[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by photon

...I think it all goes back to the idea of revealed truth. Science is opposite to this because science takes the position of ask the question and let the chips fall where they may.

There's an interesting set of short pieces I read recently about this:

http://edge.org/3rd_culture/coyne09/coyne09_index.html

A couple of thoughts:

First, I agree with Lawrence Krauss in this:

Originally Posted by Krauss

"... theologians have to listen to scientists, because if they want to try to create a consistent theology (and while I have opinions about whether this is possible, but my opinions about this are neither particularly important nor informed) they at least need to know how the world works."

The incompatibility between the empirical nature of science and the revelatory nature of faith is one-sided: that theology must depend upon a correct understanding of science is in no way a reciprocal matter, and it must remain so. To that end, the problem has to do with the nature of "theology", which is really a relatively new idea (not quite as new as science, and very quickly becoming obsolete). I am a religious historian, not a theologian (It's a bone of contention that never approaches a resolution in a community of faith: it's as if religious people cannot grasp that there is even a difference!) I, and at least a few others in my field are rapidly coming to believe that theology is a fruitless enterprise. And this is because theology presumes in its very existence to employ a rational method to understand what can not possibly be "known". If there is a God, then surely he must be inscrutible, and this is why any "knowledge" of God is not really knowledge at all; it is "revelation".

I don't think God can be known. He can be perceived, perhaps, or "glimpsed," but if there is a God, he must be so bizarre and so fraught with difficulty and paradox that he can only be "believed", but never really known.

Anyone who believes in God believes that he is some sort of "person": Not an organism as anyone would know it, but something that may bear some traits that might be considered "organic", in the same sense that we might consider the mind to be organic. We can empirically investigate the brain, consciousness, biochemical reactions, and patterns of behaviour, but these only give us glimpses of the mind, without ever being able to define precisely what it is. Nevertheless, I doubt that anyone would ever seriously doubt the existence of the mind.

I suppose what I am getting at is that I believe God is real, and I also believe that because he is unnatural (let's forget about the "supernatural"; so far as we know, there is only the natural world; whatever else there might be, it is not a part of it), and thus defies the rules that have been put in place through which we infer the natural world. So here is the rub: "Theology" requires a good understanding of the natural world in order to make sense, but at that point precisely, it stops becoming a study about "God", and only a study about a particular religion or belief in a god.

At this point, something about what Kenneth Miller said I found intriguing:

Originally Posted by Kenneth R. Miller

"While it's certainly true that a Divine author of nature could intervene in his world at any time, I have never argued for the sort of divine tinkering that Coyne finds so disturbing. In fact, I have argued exactly the opposite. Evolution is not rigged, and religious belief does not require one to postulate a God who fixes the game, bribes the referees, or tricks natural selection."

Herein is the problem with theology: it is an enterprise consumed with telling us who god is or isn't; what he can (or cannot?) do; what he should or should not be, and how we ought or ought not respond. And this is utter nonsense. With all due respect to Prof. Miller, how can we even know whether or not "God" could "intervene" with the natural world, especially when we are still without any clear understanding of his relationship to the natural world? Who in the hell are we to tell God who he is or what he can or cannot do, anyways? I realize that I am addressing predominantly a bunch of godforsaken atheists, and that most of you probably believe at this point that I am speaking in riddles and word-games. But bear with me: suspend your empirically justified absence of belief for a moment, and imagine the world, the cosmos, and everything as I might hope to understand it:

One of my long term goals is to write a "theology", but under a rather preposterous caveat: that theology is useless. An "anti-theology" or an "a-theology" if you will. For if I am to understand my relationship with the natural world, there really leaves no room for God. I can't ever hope to really gain or impart any sort of special "knowledge" about God, and the moment I attempt to communicate any sort of rational basis for revelation, it becomes nonsense. I believe that the future of theology is no theology at all. Not that I will ever abandon a belief in God, I don't think. Only that what matters is natural. I will continue to "worship" God; to "seek" God; to "communicate" to (with?) God, under the pretext that I don't pretend to understand him(?) in the slightest. But also that I believe what is most important is not God—and from what I've "glimpsed" in my own journey of faith, I think that I can confidently say that he/she/it would agree with me—rather, it is humanity. A useful theology—which is no theology at all because it cannot tell us anything meaningful about God—is really a treatise on the hope of humanity in the real world. It may maintain a belief in god without insisting upon his presence or interaction.