[Dialogue] 10/07/10, Spong: Stephen Hawking and the Death of Theism

Thu Oct 7 10:06:14 CDT 2010

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Bishop Spong's October Schedule
(Please see Event Calendar for details) 
10/7 – A Call to Action, St. Mark's Cathedral, Seattle, WA
10/8 & 10/9 – University Congregational UCC Church, Seattle, WA
10/15 – Unity of Dallas, Dallas, TX
10/16 – Center for Spiritual Living, Dallas, TX
10/22 & 10/23 – Foundation for Contemporary Theology, Houston, TX

Thursday October 07, 2010 

Stephen Hawking and the Death of Theism

Stephen Hawking, probably the best known and best read scientist of this century, has just published, with his co-author Leonard Mlodinov of Stanford University, a book entitled The Grand Design. This book has achieved headlines in newspapers around the world because Hawking's conclusion is that one does not need the God hypothesis to explain the origin of the universe. The Grand Design has been hailed by such popular atheist authors as Richard Dawkins of Oxford in the United Kingdom and the author of the best-selling book, The God Delusion, who described Hawking's book as "Darwinism for the very fabric of nature, not just for the creatures living within it." It has been attacked by the standard defenders of the theistic God of yesterday such as the Vatican and Canterbury as well as a wide variety of fundamentalist spokespersons. Catholic News Service in Vatican City, in a display of enormous egocentricity, actually speculated that the book was published intentionally one week before the scheduled visit of Benedict XVI to Great Britain. I'm sure the publisher checked the papal schedule before starting the book on its long journey toward publication. Rowan Williams of Canterbury was content simply to dismiss Hawking's conclusion without much commentary. The fundamentalists give abundant evidence that they don't understand what Hawking is saying, but they do know that they are against it. I suspect that most of Hawking's supporters as well as his religious critics have not read the book and probably never will.
The reason that this deep-seated misunderstanding abounds in both the press and in current religious voices is that both the religious and the popular mind are still infected with the theistic definition of God. By this I mean that theologians and average citizens alike continue to conceptualize God as a being who exists in some place external to the world and who is equipped with supernatural power. This deity uses this supernatural power to intervene in history to guide life toward a particular conclusion or down a particular path. This theistic understanding of God, however, died in academic circles as long ago as the 19th century, but its shadow or its echo is still present and is reinforced constantly by the liturgies, hymns, sermons and prayers in the churches, synagogues, mosques and temples of the world. Theistic theology is not unlike the daily report of the weatherman, who informs us that the sun will rise and set at a particular moment each day, though we have known since the time of Copernicus in the 16th century that it is the earth's rotation on its axis as it journeys around the sun each year that creates the illusion of the sun itself rising and setting.
I welcome Stephen Hawking's latest book as well as his religious insight as driving one more nail into the coffin of theistic thinking and forcing the religious world to begin the hard process of rethinking what it is that we mean when we say the word God. Maybe the word itself has become so corrupted that we cannot continue to use it, but I would argue that the experience of transcendence, otherness and even heightened consciousness is real and that this experience has pointed to and been part of what we have historically meant by the word God. We need to remember that despite all of our God assumptions, we have only a human language to use and it is by means of that language that we have always sought to translate our deepest yearnings.
What Stephen Hawking is saying is that no matter how sophisticated our theological understanding is, the idea of God as a supernatural being who started the universe, and who from time to time has intervened in miraculous ways in the affairs of the universe in general or of this world in particular, is no longer viable. Since most people have no other frame of reference in which to think about God, they hear this as a denial of any divine reality. If one is not a theist, at least according to the limitations of the English language, the only alternative is to be an atheist. Theism, however, is not a name for God or even a name for one who believes in God. Theism is the name of a human definition of God that is no longer believable. Atheism does not mean that there is no God. Atheism means that the theistic understanding of God no longer translates into the world of our experience.
Can God turn the path of a hurricane as evangelist Pat Robertson has so often argued? Can God intervene in history to stop something as evil as slavery or the Holocaust? Can God actually act to prevent such things as war and prejudice? If God has that power and does not use it, can we not state without equivocation that God is both malevolent and immoral? If God does not have this power, then does this not make God impotent? In either event such a view of God will have a very short shelf life in the world of human ideas. In each of these illustrations, however, it is clear that we have done little more than to create God in our human image, but with all of our human limitations removed. Why do we continue to envision God after the analogy of a limitless human being? Perhaps the reality is that we are not capable of transcending these boundaries. An insect could never describe a bird in any way other than in terms of the experience and world view of an insect, since t he insect has no ability to transcend its limits. A horse cannot describe a human being in any other way except in terms of the experience and world view of a horse, since a horse has no capacity to transcend its limits. Human beings, however, even though limited to the experience and world view of a human being, still pretend to act as if the God we worship can and must be understood after the analogy of a limitless human being. That is the extent of our human capability. We human beings then insist, it seems, on going one dreadful step further, and that comes when we turn our God definition into creeds, doctrines and dogmas and immediately invest these ideas with the claim of infallibility or inerrancy. That is why we persecute those who disagree with our definitions or try to convert those who are amenable to our persuasion, both of which are acts of religious imperialism. Self-conscious human beings can escape our human limits, but only by analogy and pointers. The re is clearly more to the idea of God than the human mind can ever understand, but we should have learned this by now, since this fact has been clear for centuries. Even St. Paul warned us that we now see only through "a glass darkly." The Fourth Gospel tells us that the Holy Spirit "will lead us into all truth," which seems to me to imply that none of us now possesses all truth. Yet in our pathetic human insecurity we still talk about an "inerrant Bible" and an "infallible Pope." If we recognize that ultimate truth is beyond our limits, how can we continue to describe anyone anywhere as either a "heretic" or an "infidel," to say nothing of proclaiming one to be an atheist?
The God question will not be solved by postulating a supernatural invasion of a human-like deity at the moment of the "big bang," or at any other moment in the unfolding of the universe or in the evolution of life. Intelligent design is just as foreign to the biologist as the God who inaugurated the universe is now to the astrophysicist. That does not mean, however, that there is no transcendent reality, no "other" that we can sense or discern as we seek to understand life.
When I was working on my book Eternal Life: A New Vision, I became deeply moved by the wholeness of life. I saw a universe born in a physical explosion of matter that ultimately produced life, consciousness and self-consciousness; I am now convinced that matter carries within it the seeds of life. I see no dualism any longer between matter and life or between matter and spirit. I have also ceased to think of God theistically, that is, as a being — even a supernatural being. I think of God as the Source of life calling me to live, the Source of love, calling me to love, the ground of being calling me to be all that I can be. I think of God as the universal consciousness of which I am a part. All of these concepts are analogies, descriptions of our experience. They are not descriptions o f God! I now see worship as the commitment to live fully, to love wastefully and to be all that I can be. I see the mission of my faith not to be winning converts, but to be that of expanding life for all, enhancing love for all, increasing the being of all that renders every human prejudice as a violation of all that God means. I see the divine as the depth dimension of the human and thus as part of the human, not as the invasion of life by a being external to life. I see the symbols of my Christian faith story, trapped as they are inside a theistic belief system, struggling to cast that system aside so that they can be transformed and live again in dramatic new ways.
The claim by Stephen Hawking that God is not necessary to account for the universe as we now understand it is a step in freeing our minds from the clutches of yesterday's world view. I find the religious voices attacking Hawking in the name of preserving yesterday's theistic system to be engaged in little more that the activity of institutional religion's rigor mortis. As I learn more about the universe and life itself, I find myself called into an increasing sense of awe and wonder. Whatever God is, I believe that I am a part of that and whatever I am or can be God is present within it.
The human being lives in the wonder of self-consciousness and perceives thereby the wonder of life itself. God is not external to that. I open my eyes every day to the wonder of life, the power of love, the mystery of being and I call that experience God. 

– John Shelby Spong

Question and Answer 
With John Shelby Spong

Garry Worger from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, writes: 
Thirty five years ago, I was taking a theology class from an enlightened and controversial Roman Catholic priest, The Rev. Ron Rolheiser. He told us of a little–known parable that involved a tree, the leaves of which were highly unusual. The sides of the leaves facing upward were so varied that they all looked like a different species. However, underneath they were essentially identical. Father Ron said the lesson was that while we humans all subscribed to different belief systems, deep down we were identical. He went on to talk about "Covert Christians," those whose lives exemplified the precepts of a "true Christian." Such people, Father Ron contended, would experience the same salvation as would a Catholic. That drove the nuns in the class into paroxysms of denial. My question: where is that parable written? I cannot find it in the Bible. Of course, given my advanced age, I may have dreamed the whole thing!

Dear Garry, 
That parable may have been dreamed up by you or even by your Roman Catholic priest. I have never heard of it and it certainly does not come from the Bible. It teaches a lesson, however, that is both profound and true. 
The purpose of a parable is to enlighten the listeners. If this parable does this for you then use it. It does not matter from whence it comes. Truth is our goal and we seek to give credit to our sources of truth but, if our sources are unknown, as they appear to be in this instance, then we simply pass the truth on. 
My best. 

– John Shelby Spong

Send your questions to support at johnshelbyspong.com 

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