PLGRM

When Paul got to Athens, he told them that humans should not think that a god is somehow like gold or silver or stone – an image formed by the hands and imagination of mortals. For Paul, when he said idol, he meant literal physical objects that human beings believed had supernatural power.

Now, even though I see a proliferation of crystals and amulets and things like that, I don’t get the sense that trying to localize the divine into physical objects is the issue most modern humans have. Instead, the images we create of our gods, are done with words. We devise all matter of specific words and ideas and designate them as eternally true and unassailable. In this way we “set them in stone.”

I want to talk about this modern tendency of creating idols with our words before we return to the content of Paul speech.

We have said that humans are creatures that have a deep need to have meaning to be present in our lives. We are, to varying degrees, uncomfortable with ambiguity, so we work hard to learn and to understand. Part of what has made us so good at this is our ability to imagine. We can see the possibilities of things that don’t yet exist. Seeing these possibilities gives us a reason to explore whether there is any truth, basis, or value to these imaginings. One way we’ve done this to the benefit of our entire species is through the Scientific Method.

Until the establishment of the Scientific Method, advancement of the human race was quite slow. It took years and years for prevailing and guiding ideas to change, allowing us to grow and mature. But the rigorous application of methods and formulas changed all that. We now have a way to see if our theories about creation held true. We could test the effects of this, or that action, this, or that drug. As our data set grew, we returned to a space of comfort. Some things have been tested. We didn’t need to test them anymore.

As we built up our knowledge base, we could see how the errant “known quantities” behaved, and we could make “if this than that” inferences. When enough of those inferences proved true – in truth, they were merely repeated – we became more and more confident in our ability to speculate and imagine and so it goes.

One benefit of the scientific revolution has been the freedom we have one from superstition. The Salem Witch Trials are not a thing that would happen today. The medical removal of various liquids from the body to cure diseases (bloodletting) has thankfully gone by the wayside.

However, we have also found ourselves unwilling or unable to see anything as good, beautiful, or true if it cannot be “proven.” Love is no longer love. It is the result of chemical reactions in our brain.

Similarly, we cannot be said to “experience God.” Those who claim to have a connection to the divine must have a biological or chemical difference in them, something that can be studied, quantified, and judged useful or not. Most of the time, however, religious people are written off as those who “cannot deal with the real world” and need something “to make them feel better.” Karl Marx famously said:

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

In other words: Religion is something we made up so we could feel better.

But I don’t want to criticize lovers of science too harshly. There are also those who are so unquestioning in their devotion to God, that they, themselves, write off science, all together. And, unfortunately, that is how the conversation is always framed: God versus science.

For a time, the way through this was to say that we could describe to God everything we didn’t know about. We called this the “God of the gaps” in this approach worked pretty well with our knowledge about the world was limited, but the more we learned and understood, the less we needed to describe anything to God. And so, we began to say that God “uses science.” This allowed us to not be scared of science any longer. It is the tool by which God works.

But notice: All this has an air of needing to justify the existence of God. God exists in service of some other idea. And, so, when things that once appeared miraculous are now explainable, it neuters the power of the god we thought we were serving.

But we can’t just give up on the idea of God, right? Of course not. So what do we do? We use our If This then That™ brains and engage in all sorts of mental gymnastics to explain how God is a part of the scientific process. We take great pains to explain why God set the world up like this or that. (Remember when Pat Robertson claimed Hurricane Katrina leveled New Orleans because God was punishing us for abortion?)

We take the scientific information we know and make theological claims based on it…only to have to revise those claims as we learn more and more about the universe.

Not only is this intellectually humiliating, it is the very behavior of turning God into an idol.

I am weary of the game that says if we want to make meaning out of our experience of God then we need to “prove” God exists according to scientific principles. I don’t actually think that’s a healthy way to go about it. My faith might be informed by science, but it is not dependent on it.

So, if scientific talk is off the table when dealign with God, what’s left to us?

I have an idea.