Erik Turnberg, Episcopal Campus Minister
February 2, 2005
I was asked here today to speak to you all about faith and skepticism -- about one has to do with the other. I had in my mind that this might be a series of sermons that people would come to wanting proof about God. They would want to understand the augments that can be used against atheists' arguments that God does not exist. The arguments that say that people of faith believe in the absurd and that they should just get real.
Actually to tell you the truth when I was thinking about this the first quote that came to mind was the often quoted one from the philosopher Nietzsche, "God is dead." This is the atheist motto that seems to be hurled at Christians and all people of faith. The response that is hurled back is one that I saw first on the back of a t-shirt that read "Nietzsche is dead" and ascribes the quote to God, giving God the last laugh in the situation.
The problem is that this argument didn't start or stop with these quotes, the whole hurling of arguments back and forth about whether one can or can't believe in God and about the absurdity of faith stretch across centuries and even millennia. I guess I'm here to say that I don't have anything to say about proofs of God and that I'm tired of them. They don't do anything to help my faith in the end. The arguments of both sides seem to just crumble like clay.
I don't think there is anything I could tell anyone here that would in the end fully convince them of the existence of God. I know God to exist and I could tell you why for me I know that, but that will not tell you why God exists for you. I think in the end it is up to God and you to work that out.
I actually think that the whole notion of proving God is antithetical to the faith that we not only seek after but are commanded to have. The day we succeed in proving God's existence there will no longer be any God to have faith in. We will have destroyed our own faith. God, God of Creation, is to large to comprehend, is beyond our knowing or not knowing, proving or not proving. Each time we try to prove or disprove God's existence we simply reduce God down to something less, so that our smallness can understand the infiniteness of God. We just create idols with all of these proofs.
This brings me back to the quote from before; "God is dead," this quote is taken out of context and is often misused. What is said is, "We have killed him, you and I, all of us are murderers, God is dead." And indeed we often do kill him. Each time we try these games of proving God, boxing God in, limiting God, and defining God we are working to kill God.
It's important to remember that both these proofs for and against come from two extremes that push us to accept their dogmatism. They arrogantly try to force us into accepting the unwavering truth that they know what is right and wrong, who is in and out, that theirs is the right way to be.
The reading from Job is of Job's response to his very religious friends and their proofs and rules. They say that everything happening to Job, all his suffering is simply because he has simply done something wrong. He must therefore admit he has strayed and come back to the proper way of being good and religious, and then good things will happen. We know like Job though that he is a righteous man and does not deserve what is happening. We even know from God in the end that what is happening is beyond all arguing right and wrong, beyond all proofs of God. All Job wants is for his friends to be present to his suffering and to stop making empty arguments for God. God is big enough to make his own arguments without religious fanatics.
I think most of us have seen some religious fanatics that we can easily put in this category, but here's a story to illustrate the other side. I was at a talk on creationism vs. evolution. The participants were Lynn Margulis, geologist, professor or earth science and wife of the late Carl Sagen, prominent atheist and Michael Behe, professor of molecular and cellular biology. Michael is a proponent of guided evolution, a creationism that accepts that life has evolved with the help of God and that God's hand is visible in creation. He presented a view of a complex creation that left a lot of questions and a great deal of mystery. He was skeptical of classical evolution and allowed his faith to lend him some answers while driving the scientist in him to discover more about or complex reality. He is a Christian, a scientist, faithful, and a skeptic of dogmatic acceptance of answers.
Lynn Margulis then stood to speak, grabbing the podium with white knuckles, red in the face she screamed, "THIS IS CRAZY NONSENSE, ONLY AND IDIOT COULD BELIEVE WHAT HE IS SAYING, ALL THIS GOD STUFF IS NONSENSE, EVOLUTION HAS BEEN PROVEN FOR OVER A HUNDRED YEARS, IT IS THE WAY THE WORLD WORKS, AND ONLY A STUPID RELIGIOUS FOOL WOULD QUESTION IT." Her argument went on from there and I sat back in my seat stunned and thought to myself, "Wow, this woman is a religious fanatic."
Her religion is the doctrine of evolution. For her it has become dogmatism and questioning it is pure evil.
I think the way of Jesus; the way of Christianity presents us with something different. It presents us with a challenge to be skeptical of every time that people assert their dogmatism and try to force us to their point of view and truth.
In the reading from John, Jesus says to the Jews who have believed in him that when we know the Truth it will set us free. To the others he says that their unbelief has hidden the Truth from them. That their actions have even violated the very tradition they come from, the essence of their being, as they have persecuted him and tried to kill him. The Truth that Jesus is speaking about is not a factual truth in the sense of proofs or knowing exactly how many people are here in this room or something like that. It's not something observable or provable. This is God's Truth, it's starting to get at God being bigger than what we can know, creation being more complex than we can wrap our heads around and right and wrong being things that are more complicated that fixed sets of laws. Jesus... God, calls us to be skeptical of these people who tell us how things are supposed to be.
Like what Job's friends are saying, that bad things happen to bad people, that good things happen to good people, that some peoples are chosen or special. This sort of theology or outlook is at the root of some of the most evil actions in the world and it's at the root of a lot of the secular and religious dogmatism or fanaticism that helps people to say what people are good and bad, what people are in and out, who we can hate, and who we can kill. God calls us like Job to be skeptical of this. We are to be people of faith, strengthened in our faith and empowered by a Truth that sets us free, free to question those that would be arrogant enough to tell us that their narrow vision is the complete will of God and then use that vision of God to commit unspeakable evil.
We must be a people who are able to be skeptical of the way things are, to know that they can change, and that God is calling us to change them. We must be people who don't just ask for salvation and change, but ACT for salvation and change by questioning what we've been told. We are free to have a faith that lets us be skeptical, a faith that will lead us into a Truth that will set all of God's creation free.
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