“Secular Saints”
May 22nd 2008Wallabynerd alert
Their banner ad caught my eye. Not too many do, but the headline “Science nerd? Us too” made the difference. “Pay respects to all of your favorite scientists with our new line of Secular Saints products, including devotional candles and posters!”
Devotional candles. With pictures of scientists, those “secular saints,” on them. Like St. Darwin and the Einstein the Blessed, and Holy Mother Curie. Because, while St. Darwin’s great work “made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist”, sometimes you really want to burn some wax while reading about what immense benefit he has bestowed on mortal (but hardly unique) Mankind. Or other primates, come to think of it.
There’s been any number of attempts to “explain” religion in terms of neuroscience and evolution. “We’re wired that way,” is the usual conclusion. (Because, of course, spending time and energy on imagining conversations with beings that, of course, couldn’t possibly exist — Science never having found any evidence for them — is a big contributor to survival and reproduction.)
(I’m not sure about an Evolutionary Advantage, but it’s certainly the Evolutionist’s Advantage — practically anything that lives, with all of its behavior, can be explained in terms of Evolution. And its essential handmaidens, named “Waving Hands” and “Nothing Else Will Do.”)
Thanks to the “Secular Saints” candles, it seems pretty clear that the real reason for all of the “God shaped hole in the human DNA” scientistic mumbo-jumbo is to justify the fact that… that people really want to venerate icons. Whether any of the “Saints” would’ve wanted to be treated that way is another matter – ego is one thing, but expecting worship?!
Perhaps that’s a bit unsympathetic. It must be a very difficult thing, to be a scientist able to see the beauty and order and purpose built into the universe, in all sorts of places that most people will never see, and require yourself to believe that “beauty” is a convenient term for your subconcious preference for the familiar and useful, that “order” is merely one unlikely arrangement of atoms with no inherent advantage over any other, and that “purpose” is merely a wish based on cultural conditioning.
(Of course such can be seen – that’s why people so often slip and use language associated with purpose and design, even when they’d normally hold that of course any such talk of “design” is nonsense, it’s all here by chance.)
“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” And seen all the more clearly when examined in great detail… those who study “what has been made” cannot expect to hide themselves from it. And some, I think, can see it – but do not want to see, and so they paper over their eyes with talk of “the neural basis of religious belief” or “the evolution of religion from the primitive worship urge”. And thus excuse in themselves the urges their minds will not let them consider — “How nice,” they say. “I am now having a religious experience. Think how much better I will be able to understand that research on fMRI imaging of people meditating!” They mistake the God-shaped hole in the heart for a God-shaped squiggle in the DNA.
And then they light a candle to St. Schrodinger – which may or may not be lit when they’re not looking at it.
