The Peculiar Human Organism

One of the central components of my thesis (which is, mercifully, coming closer to completion) is that the new atheist account of reality is not “deep” enough - it does not provide a rich or satisfying enough account of the phenomenology of being human. Huge swaths of human existential concerns are relegated to the realm of evolutionary peculiarities or “misfirings” in the attempt to squeeze everything into what John Haught has called an “explanatory monism” which assumes that one mode of explanation - the scientific one - is all we need. This reductive approach to human beings is then held alongside (awkwardly and incoherently, in my view) an arrogated moral authority in the attempt to discredit the very religious traditions which it is unwittingly borrowing from.

I couldn’t help but think of this while reading the opening chapter of Walker Percy’s The Message in the Bottle. The book is about language and, among other things, what our ability to use it - to address others and to be addressed as subjects - might say about our uniqueness in the cosmos, but here, at the outset, Percy simply wonders about how an understanding of human beings as nothing but “organisms in environments” can account for the alienation and longing that is so pervasive a feature of human existence - even when our environment is the best (materially speaking) that our species has ever seen:

If beasts can be understood as organisms living in environments which are good or bad and to which the beast responds accordingly as it it has evolved to respond, how is man to be understood if he feels bad in the best environment?…. A theory of man must account for the alienation of man. A theory of organisms in environments cannot account for it, for in fact organisms in environments are not alienated.

Percy, writing in the mid-twentieth century, summarizes a human predicament that I suspect has not changed much since he penned these words:

Man knows he is something more than an organism in an environment, because for one thing he acts like anything but an organism in an environment. Yet he no longer has the means of understanding the traditional Judeo-Christian teaching that the “something more” is a soul somehow locked in the organism like the ghost in the machine. What is he then? He has not the faintest idea. Entered as he is into a new age, he is like a child who sees everything in his new world, names everything, knows everything except himself.

We might behave as “organisms in environments” on the physical level - we have the skills to survive and have proven wondrously adept at bending the natural world to our material purposes - but at the psychological or spiritual level, this is certainly not the case. If the story of cosmic history is about the emergence of species suited to their environments, why do we seem to be such an odd fit? How has nature thrown up a creature that expects so much more from its environment than it could possibly give it? Is it because, for reasons unknown, we’ve evolved prefrontal lobes that are too big (and overactive) for our own good? Or are human beings more than just organisms in environments.

Percy sets forth the metaphor of human beings as “homeless” wayfarers as opposed to organisms adapting to their environment in order to account for the alienation we feel. While the word “homeless” gets my theological antennae up (it seems to connote an escapist eschatology - “this world is not my home, I’m just-a-passin’ through” - which is problematic on a number of different levels), I think Percy powerfully captures the Christian idea that human beings were made for more than our current experience of the world allows.

To say that we are made for “more” does not require the further claim that this world is not a good one, just that it doesn’t seem to be enough for us. This is more of an empirical observation of how human beings, in fact, think and live in the world than it is a theological claim. The relentless human search for purpose and meaning, no matter what exotic paths this might take us on, is evidence that we at least think we are more than just “organisms in environments.” Simply put, we expect more from the world than it seems able to deliver.

There are, broadly speaking, two ways of interpreting this empirical phenomenon: 1) With Richard Dawkins (among others), dismiss it as the “whingeing self-pity of those who think that life owes them something”; or 2) With Percy (among others), consider the possibility that it might just represent a clue to the mystery and meaning of the universe. Either the phenomenon is an evolutionary oddity which makes no contact with what is actually true about the cosmos, or it is a hint of things to come.

 

How Do You Know?

This weekend, a friend alerted me to an interesting DVD special where four of the more prominent atheists out there right now (Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris) get together for a round-table discussion. The two hour unmoderated discussion is, interestingly, entitled “The Four Horsemen” - a reference, presumably, to the protagonists’ understanding of themselves as the agents entrusted with the hastening of the demise of the blight upon human history that is religion.

From the bit that I watched, the special seems to be mainly about these four guys sitting around congratulating themselves on the obvious superiority of their views, ridiculing religious people, and sharing stories about the “persecution” they’ve experienced from those who have not yet attained their level of intellectual development. I watched twenty minutes or so of the first hour on YouTube and found it fairly uninteresting - mostly, I presume, because I’ve read each of their books and they don’t really say anything in their discussion that they don’t say in their published works.

One part that did interest me, however, was near the end of the first hour when Sam Harris asked his fellow atheists if they had ever come across an argument that gave them pause, that planted even the smallest seed of doubt in their minds that their militant assault on religion might be misguided. For the most part, they said that they could not. Dennett just bluntly said “no”; Dawkins and Hitchens said something to the effect that they sometimes wondered about the political ramifications of angering religious groups, but not one of them claimed to have ever come across an actual argument that wobbled the foundations of their atheism in any way. One gets the sense that it is literally beyond their capacity to imagine how or why any intelligent person could possibly not see thing the way they do.

The new atheists are frequently accused of a rather breathtaking and condescending form of arrogance in claiming to understand and diagnose the “disease” that is religion, but for me, their arrogance is most obvious in their implicit view of the history of human thought and experience. They really do portray themselves as representing the absolute pinnacle of human intellectual development; they, alone, occupy the privileged position of surveying the human condition with absolute clarity, free from the superstitious fantasies that have clouded the judgment of the overwhelming majority of human beings who have ever inhabited the planet.

C.S. Lewis once said that one of the things he found most troubling as an atheist was the view he was forced to take with respect to how others think. In Mere Christianity, he says:

If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake. If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all these religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth. When I was an atheist I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race have always been wrong about the question that mattered to them most; when I became a Christian I was able to take a more liberal view.

The “Four Horsemen,” it seems, have no such misgivings. They simply know the truth; the only issue is how to break the news to the rest of us - how to relieve us of our delusions in the most painless manner and avoid stoking the flames of religiously-fueled violence.

In each of the new atheists’ books that I’ve read, the author expresses astonishment at how religious people can claim to have certainty about their beliefs. After reading their books, observing a few of them in debates, and now my brief exposure to their discussion amongst themselves, I can only wonder where the epistemological humility they plead for from religious folks is. John Stackhouse, in a word of warning to those tempted toward claims of certainty in the arena of faith, has recently posted on the importance of recognizing the epistemic limitations faced by all human beings, religious or not. Here’s a summary passage:

This is, finally, the point of it all. We Christians “live by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7)—and so does everybody else, actually, since no human being can transcend our common situation of epistemic finitude. In fact, if we enjoyed all the certainty (in the former sense) that some Christians say we should claim, well, then, we wouldn’t need faith anymore. We would just know things, and we would know that we were entirely right about them.

I think that a little more humility would be a very good thing, on both sides of the atheist/theist divide. We simply are not the sort of creatures who can know, with 100% certainty, that we are right - especially when it comes to metaphysical questions of meaning and purpose. A kind of “fortress mentality” is as evident in “The Four Horsemen” as it is in the most dogmatic circles of religious fundamentalism. In response to the ambiguities and complexities of the real world, both retreat to the safety of certainty, simply declaring (louder and more angrily if necessary) that they are right and everyone else is wrong.

The problem is that the certainty being sought and claimed (on both sides) is illusory. As Stackhouse reminds us, it simply is not possible to transcend the inherent limitations of being human. A wider appreciation of this truth could lead to the welcome recognition that conviction and commitment can be held and articulated humbly and graciously, without demonizing, ridiculing, or questioning the intelligence of those who do not share it.

 

Offended by God?

Over the course of my thesis research over the last year or so, I have come across a lot of different reasons for doubting the existence of God. One major stumbling block for those who reject Christianity is those parts of the Bible which seem to justify actions that we consider to be culturally backward, confusing, and irrelevant or, even worse, immoral. And I think that most Christians, if they’re honest, will agree that there are parts of the Bible that they find baffling, frustrating, or, possibly, just plain offensive.

A friend and I were in Alberta for a speaking engagement this past weekend and one of the biblical figures we focused on in one session was Moses. Most people are fairly familiar with Moses and the cluster of stories in his life which are prominent components of our biblical imagination (scenes like the burning bush, the parting of the Red Sea, the receiving of the Ten Commandments, etc). One feature of Moses’ journey that is, perhaps, less well-known is the way in which he boldly interceded to God on behalf of his people when God seemed ready to wipe them out for their idolatry. Moses repeatedly calls on God to remember what he promised, to consider what the other nations would think, to turn away from his anger and show mercy (Ex. 32:9-14; 33:12-17).

Surprisingly, God relents. Moses’ courage and boldness appear to earn him God’s favour in a manner  somewhat analogous to how Job’s blunt expressions of confusion and outrage at his misfortune led God to ultimately declare that he, and not his friends with their neat and tidy religious formulas explaining human suffering, had spoken rightly of God (Job 42:7-10). In both cases, confusion, ambiguity, and outrage were presented to God honestly and unapologetically. In both cases, it seems that God was less interested in human beings pretending that God’s actions and intentions were perfectly obvious, transparent, and morally praiseworthy from a human perspective than he was in an honest acknowledgment of the pain and offense that walking with him can and does cause.

I’ve been reading Timothy Keller’s The Reason for God over the last week or so. Here’s what he has to say about what to think when we come across a passage in Scripture that we find outrageous:

To stay away from Christianity because part of the Bible’s teaching is offensive to you assumes that if there is a God he wouldn’t have any views that upset you…. Now, what happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible that offends your sensibility and crosses your will? If you pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest, how will you ever have a God who can contradict you? … Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle (as in a real friendship or marriage!) will you know that you have gotten hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination.

In other words, one skeptical assumption worth challenging is that if God exists and chooses to reveal himself to human beings, he is obliged to do so in a way that will simply confirm and validate our (profoundly historically and culturally conditioned) conceptions of what is good, admirable, and admissible.

On one level, I don’t find this much easier to accept than an atheist or an agnostic. I don’t find the idea that my moral conceptions might not represent the last (or at least the best thus far!) word on the question of what God is like to be a particularly comforting or comfortable one. But if I take seriously the fact that human beings are finite and fallen creatures, whose only access to reality is profoundly shaped (in positive and negative ways) by a whole host of historical, cultural, and psychological factors, then it makes sense to say that my vantage point might not be the plumbline which these matters are adjudicated.

In one of my philosophy classes in university, a professor told the story of a friend of his who was a committed Christian and a celibate homosexual. When my professor asked his friend if he agreed with the Bible’s teaching on homosexuality, his friend said that he did not. This, my professor found truly baffling. How could he possibly choose to commit to a religious tradition when he was in such obvious disagreement with it on a matter as important as his sexual identity? His friend said that Christianity made sense of enough important elements of his experience, and that God had proven faithful enough over the years that he had learned to trust and yield to him when it came to matters that he disagreed with. His confusion and disagreement with God were preserved within the context of faith, and with the understanding that it is at least possible that human conceptions of what is right and wrong might require modification.

My professor obviously found this pretty difficult to stomach. What, after all, could be more important than being true to one’s own beliefs? If anything is sacred in our post-Christian Western culture it is the individual’s freedom to decide what is true and meaningful for themselves. Yet I got the sense that he had a deep respect for his friend, as well. His friend’s position was not inconsistent or absurd. It simply took seriously the fact that human beings don’t see the whole picture and exhibited a conviction that faith does not require us to sacrifice our honesty - before God or before each other.

I find that facing the implications of the inherent limitation of the human condition - even when it comes to our moral intuitions - it is somewhat liberating in a strange sort of way. I don’t have to pretend that I love everything in the Bible, nor do I have to pretend that God’s way of acting in the world makes obvious sense and demands nothing but my reflexive and unthinking praise. Whatever else may be going on in the stories of how Moses and Job related to God, it seems that one important lesson is that God is not put off by human doubt, anger - even offense - in response to their understanding of how he is working in the world.

 

Love and Knowledge

Near the end of Christopher Hitchens’ God is not Great, tucked away in a chapter entitled “The Resistance of the Rational,” is the following definition of an educated person, approvingly attributed to Socrates:

All he really “knew,” he said, was the extent of his own ignorance.

While we might wonder exactly how seriously Hitchens has taken his own understanding of what an “educated” person ought to claim to know in the 250 pages that precede this quote (he has, after all, claimed to “know” an awful lot about the truth claims of many of the world’s religions), there is much to be said for this view. Many people find that the older they get and the more that they learn, the more they realize how little they know. Ideally, I think, a recognition of the inherent limitation of being human ought to make us more humble, gracious, curious, and generous people who are committed to knowing what they can about the world within the time they are given.

I came across another ancient writer who “knew” the extent of his own ignorance this morning. 1 Cor. 8:2-3 contains the following words of Paul which I had never really noticed or considered in this context before:

Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; but anyone who loves God is known by him. (NRSV)

The TNIV puts it a bit differently in 8:2b, saying that those who claim to know “do not know as they ought to know” but the main ideas are, I think, the same. First, there is a moral component to knowledge, an approach to knowledge that we ought to have. Second, the ultimate “solution” to the inherent limitation of being human is not to steel our resolve, and try to cram ever more into our storehouses of knowledge but to be known by God.

For Hitchens and the rest of the “new” atheists, the solution to human limitation seems to be more knowledge. Each writer ends up arguing for a “new Enlightenment” of some kind, a recommitment to the rational as the exclusive path to knowledge, and the only possible remedy for the ills that plague us. And this is good, as far as it goes. I think that human beings have both the ability and the obligation to discover as much as we can about our world, to fulfill our mandate as image-bearers, to make the world a better place. It’s good to “know stuff,” after all. I, for one, certainly enjoy acquiring new knowledge, and God knows I’m deeply grateful for the amount that others know in the (many) areas where my knowledge is inadequate or nonexistent.

But knowledge only goes so far. What Paul seems to be implying is that human knowledge must recognize its limitations, understanding that it is a means, not an end. And that end, Paul says, is love - love of God, love of neighbour, love of the world for which Christ died and which will one day be fully redeemed.

Recognizing our limitations as “knowers” can, I think, do one of two things: 1) it can, as in Hitchens’ portrayal of Socrates, lead us to embrace “free thought and unrestricted inquiry,” refusing “to give assent to any dogma,” in the maintenance of a perpetually open and curious posture to the world; or 2) it can help us to see that there is a goal higher than knowledge (love), and that when we pursue this goal, our openness and curiosity are properly oriented.  Our knowing grows closer to what it was intended to be.

When we love, we may “know” more than we think. More importantly, when we love we are known by the One who stand beyond all human knowledge, the One who dignifies and encourages human beings as seekers of knowledge and who provides the means and the goal of all knowing.