What Makes Religion a Force for Good or Evil?

By Terrence McNally and Robert Wright, AlterNet. Posted July 11, 2009.

I'm just saying that algorithms like natural selection don't fall out of trees. There's more directionality built into it than you would expect. If this sounds too spooky and weird, I'm not expressing myself clearly.

Or it could be spooky and weird, I'm not ruling that out either. In fact, modern science tells you things are spooky and weird: quantum physics.

TM: You raise the question: Is belief in God any weirder than belief in electrons?

RW: That's in the afterward of the book, and the whole text is online. It's very much in the spirit of an essay I read a long time ago by William James called "The Will to Believe."

Scientists say, "Yes, I believe in electrons." Now, it isn't just that they've never seen one, it's that we know from quantum physics that electrons are inconceivable. They have internally contradictory properties. You ask, "Is it a wave or a particle?" And they say, "Both." And you say, "What do you mean both? I can't conceive of that."

TM: The human mind likes to think in "eithers" and "ors."

RW: Saying it's a particle is not a comprehensive ongoing explanation of an electron, it doesn't account for all its behavior. In fact, there is no easily conceivable image that accounts for everything electrons do. It's beyond human comprehension.

Some physicists would say, "I'm not sure electrons per se really exist. It is, however, useful to talk as if electrons exist. You get good scientific results using that kind of language."

So the question I raise is, "If thinking of divinity as something that exists leads people to behave in a morally progressive fashion, might that give validity to a conception of divinity?" In much the way our belief in electrons is ultimately vindicated by the practical result that follows from believing in them.

When I first heard an argument very much like this from William James, I thought that's nuts. Maybe I'm just getting old and softheaded.

TM: Is it enough to say that this line of thinking may not be as nuts as some people think it is?

RW: Yes. Have a little humility. This bothers me with some of the new atheist writing. Fact is, we just don't know.

Strictly speaking, I don't understand how people can call themselves atheists, if the term means you're sure there's no God. I don't see how you can be sure of anything in this world. I'm technically an agnostic, although one with spiritual and religious leanings. But I don't know anything, and I don't know how anyone can say they know there's no God.

If you have a religious experience and God appears, I can see how you'd be pretty convinced. Strictly speaking, you still don't know that it's not an illusion, but it's easier for me to understand someone who says they're a religious believer than somebody who says they're an atheist. Because the religious believer says, "I saw it."

TM: In high school, as I was moving away from Catholicism -- now I'm basically "spiritual but not religious" -- I would have debates. I can remember clear as a bell the moment when one friend of mine said, "You can't argue me out of God; I've experienced him." What could I say?

RW: I did a one-week meditation retreat: silence, 5 1/2 hours of sitting meditation a day, 5 1/2 hours of walking meditation, no news from the outside world, no phone calls, no speech. That was an amazing experience, not in an especially theistic sense.

It moved me to be much more appreciative of other beings in the world. I remember seeing weeds and thinking, "I can't believe I killed these things, they're beautiful." And that's really the truth. "Weed" is a label we've imposed.

TM: A dandelion, the scourge of people's lawns, is nature's geodesic dome. Buckminster Fuller could do no better.

RW: This gets at another thing William James said, that our ordinary state of consciousness, the one we use to drive to work and get through life, is just one possible state of consciousness, and there's no reason to assume that it's any more valid than a lot of other possible states. I think in some ways it's manifestly less valid, because our ordinary state of consciousness was designed by natural selection to serve our own interests.

TM: It's mainly about limiting and filtering.

RW: And it is an illusion.

TM: I recently interviewed Winifred Gallagher about her book Rapt. She points out that attention is mainly about cutting things out so we can function, because there's too much going on.

RW: It's not just that we narrow our focus, our whole evaluation of other people becomes subservient to our individual goals.

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Interviewer Terrence McNally hosts Free Forum on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles (streaming at kpfk.org). Visit his Web site,A World That Just Might Work, for podcasts of all interviews, and more.

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