If you knew me personally, you’d know that as a reductionist my profile can be reduced to that of a liberal atheist scientist with marginally good manners. I broke the shackles of magical thinking in high school after reading a few books by Bertrand Russell and Carl Sagan. Though I have not been the same since, I have come to sympathize a bit with Quakers and their predilection for peace.
My religious upbringing was quite ordinary for a young Iowegian lad in the 1960’s. Confirmation in the Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod) in 8th grade followed by a short stint as a reluctant acolyte. The church seemed firmly footed in bedrock as an institution and adept at indoctrinating the young. In catechism studies I tried to understand the authoritarian system that is outlined by Martin Luther and the strange collection of narratives that make up the King James Bible.
There were abstractions that didn’t make sense then and are still a mystery to me today. The concept of the Holy Trinity always seemed suspiciously anthropomorphic. Then there is the crucifixion as a kind of “ghostly sorting mechanism” for salvation. It stands out against the backdrop of natural phenomena like physics and biology- mechanistic systems which seem to suffice for everything else. Finally, there is God’s seemingly endless requirement for worship and admiration which has always struck me as a vanity unnecessary for a supreme being. The whole scheme reeks of iron-age anthropology.
I remember the day it happened. I was praying for something or other. Trying to have a little spiritual time with the Big Guy. It finally dawned on me that I was talking to myself and in doing so, wishing for some particular outcome to happen. All those years. Praying and wishing were indistinguishable. I’ll admit, I was never one to volunteer a lot of praise to God. Heaping praise on a deity seemed patronizing and wholly unnecessary. Surely if God could elicit wrath, then he’d certainly pick up on being flattered.
Well, in the end, so what? Another tedious atheist commits apostasy. Like most people in US culture, my moral basis was built on what has been described as Judeo-Christian morals or ethics. It’s hard to avoid. But just as the earth does not rest on a foundation, I am not limited to sensibilities derived only by the sons of Abraham in a far earlier age. My culture and my brain tell me that theft, murder, and the other spiritual crimes (sins) are bad for the common good. That respect for others has a pleasurable and sensible aspect that threats of eternal damnation do not improve on.
The reductionist in me can’t resist the following assertion. Deistic religion reduces to cosmology. In the end, a religion offers a theory of the universe. It is a kind of physics that defines relationships between the prime mover and his (?) bipedal subjects imbued with mystical sensitivities. It claims to define the outcome of the disposition of a soul, whatever that may be. I don’t even believe in the existence of the mind, much less a soul. As a form of physics, religion lacks means by which theories can be tested. Quantitation of a spiritual element is an idea that has yet to see practice. It seems to lack predictive capability to estimate an outcome that can be validated. It is definitely not a science. It is not about matter or energy. It is about how to conduct ones life against a backdrop of divine authority and within a box of behaviors.
But our brains seem to be constructed in a manner such that religious/spiritual notions are nearly irresistible. Billions of people have claimed to feel its draw and testify to its merits. The projection of anthropomorphic imagery in myth is common in diverse cultures. The Abrahamic religions congealed from cultures that were apparently unaware of the concept of zero. Where heaven is death with a plus sign, hell is death with a negative sign. To an atheist death is just zero. It has no sign or magnitude. It is unconsciousness and devoid of the awareness of pain or pleasure. Zero sensory processing. It is neither exaltation nor agony. Just zero. Entropy prevails. Such an outlook is hardly appealing enough to gather followers. It is grim and without hope of graduation to eternal bliss. The take home lesson is to live in the moment, not the future.
Who am I to argue with millennia of religious thought? I don’t know. All I can say is that even as a cancer patient, I remain refractory to the pull of religious and mystical thinking. So it was and so it is.
Post script.
Divinity students! Relax. I’m no threat to your faith. My conclusions on this life of ours offers no ceremony and precious little fellowship. I can say that I’ve had an eye-full of the clockwork of this universe. Adherence to evangelical doctrines could not have provided the amazing insights. And for that I have no regrets.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
I have followed your posts over the years with some measure of glee with the sarcasm and parody, interest with the metals and minerals and thoughtfulness as you have journeyed with through “the land of malady.” I deeply appreciate your context, thoughts and insights on the spiritual aspects of your discipline and journey. Live well, know that you have made a difference and cherish your days.
A way of organizing the sciences would be to define a science as a discipline that seeks to answer a unique, fundamental question that in the past would have only have been known by God. The nature of the question means that a thoughtful participant in the discipline must answer the question for themselves as part of their scientific statement of faith. I have wondered if this definition would exclude chemistry as a science since we are, at heart, reductionist and limited to second causes, but there is the Origin of Life question. As they say, it is not the destination but the journey.
Your youth in the LCMS made me smile. I attend an ELCA church, having been raised elsewhere (and further downstream) in the reformation. There’s a lot of Adoration and Praise, chiors of angels and such that are part of the weekly service- most all of it is language from Revelation. It’s not a big hit with me, either. What really sticks out is that I’ve read that Martin Luther thought that Revelation should not have been part of the canon… yet so much of the modern ELCA service includes imagery from it!
I have just returned home from a three day road trip down into the Mojave Desert, north along the eastern Sierra then back to the coast, and I discovered your blog entries on some of the interesting minerals and metal ores that I wondered about from the various active mines I saw along my trip. Although I am a meteorologist, I marvel at the complex geologic features all over the Far West, pondering their ages and formation processes. Your religious thoughts are interesting because I too was raised Lutheran Missouri Synod but unlike you, I saw the “indoctrination process” of the confirmation and felt unready to study and reason through the subject matter, so I went on to university holding onto my child-like beliefs. Unlike you, I always knew “the deity” was present, and in any of my college classes where I perceived the same sorts of “indoctrination process” based on naturalism (i.e., anti-supernaturalism), I would have to work through the problems further.
Using the same observations of life, astronomy, geology, and so forth, I concluded that all that exists was made, not just because the evidence is everywhere but also the nagging fact that there is a book said to be written by the “deity” who claims to have done it. I don’t see how an intelligent person can simply shrug and hold onto some vague memory of being a teenager and childish feeling that you were “praying to yourself” as the basis for a world view even as you enter old age. Mentioning a struggle with cancer while resisting “faith” smacks of pride, does it not?
In any event, I’ve hardly been a paragon of virtue or religious fundamentalism, but I have been coming closer to embracing the biblical literalist beliefs that simply interpret the universe as 6000-odd years old with the return of Christ in final judgment of this messed up world at hand as the 7000th year approaches. Yes, it makes a nice coherent “story about everything” in that sense, but most of what I’ve seen as a scientist has meaning that otherwise is truly meaningless. So I wanted to leave you this comment to encourage you to think through the Big Picture without closing your mind permanently. Thank you for your fascinating blog entries, by the way 🙂 -Kurt
Hi Kurt,
thanks for the thoughtful comments. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts on the matter of religious beliefs as a scientist and believer. Whether my life’s operating manual is the result of pride as you suggest I cannot say. I can offer that when it comes to perception of this world, folks seem to partition into two loose camps: those who are comfortable with the notion that the world can be understood analytically; and those who find comfort in taking a devotional approach where reverence for ancient writings prevails and are not subject to criticism, that is, considered sacred. By “criticism” I mean analysis that leads away from accepted views, say, in the manner of Martin Luther. The first camp enjoys novelty and overturning obsolete thinking. The second camp prefers fidelity to revealed doctrine.
Honestly, I do not think I ever accepted the reality of Christian mysticism. The revelation I mentioned was simply an acceptance that it is reasonable to trust my own senses.
Best of luck on your spiritual and geological journey. The Roadside Geology books are very handy. You’ll find that you watch for road cuts as you drive. You’ll see.
regards,
Th’ Gaussling