Flying Spaghetti Monsters

There is a fascinating interview with Richard Dawkins on salon.com. Dawkins is a biologist and an atheist. Although his take on the role of faith and religion in human life differs from mine, he offers an interesting and significant point of view.

I would not argue with his logic; I would simply note his assumptions. In the opening question of the interview, Dawkins is asked why he became an atheist. "I started getting doubts when I was about 9," he responded, "and realized that there are lots of different religions and they can't all be right."

This is precisely the assumption with which fundamentalists begin. There is one God, one truth, and thus only one religion can be true. This assumption can take different forms.

• One can assume that one religion has all the truth and that the others by implication have less of the truth (example: Joseph Ratzinger's discussion of the lesser status of Protestant Christianity in Dominus Iesus).

• One can assume that there are certain fundamental nuggets of truth and that religions that deny those nuggets are false religions.

• One can assume that adherents of one's religion will have eternal life and "go to heaven" and that everyone else won't.

I start with a different assumption entirely. Any religion offers glimpses of what is true, what is real. Different religions provide different glimpses. We are enriched by the existence of all of our faith traditions because each contributes to our comprehension of the unknown, the mysterious, the holy.

The same is true with science. Biologists try to gain understanding of the mystery of the universe by studying living creatures, chemists by studying how different substances react with each other, physicists by studying motion and gravity. Different methodologies, differents fields of investigation, but each field of science contributes to our comprehension of the universe.

The interviewer asks Dawkins, "What is so bad about religion?"

"Well, it encourages you to believe falsehoods, to be satisfied with inadequate explanations which really aren't explanations at all. And this is particularly bad because the real explanations, the scientific explanations, are so beautiful and so elegant."

The real explanations? Science offers a final, true, and complete explanation of life and the universe? Why is reseach still going on?

So beautiful and so elegant? This is the language of faith! Yes, there is beauty and elegance in the discoveries of a Galileo, a Newton, a Darwin. But there is also beauty and elegance in the insights of the writer of Job, in the passion for social justice of the Hebrew prophets, in the wisdom of Hillel, in the spiritual genius of Jesus of Nazareth. And though I am less familiar with other streams of faith tradition, I acknowledge the beauty and elegance in the paths set forth by Mohammed, by the Buddah, by Taoism and Hinduism and by Native American spirituality.

So, Richard Dawkins, I agree with you that some expressions of religion are dangerous. I agree with you that unquestioned faith can blind rather than illumine its adherents. I agree with you that there is a beautiful, fascinating, still-to-be-understood world and universe out there for humanity to explore. And I would suggest that when you use the language of beauty and elegance to speak of the discoveries of our minds, you are acknowledging that truth is not just of the mind. Truth affects us at a deeper place of our own being. Call that deeper place what you will, I think we are essentially in agreement!