this issue depends on whether you think of the brain as a CD player or a radio. Most people who believe that everything is explainable through material processes think that the brain is like a CD player. The content - the song, or in our analogy, God - is all playing in a closed system. If you take a hammer to the machine, the song does not play...In this view, there is no 'God' outside the brain trying to communicate; all spiritual experience is inside the brain."

But in the other view, where the brain is not a CD player, but a radio, everyone possesses "neural equipment" to receive the radio program in varying degrees. And while Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens may have hit the "mute" button, others hear the "broadcasts" every now and then, as do most of us in our even brief, but real, transcendent moments (Yes, I know that that human analogy does not bear up to theological scrutiny!). But the point of this analogy is simply to show that the "Sender" (namely, God) is separate from the receiver, so that the content does not originate in the brain.

In the end, Hagerty, who also is the author of "Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality," does at least concede that science cannot answer ultimate questions such as meaning, purpose, and destiny, when she observes, "Science cannot referee that question." When you net it all out, it really comes down to whether you believe that a materialistic view of the universe is adequate, or whether you believe that there is Something Greater that lies beyond this physical world, namely God.

I recall reading C. S. Lewis' apologetic work years ago, Miracles, in which he debunks Naturalism, that worldview which destroys the very idea of the transcendent, the sublime, and a world filled with awe and delight. Further, in that book, he asks a sobering question, "If my thoughts are determined by the random movements of atoms in my brain, then how can I know that my beliefs are true?" I would pose that same question to these materialists of our own day. I find it interesting that in recent months, A. N. Wilson, the brilliant novelist and biographer, who jettisoned the Christian faith for years, and who wrote a biography of Lewis, has returned to the fold. Wilson despised the "mere" Christianity of Lewis, and now we find that the prodigal has found his way home. Despite the absurdities of this life, and challenges to faith, he has chosen to rekindle his belief in God. He writes:

"But religion, once the glow of conversion had worn off, was not a matter of argument alone. It involves the whole person. Therefore I was drawn, over and over again, to the disconcerting recognition that so very many of the people I had most admired and loved, either in life or in books, had been believers. Reading Louis Fischer's Life of Mahatma Gandhi, and following it up with Gandhi's own autobiography, The Story of My Experiments With Truth, I found it impossible not to realise that all life, all being, derives from God, as Gandhi gave his life to demonstrate. Of course, there are arguments that might make you doubt the love of God. But a life like Gandhi's, which was focused on God so deeply, reminded me of all the human qualities that have to be denied if you embrace the bleak, muddled creed of a materialist atheist. It is a bit like trying to assert that music is an aberration, and that although Bach and Beethoven are very impressive, one is better off without a musical sense. Attractive and amusing as David Hume was, did he confront the complexities of human existence as deeply as his contemporary Samuel Johnson, and did I really find him as interesting?"

Wilson concludes his article:  "My departure from the Faith was like a conversion on the road to Damascus. My return was slow, hesitant, doubting. So it will always be; but I know I shall never make the same mistake again. Gilbert Ryle, with donnish absurdity, called God "a category mistake". Yet the real category mistake made by atheists is not about God, but about human beings. Turn to the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - "Read the first chapter of Genesis without prejudice and you will be convinced at once . . . ‘The Lord God formed man of
the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life'." And then Coleridge adds: "‘And man became a living soul.' Materialism will never explain those last words."