Religion and Reason
An Introduction
by
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Life is a compelling mystery for everyone. Most human beings, especially those not spending their whole lives trying to survive, seem to need, almost viscerally, answers to their own mysterious existence and death. Often, they also experience life- or health-threatening situations and, if the revelation offers relief from the threats, they can enjoy that relief in believing them. As an unforeseen result, humans are also notorious for placing their belief in ‘revelations’ made to themselves or others that turn out to have many falsehoods in them. Claims of receiving a revelation from God, even when large numbers of people believe it, is not proof that such a revelation really occurred. No person who adores Isis and Osiris, once worshipped by many, can be found today as the many gods and revelations come and go.
The rescue from an untenable lifestyle, personal need or advantage, the belief of persons they respect, or the general assent of a culture they live in can cause quite innocent people to override cautions of reason and believe misinformation. They may even do this after it is proven unreasonable or false or has a highly questionable origin. When obvious advantages for peaceful existence, the acquisition of wealth, or various personal advantages are included in a false “revelation”, sometimes whole cultural groups have done this. All revelation must be subject to reason and, to be satisfied in living an authentic human life, convincing truth alone must be the goal. Sometimes items held for many years as “revealed” by a religion were discovered to have been wrong from the start and had to be rejected. .
Honest motivations for belief can even be found beneath the most outlandish claims of religious revelations and insights by charlatans. Throughout this discussion, the mystery of life must be always kept in mind. Scoffing at attempts to find meaning in life and the dismissal of religion in general are not intelligent activities. The absolutely amazing coming together of the stuff of our own bodies, minds, and wills from our fiery cosmic origins should never be forgotten during discussions of religion. The wonders found in nature that attract the many visitors to National Parks or those uncovered by scientists delving deeply into the natural sciences, all invite the human seeker to explain their origin and composition. Looked at deeply, Nature appears to have a magnificent Intelligence behind it and, reasonably, no such profound Intelligence would create meaning-seeking minds for petty amusement and their ultimate frustration. That would make the Creator of reason unreasonable, and the Originator of “good”, “bad.” .
Pressed on the point of the mysteriousness of our arrival, Albert Einstein said that saying it was just an “accident” of cosmic forces was like saying “an unabridged dictionary resulted from an explosion in a print shop.” Another noted scientist chimed in later that it would be like saying “a 747 airplane resulted from a tornado going through a junkyard.” If this all happened by design, one must face the question of a Designer or fall back into the chaos of a meticulously ordered, gradually unfolding Universe without an organizer. (Incidentally, this kind of dealing with a question is what is meant by “philosophizing.”) .
Moreover, considering the linear, directional nature of evolution, a “dark” “spiritual” soul that survives death appears as a natural outcome of the process. After the biosphere developed from the land, atmosphere, bathysphere, and so on, the plants developed. Then the animals came and moved through the gamut of simple, one-celled animals to the more complex, to the ones with outside skeletons, to inside ones, to brains, to the intelligent humans. This is wonderful, obviously progressive order! The existence of a mindful creature that can live, know, love, and communicate without the present physical body seems more like an inevitability than just a vague possibility. At any rate, the mystery is palpable and confronts all of us. .
In addition to engaging our human consideration of mysterious origins and natural revulsion at dying, we also seem to need an explanation for the pain and strife that accompanies living a human life, especially for those who do not seem to deserve their sufferings. Being born with confused genitalia, contorted or missing limbs, blindness and such, raise questions about life itself. This is especially true for children and other obvious innocents. Any revelatory event would be expected to provide some meaning to all this. .
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About the Book
Our human nature incessantly challenges us to explain the great mystery of whence we came and why we are here at all. We simply do not want to die while saying to ourselves, “Well, that was interesting; I wonder what it was all about.” Religions have always flourished because they offer answers. But which, if any, is the right one to choose? This book examines the origin and nature of religion and offers a path of wisdom to find reasonable answers to the mystery of it all. The Hebrew prophet Isaiah once relayed as a message from God the exhortation, “Come, let us reason together!” (Isa.1:18). This book is an invitation to do just that.
About the Author
Although a Roman Catholic by rearing and education, I was never tempted into business or to become a clergy person, I began my higher education with an Honor’s bachelor degree having a double major in Classical Languages (Latin and Greek) and Philosophy at Xavier University of Ohio. A teaching fellowship from Saint Louis University brought experience teaching Philosophy to undergraduates, a Master of Arts degree in Philosophy with a thesis on human understanding, and some work on a doctorate. Marriage and the arrival of children caused an interruption in studies while I taught Philosophy in the evening back at my undergraduate college. By day I became a Systems Analyst, helping to convert a large life insurance company from a punch-card system to the then newly-created digital computers. Life took an unusual turn when, after reading a Time Magazine article (June, 1961, “Religion”), I was accepted into an experimental program formed at the University of San Francisco to train professional lay evangelists for the Roman Catholic Church. A year of graduate studies, mostly in theology, followed and then I spent four years as an evangelist in California parishes. We evangelists, all college graduates and at least twenty-eight years of age, were directed specifically to try to convert the un-churched and I led more than a hundred adult persons to Baptism. This bold experiment was interrupted by the Roman Catholic Ecumenical Council, Vatican II, and parishes became more focused on updating than reaching out for converts. Always interested in theology more than philosophy, I took the opportunity to return to graduate studies when, just at that time, a doctoral program was opened for laity at Marquette University. With a good grasp of Greek, I was eager to do a doctoral dissertation in the Gospel of St. John. Fate intervened. The man on the faculty who led such studies took a leave of absence and I had no time or money for any delays. I turned to my Lutheran, Harvard-educated professor of Reformation Theology and he led me through a dissertation in the young Martin Luther. I ended up a Roman Catholic with a grasp on Reformation theology. I also taught a course in the New Testament at a local women’s college during this time. The program that I had entered to become an evangelist had meanwhile been invited to become an affiliate of the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California, as The School of Applied Theology, offering a professional Master’s degree in Applied Theology. Because I was finishing my Ph.D. studies and had four years of experience as an evangelist, I was invited to Berkeley to become Dean of the new program. I did that for the next twenty-nine years, President/Dean for the last nine. Besides directing the degree program, I taught theology, primarily on a graduate level, at the Union as well as at several other universities as a Visiting Professor. Motivated by personal efforts to engage adults, many highly educated, in the reasonableness of Christianity, I have made a specialty of examining what is happening when people “convert” to a religion. When I “preached the Gospel”, I seemed always to be only half preaching, the other half being a rational presentation, almost like a college class. This may be somewhat evident in this treatment In spite of my intellectual pursuits, my feet have, perforce, been kept firmly planted on the ground. With my spouse of over fifty years, we have raised eight children, all college graduates. Spurred by recent events wherein people have pursued wealth as if it were something holy or have suicide-bombed innocent women and children as if it were something God would bless, I was moved to write this essay. I pray that no one be scandalized by what I have written.