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Conversations on Religion

Edited by Mick Gordon and Chris Wilkinson (Continuum, London 2008)
reviewed by Gordon Peckham.

Personaly, I follow the Jonathan Miller school of thought on religion:

The idea of a mind that continues to exist after the brain has dissolved is inconceivable. … Still less can I conceive of a vast, supernatural Mega-Mind which was there at the beginning, and which said: 'Let there be matter … er, whatever that is.' The notion is infantile. I'm amazed that people who can find their way to the toilet without advice can entertain such logically incoherent ideas.

But am I missing something? Terry Eagleton, reviewing Dawkins's The God Delusion in The London Review of Books (19 Oct 2006), wrote:

Card-carrying rationalists like Dawkins … invariably come up with vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince.

There is a bewildering variety of religious beliefs, even amongst the followers of one religion – Christianity:

• We believe in the verbal (words) plenary (all) inspiration of the Bible, that the Bible in the original writings are the complete, inerrant, and authoritative written revelation of God to man, and that the Bible is the supreme and final authority in all areas of faith and life. (Hagerstown Bible Church)
• … the most fundamental categories of our theology – of God, of the supernatural, and of religion itself – must go into the melting. (CofE bishop John Robinson Honest to God)
• … religion is entirely human, made by men for men. (Ordained priest Don Cupitt The Sea of Faith)

In this book the editors record the responses of a group of 19 well-known religious thinkers and commentators to questions about religion. Members of the group included Humanists A. C. Grayling and Richard Dawkins, Christian theologians Rowan Williams and Alister McGrath, scientist and atheist Lewis Wolpert and his Christian son Mathew, ex-nun Karen Armstrong, politician Ann Widdecombe, Rabbi Jonathan Sachs and Imam Muhammad Hussaini. Can this collection of interviews give us some some deeper understanding of what religion is all about?

There was some agreement on the meaning of the word "faith":

• Faith is a stance or attitude of belief independent of, and characteristically in the countervailing face of, evidence. It is non-rational at best, and is probably irrational given that it involves deliberate ignoring of evidence, or commitment despite lack of evidence. (A. C. Grayling)
• … the best definition of faith is simply a passionate belief that something is right and makes a difference. Something that you do believe to be true, but when the chips are down you can't actually prove to be so. (Alister McGrath)
• If I were to think of a definition [of faith], well it would be something that you take for granted, something that you don't question. (Azzam Tamimi)

Religious faith is an arational, emotional experience; rational argument is just not relevant. Having faith has been likened to falling in love – you don't just make a list of the pros and cons and so come to a decision – the decision is emotional not logical. But, if you must have a religious faith, what do you choose from the thousands of current religions, or the ever growing number of new-age beliefs? Without rational argument based on evidence there is no way to determine which religion, if any, is "true". But, as Louis Theroux noted in The Call of the Weird,

On the list of qualities necessary to humans trying to make our way through life, truth scores fairly low … feeling alive is more important than telling the truth. We have evolved as living creatures to express ourselves, to be creative, to tell stories. We are instruments for feeling, faith, energy, emotion, significance, belief, but not really truth.

For most people, their religion is determined by their cultural background. Many communities are unforgiving of deviation from tradition, but there is little such pressure in the western democracies. Why then do people still turn to religion? Alister McGrath suggests "There is a belief that there is more to life than we can see. These people are very impatient with atheism". Richard Dawkins agrees that "we probably do" have an urge towards the transcendent, but "it's one thing to feel a sense of awe at the world, and its quite another thing to believe all sorts of other things." But for many, religion is more about practise and community than about beliefs.

Dip into this book to try to understand the religious mind set and why religion is still important in many people's lives although its dangers are all too apparent in our modern world.