Theological Questioning and Evil

At the prompting of a good friend, I am starting to revisit theological questions. Or more accurately, I am again look at religion and particularly theology from a philosophical perspective. My closer friends will know that I accept, to a fundamental degree, that the firm foundations of religious faith can never come from reason alone. I accept the need for Kierkegaard's "leap of faith". That said, any faith that is blind, that is reached without deep questioning and searching to me is fundamentally hollow, and perhaps even rotten, a soft center without any weight.

For me, one of the most difficult philosophical (let alone religious) problems that exist is the problem of evil. Not merely that there is evil in the world, but that it is often the completely innocent that suffer unjustly. Christianity though in particular has a much greater burden in relation to the problem of evil because they posit a God who is personal, whom you can seek comfort in, pray and talk to, who watches over each and every person just as he watches over the sparrow.

While a humanist can bite the bullet and say that injustice is often a brutal fact of a cold, uncaring world a religious person cannot. A volcano doesn't have intentions, nor an earthquake. It cares not for the fact that a town or a city or a school or tens of million people living nearby. But Christians cannot escape the question of how an all knowing, all powerful God could allow for those many thousands of innocents to die. Indeed, some psychologists have suggested that it is precisely in the fact of the inexplicable brutality of existence, in our need to find some kind of meaning in the very first place, that many turn to God as an answer.

As Peter Singer argues, I have never been able to find a satisfactory answer to this question short of saying that God's ways are unknowable, and any attempt by feeble human minds to understand God's intentions is akin to a monkey trying to grasp the depth and power of Shakespeare. I find this reply unsatisfactory. To begin with, the argument is circular. It attempts to argue that we are incapable of knowing God precisely by presupposing that God is omnipotent and omniscient as well as good, the very three things that seem incompatible together when we deal with unjust evil in the world. More damning for me is the denigration of reason. As I said earlier, any faith that I shall ever come to will be through constant thought, struggle and reflection. It is far far too easy, and correspondingly also too dangerous to just say God's reason is unknowable. Let us not seek to grapple or understand. Let us just accept.

Perhaps that is the crux of religion. Acceptance. Submission (which is the major tenant of Islam). Thy kingdom come they will be done, now and forever. Amen.

Catholic Church, Abuse and Homosexuality

The degree to which the Catholic Church engaged in a systematic cover-up of the sex abuse cases which are now being revealed is certainly still contentious. What is not is the series of ill-advised, and in some cases downright insulting remarks that have issued from the Vatican revealing a Church very much on the defensive.

First, the Pope's very own personal pastor made an allusion to the current series of scandals being akin to the persecution of the Jews. That this comparison is inaccurate is self-evident, that it is thoughtless, and an insult to the 6 million Jews who lost their lives in the holocaust is even more so. Many of the victims of the holocaust lost their freedom, their livelihoods and ultimately their lives as a result of blind hatred and pure prejudice. To equate their plight with a Church that is under attack due to the abuse of trust and criminal behavior of admittedly a minority of its members is not just bad taste but horrendously wrong. It is insulting not only to the Jews, but to the actual victims of abuse, and a pathetic attempt to paint the Church as a victim, instead of having it as a body give a fully accounting and reckoning for what has happened.

This especially is the case as more and more victims of abuse come forward with testimony, and with more circumstantial evidence showing the culpability of senior members of the church, who if they did not actively attempt to cover-up or circumvent the truth, at least chose to do nothing, which is a form of culpability in and of itself. The fact that church has repeatedly insisted that this is a private matter that will be dealt with internally, like many other instances of Vatican bureaucratic secrecy, has increased speculation that the church has something to hide. In any other circumstance, individuals facing such allegations would have to come before the open court to face their charges. Some opaque form of internal censure surely is not sufficient given the age of many of the victims when the abuse occurred, the abuse of positions of trust and power of the perpetrators, and the heinous nature of many of the acts. Those suspected of pedophilia should be investigated, and if found guilty, jailed.

Worse still, a senior Bishop, effectively the second most powerful man in the Vatican, has come out with the accusation that pedophilia is inextricably linked to homosexuality. The irony is, in the context of the Church, this might very well be the case. That it is not so for the wider homosexual and transgender community may be testament to the lasting damage of the Church's outmoded stance on sex and sexuality.

That there is a link between pedophilia and homsexuality in the Catholic Church context, is ironically, very much due to the fact that taking up the robe is seen as a last resort to many individuals unable to reconcile their religious beliefs which condemns homosexual acts in any form, and their own innate tendencies. Facing the notion that their inclinations and desires are inherently wrong, they choose instead to renounce desire altogether, taking vows of chastity, hoping that purity can be found in abject self-denial.

I am not saying that all the pedophiles and sex abusers were homosexual, in fact, far from it, something that already shows the inaccuracy and plain idiocy of Cardinal Bertone's remarks. What is does serve to underline is that abject self-denial, which is in line with the Church's notion of the sexual act as a kind of impurity can be signficantly damaging if the repression results in systematic abuse. This leaving aside the psychological trauma faced by some of the clergy, particularly the homosexual ones in this form of repressive self-denial.

How ironic then that the current Pope was the author of the last major Catholic statement on homosexuality, which trots out the usual cliches on the matter. Violence against them is no doubt wrong, but we should never detract from its inherent wrongness. Homosexual inclinations itself is not a sin - presumably engaging in homosexual acts itself would constitue such, but it "is a strong tendency ordered towards an intrinsic moral evil". Love the sinner, hate the sin.

Indeed, because it is a moral disorder, it prevents achieving personal fulfilment and happiness. As such "The Church, in rejecting erroneous opinions regarding homosexuality, does not limit but rather defends personal freedom". So, telling individuals that what many of them perceive (or feel) to be a fundamental part of their identity is an intrinsic evil they are extending the sphere of personal freedom. By condemning a whole group of individuals as intrinsically morally evil (and then stating that of course, they should still have our love), they are promoting their best interest. I struggle to see how.

Attempting to accept or condone homosexual beliefs is seen as seeking to undermine the Church. Those who represent the view of acceptance are ignoring the teaching of the Church. Supporting gay rights on grounds of equality is mistaken and an attempt at manipulation given that homosexuality "may threaten the lives and well-being of a great number of people". How exactly? By undermining the church?

In contrast, we have the Catholic church's stance on homosexuality, and indeed their views on sex in general including contraception. What harm has that done? Just ask the numerous victims who have been sexually abused by Catholic clergy in whom they had the utmost trust, and were often allowed to continually abuse young children systematically over an extended period of time. Just ask the young, confused homosexual men and women who are not able to reconcile their sexual identities with a faith that tells them they are inherently sinful. Tell that to an African woman who is infected with HIV because the Church tells her husband that using condoms is a moral wrong, and he uses that as an excuse to have unprotected sex with her. There is real harm, here. Harm that the Catholic Church must answer for. Harm that it can no longer deny and hide away. Harm that will not dissipate from feeble attempts to paint the church as a victim, or indeed as a bastion under siege.

Atheist Bus Ads

I was very interested, and somewhat amused to read about a new campaign, led by a group of humanists in Britain and supported by such well know luminaries as Richard Dawkins and A.C Grayling, to fund ads on buses calling into question the existence of God. The campaign, which has raised over 250,000 pounds so far, involves a bus ad stating: "There's probably no God, so stop worrying and enjoy your life". I applaud the campaign for coming up with a creative and open way to question religious belief, and the seeming monopoly of the religious communities in propagating their views. That it was done without the usual condescension and stridency of previous attacks of religion by atheists (Dawkins being a prime example) is surely to be commended.

What was predictable was the response from some religious groups. Christian Voice called the ads "offensive to Christians and others believing in a single God". Adding considerably to the irony is the fact that the campaign was conceived by Ariane Sherine in response to adverts on buses funded by religious organizations, notably "Jesus said" ads, and others providing a website URL which propounded such gems of wisdom as the threat of "spending all eternity in torment in hell" unless one believed in Jesus. Sherine wanted to find a way to propagate the humanist message without being as blunt as the Christians. If she had seriously wanted to match like with like, she should have come up with slogans like "God is a figment of your imagination, stop being delusional" or "Grow up and send God the way of the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus". Clearly tact was lacking in one of the advertising campaigns, and it is evident which one it was.

It is worth noting that there were varied responses from Christians to the ads. Some groups welcomed them, saying that it would re-open debate on metaphysical matters, which have far too often taken a back seat to practical ones in our modern consumerist society. However, the response from Christian Voice is telling because it only serves to underline the gross disparity facing humanists and atheists with regards to spreading their views. Any attempt to question the organized religion or faith is seen as offensive or derogatory or an attack on the foundations of British society and heritage. It is not clear to me why the church, or any other religious institution should be entitled to such a free ride. A Christian quoting bible verses on a street corner is evangelising, a humanist and atheist attempting to put forward their views in the same locale is seen as inciting religious hatred and insulting believers. This double standard is wrong, and must be stopped.

A even more hilarious response was an attempt by one Christian group to have the ad campaign stopped by lodging a formal complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), complaining that the atheist bus ads didn't meet the regulatory body's requirements on grounds of "truthfulness and substantiation". Without any irony whatsoever, the letter to the ASA claimed that the ads "completely fails to reflect the true state of the current scientific argument" regarding God. Since God exists, any attempt to question that notion must necessarily be false advertising. According to them, the evidence of God - in the form of "personal experience, complexity, interdependence and the beauty and detail of the natural world" - has proved largely incontrovertible, and made the statement "God probably doesn't exist" patently false. Adding to the letter's ridiculousness, it was soon revealed that large chunks of it were cut and pasted directly from websites. It seems that the group isn't even capable of independent thought, or aware of copyright regulations.

One excellent suggestion has been made regarding the atheist bus campaign. James Ball, who was a fellow PPEist at Trinity College, Oxford, suggested using this campaign as a controlled experiment to prove the efficacy (or not) or religion. We now have a number of buses going about London with atheist ads, and a number of buses going about London with religious ones. We also have a large control group (buses advertising cosmetics, shoes and the like). Let's track the punctuality of all the various buses and see if a larger proportion of the buses advertising the existence of God run on time as compared to questioning his existence. As James rightly pointed out, beating London traffic is surely something that requires divine intervention in some shape or form.

Oxford and Religion

It seems that Oxford inspires spiritual reflection. Tony Blair famously developed his deep religious grounding (when not moonlighting as the lead singer of a rock band) in the midst of a Law degree at St Johns. C.S Lewis, the famous Christian apologetic, was struck by the incontrovertibly true nature of Christ while sitting on a bus traveling through Oxford down the Cowley Road. A recent issue of Oxford today featured two other individuals - the popular writer on religion Karen Armstrong and the Rabbi Lionel Blue - whose times at Oxford were similarly suffused by spiritual and personal crisis.

In the case of Karen Armstrong, she arrived at Oxford as a nun from a strict Roman Catholic order (pre-Vatican II). The intellectual freedom that is the foundation of an Oxford education soon began to jar with the expectations of submission and blind obedience that characterized her role in the nunnery, precipitating an existential crisis that led to her leaving the cloisters. Lionel Blue arrived in Oxford as an atheist (since the age of five when he had prayed for the deaths of Adolf Hitler and Oswald Moseley - the prayers were not answered) but soon faced a personal crisis prompted by his repressed homosexuality. He literally stumbled on religion while sheltering from the rain at St Giles and the Quakers he met provided the grounding and impetus that he needed to complete his degree.

What it telling to me about these two individuals, is their refusal to cling to dogmatic faith. Armstrong calls belief a "ludicrous red herring". To her, the essence of religious experience is "not accepting dubious propositions" but rather compassion. Armstrong emphasizes that it is "compassion that brings you to a state of transcendence by dethroning you from the centre of your world and putting another in your place". For Rabbi Blue, who characterizes himself as a 'religious free ranger' as opposed to a 'battery believer', genuine spirituality is achieved when it changes you for the better. For him, faith is genuine and not self indulgent if it makes you kinder, more generous and provides greater self-knowledge.

I didn't quite achieve the religious epiphany that C.S Lewis did during my time at Oxford, but I was prompted to give religion serious thought and consideration. During my time there I spoke with many thoughtful individuals - Catholic, Anglican, Church of Scotland and much else beside, indeed the antithesis of the hard-headed, dogmatic right wing evangelical that is the target of so many recent polemics against religion ranging from Dawkins to Hitchens.

While I have been giving religion serious consideration, it has often come in the form of intellectual theorizing about faith - whether God can really exist, and other such ontological questions. One lesson I might have learned from Oxford, and indeed from Armstrong and Blue, is that this intellectualism can only bring you so far - and that the true basis of religion is not considered theorizing (though that must surely play a part) but compassion, generosity and kindness.

Blaise Pascal once wrote that - the heart hath its reasons that reason cannot know. That, to my mind, is a powerful summation of faith.