George,

You said
You cannot blame professional physicists for the fact that many people have simplified ideas about gravitation, the same as you cannot blame the Church for the fact that some, probably most, Christians need a simplified, even naive, explanation of what the Christian world view behind their faith is all about.

Physicists occasionally do try to explain their work in simplified language BUT they don’t pretend that the simplified version is the real thing. Churches DO expound the simplified view as reality and therein lies the problem. Actually it would be wise for the church not to expound any particular cosmology as it really isn’t necessary for the ‘spiritual’ enterprise and they keep getting it wrong. The church is very much to blame for continuing to expound its medieval cosmology and frankly they don’t do it out of any desire to simplify and make comprehensible an otherwise complex message. Many of them really believe it!

If you read the bible there is no real evidence that Jesus cared greatly about gravity or quantum mechanics. He spoke out of a culture with a particular view of the world but his ‘cosmology’ was not his message. Love, justice and hope are the really timeless messages that Jesus offered and in that department His teaching is as relevant today as it was when he delivered it 2000 years ago. It was relevant when the Hebrews taught it another 1000 years before Jesus.

Forget the Church’s cosmology. Its just a distraction! If it really is a genuine attempt to simplify a complex message then it isn’t working. Its doing more harm than good.

Bugsy, I’ve never heard of a colourless car. And the scientists at NASA would certainly be surprised to hear that the writing of a fiction like Star Trek was more complicated than the problems they have to solve since there is no “Scottie to beam their cosmonauts up”.

In distinction to fiction, scientific speculations, built up into theories, have to be confronted with reality through observations, experiments, etc. The same with contemporary (Christian) theology, where the “reality” to confront their speculative theories with consists of, beside scripture and tradition, also the most recent findings of science, including neuroscience, cultural anthropology, and psychology.

I agree that I can believe what I want, and so can you. However, one of the main differences between our approaches is that I try to explain MY world view, instead of calling YOURS bulldust.

waterboy, thank you for your thought-provoking comment. You have a point there, every analogy goes only that far. Perhaps I should have said “physics teachers” instead of professional physicists, because it is not the scholarly but the teaching function of Churches that you criticise. Beside that, I must agree with much of your criticism, except for the sweeping conclusion, if I understood you properly, that the Churches’ activities are generally useless or even damaging. (ctd)

(ctd) What is special about questions people ask the Church - or some other authority they trust, e.g. much of the function of what used to be pastoral guidance was taken up by counsellors - is the personal urgency to know the answer: You might or might not be interested in reading a lecture on cancer, but you will certainly have more personal and urgent questions should you be diagnosed (or suspected) of having cancer. Well, many of us have been “diagnosed” (or suspected) by life as being sentient, not just “biological”, beings. Most of us are satisfied when the answer to the question “What is a TV, how can I use it?” is “Just turn it on, you would not understand more about its workings unless you studied electronics.” The same about cosmology questions you hint at, but not when questions that we are deeply involved with, are asked. That is why the Church has to give simplified explanations pretending they are the whole answer, whereas physicists writing popular texts do not have to.

Having said that, I repeat, I agree that many teachers of Christian religion, often including influential hierarchy, are not up to their task of interpreting Jesus for our age. Something like there are two kinds of bad maths teachers: those who themselves do not understand what they are supposed to teach, and those who have a reasonable understanding of the material, but cannot teach. Also, a good high school teacher of maths does not have to be, and usually is not, a good research mathematician. The same, again to a certain point, about pastors/priests and theologians.

I never claimed Jesus cared about gravity, but I agree that Jesus taught many things that are useful and inspiring also for an individual or a society that does not believe (or thinks it does not have to believe) in a reality beyond the material; and even more for those who accept the spiritual dimension of reality, although without accepting its model based on Jesus’ teachings and developed over 2000 years by theologians of the Church or Churches.

I think that the "black" analogy is kind of holding up. When it comes to popular usage of words, a lot of people believe they know exactly what is being said, but they don't. You see, as with "black", many people believe it is a colour, but actually it is a shade, so to use the "colourless" as an antithesis is not really correct as it conjures up all sorts of visions of invisibility and whatnot (like water is "colourless"). Black is an absence of colour, not colourlessness. This is how false dichotomies are set up. Atheism is an absence of belief in the existence of god, nothing more. It cannot be generalised much further as the actual beliefs of atheists can vary very widely.

I see I am not the only one misrepresenting others George, as I only compared Star Trek with religion, not science (or NASA!). As a fictional story, I certainly believe that it still holds up as an analogy as they are both complicated with moral lessons and both probably have as many devoted followers. In the end they are still just stories.

To clarify my original point though is that many Christians (and theists generally) believe they know what is meant by the words "soul" "spirit", "mind", "consciousness" and "intelligence", when in reality they know nothing of the sort. They just think they do, which I suppose is the definition of "belief". But that doesn't stop them going to great lengths to try and explain what they think they mean.

Bugsy, I certainly appreciate the less emotional twist in your argumentation. Never mind whether black can be understood as the colour of a car (just ask a car dealer), but when you say “atheism is an absence of belief in the existence of god … the actual beliefs of atheists can vary very widely“ you are probably right; it all depends on what you call “atheist”. Classically, such person is usually called an agnostic, but I agree that grammatically “atheist” better describes the person who does not believe, in distinction to a person who believes firmly in the negative, who then should be called an anti-theist.

However, those critical of Richard Dawkins, the atheist par excellence, do not object to his “absence of belief in the existence of god” - there are many tolerant scientists who would fit that description - but to his aggressiveness towards those who believe. From what I know of his writings he is convinced that there is no god, whatever that means before you define the terms “exists” and “god”. So in practical usage, atheism has become to mean belief in the non-existence of (the Christian version of) God. I usually call people who do not believe in the existence of god but do not attack those who do, secular humanists (some people use the term secularist but that sounds too much like Islamist, the fanatical adherent of Islam). I certainly can coexist with them - as well as with Muslims or other Christians - as long as they do not attack me and/or my world view, though, of course, the verbal attacks by Christian fundamentalists (who claim to possess a monopoly on truth and morals) or aggressive atheists (who claim a monopoly on what is rational, logical or supported by evidence) is preferable to terrorist attacks by Islamists. (ctd)

(ctd) You wrote “theology is more complicated than quantum physics. That's because it is a fictional story, like Star Trek.”, so I understood you were referring to the “Star Trek story” not the “Star Trek fan club”. However, I can see that to an outsider a Church or a congregation of believers might look like a fan club. I believe my Christian world view is rational enough, but I am also a “fan” of the Apple/Macintosh system and sometimes find myself defending its advantages over the you-know-which system quite emotionally.

What you say about simple Christians who believe they know what is meant by rather abstract terms, when in reality they know nothing of the sort, can also be said about them - as well as about many simple non-Christians - in relation to other abstract terms, or even seemingly well known scientific terms like evolution, photon, quark, etc. For instance, many people think of atoms as tiny planetary systems where the small balls, electrons, revolve around a somewhat larger ball, the nucleus. There is nothing wrong with it, unless those people are professional physicists.

The professionals, physicists, philosophers or theologians, will explore these abstract concepts never claiming they know everything. Nevertheless, physicists will “go to great lengths to try and explain (to common folk) what they think they mean” when they discuss e.g. whether space-time is 4-, 10-, or 26-dimensional. Philosophers will try to explain why they are puzzled that our universe is mathematically structured, or, as Stephen Hawking recently put it, does it bother at all to exist? What if there indeed is “something out there” reflected in our meme for religion (Dawkins) as there is - many mathematicians believe - a “Platonic world of mathematics” reflected in our “meme for maths”?