I
think this is the third time I have posted photos on this blog from the marquee
of the church down the street from where I live. In the first photo, the
marquee indicated, “Big Bang Theory: You’ve Got to be Kidding—God.” Interesting
that God should actually provide a direct quotation to this particular church
without providing it to other churches. I kind of thought they believed the
Bible was God’s word, but apparently God sends them direct quotes. I used this
photo in my 2012 book Life of Earth: Portrait of a Beautiful, Middle-Aged,Stressed-Out World. At first I thought God was ridiculing cosmology,
but I have gradually come to realize that what really disturbed God was the
television series by that name. Apparently God really hates TV shows with geeks
in them. In the second photo, the marquee announced, “Evolution: The Science of
Calling God a Liar.” I made a YouTube video of this sign, and it got
copied around the FaceBookosphere.
Note
of caution: There is a website that makes fake church marquee images. They are
funny but don’t take them seriously. For example, the church sign that said,
“God to President Bush: Those little voices are not from me. Check your meds,”
was funny but not genuine. And that joke about the church marquee that said,
“What is Hell? Come to church and find out” is likewise apocryphal.
But
in this third example the marquee looks, at first, not too different from other
church marquees. It is not outrageous, but subtly misleading in a way that I think
is interesting enough to discuss at this point. There is a website called “ExploreGod.” In their videos, being shown at this church, they ask important questions, such as Does God exist? or (as in this
photo) Why does God allow pain and suffering? These are good questions. But how
a church approaches them and how scientists might approach them reveal a
fundamental difference between religion and science.
First
note that science itself cannot answer either question. But scientists as people frequently wonder
about such questions and come up with personal answers to them.
When
a church asks, Does God exist?, there is only one possible answer. And
everything that leads up to their conclusion is forced into lockstep march
toward that conclusion: the answer of Yes. But when scientists ask, Does God
exist?, you get a whole range of answers. Science does not force its arguments into a lockstep march toward the answer of
No. Many scientists answer Yes, many answer No. But many scientists, myself
included, cannot answer this question. Instead we ask, what do you mean by God?
If you mean a supreme being who controls all the details of the universe, the
answer is clearly No. But if you mean a spiritual essence of love, the presence
whereof can never be tested but which many of us would really, really like to
believe in, the answer is a resounding I
hope so for those of us in the middle. Scientists are always questioning
our assumptions and biases. The churches answer the question like an army;
scientists answer it like a herd of cats.
Similarly,
when churches ask the question in the photo, you know that they will reach some
kind of answer or other that leaves God both merciful and all-powerful. They
might answer it (especially this church), “God allows suffering because there
are Democrats in the world.” Others might answer it, “Because God is testing
and strengthening us.” But both of these answers fail to match the evidence,
because (in response to the first) even Republicans suffer now and again—there
are some forms of pain from which even assault weapons cannot protect them—and
(in response to the second) because pain and suffering is way, way,
prodigiously, lugubriously, supercalifragalisticexpialadociously, abominably
greater than is necessary for strengthening a person’s character. We all expect
life to be challenging, to find thorns in a rose garden, but for many people
(so far, not for me) suffering has been overwhelming. A little Palestinian kid
getting killed by an Israeli mortar, or getting killed because she was used as
a human shield by an Islamist terrorist, does not promote that kid’s spiritual
development. (See, here is common ground between Israel and Hamas: they both
believe that Palestinian civilians are expendable.)
The
one answer a church will not permit is to say, “Shit happens and God doesn’t
stop it.” There may be a God-essence that wants us to overcome struggles to the
extent that we can, and this can be considered a potential Christian answer,
but no church would say this, because then people would stop coming and
bringing their money. That is, if you can’t get God to alleviate your
suffering, then what is the point of prayer and church involvement?
But
scientists as people are open to a range of responses to such a question.
As
Bart Ehrman has pointed out in his book God’s
Problem, the Bible offers about four different answers to the question of why
God permits suffering, depending on which part of the Bible you read. The
answers all contradict one another. Scientists, as people, would note this
range of Biblical answers without trying to force everyone to believe just one
of them, without screwing the scriptures that say otherwise into confirming the
belief decided in advance.
And
of course there are lots of religious answers outside of Christianity.
Christian Scientists (who are not Christian scientists) claim that suffering is
an illusion.
Conservative
religion says, “We have the answer, and we will force all evidence, even
scriptural evidence, into confirming it.” Scientists as people say, “There are
different possible answers, and we may just have to accept the fact that we cannot
know which if any are correct.”
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