Tag Archives: agnostic

Answers to the Big Questions – Thinking About Thinking #53

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The investigator in my mystery series, Evan Wycliff, is a young Baptist minister who is beset with doubt. When he was in college, he gave up his studies in the seminary because what he learned of Christian history was far too grim. Then he took up astrophysics and found more troubling questions than answers.

Like the rest of us when we bother to fret about the state of the world, Evan wants to know:

Why is there something rather than nothing?

Why is there evil in the world?

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe: Greene, Brian: 9780593171721: Amazon.com: Books

I don’t have any satisfying solutions to those riddles, but I have recently read two books that offer some explanations. The first is Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe by physicist Brian Greene. Here’s a more lucid presentation of astrophysics and cosmology than I’ve yet encountered. Unfortunately from the standpoint of traditional religious teaching, Greene seems to side with the “godless universe” theorists, who hold that the dual processes of entropy and evolution, over 14 billion years of chaotic interaction, are sufficient to explain the complexity of our physical world and its dazzling life forms. Greene does stop short of attempting to explain how consciousness arises. He’s as stumped as anyone about whether a computer will ever be able to know it exists. (I’ve written more about Greene’s book here.)

The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex , Morowitz, Harold J. - Amazon.com

The most intriguing and persuasive scientific world view I’ve found so far is in Harold J. Morowitz‘s 20-year-old text The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex. Like Greene, Morowitz is a hard-headed physicist, but he seems to think there is more to the purpose of evolution than random outcomes, however complex or sophisticated. He’s in sympathy with the Jesuit theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who theorized that all evolution tends toward the Omega Point, the pinnacle of creation decreed by its Creator. The breadth of Morowitz’s analysis is amazing – he begins with quantum particles and concludes with complex brain structure – hinting that the next step in evolution is into the spiritual realm, although he offers no opinions about what intelligent beings can find there.

If you are tempted to dive into Morowitz – and if you’re curious, I encourage you to take the plunge – feel free to skim the chapters on organic molecular chemistry. That’s the author’s specialty, and there’s way too much information here for anyone without an advanced degree in his field. Nevertheless, I promise that making your way through this ambitious book will be a rewarding experience.

New Interpretations of Bible Parables – Thinking About Thinking #48

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Hands folded over a bible with the text "Could famous bible parables contain hidden meanings?"

If you’re having trouble with your religious faith, studying theology will only make matters worse. In my Evan Wycliff Mysteries series, the protagonist is a Baptist minister who often has serious doubts. For my background research, I delved into some recent Biblical scholarship, where I found some remarkable reinterpretations of the old stories.

One of these latter-day sources is Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls by Barbara Thiering. This Australian scholar applied a traditional rabbinic pesher analysis – used primarily by Hebrew scholars to find hidden meanings in the Old Testament. Thiering maintains that the New Testament gospels are full of coded messages intended to be passed among rebellious Jews who sought to hide their controversial beliefs and doctrines from conservative sects such as the Scribes and the Pharisees.

For example, Thiering asserts that the parable of turning water into wine at the wedding feast was not to be taken literally. Traditional religious practice segregated women in worship services and used water as a sacramental beverage. Jesus and his rebels advocated including women and the infirm in all ceremonies, and their sacraments used wine. The parable therefore uses powerful symbolism to emphasize a doctrinal dispute.

The cover of Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls

And – which is more miraculous – a one-time chemistry trick or changing worship practices from ancient times to this to include women?

Thiering also thinks the story of the virgin birth contains an encrypted message. In the Essene community, a betrothed couple were made to live apart until the wedding, Mary was sent to live with pious women (who were like caregiving nuns), in the “House of the Virgins.” This suggests that Mary – and not necessarily Joseph – was descended from the house of David and a member of the sect aligned with the revolutionaries Jesus would eventually lead. The story of the virgin birth is therefore coded proof of the matrilineal legitimacy of Jesus to claim the throne of David.

As you might expect, Thiering’s conclusions have been shouted down by traditional theologians. She died in 2015, so these days she’s not around to defend herself. But you can be sure there is a generation of seminarians who have her on their reading lists.

I imagine many faithful churchgoers don’t delve much into theological scholarship. That’s what ministers are supposed to do at divinity school. Sunday-school teachers must certainly study the Bible, and a source they might routinely consult would be The Wycliffe Bible Commentary, a standard text in seminaries. Not coincidentally, that book was the inspiration for fictional Evan Wycliff’s family name.

Understand, I’m not endorsing or pushing such alternative views. I do find them intriguing, even at some times appealing. But these speculations figure strongly into the plotting of the mystery series because Evan is – as he admits – both perpetually curious and a habitual doubter.

An image of the paperback version of Preacher Raises the Dead: An Evan Wycliff Mystery

Evan Wycliff – Agnostic Minister? Thinking About Thinking #46

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A black and white picture of a man praying in a church. The text reads "Can a Practicing Minister be an Agnostic?"

Can a practicing minister be an agnostic?

Evan Wycliff, the protagonist of Preacher Raises the Dead (latest and third in my mystery series), might not be a full-time agnostic, but there are days when he certainly has his doubts. In the first book in the series, Preacher Finds a Corpse, he’s just returned to his rural hometown, Appleton City in southern Missouri, because he’s given up on his studies. He earned a degree at Harvard Divinity, but along the way he learned way too much about the hypocritical and corrupt history of Christianity. Then, hoping to find better answers to the “big questions” in science, he undertook postgraduate work in astrophysics. He found those conclusions baffling as well.

As an unemployed college dropout, how can he make his way? He grew up on the farm, but these days it’s tough for farm owners to get by, let alone their farmhands. So he takes the occasional opportunity as guest preacher at the local Baptist church. And because he’s a skilled data-driller, he tracks down debtors who have skipped on their car loans (whom he tends to forgive more than he chastises).

In the second book, Preacher Fakes a Miracle, Evan helps a girl who is afflicted with epilepsy. Then the rumor around town alleges he’s a faith healer because, they assume, he must have cast out demons.

In the third book, Evan’s life gets a lot more complicated as he’s challenged with becoming a more responsible member of the community. The old pastor and his mentor Rev. Marcus Thurston decides to retire, and Evan reluctantly takes on the role of full-time minister, pastor of the church.

That’s when he finds out that not only preaching sermons, but also visiting the sick and the dying, along with officiating at weddings and funerals, is hard work. It’s a job – often a tedious one. And, some days, Evan just can’t find it in his heart to believe.

Fueling his doubts are the theories he’s studied of cosmologists who assert the increasingly accepted notion of a “godless universe.”

A book cover for "The Big Picture" by Sean Carroll. The cover features a glowing strand of DNAPhysicist Sean Carroll of CalTech is one of the proponents of the godless-universe hypothesis. He advances his argument in his book, The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself. The core of his argument is naturalism – meaning that the physical universe – encompassing everything humans can sense or measure – is all that there is. In an interview with Clara Moskowitz published in Scientific American, Carroll explains:  “There’s actually a movement called religious naturalism. Religion involves a whole bunch of things — practices, casts of mind, morals, etc., so you can certainly imagine calling yourself religious, reading the Bible, going to church and just not believing in God. I suspect the number of people who do that is much larger than the number of people who admit to it.”

As I discussed in my post about Brian Greene‘s book Until the End of Time, a trending consensus among cosmologists is that the dual processes of entropy (disintegration) and evolution (integration), can explain the emergence of complexity without God as creator or cause. Physicist Brian Cox, in his recent comments on the movie Don’t Look Up, implied that the most significant role of humans may be to create meaning in a meaningless universe. The philosophy of existentialism, which arose in the mid-twentieth century, possibly in response to the horrors of WWII, holds that the universe is fundamentally empty and meaningless. But as psychologists know all too well, human beings are “meaning-making machines.” We’re prone to finding meaning and purpose even in random events. This skill is a useful survival tool, making it routine for us to take lessons from our experiences to avoid future harm. An alternative view is the prevalent New Age belief is that there are no accidents in the universe.

Existentialists might say that people who find comfort in religion aren’t wrong – they’ve found useful meaning, even if that meaning is not objectively provable. But the naturalists may assert that everything that exists is simply the sum total of 14 billion years of accidents.

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