Spiritual Migration

The MM search for the truth in the metaphysics of religion began eight years ago with our MM 9/12/16 God And Science session which featured the embedded essay by Lance Morrow In the Beginning: God and Science which begins:

Sometime after the Enlightenment, science and religion came to a gentleman’s agreement. Science was for the real world: machines, manufactured things, medicines, guns, moon rockets. Religion was for everything else, the immeasurable: morals, sacraments, poetry, insanity, death and some residual forms of politics and statesmanship. Religion became, in both senses of the word, immaterial. Science and religion were apples and oranges. So the pact said: render unto apples the things that are Caesar’s, unto oranges the things that are God’s. Just as the Maya kept two calendars, one profane and one priestly, so Western science and religion fell into different conceptions of the universe, two different vocabularies.

Morrow went on to cite Robert Jastrow, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space studies, to bridge the chasm between science and religion with that scientist’s “operatic” prose: “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

That hostile distinction between religion and science, Morrow suggests, may have softened a bit as both religion and science have become self-consciously aware of their excesses, even of their capacity for evil, as they find themselves jostled into a strange metaphysical intimacy.

Softened maybe but nevertheless has persisted and evolved. Nietzsche, of course, threw down the gauntlet in the nineteenth century with his “God is dead.” Then there has been no lack of those twentieth century hardboiled realists who have piled on with the belief that reason and science could explain everything e.g. evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins; or Bertrand Russell in his essay Why I Am Not A Christian; or neuroscientist writer Sam Harris in his declaration that non-belief was the only rational position worth having.

Now along comes this notion of a spiritual migration among some (certainly not all) of the “new theists” (click: How Intellectuals Found God) who, having “scaled the mountain of ignorance,” are now looking for a connection to the natural and the divine.

Let us compare our respective belief systems of whatever denomination. For those of a certain faith, do you regard yourself as a “theological Christian” or a “cultural” one? Best as you can, describe the primary driver of said belief e.g. fear, intellect, or boundless love? Motivated by a deep-seated belief or by the comfort of ritual? Remember Pascal’s Wager (little downside for the Believer, if wrong, versus eternal damnation for the Non-Believer, if wrong).

Be honest: God promised Securus Locus.

Please note the following RSVP Policy for Member Monday: RSVP sign-up opens up at 11:00am on Fridays via the City Club weekly Newsletter. Seats are first-come, first-served: the first 14 secure a spot at the table, the last 3 on the couch. Cancellations must be made 24 hours in advance or the standard Social Lunch rate applies.