Leadingchurch.com

A Casual, Drowsy Grasp on the Almighty

On my flight home from GR Wednesday night “The Life of Pi” was playing. In an early scene Pi’s uncle has told the Canadian reporter to hear Pi’s story and then he will believe in God. That got my attention.

Unfortunately for me, and my capacity to review the movie fatigue from my business trip overcame me and I slept through a good amount of the movie. I’ll make a point to see the movie in its entirety when I have time. I knew enough about the movie to know that it would take a fairly common, syncretistic approach to the question of God.

For many people in our culture cosmopolitan pluralism governs their casual grasp upon the Almighty. The implicit approach I think goes something like this.

1. Religious groups have their confirmation biases firmly entrenched by their histories, social and familial pressure making a less biased observer duly hesitant to embrace their assertions.
2. Because humanity has been unable to arrive at consensus regarding the question of God the matter is still open for debate and we can safely assume that no religious camp has gotten the whole thing right so far.
3. Because personal experience is so often so determinative for a person’s religious commitment and because these commitments are so diverse we might suspect that religious beliefs are partially a matter of taste, not knowledge or fact.
4. Because the rise of science and technology have both displaced some answers previously given by religious groups (origins, psychology, etc.) and have proven more reliable at achieving controllable and predictable results than religious practices (medicine works better than prayer for most health concerns) all religious claims should be considered subject to a more scientific level of scrutiny.
5. Given points 1 through 4 if a reasonable, modern person is to dabble in religion at all the most prudent approach would be to a. Hold your beliefs loosely, always subject to further information b. Keep your beliefs fairly private, not trying to impose them on others, or even suggest or recommend them to others and c. survey the breadth of religious assertions trying to find what various religious camps hold in common, account as much to anecdotal perspective as possible and try to construct for yourself a “least common denominator” approach to anything that might approach “fact” or “knowledge”. Continue reading →