The Dish

by Katie Zavadski

Dreher gives the gravitational waves discovery a theological gloss, baiting his secularist readers:

There was nothing, and then, in an instant, there was something. It’s almost like somebody created the cosmos out of nothing.

UPDATE: Um, guys, I know this doesn’t prove God’s existence, or that God created the universe, etc. Let me state here without fear of contradiction that I do not believe science can ever prove such a thing, though astrophysics and cosmology can make (and is making, I think) belief in an intelligent designer more credible.

Leslie A. Wickman backs him up:

The prevalent theory of cosmic origins prior to the Big Bang theory was the “Steady State,” which argued that the universe has always existed, without a beginning that necessitated a cause. However, this new evidence strongly suggests that there was a beginning to our universe. If the universe did indeed have a beginning, by the simple logic of cause and effect, there had to be an agent – separate and apart from the effect – that caused it. That sounds a lot like Genesis 1:1 to me: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth.”

So this latest discovery is good news for us believers, as it adds scientific support to the idea that the universe was caused – or created – by something or someone outside it and not dependent on it.

But Danny Faulkner is skeptical:

First, this announcement may be improperly understood and reported. For instance, in 2003 proof for cosmic inflation was incorrectly reported and a similar erroneous claim was made last year. Second, the predictions that are being supposedly confirmed are very model-dependent: if the model changes, then the predictions change. Inflation is just one of many free parameters that cosmologists have at their disposal within the big bang model, so they can alter these parameters at will to get the intended result. Third, other mechanisms could mimic the signal being claimed today. So, even if the data are confirmed, there may be some other physical mechanism at play rather than cosmic inflation.

Hemant Mehta mocks Faulkner’s conclusions:

In summary, 1) the scientists might be wrong, 2) Science changes so we can’t trust it, 3) God may have caused the thing the scientists are talking about.

Which, let’s face it, are [creationists’] explanations for damn near everything. It’s an evasion of how scientific theories work, which parts of the experiment Faulkner thinks the scientists got wrong, and the usual admission that something else (hint: God) could’ve provided the same results a few thousand years ago. Creationism: Proof that you can always deny that which you don’t understand.

Previous Dish coverage of the findings here, here, and here.

by Tracy R. Walsh

Amid the ongoing conversation about whether non-believers can ever truly understand religious art, Kenan Malik calls for a humanist appreciation of the sacred:

Transcendence does not necessarily have to be understood in a religious fashion, solely in relation to some concept of the divine. It is rather a recognition that our humanness is invested not simply in our existence as individuals or as physical beings but also in our collective existence as social beings and in our ability, as social beings, to rise above our individual physical selves and to see ourselves as part of a larger project, to project onto the world, and onto human life, a meaning or purpose that exists only because we as human beings create it.

The capacity to grasp the transcendent in this fashion has transformed through history. In the premodern world it was difficult to conceive of meaning or purpose except in relation to God, or gods, or as aspects of the universe itself (though there were major strands in ancient Greek, Indian and Chinese philosophy that attempted to understand this in a purely human way). Hence, transcendence was inevitably seen in a religious light. But with modernity it became increasingly plausible to imagine purpose and meaning as humanly created. Indeed, as the French philosopher Denis Diderot claimed: “If we banish man, the thinking and contemplating being, from the face of the earth, this moving and sublime spectacle of nature will be nothing more than a sad and mute scene.” It was “the presence of man which makes the existence of beings meaningful.” …

If today we are uncomfortable with the idea of the transcendent, if many reject the idea entirely, while others can discover it only in a religious context, it is largely because we have a degraded sense of the human. That is why to read Marilynne Robinson, to gaze upon a Rothko, to listen to Olivier Messiaen can feel so essential. For some it may be to surrender to a religious experience. It is also, paradoxically, to remind ourselves what is truly human about the human condition.

by Jessie Roberts

Sanford Schwartz reviews the Metropolitan Museum’s exhibit on the devotional works of Piero della Francesca, writing that his “figures can be strangely contemporary in their sexiness, and there is nothing dated about the way they encounter and judge one another, or appraise us”:

The most impressive work in the show is Madonna and Child with Two Angels…. With her downcast eyes, gentle demeanor, and small features set in a large, wide-nosed face, the Madonna is a choice example of a kind of woman, at once regal and rustic, that Piero created. Her quiet strength is reiterated in the work’s painted surface, which has an enamel-like density.

The angel in pink is an attentive young person, but the angel in blue (who is possibly the same model seen in a different way) is, along with the suggestion of a room behind him, transfixing.

Piero’s angels, whether attending a Nativity, a baptism, or a Madonna, can be guarded or genuinely sweet. They almost always have a distinct presence. The angel, or seraph, in blue here, whose arms are crossed before his chest and who might be blocking entry to the background space, would seem to be Piero’s last word on the subject. His baby-blue outfit is exquisitely touched with bits of white and gold, and his white-blond hair is set in little electrified ringlets. Kenneth Clark, in his book on the artist, called him “daunting,” and [curator Keith] Christiansen says he is “implacable.”

But surely his protectiveness has something sensual and brazen about it, and the glimpse we have of the bare space behind him, where all we see are shadows of window blinds and a patch of strong sunlight on the wall, is uncannily of our day and age. Am I alone in thinking that this part of the picture might be set in Palm Springs? The angel and the mysterious area he is linked with form almost a painting within the painting. It is kind of a gift within the larger gift that is Piero’s art.

(Image of Madonna and Child with Two Angels (ca. 1464–74?), also known as the “Senigallia Madonna,” via Wikimedia Commons)

by Matthew Sitman

Last week the Dish featured an interview with Peter Watson, author of The Age of Atheists, an intellectual history of European and American thought since Nietzsche’s 1882 proclamation that “God is dead.” Emma Green accuses Watson of “intellectual snobbery” for believing that because “intellectual history trends toward non-belief, human history must, too.” Why she objects:

For one thing, it suggests that believers are inherently less thoughtful than non-believers. Watson tells stories of famous thinkers and artists who have struggled to reconcile themselves to a godless world. And these are helpful, in that they offer insight into how dynamic, creative people have tried to live. But that doesn’t mean the average believer’s search for meaning and understanding is any less rigorous or valuable—it just ends with a different conclusion: that God exists. Watson implies that full engagement with the project of being human in the modern world leads to atheism, and that’s just not true.

We know it’s not true because the vast majority of the world believes in God or some sort higher power. Worldwide, religious belief and observance vary widely by region. It’s tough to get a fully accurate global picture of faith in God or a “higher power,” but the metric of religiosity serves as a helpful proxy. Only 16 percent of the world’s population was not affiliated with a particular faith as of 2010, although many of these people believe in God or a spiritual deity, according to the Pew Research Center.

Green goes on to cite a litany of statistics, broken down by region and country, showing just how many people still believe in God, even in Europe. I find this a puzzling and unpersuasive retort.

To begin with, the distinction between “intellectual history” and “human history” is a strange one – isn’t the former part of the latter, and might it not portend the shape of things to come? Even more, large numbers of people across the globe still having a “religious affiliation” doesn’t mean such social facts will be durable, or indicate how strong such affiliations are, or predict how the ongoing churn of the modern world will impact areas outside the United States and Europe. That 30 percent of the religiously unaffiliated in France believe in God, a number Green trots out, seems irrelevant to me; one can imagine a survey respondent shrugging and saying, “Sure, I believe in God,” with that belief being of no practical import to that person. The Pew study she cites specifically notes that such numbers only deal with the self-identification of those surveyed, and “does not attempt to measure the degree to which members of these groups actively practice their faiths or how religious they are.”

Most of all, in her own summary of his book, Green describes Watson as implying that “full engagement with the project of being human in the modern world leads to atheism.” That means he’s making an argument that an array of forces in contemporary life – from modern science to capitalism to the overturning of traditional ideas about sex and morality – mitigate against religious belief, or at least make it more tenuous and difficult. In other words, there are reasons, intellectual and cultural, that make Watson predict an atheistic future. I’m not convinced Watson is right, but responding with rather weak survey data does nothing to address these deeper issues. That’s why John Gray’s review of The Age of Atheists (along with Terry Eagleton’s Culture and the Death of God) is so on point, getting at the true intellectual and moral alternatives at stake. Here’s why he praises Watson and Eagleton as the rare exceptions who take Nietzsche as the “central reference point” in their books:

There can be little doubt that Nietzsche is the most important figure in modern atheism, but you would never know it from reading the current crop of unbelievers, who rarely cite his arguments or even mention him. Today’s atheists cultivate a broad ignorance of the history of the ideas they fervently preach, and there are many reasons why they might prefer that the 19th-century German thinker be consigned to the memory hole. With few exceptions, contemporary atheists are earnest and militant liberals. Awkwardly, Nietzsche pointed out that liberal values derive from Jewish and Christian monotheism, and rejected these values for that very reason. There is no basis – whether in logic or history – for the prevailing notion that atheism and liberalism go together. Illustrating this fact, Nietzsche can only be an embarrassment for atheists today. Worse, they can’t help dimly suspecting they embody precisely the kind of pious freethinker that Nietzsche despised and mocked: loud in their mawkish reverence for humanity, and stridently censorious of any criticism of liberal hopes.

I want more discussions prompted by this line of thought, more atheists who have absorbed the full import of what rejecting Christianity really might entail, especially the faith’s deep, if not uncomplicated, impact on the West’s moral and political heritage. To the extent Watson’s book, along with Eagleton’s, contribute to this happening, I rather enthusiastically welcome them.

by Matthew Sitman

A couple months back, a Reddit user spotted the above pamphlet from a Christian organization, replete with garbled texts that make it seem like Jesus didn’t have time for the person he was messaging. The episode prompts Billy Kangas to lament evangelicals’ “groan worthy” attempts at making Christianity cool and relevant, arguing that when “the Church employs superficial symbols to communicate the Gospel, the Gospel can only take hold of people on a superficial level”:

A slogan-branded faith can’t communicate the depth of the mystery of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. Perhaps this is part of the reasons there has been such a mass exodus of evangelical children after they graduate from youth group.

Historical Christian symbols, on the other hand, are primordial and polyvalent:

Flesh, blood, light, water, birth, death, eating, drinking, hunger and thirst. These symbols are not seeking to emulate the ephemeral but they encompass our entire existence. The symbols not only contain a wealth of meaning, they contain us. They dig deep into who we are as people in our deepest depths, in our hopes and fears. They are the building blocks of poetry, romance and drama. They have layers of meaning and depths that require a lifetime to divulge. They captivate rather than entertain. In many places these images have been lost, and I believe they need to be reclaimed.

One alternative he suggests Christians cultivate – “create space for silence”:

It’s no secret that we live in a noisy world. Part of the reason the creating of a pop-culture Jesus is so tempting is because many in the Church realize that they are competing for the attention of people who are constantly bombarded with images and sounds designed to overwhelm the senses. The fact that there is rarely a moment of stillness in our lives means that we rarely give images and symbols the space they need to settle deeply within us.

(Image via Imgur/theqwoppingdead)