It is easy to be an atheist these days. Celebrity scientists team up with popular comedians on TV programmes ranging from presentations of cosmology and nature to panel shows. The intelligently designed message, implicit or explicit, is that God is for intellectual losers.
There are even programmes dealing with religious matters in which the presenter is quick to deny any personal belief, treating the subject as anthropology. A recent Radio 4 broadcast about Jainism began with the presenter declaring she, of course, didn’t hold any religious beliefs.
Conversely, members of revealed religions continue to be socially significant. While many church congregations continue to be small if not declining it seems cathedrals services are attracting increasing numbers. And there is no denying the impact of Islam on Britain.
“Thought for Today”, Radio 4 again, features speakers from all three Abrahamic faiths with a bias towards Christianity. There are occasional contributions from Sikhs, Hindus and Buddhists, reflecting the variety of religious traditions in Britain today. No invitation for a Deist contribution as yet.
So, atheism or belief? Perhaps a hedging of bets by embracing agnosticism is the really smart move. This appears to be the position of many people who forswear any religious affiliation and yet are not fully prepared to commit to a complete rejection of God.
The religious impulse is common throughout humanity; even non-believers recognise its force, otherwise why are humanist and secular societies so insistent denial?
What cannot be denied are the insights and advances of science. Revealed religions are often found wanting when some scientific breakthrough contradicts a traditional viewpoint based, so it’s claimed, on a divine diktat.
However, what science is revealing expands religious understanding. For a Deist, unencumbered by either scepticism or faith, a fundamental principle has been established: nothing occurs without prior cause.
That there is a universe signifies a universal creator. Some Deists invoke intelligent design, but this has the debilitating drawback of association with creationism. Perhaps intelligent creation might be a better concept. Creation is continuous and intelligence is an aspect of that creation, an obvious manifestation of it in humanity.
The universe is self aware: although it can appear that humans are in some way observers of creation we are as much a part of it as the earth on which we stand and the stars we look out upon. Therefore, if we turn an eye towards the universe it means the universe is looking at itself.
The objection usually raised against a First Cause is, doesn’t logic demand that also had a cause? This question presumes the creation can comprehend its creator. Laws established for the functioning of the universe have no logical necessity to apply beyond, or before, the universe.
The universe is a miraculous conception and for all the advances of science, how much is not yet understood, how much will remain outside our understanding? Every new discovery opens up whole new vistas for inquiry not previously dreamed of.
Deists refer to the First Cause as God or Deus, but do not presume to claim any profound understanding of what that means. God is an inference as, analogously, dark matter and energy, though unobservable, were inferred through their effects on what could be measured.
Therefore, it is possible to combine humanity’s basic religious impulse with an appreciation of scientific insight without sacrificing intelligent credibility. Look at nature, creation, and witness the divine expressed in material reality.
Perhaps we should not be so arrogant as to think we virtually know it all, or at least enough to dismiss a spiritual appreciation of creation. Clever jokes and sneering contempt cannot deny the Deist view there is something greater than we, for all our learning, can comprehend.
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