The second book seeks to bridge the gap between the religious world of dreams of perfection with the realities of the everyday world in which we live. I do this by incorporating the language of science and conflict into the vocabulary of religion; and then I chiefly explore the interface between religion and life in the professional world. My conclusion, which I state with almost monotonous regularity, is that conventional Christianity is useless if one is looking for a guide to find one’s way through the labyrinth of professional life. If that is right, it fails to provide a way of life. And if that is right, then it has not a hope of standing up to those religions which do provide a way of life, and may well be in terminal decline, very nice though its members often are.
The third book broadens the scope. If science’s precious gift to us is to enable us to see creation as a whole, what is the centre of this vision? Is it astronomy and atomic physics, which may be said to be the foundations of science? No; it is the science of life. And that means Evolution, rather than physiology and biochemistry. So if the “explanation” of the heart of science is a religious one, it means that the whole of science is a religious phenomenon, which is what you would expect in a God-created Universe. As the psalmist says, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth His handiwork”.
What I think I have done is open the door to a better future, and then go through the door and admire the scenery beyond. But I am incapable of exploring the delightful world beyond; I have to leave that to others. We are all children of the world in which we were brought up; and it was as much as I could do to open the door. Roger Bacon was one of the first to see that only experiments could tell you whether your theory was valid; yet he was a Franciscan friar, and he was incapable of leaving behind his reverence for Biblical truth. He could not question that. And sadly, once he had lost the protection of a sympathetic Pope, he spent most of the rest of his life in prison for daring to question as much as he did.
My vision is not like the medieval vision, which the Church compelled people to subscribe to for fear of being burned. Anyone is free to accept my view or not, as they please. And I simply argue that the objections to my view all appear on examination to be so insubstantial, that for practical purposes they vanish. No intellectual discipline measures up to the reality of life, as we all experience it in practice. If you think it does, in modern jargon you are indulging in Political Correctness, which I regard as the last refuge of the ignorant. In old-fashioned jargon, you are indulging in idolatry. In my idiom, you are crazy! No mental discipline does more than offer an approximate profile of life. And St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae was, in the long term, the architect of a most deluded system. I much prefer Erasmus, and his Praise of Folly.
Religion Rewritten, a religious view of nature and the universe.
Essay 3 - What Does The Future Hold?