Contact

In the fall of 2026, Chris Graney, an astronomer at the Vatican Observatory, argued that the universe of at least 2 trillion galaxies (according to a study in 2016 using the orbital Hubble Space Telescope) probably contains few, if any, planets capable of supporting intelligent life. This claim may come as a surprise, given the gargantuan number of possibly habitable exoplanets in the universe and the associated likelihood of alien life out there. The overlay of theology onto science, as if the latter’s criteria were nugatory and thus dismissible relative to religious doctrine, is problematic because the two domains are arguably distinct and even unique, even though they are related. Such a category mistake is highlighted in the film, Contact (1997), in which religious figures (who have related political roles in the White House) impose monotheist criteria in the selection of an astronaut for space travel, which is primarily a scientific enterprise.

The full essay is at "Contact."

Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist

Decades before dying while doing battle with the demon possessing Regan NacNeil in The Exorcist (1973), Rev. Lankester Merrin successfully extracts the same demon from a young man in Kenya. An African chief (or medicine man) tells Merrin at the end of Dominion: The Prequel to the Exorcist (2005) that he has made a rather bad enemy of the demon, which was not done with the priest. We know from The Exorcist that the demon will eventually kill the priest, but that is by no means the final word on a distinctively religious battle because in that domain, the human soul is eternal rather than necessarily tethered to a corporeal body. It is important, moreover, not to reduce religion to one of its aspects, or, even worse, to the stuff of any other domain, including the supernatural. Dominion reduces Christianity to one belief-claim and relies on supernaturalism to validate the religious phenomena in the film.

The full essay is at "Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist."

Confucius on the Ethics of Religious Knowledge

A contemporary scholar of Chinese philosophy wrote, “myths often contain an element of historical truth, and what passes for historical truth often has mythical elements.”[1] By implication, not everything that seems to be historically valid in a religious story is, for it is fair-game in that genre to assuage and even invent “historical” events to make theological points. Lest it be thought that histories are written objectively, it should not be forgotten that historical accounts are written by human beings, and thus are subject to our limitations, including bias. Nevertheless, religious stories, or myth, and historical accounts are different genres of writing, and have very different purposes and criteria. To conflate the two genres, or, moreover, any other domain with that of religion, is to deny the uniqueness of religion (as well as that of other, even related domains). Religion and ethics, for instance, are two, admittedly very closely related, domains of human experience.

Ethics is the field concerned with what a person should do, whereas religion goes beyond conduct to include, and be based on, the experience of transcendence that goes beyond, or is oriented to, beyondness. Religious mystics, such as Ramakrishna in the 1800s and Gertrude in a medieval monastery, would in all likelihood agree with Pseudo-Dionysius’s claim that religion goes beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and sensibility (i.e., emotions). More precisely, religion, while being in our world, transcends it and does so inherently. Knowledge of the source, or infinite remainder, of religion inherently eludes us finite, corporeal beings, whereas knowledge currently beyond our grasp in domains such as politics, economics, the weather, and the other sciences can potentially be known by us. This qualitative epistemological difference is just one way of grasping why the domain of religion is unique, and thus warrants its own criteria, rather than any overreaching from historians and scientists. To be sure, the arrow goes both ways; distinctly religious criteria cannot legitimately dominate in the fields of history and natural science. Such overreaching in both directions has been the blight of religion especially in the last millennium at least in Europe.

To be sure, certain other domains are very closely related to that of religion. After all, five of the Ten Commandments contain ethical content, albeit crucially of a divine command rather than a human’s ethical theory. Recognizing that divine commands are not bound in principle to our notions of conduct that is ethical (or unethical), as Kierkegaard makes clear in Fear and Trembling in which Abraham’s attempted religious sacrifice of Isaac trumps the ethical verdict of attempted murder, it is legitimate to include religion in ethical analysis.

For example, whether knowledge is of the transcendent sort or merely potential, it is important not to overreach in what we think we know. This vice may be called epistemological arrogance. In fact, to Confucius, “knowledge (zhi) is to know what one knows and doesn’t know (2.17, 19.5). Such knowledge, in turn, enables one to learn (xue) what one doesn’t know.”[2] The arrogance in thinking one knows more than one does diminishes the knowledge that a person can potentially acquire. Hence, Confucius states in Analects 9.8, “The Master said, ‘Do I possess an all-knowing cognizance? I do not. If a simple fellow asks me a question, my mind at first is a complete blank, and I have to knock at both sides [of the question] until everything has been considered [and some clarity begins to emerge].’”[3] That is, Confucius (Kongzi) “did not think that he must be right; he was not obdurate; he was not self-centered.”[4] Intellectual humility is like a cup viewing itself as empty and thus as able to be filled; additional knowledge must overflow from an already-full cup.

Such humility is especially valuable when it is applied to knowledge in the religious domain, for to lapse there into overreaching as if a person could be omniscient (i.e., all-knowing), is to engage in self-idolatry. This is not so regarding knowledge in other domains. Therefore, the method that Confucius urges for earthly knowledge in those other domains pertains all the more when the human mind enters the domain of religion. Incidentally, to project self-idolatry onto intellectual arrogance in another domain is an example of religious criteria (and meaning) overreaching at the expense of the native criteria (and meaning) of the other domains.

I contend that with respect to religion, given the mind’s proclivity to overreach epistemologically (i.e., thinking one knows more than one does in a certain subject), it is prudent to be  ever vigilant in distinguishing religious belief, which is compatible with faith, from knowledge of divine things, which excludes faith and is ultimately self-contradictory because the essence of divinity is inherently beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and emotion. Analects 2.17 refers to a statement ostensibly made by Confucius himself: “The Master said, ‘You [Zilu], do you know what I have been trying to teach you? To say that you know something when you know it and to say that you do not know something when you do not know it—this is true knowing[zhi].”[5] To be able to say what one knows and admit what one does not (yet) know is premised on knowing where the line between the two is. This in turn is premised on valuing knowledge. In Analects 19.5, “Zixia said, ‘To be aware each day of what you still don’t know and to remember after a month what you were able to absorb—this is proof of your love for learning.’”[6] A love of learning can be intuited by a person’s carefulness in making clear to others the limits of one’s knowledge.

In the religious domain, all that translates into resisting the temptation to presume to know not only what God is in itself (i.e., the essence of divinity), but also what God wants or wills and furthermore that God’s will must surely be behind some event in the world. To know that God caused an earthquake, for instance, lies beyond our ability to discern, and yet such overreaching has not been uncommon. To know that it is God’s will that a close relative dies at a certain time is similarly presumptuous, epistemologically, whereas to have faith, and thus a belief, that the loved one is in a better place fits with the human situs in the realm of religion. In stark contrast, to declare that the person is in a better place is dogmatic, and may say more about the psychology of the person making the statement than anything religious. Whereas a person enunciating more about economics or politics than the person actually knows is just pedantic, presuming to know that which lies beyond the limits of human cognition, perspective, and emotions in principle is of a sort of arrogance that is foisted by an utter self-contradiction: knowledge of that which is inherently beyond the limits of human knowledge. In trying to be akin to God, a human being flies too high and thus inevitably falls on one’s face. Humanity’s grasp of what divinity actually is may be more misguided than we assume. How, for example, is divine, theological love qualitatively different (i.e., unique) from the garden-variety love evinced typically in our world? It is easy to draw on psychology and metaphysics instead of looking below to a distinctly theological sort of love. Augustine’s notion of caritas love in his Confessions is soaked in emotion, and the Christian notion of divine agape love as self-emptying love is typically thought of metaphysically rather than distinctly theologically.

It is ironic that Confucius’s epistemological ethic can be so useful in how a person can approach religion as such. To be clear, in the Analects, Confucius is discussing knowledge that a person can potentially have. Such knowledge is not of the transcendent; in the religious domain, knowledge extends only so far and then belief must take over. This does not mean that the method proposed by Confucius cannot be used by people in discerning the limits of knowledge in matters of religion. The human susceptibility to over-reach in such matters even though faith is tacitly sacrificed in the process is so commonly exploited that more vigilance in distinguishing what one knows from what one does not know is needed. Divine revelation is by definition pristine, but it should not be forgotten that it must go through our atmosphere—or as through a smoky, stained-glass window—to reach us. Put another way, we are hardly pristine receptors, and yet we presume so to be even as we implicitly import psychology and metaphysics in essentially remaking divinity into something more familiar to the mind. David Hume’s The Natural History of Religion gets at the anthropomorphism that the human mind inevitably hangs on divine simplicity. For example, it is much more difficult for us to grasp the Christian theological notion of the Logos than its incarnation as a god-man because the latter is literally more familiar to us than is God’s creative rationale in Creation. To transcend a familiar mask of eternity—to use Joseph Campbell’s term—and be suspended in the mystery of the transcendent that lies inherently beyond our reach (not to mention our human form) is admittedly scary, but also so necessary to getting past religion in human terms.[7]

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1. Bryan W. Van Norden, Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy (Indianapolis: Hackett Pub., 2011), p. 2.
2. Mary Sim, “Why Confucius’ Ethics is a Virtue Ethics,” The Routledge Companion to Virtue Ethics, ed.s Michael A. Slote and Lorraine Besser-Jones (New York: Routledge, 2015), 63-76, p. 70.
3. Confucius, The Analects, trans. Annping Chin (New York: Penguin Books, 2014), p. 133.
4. Analects 9.4, in Confucius, The Analects, trans. Annping Chin (New York: Penguin Books, 2014), p. 131.
5. Confucius, The Analects, trans. Annping Chin (New York: Penguin Books, 2014), p. 20.
6. Ibid., p. 311.
7. This is essentially the thesis of my treatise, Godliness and Greed, which is published by Lexington Books. In my next book, God’s Gold, which unlike the first is written for a non-academic readership, I extend my thinking to how an anthropomorphic religion can be retained without the pitfalls of rendering the divine in so anthropomorphic terms.

The Physician: Medical Science and God

In the 11^th century, Christians were not welcome in Persia, so in the film, The Physician (2013), Rob Cole, a Christian, pretends to be Jewish in order to travel from Western Europe to study at the medical school of Ibn Sina, a famous physician in Isfahan. He eventually reveals his religion as that of “the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” when he is on trial before the local imam. The Jews there doubtlessly feel used and betrayed. As interesting as interreligious controversy can be, I contend that the nature of Cole’s crime is more significant from the standpoint of religion itself. In short, the film illustrates what bad effects are likely to come from committing a category mistake with respect to religion and another domain. Whether conflating distinct domains or erasing the boundary between them, category mistakes had diminished the credibility of religion as being over-reaching by the time that the film was made. As for the matter of interreligious differences, the sheer pettiness by which the three Abrahamic religions that share the same deity have made mole hills into untraversable mountains is hardly worthy of attention, whereas that which makes religion as a domain of phenomena unique and thus distinct from other, even related domains, is in need of further work. The film could have done more in this regard.

The full essay is at "The Physician." 

The Exorcist Extrapolated: Ministering to the Devil as "Love Thy Enemies."

One of the most iconic films of the horror-film genre, The Exorcist (1973) focuses on the duality of good and evil that the film’s director, William Friedkin, maintained is in a constant struggle in all of us. The dialogue between the two priests performing the exorcism on the one side and the Devil possessing Regan on the other not only reveal the duality, but also the essence of evil itself. Once this essence is grasped, interesting questions can be asked that are distinctly theological, as distinct from modernity’s trope of evil portrayed in terms of, and even reduced to, supernatural movements of physical objects. The decadent materialist version of the theological domain stems from modernity’s bias in favor of materialism and empiricism. In other words, highlighting supernatural physics as being foremost in representing the religious realm is how secularity sidelines religion, rather than how religion itself is. The bias of modern society is very clear in the film as the “professionals” go through alternative explanations first from the field of medicine, privileging the somatic (physical) and then the psychological domains of medicine. In other words, the narrative establishes (or reflects) a hierarchy of three qualitatively different levels of descending validity: the somatic is primary, and only then the psychological, and, if the first two do not furnish an explanation, then, and only then, are we to turn to the theological as metaphysically (i.e., supernaturally) real primarily shown by physical objects defying the laws of physics. Science, rather than religion, is thus still in the driver’s seat. The bias in favor of materialism is in the assumption that only after feasible hypotheses from modern medicine are nullified can theological explanations be considered (as credible). In this way, the film reflects the hegemony of materialism that has taken hold since the Enlightenment, and the relegation of the theological as “magical” supernaturalism, as in a bed levitating of objects flying around Regan’s bedroom. The essence of evil is instead interior. If religion is a matter of the heart, then how could evil be otherwise?

The full essay is at "The Exorcist."

On the Infallibility of the Pope: The Assumption of Mary

What does it mean for a human being to be vested with infallibility in a religious organization even though like all humans, that one is a finite being? Ironically, it is often the ignorant who presume that they cannot be wrong (i.e., that they are infallible). That is something else entirely. The sort of infallibility granted by the Roman Catholic Church on its pope does not mean that he knows everything or can’t be wrong about anything. The infallibility is circumscribed to cover only religious doctrine. In short, Roman Catholicism gives the Pope the authority to promulgate theological truths that go beyond, yet are consistent with, the Bible. A pope cannot say that Jesus is no longer to be regarded as the Son of God, for such a claim obviously contradicts the canonical gospels. Yet more could be said that is consistent with Jesus’ divinity, and even about Mary, whose womb is regarded as blessed. The “Mother of God” is itself a title that practically invites further theological elaboration beyond the material on her that is in the Gospels. I have in mind here the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, which is celebrated by the Roman Catholic Church on August 15 annually. The feast-day is not a minor holy day for Catholics, for they are obligated to attend Mass. Indeed, a human body being admitted into a spiritual state is no small matter theologically. 

Aad de Lange, the chief financial officer of the archdiocese of Galveston-Houston in Texas, took to social media on the day in 2023 to give a synopsis of how the holy day came to be. “On November 1, 1950, Pius XII defined the dogma of the Assumption. Thus he solemnly proclaimed that the belief whereby the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the close of her earthly life, was taken up, body and soul, into the glory of heaven, definitively forms part of the deposit of faith, received from the Apostles. To avoid all that is uncertain the Pope did not state either the manner or the circumstances of time and place in which the Assumption took place--only the fact of the Assumption of Mary, body and soul, into the glory of heaven, is the matter of definition." Having degrees both in business and theology, I’m glad to see a CFO being so well-versed in theological-speak. Indeed, his paragraph is dense, so I shall endeavor to unpack it by putting the theological verbiage in contemporary terms.

In particular, I have in mind the telling of a story. I used to tell kids stories when I worked at two summer camps. As the storyteller, I could invent new characters and elaborate on existing characters as long as I did not contradict the story so far. For example, I could say that a group of kids alone in the woods came upon a bear; bears are consistent with forests. I could not then refer to the bear as a wolf unless I obviate the contradiction by saying that a witch changed the bear into a wolf. Furthermore, I could not start referring to the kids as adults without a magical explanation.

As a student at Yale, I took a course called storytelling that was taught at the divinity school. At the time, I just assumed that the course was for preaching, for who doesn’t enjoy a good story, even in church. But then I read Hans Frei’s book, Eclipse of the Biblical Narrative. Frei had been on Yale’s faculty, but unfortunately that was before I matriculated. In his book, he urges readers not to get in the way of the story in the Gospels. Take the story in without thinking about whether the characters existed historically or whether a miracle was an empirical event. Religious truth is distinct from historical facts; faith narratives and historical accounts are distinct literary genres. The writers of the Gospels would have known that they were writing faith narratives, so historical events could legitimately be appropriated or even invented to make theological points. For example, that gospels differ on when the Last Supper takes place—notice I’m not using the past tense!—relative to Passover to make different theological points. In Matthew, which was likely oriented to the Jews, it is no accident that the Last Supper takes place on the night that commemorates the sacrifice of lambs in Egypt so the death would pass over the Hebrew houses. Jesus is to be viewed as the sacrificial lamb who takes away the sins of the world by his willing sacrifice. This is the point, and interrupting the story to ask whether the Last Supper “really” happened is a diversion. Being eternal, religious truth is not affected by time, and is in this sense outside of history. Conflating the object of a faith narrative (i.e., getting at or uncovering religious truth) with that of a historical account (i.e., getting at the who, what, and where in history) not only evinces a category mistake, but also, especially since the Enlightenment, risks the subordination of religious truth to historical fact.

In his paragraph, Aad de Lange obfuscates the two genres. After pointing out that the dogma of the Assumption was added by Pope Pius to the then-extant deposit of faith, de Lange treats the new doctrine in terms of a historical event: “the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the close of her earthly life, was taken up.” It is as if being a historical event is needed to legitimate or justify the religious truth being promulgated. This “need” is merely a symptom of our age in which scientific fact dominates and is the default for certainty. To eclipse even the extended faith narrative, which has Mary go to heaven in body as well as soul, by asking whether or not it was an event that happened historically is to tacitly treat the story-telling as somehow insufficient or subordinate in its own genre. The dynamic, or narrative “arc,” in the Gospels being interrupted by interlarding exogenous questions, the reader (or ancient hearer) undoubtedly has trouble zeroing in on the unique sort of validity that religious truth enjoys. Such truth itself is best grasped from a story if it is not interrupted with distractions.

De Lange unwittingly provides us with a useful way to understand the distinction between historical events and religious truth: “the Pope did not state either the manner or the circumstances of time and place in which the Assumption took place—only the fact of the Assumption of Mary, body and soul, into the glory of heaven, is the matter of definition.” Although de Lange clearly views the Assumption as having occurred empirically (i.e., historically), he does depict religious truth in its own terms—that of definition. A historian would not find the language, “the matter of definition,” to be that which historians use, for they are interested in “the manner or the circumstances of time and place” rather than definitions of truth.

The Pope can be regarded as the chief story-teller as regards religious truth in the Roman Catholic Church. As long as he does not contradict the story so far, he is free to go on telling the story as the spirit and his mind moves him. As long as the dictates of logic (e.g., non-contradiction) are maintained, any storyteller cannot be wrong as one develops a story in progress. In the story of the kids in the woods, I am adding that a helicopter flew in at the last minute and rescued the kids. Once I add this elaboration, someone listening can’t very well say, “No! That doesn’t happen. The kids get eaten.” Notice that I use the present tense—doesn’t—because I am referring to what goes on in a story, rather than to an historical account. Were the listener to say, “No! That didn’t happen,” I would reply, “Of course it didn’t; it’s a story. Now, what does it mean?” Similarly, detecting the leitmotif of a faith narrative distinct from trying to ascertain whether a certain event (or character) existed in history.

To be sure, were the Crucifixion only in the story rather than also a historical event, then it could not be said that a sacrifice happened that restored humanity to God’s graces. Jesus actually suffering is necessary to “pay the price” that no one else would pay. If the only suffering is in the Passion Story in the Gospels, then the reconciliation of humanity with God is also only part of a story. Furthermore, the Incarnation is depicted as God piercing or entering human history—God made flesh. Indeed, the Immaculate Conception of Mary (i.e., she is conceived so as to be without sin) can also be regarded thusly.

Christians are in the unenviable position of believing in religious truth that hinges on historical persons events that historians have so far not been able to determine to have lived and occurred. Faith narratives do not count as historical sources because the writers of such stories can legitimately use, modify, and even invent historical figures and events in the service of making theological points. The risk involved in believing that the Word became flesh as a person who lived historically/empirically is that religious truth comes to depend on history even though truth itself is eternal and thus does not depend on time.[1] In other words, such faith can be in historical fact, which is an oxymoron as facts are known rather than believed and thus of religious belief. In contemporary parlance, it is said that a person is entitled to one’s own opinion but not to one’s own facts. Facts are solid, and thus deemed superior to mere subjective opinions. The danger in subordinating religious truth to historical facts is that truth is relegated as mere opinion.

Just as thinking during a movie in a theater about what to cook later breaks off, or eclipses, the suspension of disbelief that allows a person to “enter” a movie’s story-world, so too does thinking about matters outside of a faith narrative as it is being read. Let the story speak to you so you might grasp the religious truth from the continuity or flow of the narrative. Let history take care of itself. This is not to commit to any answer concerning whether someone existed or something actually happened. Even using words like really and actually for historical claims implicitly subordinates religious truth. Transcending temporal things, truth is really and actually existent. In an age in which some people insist on imposing their ideological opinions as if facts of reason, such presumptuousness shows up much better relative to a discernment of religious truth from a faith narrative.

The infallibility of a storyteller in the telling of a story is much different than the arrogance on ideological stilts that indicates self-idolatry. To be sure, such idolatry can be used to impose even religious truth. At a Roman Catholic church in my hometown, the pastor said in his homily, “Don’t worry if you don’t understand the Marian mysteries; just obey.” That is to say, just obey the pastor. Pope Benedict promoted the pastor to bishop.  Such a decision falls outside of a pope’s story-telling infallibility (as does that Pope’s decision when he was an archbishop to transfer rather than defrock a sexually-molesting priest), and perhaps even outside the purview of the Holy Spirit.  

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1. I deliberately use the word, “Word,” as the second person/manifestation of the Trinity (i.e., the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) to de-anthropomorphize God. To anthropomorphize something is to ascribe human qualities or attributes to it. Doing so in the case of the second person of the trinity risks understating the qualitative difference (i.e., difference in kind rather than degree) that exists between the Creator and creation, and thus the eternal God and temporal history. In my book, God’s Gold, is suggest that viewing God in terms too similar to us (i.e., anthropomorphizing the transcendent) may be one reason why the assumptions of theologians on wealth and profit-seeking in relation to greed have shifted from anti- to pro-wealth through the centuries. If the second person of the Trinity is viewed too much like the flesh in the Incarnation, then it’s easier to overstate the theological significance of the stuff of Earth more generally, including wealth. From such an overstatement, it was written in the Italian Renaissance that a person must be rich to exercise the Christian virtue of munificence (rather than merely liberality). Cosimo de Medici, who made his fortune from usury, a mortal sin, was absolved by Pope Eugene IV by making a large gift to the Church. Had de Medici not been rich, he could not have afforded to pay for the renovation of a monastery. So it turns out that a rich man can get through the eye of a needle, and that money helps.

Christianity on Climate Change

First Reformed (2017) contains fundamental ideas concerning the human condition and wrestles with the relationship between religion and politics.  Ideas play a significant role in the film, hence it can be used in support of the thesis that film is a viable medium in which to make philosophical (and theological) ideas transparent and derive dramatic tension from clashing ideas. In this film, the ideas that clash concern the role of religion in the political issue of climate change—or is that issue primarily religious?

The full essay is at "First Reformed."

Is Scientology a Religion?

I contend that other domains have encroached on religion, or religion on them, such that the native fauna in religion’s own garden is scarcely recognizable. In this essay, I distinguish psychology from religion using Scientology as a case in which the two domains have been obfuscated. In other words, I want to remove the troublesome category mistake that allows psychological matters to be reckoned as religious. 

After living on the Divinity School quad at Yale for a year, I ventured off-campus to a small apartment. The contrast was stark; as I was unloading my mattress off the U-Haul truck, an old prostitute came over and offered to help me. “And then we can use it,” she said. I politely declined. Once I had moved in, the building’s janitor introduced himself and informed me that the building was owned by Scientologists and he was one as well. Hearing that I was a divinity student, he quickly came up with a thick book on Scientology for me to read, which I did. My reaction was that the substance of Scientology is psychological rather than religious.

The core practice in Scientology is the audit, in which one person helps another in getting rid of hurtful memories. The aim is freedom. Scientologists would say that such freedom is spiritual, but I contend that being free from the pain of certain memories is a psychological freedom because the freedom is mental—of the mind. My aim is not to be critical of Scientology; helping people to dissolve traumatic memories is highly laudatory, even though it is not religious.

Part of the problem has to do with getting carried away with wording. In advance of the launch of Scientology’s television network in March, 2018, a promotional video featured an e-meter. This piece of equipment is described in the ad as ‘the cutting edge of spiritual technology.”[1] The expression, spiritual technology, seems odd, even oxymoronic. “According to Scientology’s website, the electronic instrument is used by auditors in sessions with members to check [sic] they are addressing ‘the correct area in order to discharge the harmful energy connected with that portion of the preclear’s reactive mind.”[2] In other words, the device measures how nervous a person is while bad memories are being targeted for dissolution. Lest energy signal something spiritual, the correct categories are physiology and thermodynamics (i.e., natural science).

Even in terms of cosmology, God is believed to be the source of the universe, including its energy, rather than the energy itself (which would be pantheism). God, in other words, transcends the limits of the universe, rather than being its energy. The harmful energy being picked up by the meter is a physiological effect of a psychological state or change. Such energy, and the audit process itself, lie wholly within the created realm and thus do not satisfy the divine attribute of transcendence. Not even “getting deep” psychologically counts as transcendence theologically speaking, which involves yearning for a beyond that lies beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and sensibility. The latter term includes emotional feeling. So Augustine’s very emotional erotic pining for God can be reckoned as human, all too human, rather than of a wholly other quality reflecting the transcendence that is distinctly theological. In other words, theological love is not emotional feeling. I suspect that we are so used to conflating psychology with theology that the nature of distinctly theological yearning eclipses our understanding and practice. To transcend emotion, being free of it, may be a freedom surpassing that of the emotional freedom from bad memories.

For more on weeding category mistakes out of religion, see the booklet, Spiritual Leadership in Business.

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1. Erin Jensen, “Scientology Makes Debut with Its Own TV Network,” USA Today, March 13, 2018.
2. Ibid.

God Versus Physics: Is Creation Behind the Big Bang?

In his doctoral dissertation, Steven Hawkins demonstrates that the universe could have begun spontaneously. That is to say, the big bang could have gone off without being triggered by a divine intelligent being, or God in the sense of the word as used in the Abrahamic religions. To say that the universe could have begun in a moment of singularity is not necessarily to vitiate the deity-concept of all content. In fact, Hawkins’ work may one day trigger a movement to hem in the concept to the terrain that is distinctly religious.

The full essay is at “God Versus Physics: Is Creation Behind the Big Bang?” 

The Eucharist as Transcendent Experience

Taking a swipe at a core tenet of Catholicism, Bill Keller of the New York Times writes, “Every faith has its baggage, and every faith holds beliefs that will seem bizarre to outsiders. I grew up believing that a priest could turn a bread wafer into the actual flesh of Christ.” I contend that the editor’s characterization of consecration represents a misunderstanding of the Eucharist. Such misunderstandings have been worse; in the early years of the Church, some pagans were under the impression that the Christians were meeting on Sundays to eat babies. Indeed, phrases such as “eat my body” may in fact be inherently prone to being misunderstood.

Generally speaking, religion may have a tendency to flirt with the literal, or empirical, even at the expense of that which is distinctly religious in nature. Hence Keller’s point that every institutional religion has baggage may be correct even if his interpretation of the Eucharist is erroneous. It should be of no surprise that religion is hardly immune to the vaunted pretentions of the human mind even to that which is beyond the limits of its cognition and perception. Under the circumstances, we would be well-advised to be relatively circumspect in how firmly we impose our religious beliefs as if they were established knowledge.

Regarding the Eucharist, Keller’s use of “actual flesh” is misleading, for both actual and flesh point to an empirical basis or connotation. When we moderns typically say actual, we mean that something actually exists, which is to say that it is the case empirically in the world in which we live (i.e., based in the human domain). Keller’s use of flesh confirms his usage of actual, for flesh is indeed found descriptively in the world, as in, The wolf ate the lamb’s flesh. In German, the word for meat is Fleisch. To be blunt, a priest does not turn a wafer into meat. I’m not sure whether changing something from one food group to another would constitute a miracle anyway. This allusion to food groups is apt, for my approach stresses the utility of delimiting categories. I assume that the various realms, such empirical, metaphysical, and theological, are qualitatively different and distinct.

I contend that the Eucharist involves the application of a theological concept through social contract as pertaining to an empirical object. This is not to say that the empirical realm is that of theology.  Van Rad makes this point in his text, History of Israel. A faith narrative, such as the covenantal relationship between Jehovah and the Hebrews is not comprised of bare historical facts, even if Biblical allusions to history are used for theological purposes and given a theological meaning. The meaning gleaned from the faith narrative does not establish or confirm historical facts. Nor are theological meanings scientific concepts; the two domains are distinct, and thus have their own respective criteria. Whereas history and science are confined within the empirical domain, which is in principle within the limits of human cognition and perception, theological meaning is transcendent in nature, meaning that our ideas and sensual impressions fail inherently to go the distance with respect to religion.

Neither is theology essentially metaphysics, for otherwise, religion would be none other than philosophy. Put another way, meaning is not reality itself. People who characterize the Trinity as real are making a metaphysical rather than a religious claim. The latter has to do with the unfathomable mystery behind the notion of a triune god, rather than any metaphysical claim that the three persons exist in reality itself. Put another way, if God is the condition or source of existence, then God cannot be existence itself—much less some empirical object existing. Neither does God as conceived theologically reduce to Kant’s “things in themselves.” God is not “the Real.” Yet neither is the transcendent limited to Kant’s phenomenal realm of appearances. Religious meaning is of its own, distinct, realm—yet how elusive it must truly be, for all the rush to cover it over with leaves from other fields. If I am indeed on to something here, we would hardly recognize the distinctly religious terrain for all we have interlarded on top of it. Put another way, our theological gardens tend to end up looking a lot like ourselves.

In terms of the Eucharist, Catholics maintain that the body and blood of Christ are really present theologically under the empirical “species” of bread and wine. In Catholicism, the real presence is a theological concept called transubstantiation. That it is applied to empirical objects—bread and wine—does not mean that the religious meaning is empirical in nature. The religious term refers to another theological concept—that of resurrected body—rather than to the empirical concept of “actual flesh.”

In a nutshell, Bill Keller has Jesus’ earthly body rather than his resurrected body in mind. To think of a resurrected body on the basis of a physical body is to reduce theology to physiology or biology. The resurrected Jesus walking through a door and asking for something to eat anticipates the tendency to liken what we don’t understand to things that are familiar. Theological meaning is distinct, rather than reducing to any of the empirical sciences, yet for centuries Christians insisted on being buried so their physical bones would be available to be resurrected.

Augustine writes that the relation between the Father and the Son should not be thought of in terms of the relationship between dads and sons. By implication, the Son as a theological concept is qualitatively different—meaning not just in degree—from what we know of what it means to be a son from our observations of sons in our midst. Christians forget Jesus’s reminder, “no one knows the Son except the Father” (Mt 11:27). It is all too natural to reduce begotten to made by clothing the transcendent in familiar clothes.

Resurrected body does not apply empirically; rather, it is a theological meaning that is situated in a faith narrative rather than a historical account. This is the point that Keller so vitally misses in his essay. The real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is not actual flesh. Nor is the real presence metaphysical in nature. The empirical species of bread and wine as like posts around which the Catholic believer can swing around, as it were, in the transition from the empirical realm of the everyday to a distinctly transcendental experience that transcends even the posts themselves. A major pitfall to watch out for is slighting the experience in favor of holding onto the posts. There is even a risk that some of the unsatisfied religious meaning gets transferred onto the empirical signs themselves, thus making them into idols without realizing it. The mistaken assumption is then that a sustained, intense focus on the empirical objects enhances rather than takes away from religious experience. In actuality, the religious domain, which is inherently transcendental, has been confiscated with more familiar experience within the limits of human cognition and perception. All the while, the Kingdom of God is within, as though smiling at these artificial edifices we create to edify and bemuse ourselves.

I contend that the bottom line on the real presence is the theologically-felt experience of transformation or sanctification that can be induced by applying the theological concept to the bread and wine via ritual. The religious experience is not exhausted by the symbols on the surface; religionists merely use them, and the associated ritual, as prep. Crassly put, they put people in the mood. Sustained, concentrated transcending as an experience that is really present (though not reality!) does not just happen after a person steps into a church from a busy day, hence the rites and posts to follow along the way. The point is the experience, felt as really present (and thus eternal rather than of time and space)—the artifices along the way are just so, rather than religious objects to be held as though they were ends in themselves, which is to say, idols.

Source:

Bill Keller, “Asking Candidates Tougher Questions About Faith,” New York Times, August 25, 2011.

Pruning and Weeding in the Garden of Eden: Religion and the Big Bang

Peeling layers off an onion is a proverbial metaphor for religious, philosophical, and psychological matters alike. This is not to say that these matters are synonymous or even reduce to the same basis. As concerns the religious or theological domain, the metaphor of levels to be peeled away to get at a distinctive essence may suggest that superficial uses of terms like religion and god may refer to phenomena that are actually within other domains and thus not at all of the dimension claimed. That is to say, people may be inadvertently sloppy as a matter of general habit with regard to what counts as religious or theological in nature. 

In short, too much extraneous content may have inadvertently gotten in (no doubt with the help of plenty over-reaching hands); interlarding flora and fauna from other lands presumed by now to be as native-born have eclipsed the theological dimension to the extent that it is barely recognizable.

If peeling off the outer layers of religion can prompt people to question their basic assumptions regarding the phenomenon of religion, I suspect that many of us may be surprised to discover just how much our ancestors have allowed “the burning bush” to grow over into foreign lands, and thus how much pruning is necessary to distinguish the theological dimension as unique to itself.

In his Natural History of Religion, David Hume suggests that the homo sapiens brain has great difficulty holding onto the notion of divine simplicity—such as in the divine as pure, undifferentiated spirit—and thus tends to render the divine more and more in human terms over time. Hence in Hinduism, the various deities have come to be depicted as stone icons bearing the likeness of humans (combined even with body parts of other animals, such as is the case with Ganash, the elephant-headed deity).

I submit that the human brain also has the tendency to take it for granted that the referent of an abstract word (i.e., linguistic symbol) is shared rather than distinctive to a particular mind. In asking other people, “Do you believe in God,” for example, we typically take it for granted that we have the same thing in mind with respect to that which “God” refers. Problematically, this erroneous assumption permits the gradual encroachment of matters extraneous to (i.e., outside of) the religious domain coming even into the default of what we typically assume as counting as religious in nature.

As just one example, people have confused or conflated the theological and metaphysical domains, even reducing the former to the latter. All too easily perhaps, we characterize God in terms of reality, a metaphysical concept. God as the source or condition of all that exists (i.e., Creation) as well as existence itself (i.e., reality) functions here as a metaphysical condition. If that which god refers is metaphysical, then theology is essentially a metaphysical theory; religion reduces to philosophy (metaphysics or at least existentialism).

To be sure, cosmological claims such as that God created the heavens and the Earth or the cosmos, permeate extant religions even functioning as a foundational article of faith. God created quarks and thus atoms, not to mention space and time. Immanuel Kant, a major philosophy of the eighteenth century, suggests in his Critique of Pure Reason that the human mind structures such basic contours of what we perceive of the world—such appearances known to us as space and time being distinct from things in themselves, or reality. Theologians (as well as many philosophers, such as Hegel) claim that their domain includes and in fact is based in the latter—the Real. Especially in a materialistic age, the reality claims in “God as the Creator” include the domain of physics (and chemistry) as virtually synonymous with that of metaphysics (i.e., existence and reality).

This model (from NASA) presumes a beginning, which dovetails with the storyline in the Biblical book of Genesis. Does it make sense to add time and even God into a physical process? 

Hence, God is popularly said to be the “first cause” of the Big Bang, the beginning of the universe. Accordingly, reality or existence prior to the primordial blast would presumably invalidate theism—the belief that God (i.e., not only as the Creator) exists. The conception of God is conditional on what is known in physics. Should the universe as we know it have come through rather than out of the Big Bang when all matter and energy were presumably at one point in space (before time), the physics would by cyclical rather than linear (i.e., a beginning, middle and end). Creation or even Aristotle’s “first cause” cease to make any sense in terms of the universe.

In the early 1970s, Steven Hawkins theorized that quantum gravitational effects produce a repulsive force such that black holes eventually “evaporate” or explode outward rather than reach infinite density in a point. Physicists have concluded that the universe may not have begun with the Big Bang. Rather than starting from a point (i.e., singularity), the explosion could have followed a previous contracting phase going to a maximal compact state, which then triggered the explosion. In line with Nietzsche’s notion of “eternal recurrences,” the universe may “bounce back” following each contracting phase, again and again.[1]

Lest it be concluded that science would once again be pitted against religion should the alternative theory get empirical support, the anticipated tension can be transcended. I submit that the either/or dichotomy is false, as it is premised on the assumption that religion includes physics (and metaphysics).[2] To create energy (and thus mass, as E=mc²) is not the same as to be the source or condition of reality; physics can thus be distinguished from metaphysics. Furthermore, the theological meaning of “God as Creator” can be distinguished theologically from scientific and metaphysical theory and knowledge; otherwise, the theological claim would not have its own distinct basis.

What is that basis? What is the content of religious faith in God as the Creator? How is creating in theological terms distinct from making (i.e, faire, machen)? I contend that the distinctly theological dimension has by now become nearly unrecognizable, or hidden, precisely because we and our forebears have unwittingly painted religion with so many colors borrowed from other paintings. Perhaps even more astoundingly, the human brain seems to “short-circuit” when it comes to presuming that it knows (and in fact cannot be wrong) what it knows concerning what counts as religious truth. This cognitive-neurological defense-mechanism keeps us from discovering how far off the map we have “sailed.” If my theory is accurate, the path back to “good gardening” lies in pruning back the otherwise fecund plant by disentangling it from the branches of others and asking what the plant is as distinctive and whole unto itself.

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[1] Katia Moskvitch, “Black Hole ‘Information’ Paradox May Have Been Resolved,” Huffington Post, March 14, 2014.

[2] Peeling back yet another layer, the assumption itself premised at least in part on the historically-held assumption that religion must include everything or otherwise be invalid. This assumption is similar to the other historical assumption that morality must come out of religion to have any validity and force. These premises invite the theological dimension to “jump fences” as though with impunity. 

Religion in Modernity: Holding Back Evolutionary Science?

Scientists insist that neither theism nor atheism is intrinsic to evolutionary theory. They view the adversarial tone as coming from the proponents of particular theologies (e.g., creationism). Ignorance, both of the science and the theological dimension, unnecessarily exacerbates the general perception of conflicting points; and for added fun, sheer intransience, or stubbornness, rigidly paralyzes many of the most stalwart partisans from backing off long-held positions as if the world froze in place in 1925. In this essay, I take up the matter of faulty understandings of science, both favorable and unfavorable to it, as a partial explanation of why approximately 40% of the U.S. population surveyed in 2005 said evolution is false.[1] Admittedly, I am overgeneralizing here, as the percentages in Texas and Arkansas were doubtless much higher than in California and Massachusetts.[2]

Charles Darwin in the 1830s. Aided by the field of genetics, the science has advanced considerably since his time. (Wikimedia Commons)

Dr. Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist, proffers the following explanation of the antagonism. “A lot of the resistance turns out to be based not in ignorance but on simple obstinacy that [the science] seems to contravene people’s religious beliefs.”[3] The “seem to” here reflects the view held by many evolutionary biologists that the evolutionary explanation does not contradict the theological beliefs—it being the theologians who view the science as antithetical (and, for a long time, heretical). Coyne even asserts that the science can treat the supernatural explanations as testable, empirically, though this is a minority view among evolutionary scientists. For their part, theologians such as those pursuing the intelligent design theory (i.e., God is behind natural selection) assume that scientific knowledge can be subjected to theological analysis. As though two people straining across a bridge to shake hands, both the scientific and theological ends have attempted to assimilate the other. As laudable as reconciliation is, the well-intended efforts are bound to come up short if, as Von Rad demonstrates in Old Testament Theology, empirical and faith histories belong to different, albeit not disparate, categories.[4]

For instance, advocates of intelligent design (i.e., by God) once used blood-clotting as a case of irreducible complexity that only could have been designed by an intelligent being. Coyne points out evolutionary scientists have since discovered another possible means—one out of evolutionary theory. This finding does not of course mean that the biological explanation became the king on the hill simply by entering the game as an alternative; additional scientific study would be necessary for us to be able to assess whether the alternative is the one responsible for blood-clotting. Similarly, being able to get living matter from inanimate materials in a lab-setting would not necessarily mean that life emerged on Earth 4.5 billion years ago that way.[5] That is to say, the finding of an alternative means is possible chemically and biologically does not mean that it was the means by which life began on Earth.

That the reconciling devises have their limits owing to the more fundamental distinction of categories does not mean it is ok to eggerate the dichotomy. For example, characterizing the two ends of the bridge as fact and belief, respectively, distances the scientific realm inordinately from matters of faith.

Regarding the “fact” side, the scientific method functions by eliminating alternative explanations (i.e., hypotheses). That is, science never proves anything. Therefore, framing the relation of science to religion as one of a “fact-belief” dichotomy would be misleading. Unfortunately, Coyne himself attempts such a dichotomy. Referring to evolutionary theory, he states, “It’s had a million chances to be wrong, but it’s always come out right. When that happens in science, we consider it to be true in a scientific sense.”[6] Well, such truth is neither of the theological variety, nor that of the factual either; rather, the truth associated with many, many alternative hypotheses having been rejected is more of a practical sort, as in not expecting the theory to be overturned any time soon. I wonder if astronomers used this variant in referring to the Earth being flat or the Sun orbiting around the planet. As Thomas Kuhn suggests in his text on scientific revolutions, theories still thought to be valid tend to have incredible staying power, as though a houseguest who has overstayed his welcome, even in spite of new evidence. Kuhn concludes that the scientists emotionally (and especially financially) invested in the current scientific paradigm must die out before “the usurper” can claim for itself the mantle of defaulthood.

Science, it turns out, seeks communion with factual truth, yet cannot grasp it. As if only being able to dimly make out a fuzzy shape through a window darkened by soot, a scientist (or any human) can never truly see things as they are.[7] Practical “truth” is less sturdy than we might think. At the same time, that evolution as we have come to understand it is subject to the limitations inherent in scientific method does not mean that the working theory is likely to be overturned in the future.

Nor does the possibility of being replaced in the future mean that evolutionary theory must be a belief. Conflating science with fact artificially embellishes the scientific enterprise, and classifying scientific knowledge as belief, as if scientific findings are on the same field as religious belief, does not do science justice. Similarly, treating religious belief as if it were knowledge or even fact gilds the divine lily in overstating the degree of certainty achievable, and classifying religion as superstition does not do the religious experience justice.

Reaching a more precise, not to mention accurate, understanding of science, concerning both its strengths and weaknesses, can contribute indirectly to situating religious belief as belief. Admittedly, the intransience of a religionist assuming consciously or otherwise that he or she cannot possibly be wrong on matters beyond the limits of human cognition and perception fortifies any denial in keeping the door closed on anything learned on the difference between itself and belief. However, if science can come to religion’s aid in insisting that religiosity is not mere superstition because only the latter is empirically based (e.g., recording ghosts by camera), perhaps the walls will come down. Therefore, both directly and indirectly, achieving a more precise, accurate understanding of evolutionary biology and science itself can contribute to humanity moving past an old, tired antagonism overblown by human nature and fraught with too many belligerent ghosts who could otherwise finally go home.

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[1] Jon Miller, Eugenie Scott, and Shinji Okamoto, “Public Acceptance of Evolution,” Science, Vol. 313 (No. 5788), August 11, 2006, pp. 765-766.

[2] Accordingly, the decision of the pollsters to show results for E.U. states separately and yet aggregate the results for the U.S. states is suboptimal both in terms of the knowledge that can be obtained and comparing apples with apples. (i.e., avoiding a category mistake).

[3] Interview conducted online by Dr. Mohamed Noor. Coursera.org.

[4] Reading Von Rad’s text, I developed the perception of the faith history putting flesh on the bones of the empirical history of Israel. In other words, the faith history looked much “thicker,” and thus quite different. One of Von Rad’s principal themes in the text is that the two histories belong to different categories, and thus should not be conflated or even compared.

[5] I have intentionally avoided using “creation of life in a lab” in order to make the point that getting living biomass from certain chemicals can be distinguished (as of another category) from the theological Creation. Lacking precision on both sides can account in part to conflating the two and thus inadvertently committing a category mistake.

[6] Jerry Coyne Interview.

[7] The darkened window metaphor I take from Augustine. The expression “things in themselves” is none other than Kant’s famed numinal realm, which philosophers cannot get to because the phenomenal realm of space and time structures, and thus delimits or circumscribes our perceptions and cognitions. Another philosopher, Louis Dupré, argues that theism can be defined as the belief, or faith, that more exists than that which lies within the range of human cognition and perception. In my paraphrasing, I am aware that “exists” presents the danger of reducing the theological to the metaphysical. Dupré’s point is that a transcendental referent and an experience of transcendence is possible only if a person has faith oriented beyond the limits of human cognition and perception.