[Philosophy] Does life have meaning? What can we know?

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“I Am an Instrument of God”

Religious Belief, Atheism, and Meaning

Jason T. Eberl and Jennifer A. Vines

Summary

Gaius Baltar believes in a rational universe, while Caprica Six believes in “one, true God.” Admiral Adama is a pragmatist, while Laura Roslin makes crucial decisions based on spiritual visions. If Battlestar Galactica were written by David Hume or Bertrand Russell, it would favor Baltar and Adama, but the overall story vindicates Six and Roslin’s religious worldview. This chapter presents philosophical arguments for and against God’s existence, including Aquinas’s “five ways” and the “problem of evil.” We also explore how meaning and value can persist in a Godless universe, and the common ground theists and atheists may share.

Gaius Baltar is truly frakked ! Dr. Amarak has requested to meet with President Roslin to discuss how the Cylons were able to launch their attack on the Twelve Colonies. Baltar, of course, is to be the center-piece of their discussion. But Amarak just happens to be on the Olympic Carrier, which Roslin must decide whether to destroy because it poses a threat to the rest of the fleet. With his fate in Roslin’s hands, Baltar can only watch how events play out – until his personal vision of Number Six tells him otherwise:

six: It’s not her decision, Gaius. baltar: No? six: It’s God’s choice. He wants you to repent . . . Repent of your sins. Accept

his true love and you will be saved. baltar: I repent. There, I repent. I repent. (“33”)

Roslin orders the Olympic Carrier’s destruction and Baltar is safe – for the time being. Baltar’s repentance isn’t all that sincere; he has a long way to go before sharing

the Cylons’ belief in God and accepting his role in God’s plan. Baltar’s initial act of faith is motivated solely by his concern for his own “skinny ass.” This isn’t too different from a proposal made by the mathematician and philosopher Blaise

Irwin, W., & Johnson, D. K. (Eds.). (2010). Introducing philosophy through pop culture : From socrates to south park, hume to house. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com Created from utsa on 2019-11-29 10:31:40.

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Religious Belief, Atheism, and Meaning 129

Pascal (1623 – 62), who reasons that if one believes in God and God exists, then an infinite amount of happiness awaits; whereas if one doesn’t believe in God and God exists, then infinite misery will follow. Thus, it’s more practical to believe that God exists.1 But both of us – a religious believer and an atheist – think that whether one believes in God or not should be based on more than such a wager.

We also agree that the veracity of religious belief shouldn’t be judged, as Baltar thinks, by dividing religious believers and atheists into two camps – the physically attractive intelligentsia and everyone else:

six: You don’t have to mock my faith. baltar: Sorry. I’m just not very religious. six: Does it bother you that I am? baltar: It puzzles me that an intelligent, attractive woman such as yourself should

be taken in by all that mysticism and superstition. (“Miniseries”)

If beauty and intelligence don’t actually correspond to whether or not a person believes in God – and there have been plenty of well-educated religious believers and unattractive atheists to support this premise – then what rational arguments could be made either for or against belief in the existence of God?

“A Rational Universe Explained Through Rational Means”

Baltar is convinced he lives in a universe he can and does understand. As a scientist, his entire worldview has been shaped by knowledge derived through empirical investigation and rational theorizing. God, it seems clear to Baltar, doesn’t fit within this view of reality as he peers through his microscope: “I don’t see the hand of God in here. Could I be looking in the wrong place? Let me see. Proteins? Yes. Hemoglobin? Yes. Divine digits? No. Sorry” (“Six Degrees of Separation”). Of course, God isn’t empirically observable. But, according to the medieval philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas (c.1225 –74), God’s effects are observable, and one can reason from these effects to the conclusion that God exists as their ultimate cause.2

Consider one of these alleged divine effects. About to be revealed as a Cylon collaborator, Baltar is both relieved and puzzled when the Olympic Carrier, with Amarak onboard, turns up missing. He and Six have different interpretations of this event:

six: God is watching out for you, Gaius. baltar: The universe is a vast and complex system. Coincidental, serendipitous events

are bound to occur. Indeed they are to be expected. It’s part of the pattern, part of the plan.

1 Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. W. F. Trotter (New York: Dover, 2003), §233. 2 See Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1948), I, Q. 2, a. 2.

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130 Jason T. Eberl and Jennifer A. Vines

six: Dr. Amarak posed a threat to you. Now he’s gone. Logic says there’s a connection.

baltar: A connection, maybe. But not God. There is no God or gods, singular or plural. There are no large invisible men, or women for that matter, in the sky taking a personal interest in the fortunes of Gaius Baltar.

(“33”)

Baltar agrees with Six that events don’t occur randomly. There’s an ordered structure to the universe, defined by laws of nature discoverable through scientific inquiry.

But given the universe’s evident structure, is it most reasonable to conclude that such “a vast and complex system” simply formed itself, as unquestioned scientific theory tells us, out of an explosion of infinitely dense matter known as the “big bang”? Aquinas doesn’t think so.3 In his first argument for the existence of God, Aquinas states that every change from a state of potency to an actual state must be brought about by something that’s already actual in a relevant way. To use a basic example from Newtonian physics, if an object is at rest, it has the potential to be in motion, but in order to be actually in motion, something must move it or it must have a part of itself capable of self-propelling it. This ties into Aquinas’s second argument, which begins by noting that every effect must have a cause, and each cause is itself an effect of some other cause. In both cases, a chain of “moved movers” or “caused causes” forms that is discoverable by reason: a pyramid ball sails through the air because it’s thrown by Anders’s arm, which is stimulated by motor neurons in his brain, which fire because he desires to throw the ball into the goal, which he desires in order to impress Starbuck, which he wants to do because of an evolutionary adaptation that pits him in “tests of manhood” to gain survival and reproductive advantage, and so on all the way back to the big bang – the start of it all.4

But is it the start? The big bang, like any other event, is in need of explanation, unless we just accept it as a “brute fact” – incapable of, and thus not requiring, any further explanation:

The universe began from a state of infinite density about [15 billion years] ago. Space and time were created in that event and so was all the matter in the universe. It is not meaningful to ask what happened before the big bang; it is somewhat like asking what is north of the North Pole.5

3 Aquinas presents five interrelated arguments for God’s existence. We’ll review three of them here. 4 One response the atheist might launch at this point is that there is no “start of it all,” but rather the chain of “moved movers” and “caused causes” – indeed, the existence of the universe itself – is infinite. Aquinas, however, agrees with Aristotle in denying that such an infinite series could actually exist. Further arguments supporting Aquinas’s view are provided by William Lane Craig in his debate with Quentin Smith, Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). 5 J. Richard Gott III, James E. Gunn, David N. Schramm, and Beatrice M. Tinsley, “Will the Universe Expand Forever?” Scientific American (March 1976), 65; as quoted in Craig and Smith, Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology, 43.

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Religious Belief, Atheism, and Meaning 131

But, to Aquinas and many others, this answer isn’t intellectually satisfying. A standard metaphysical axiom is ex nihilo nihil fit – “out of nothing, nothing comes.” This axiom alone supports the notion that something had to exist out of which the universe came to be – in other words, there must be a sufficient reason for the universe to exist at all. We can thus ask, why did the big bang occur? How did the infinitely dense matter come to exist in the first place? Why are there one or more physical laws that state that such dense matter will explode outward?6 It’s rationally conceivable for the universe never to have existed or to have come into existence in a different fashion, or for a singularity of infinitely dense matter to exist but the relevant physical laws be different so that it doesn’t explode and just remains static.

This is where another of Aquinas’s arguments comes into play:

The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end [goal] . . . Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God. (I, Q. 2, a. 3)

This argument is sometimes identified with the notion of “intelligent design,” and that isn’t too far off the mark. But Aquinas isn’t denying any of the scientific pro- cesses by which the universe unfolds; nor is he claiming that God sticks his finger in the mix periodically to push things along. Aquinas, presumably, wouldn’t take issue with the well-established explanation of how life evolved by means of natural selection. It’s no surprise, then, that Baltar doesn’t observe “divine digits” through his microscope.

Nonetheless, the fact that there is a rationally discoverable set of laws governing the behavior of matter and energy, and the substances they compose, requires an explanation. Contemporary philosopher John Haldane notes, “Natural explanations having reached their logical limits we are then forced to say that either the order- liness of the universe has no explanation or that it has an ‘extra-natural’ one.”7 For Aquinas, the explanation of the universe’s ordered structure, and its very existence, is the “unmoved mover,” the “uncaused cause”: God.

“That Is Sin. That Is Evil. And You Are Evil”

Even if Aquinas’s arguments demonstrate that some sort of “God” exists as the universe’s existential foundation, the traditional conception of God held by Jews,

6 It’s debated among cosmologists whether any physical laws actually exist at the moment of the big bang. Stephen Hawking, however, argues that at least one law – the “wave function of the universe” – would have to exist at the beginning; see Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam Books, 1988), 133. 7 J. J. C. Smart and J. J. Haldane, Atheism & Theism, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 110.

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132 Jason T. Eberl and Jennifer A. Vines

Christians, Muslims, and Cylons suffers from a flaw in logic known as the “problem of evil.” Traditional theism understands God to be all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good. But why would such a God allow for pervasive evil and suffering to exist in the world he supposedly created? Why, for example, doesn’t God make algae taste like ice cream so the Colonials can have a more pleasant culinary experience after they find the Eye of Jupiter? The logical inconsistency is obvious and seem- ingly intractable for the religious believer: If God is all-powerful, why can’t he prevent evil? If God is all-knowing, wouldn’t he have the means to anticipate and stop evil before it occurs? And if God is inherently good, then surely he desires to eliminate evil from the world. Six, after all, constantly reminds Baltar of God’s “eternal love.”

Religious believers are in a quandary if they’re unwilling to let go of one of the three qualities thought to be essential to God’s nature. It’s tempting at this point to abandon the project of solving the problem of evil by echoing the cynical humor of the philosopher and logician Bertrand Russell (1872–1970): “This world that we know was made by the devil at a moment when God was not looking.”8 Religious belief, however, necessitates finding some explanation for this problem.

One response to the problem of evil appeals to the idea that human beings have free will, and that much of the evil we suffer is the result of our own bad choices, a misuse of our God-given freedom. The philosopher and theologian, Augustine (354 – 430), thus argues:

A perverse will is the cause of all evils . . . what could be the cause of the will before the will itself ? Either it is the will itself, in which case the root of all evil is still the will, or else it is not the will, in which case there is no sin. So either the will is the first cause of sin, or no sin is the first cause of sin. And you cannot assign responsibility for a sin to anyone but the sinner; therefore, you cannot rightly assign responsibility except to someone who wills it.9

Augustine identifies the source of moral evil as “inordinate desire” for “temporal goods”:

So we are now in a position to ask whether evildoing is anything other than neglecting eternal things [for example, truth], which the mind perceives and enjoys by means of itself and which it cannot lose if it loves them; and instead pursuing temporal things . . . as if they were great and marvelous things. It seems to me that all evil deeds – that is, all sins – fall into this one category. (27)

Things such as food, alcohol, sex, and discipline are good in themselves and are worthy of desire. But we shouldn’t allow our desire for such goods to override our commitment to pursuing more important goods. Hence, Lee’s overeating while

8 Bertrand Russell, “Why I Am Not a Christian,” in Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957), 12. 9 Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will, trans. Thomas Williams (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993), 104 –5.

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Religious Belief, Atheism, and Meaning 133

commanding Pegasus symbolizes to Admiral Adama that his son has grown soft and weak; Tigh’s alcoholism quite evidently causes him – and the fleet when he’s in command – all sorts of problems; Starbuck, like Baltar, pursues sex like it’s a sport, but suffers from a lack of intimacy in her relationships; and Admiral Cain takes military discipline to a savage level aboard Pegasus to the overall detriment of her crew and civilians alike. Does it make sense to blame God for Lee’s choice to overeat, Tigh’s choice to drink, or Starbuck’s choice to frak? As Brother Cavil tells Tyrol after he assaults Cally, “The problem is you are screwed up, heart and mind. You, not the gods or fate or the universe. You” (“Lay Down Your Burdens, Part 1”).

“You Have a Gift, Kara . . . And I’m Not Gonna Let You Piss That Away”

Even if the misuse of free will results in the moral evils for which those who make “bad calls” can be held responsible – as Tigh accepts responsibility for the “Gideon massacre” (“Final Cut”) – there are still natural evils to contend with. Assuming that Six is right when she says, “God doesn’t take sides,” why would God create a universe in which there are star clusters with dense radiation that block the Colonials’ access to much needed food (“The Passage”)? Or a disease that’s fatal to Cylons (“Torn”)? Given Aquinas’s argument that God is responsible for the universe’s ordered structure, it stands to reason that God would’ve ordered the universe so that it wasn’t deadly to the conscious entities whom God supposedly loves unconditionally.

Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–76) compares God’s creation of the universe to an architect designing and building a faulty house:

Did I show you a house or palace where there was not one apartment convenient or agreeable: where the windows, doors, fires, passages, stairs, and the whole economy of the building were the source of noise, confusion, fatigue, darkness, and the extremes of heat and cold, you would certainly blame the contrivance, without any further examination . . . If you find any inconveniences and deformities in the build- ing, you will always, without entering into any detail, condemn the architect.10

One response to this conundrum invokes the value of “soul-making.” Contemporary philosopher John Hick argues that we shouldn’t conceive of God as an “architect” designing this world to be a comfortable place in which to live. Rather, we should understand God as a parent whose primary purpose is for his children to receive a proper upbringing:

We do not desire for [our children] unalloyed pleasure at the expense of their growth in such even greater values as moral integrity, unselfishness, compassion, courage,

10 David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, 2nd edn., ed. Richard H. Popkin (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998), 68 –9.

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134 Jason T. Eberl and Jennifer A. Vines

humour, reverence for the truth, and perhaps above all the capacity for love. We do not act on the premise that pleasure is the supreme end of life; and if the develop- ment of these other values sometimes clashes with the provision of pleasure, then we are willing to have our children miss a certain amount of this, rather than fail to come to possess and to be possessed by the finer and more precious qualities that are possible to the human personality . . . we have to recognize that the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain cannot be the supreme and overriding end for which the world exists. Rather, this world must be a place of soul-making.11

Hick further contends,

in a painless world man would not have to earn his living by the sweat of his brow or the ingenuity of his brain . . . Human existence would involve no need for exertion, no kind of challenge, no problems to be solved or difficulties to be overcome, no demand of the environment for human skill or inventiveness. There would be nothing to avoid and nothing to seek; no occasion for co-operation or mutual help; no stimulus to the development of culture or the creation of civilization. The race would consist of feckless Adams and Eves, harmless and innocent, but devoid of positive character and with- out the dignity of real responsibilities, tasks, and achievements . . . A soft, unchallenging world would be inhabited by a soft, unchallenged race of men. (342–3)

We read here an echo of Adama and Dee’s take on Lee’s physical stature after a year of commanding Pegasus in orbit around New Caprica. Adama criticizes his son for having grown “weak, soft, mentally and physically”; and Dee diagnoses the source of his problem: “You’ve lost your edge. Your confidence. You lost your war, Lee. And the truth is you’re a soldier who needs a war” (“Occupation”). Without struggle, without challenges to overcome, Lee’s very existence is in danger of losing its meaning.

This is also the parental attitude of Starbuck’s mother, Socrata Thrace. Leoben tells Starbuck, “You were born to a woman who believed suffering was good for the soul. So you suffered. Your life is a testament to pain” (“Flesh and Bone”). While the physical and emotional abuse Starbuck endured is certainly nothing any decent parent would sanction, there is a valid purpose her mother was attempting – in her significantly flawed way – to achieve. As an oracle tells her, “You learned the wrong lesson from your mother, Kara. You confused the messenger with the message. Your mother was trying to teach you something else” (“Maelstrom”). With help from an apparition of Leoben, Starbuck comes to realize the greater good that her mother was trying to achieve and accepts the evils she had to endure as a child to prepare her for a crossroads in her life, when she must conquer her fear “to discover what hovers in the space between life and death.” Similarly, God allows us to experience the consequences of both moral and natural evils so that we may mature as individuals and as a species to face whatever challenges and rewards the future may bring as we continue to evolve.

11 John Hick, Evil and the God of Love (London: Fontana, 1979), 294 –5.

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Religious Belief, Atheism, and Meaning 135

“The Gods Shall Lift Those Who Lift Each Other”

Baltar’s transition from committed skeptic to religious believer, tenuous as it may be, raises a serious question: How does a person who had defined himself in clear opposition to religion suddenly find Six’s religious assertions convincing? Consider Baltar’s attitude at the beginning:

What you are doing, darling, is boring me to death with your superstitious drivel. Your metaphysical nonsense, which, to be fair, actually appeals to the half-educated dullards that make up most of human society, but which, I hasten to add, no rational, intelligent, free-thinking human being truly believes. (“Six Degrees of Separation”)

So did Baltar have a direct experience of God’s eternal love or a mystical “a-ha” moment? Did he decide to take Pascal up on his wager? Or are his religious inclinations merely another manifestation of his massive ego? It’s probable that Baltar’s religiosity can be reduced to a mere psychological need – namely, the need to be convinced that his life is important. Contemporary philosopher J. J. C. Smart eloquently sums up this view of religion as the ultimate ego-booster: “Even the horrible view that there is a hell to which the infinite God will consign us for our sins may give us an admittedly miserable sense of importance” (25).

Six’s continued insistence that Baltar has a special role to play within God’s cosmic plan ultimately proves to be an effective tool in getting him to do her bidding: “She . . . Caprica Six. She chose me. Chose me over all men. Chosen to be seduced. Taken by the hand. Guided between the light and the dark” (“Taking a Break from All Your Worries”). Baltar’s self-importance is evident when he and Six discuss the bombing of a Cylon base:

baltar: Come on, you must have an inkling, where I should tell them to bomb? six: No. But God does . . . Open your heart to him, and he’ll show you the way. baltar: It’d be a lot simpler if he came out and told me. six: You must remember to surrender your ego. Remain humble. baltar: If you ask me, God could do with cleaning his ears out. Then he might

hear what I have to say. (“The Hand of God”)

Baltar initially purports to value only what can be confirmed through rational means. Eventually his human foibles, coupled with an unrelenting series of depress- ing events in the BSG universe, result in his gravitating towards religious belief. Baltar’s change of heart, though, smacks of insincerity insofar as his primary motivations continue to be fear and the indulgence of various hedonistic pursuits, political power, or whatever might tickle his fancy on any given day. Moreover, Baltar’s actions are typically pursued without any consideration of how they impact others.

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136 Jason T. Eberl and Jennifer A. Vines

Invoking God’s assistance when one needs help to resolve a temporary challenge doesn’t constitute a robust religious belief. Baltar’s tearful appeal to God during his “trial by fire” wrought by Shelly Godfrey (“Six Degrees of Separation”) is prob- ably best described in the words of the famous cartoon philosopher Lisa Simpson: “Prayer. The last refuge of a scoundrel.”12 Baltar’s selfish nature impedes his ability to attain the type of freedom Russell describes: “freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.”13 Baltar’s desires, which are transitory and defined by the crisis of the moment, prevent him from realizing that belief in God isn’t the answer. Rather, religious belief becomes a further hindrance to accepting a world that is mechanistic, not to mention oftentimes cruel, and certainly not subject to human control.

Where does a rejection of religious belief leave humanity? When Roslin commits herself to finding the Arrow of Apollo, Adama attempts to keep her focus grounded: “These stories about Kobol, gods, the Arrow of Apollo, they’re just stories, legends, myths. Don’t let it blind you to the reality that we face” (“Kobol’s Last Gleaming, Part 1”). If we accept Adama’s view that the gods and scriptures don’t correspond to any objective reality, does that imply a lack of meaning in our lives? An atheistic worldview shouldn’t be equated with the impossibility of meaning, which is often misperceived as being contingent upon an afterlife or whether God’s plan for each of us comes to fruition. If we deny the possibility of the various mystical goals espoused by particular religious faiths, we’re left with life’s meaning defined by challenges faced, relationships forged, and the ability to derive value from these experiences. Russell allows for the possibility of transcendence through our direct experience of the world and acknowledgment of our lack of control over its forces, which he deems the “the beauty of tragedy”:

In the spectacle of death, in the endurance of intolerable pain, and in the irrevoc- ableness of a vanished past, there is a sacredness, an overpowering awe, a feeling of the vastness, the depth, the inexhaustible mystery of existence, in which, as by some strange marriage of pain, the sufferer is bound to the world by bonds of sorrow. (113)

Alone in the vastness of space with the Cylons continually breathing down their neck, the Colonial survivors grieve for the loss of their former existence and the vast number of lives lost. The makeshift memorial that evolves into a sacred space on Galactica is a tangible and poignant representation of this grief. The Colonials’ situation is precarious, and yet their continual suffering never causes them to question the assumption that the attempt to save humanity is worth the struggles endured. Preserving the human race provides a purpose that informs each person’s daily choices in their work, politics, and relationships.

12 The Simpsons, Season Two: “Bart Gets an F.” 13 Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man’s Worship,” in Why I Am Not a Christian, 110.

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Religious Belief, Atheism, and Meaning 137

Russell speaks to the bravery of facing a world lacking inherent meaning:

We see, surrounding the narrow raft illuminated by the flickering light of human comradeship, the dark ocean on whose rolling waves we toss for a brief hour; all the loneliness of humanity amid hostile forces is concentrated on the individual soul, which must struggle alone, with what of courage it can command, against the whole weight of a universe that cares nothing for its hopes and fears. Victory, in this struggle with the powers of darkness, is the true baptism into the glorious company of heroes, the true initiation into the overmastering beauty of human existence. (113 –14)

Russell envisions each person having to face her own struggles, yet he recognizes the persistent “flickering light of human comradeship.” This is one important value that continues to define a meaningful existence for the Colonials after the loss of their civilization and obvious abandonment by their “gods.” Some of the most powerful scenes in the series demonstrate this profound need for human connection: Starbuck’s naming the call signs of Viper and Raptor pilots lost (“Scar”), or Roslin’s joy when Billy informs her that a baby had just been born on the appropriately named Rising Star (“33”).

When the fleet is divided due to the ideological confrontation between Roslin and Adama, Dee confronts the “old man” and gets to the heart of the matter:

You let us down. You made a promise to all of us to find Earth, to find us a home together . . . every day that we remain apart is a day that you’ve broken your promise . . . It’s time to heal the wounds, Commander. People have been divided . . . Children are separated from their parents. (“Home, Part 1”)

Dee convinces Adama to put aside his “rage” and return to Kobol to reunite the fleet. Adama, who’s not a religious man, nevertheless recognizes a significant source of meaning for human existence in a Godless world: the need for human solidarity in pursuit of a common goal.

“You Have to Believe in Something”

Atheism doesn’t entail nihilism – the belief that existence is meaningless in the absence of objective value – although it can certainly lead to it. Religious believers and atheists will never come to an understanding if religious believers assert that those who reject belief in the divine or transcendent consign themselves to a life devoid of meaning. The extreme situation depicted in BSG lends itself to a forced cooperation between believers and non-believers, as both groups share the common goal of humanity’s survival. Adama acknowledges this fact in “Home, Part 2”: “Many people believe that the scriptures, the letters from the gods, will lead us to salvation. Maybe they will. ‘But the gods shall lift those who lift each other.’”

But should atheists and religious believers seek common ground in less dire circumstances? Atheists, despite being convinced that their worldview is more

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138 Jason T. Eberl and Jennifer A. Vines

rational and authentic, recognize they’re outnumbered. Therefore, they must often take the pragmatic approach of finding common ground with religious believers when possible.

Religious believers, conversely, often recognize that ethical and other principles they hold need to be couched in terms of rational arguments that can be debated in the secular public arena of modern society. The appeal to reason as a way of understanding and expressing religious belief isn’t foreign to most major faith traditions. To cite one representative figure, Pope John Paul II, “The Church remains profoundly convinced that faith and reason ‘mutually support each other’; each influences the other, as they offer to each other a purifying critique and a stimulus to pursue the search for deeper understanding.”14 The recognition that human beings are essentially rational animals motivates many religious believers to engage in secular, and not merely faith-based, discourse. At the same time, however, religious believers hold that there are limits to pure rational inquiry, and so faith must take over at those junctures to further our knowledge.

Hence, the litmus test for the validity of religious beliefs may be, as Roslin asserts, whether they “hold real-world relevance” (“Lay Down Your Burdens, Part 2”). To the degree that religious believers acknowledge rational, scientific inquiry as a means to truth, and atheists recognize that there are limits to the knowledge such inquiry can deliver to answer some of the ultimate questions of human concern, the ground is fertile for mutually respectable and fruitful dialogue as humanity continues its “lonely quest” on this “shining planet, known as Earth.”15

14 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio (1998), §100: www.vatican.va/edocs/ ENG0216/_INDEX.HTM. 15 We’re grateful to Bill Irwin and Jessica Vines for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.

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