Second Sight

So that’s that then. Stephen Hawking has assured us that the laws of physics are sufficient to explain the universe we live in – and that we have no need to posit the possibility of God. His book, The Grand Design, will be published on September 9.

This is neither the time nor the place to focus on the detail of his arguments, and no doubt plenty of description will be forthcoming in the popular press and elsewhere. I want to focus initially on one remark he makes: “philosophy is dead.”

Bang goes the wisdom of two and a half millennia. But philosophy is not only not dead, it was never needed as much as it is now. One of the most important tasks in philosophy is to ensure that the right questions are asked and that the arguments which proceed stand up to rigorous examination. No wonder Hawking would like philosophy to be dead because he is wrong on both counts.

The drive of Hawking’s approach is that the theory, or rather the family of theories, he espouses leads to the possibility of 10 to the power of 500 different universes (try that on your calculator and watch it explode). Thus the extraordinary fine-tuning required for a universe which would eventually be able to support human life is not evidence for a designer God; it has in fact come about by chance. Since our universe is, by definition, the only one we can experience, we are fooled into thinking that it is the only one which exists, or has existed.

M theory, as it is known, is highly controversial within the scientific community; indeed there are eminent names who claim that it cannot properly be called a scientific theory at all. The idea of multiverses to explain the fine-tuning has been known as the “last refuge of the agnostic”. But let us assume that it is true, that there is an infinity of universes, and that our universe is an inevitable result of chance at work – where does that get us?

First, we are reminded of the theory of evolution. We have no difficulty in reconciling our belief in God as creator with evolution in which myriads of tiny chances, inevitably filtered by fitness to survive, develop into higher forms of life. God is not some sort of inventive superman who performs in the same sort of way as we do – but at an infinitely higher level. He transcends the universe; his creative action is utterly beyond our ken. If we use terms like “designer” it is only because the human mind and human vocabulary has no further reach. Our descriptions are only useful if we always bear in mind their gross inadequacy.

Similarly, if all the physical laws had been explained and proved (known as the Grand Theory of Everything) – which is a million miles from the case – our understanding of the actions of God would not be one whit greater: his existence and his actions are of a different order.

Most particularly it would not touch the question of how something existing comes out from nothing. That is a question which science cannot answer, and will never answer, because nothingness is not within its domain. Hawking apparently does not address this question – which is the true and ultimate Theory of Everything. But what philosophy can teach us is that neither he, nor you, nor I will ever explain creation, except through faith.

(First published in The Catholic Herald on 12 February 2010)

So for the time being crisis is averted. It would seem that the combined efforts of the Lords Spiritual, our bishops, and the big gun of the Pope himself have led to the withdrawal of the offending clauses in the Equality Bill. Religions will retain the freedom to run their operations and appoint staff in line with the criteria of their respective beliefs, with a much reduced danger of legal challenge.

But only for the time being. I repeat this because we are a lazy lot. It gives me little pleasure (well, in truth, just a touch of schadenfreude) to mention that I have pointed out in this newspaper over several years that little by little our fundamental liberties were being eroded ­ and that one day the crunch would come. In each case the change has been small, always defended as a necessity of the time, and cumulative. Now that we have at last woken up ­ some of us perhaps still bleary-eyed ­ maybe we can take some action.

The first screech of the alarm clock loud enough to break the deepest slumber was the question of adoption agencies: the grotesque demand that Catholic agencies should be prepared to place the young with gay couples. I am not going to argue against the effectiveness of single-sex parents (the issue is not clear-cut) but against the fist of socialist totalitarianism thrust in the face of the Church’s deep and strongly held principles.

But some of us put the alarm clock on hold and returned to sleep ­ this time woken by the second screech of a further attempt to manhandle (or, given the involvement of Harriet Harman, perhaps I should say womanhandle) the rights of religion. Will that get us out of bed?

The Pope, in addressing our bishops on freedom, used the unhelpful phrase “natural law”. Natural law is a technical term; what he meant was the native ability of all decent people to recognise the ways in which we should naturally live our lives in order to flourish as human beings. For all the fashionable ills of our society, decent people do recognise that they are answerable, at least to themselves, for their behaviour, that we have a duty to each other ­ particularly the poor and the aged, ­ that we have a right to have religious beliefs or none, that we have rights to free association, that human life has a uniquely sacred status, that the misuse of sexuality brings tragedy, that stable marriage and family are the essential units of a good society. That list is by no means exhaustive, but note that in every case I am referring to values taught by the Church ­ often in the teeth of the ungodly.

We have carelessly allowed the Church to be associated with the negative images of prohibition. Our focus must move away from looking at all the things which we can get wrong, and be applied to the positive values. That way we speak to man’s aspirations rather than to his fears. What is historically certain is that our continued cataloguing of sin has not led to more orthodox behaviour. But it has led to our ill repute, and our rejection in the marketplace. I will settle for John XXIII’s remarks at the beginning of the Council: “Nowadays, however, the spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity. She considers that she meets the needs of the present day by demonstrating the validity of her teaching rather than by condemnations.”

Why is it that in any relevant matter I find a punchy comment from the British Humanist Association (who have brought prejudice, selective evidence and fallacious reasoning to new heights) and no equally forceful statement from us about how humans have to live in order to flourish, and what the Church is contributing to this? It may well be that the Catholic Union, so inspiringly discussed by James Bogle in the 5 February issue, will play an effective part here. But we in our daily lives and conversations have our responsibility of witness. So it may be useful to look briefly at some relevant issues.

Let’s clear out of the way one question which can be distracting. Catholic schools are, for the most part, publicly funded. No one with an eye for the evidence will deny that Catholic schools do a first-rate job educationally and in terms of social integration. But why should the taxpayer be funding religious organisations with which they may not agree? Surely, if Catholics want their own form of schooling, they should fund it for themselves.

Good thinking. I happen in my old fashioned way to object to the killing of around 200,000 babies a year. But the tax system works as a general pool from which the public costs are taken. As a result I am paying for the slaughter. We could make a bargain: I stop paying for killing babies, you stop paying for Catholic schools.

Another distraction to be exorcised is the idea that this is an issue about homosexuality, introducing a fashionable and emotional example is an old rhetorical trick. The issue is not homosexuality but whether a given lifestyle (and there are plenty of examples) is inconsistent with the strongly held principles of a religion, or, for that matter, those of any other organisation. I am not expecting an invitation to take up a post with the British Humanist Association any time soon, but I do not accuse them of unfair discrimination.

We also need to be quite clear about what we mean by a free society. The Equality Bill, despite its name, is aimed at neither equality nor freedom. It is an instrument to serve a belief shared by a section of the population who, with the highest ideals, think that they know what is good for us. Unsurprisingly it is usually to be found in the ranks of the civil authorities, for that is the best vantage point to put such an agenda into action. They are very dangerous because they are sincere. Rogues will eventually be outed; virtuous fools can hide in their whited sepulchres. Nor am I nosing out a conspiracy theory; Harriet Harman is in her own words “engaged in an opportunity not only to build a new economic order, but a new social order as well”.

We have been in the grip of virtuous fools ­– the totalitarian socialism to which I referred above – for many years. Regulation has been piled upon regulation ­ for each new regulation breeds its own progeny until the body politic is white with its maggots. From wearing a small cross at work to blowing your nose while halted in a traffic jam, every item of our lives is regulated. Pygmy bureaucracy is swollen, and nonentities who could not climb a dunghill can trammel our lives. Every word that we say is weighed: every word that we write must be measured against the latest doctrinaire fad.

And is it succeeding? Our class differences are greater than ever; child poverty has increased; paper qualifications have replaced education; we have the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe; the stable married family has been downgraded and disadvantaged; our jails… no, you don’t need me to answer the question.

How do you see a free society? You can take the route of the virtuous fool and attempt to engineer society through force majeure into equality. Your aim will be a society of flatline mediocrity with a universal ethos (to be updated or even reversed according to the latest fashion) by periodic referenda. Such a society has about as much chance of success as a Soviet collective farm and will cause as much distress in its attempts at formation.

Or you can have a society which rejoices in a multiplicity of opinions, rewards merit, supports real need, encourages freedom of association and promotes harmonious integration. Such a society would, of course, have its rules, and its checks and balances, but in every case there would be a heavy onus on the lawmaker to demonstrate how the laws do no more than serve the common good and ensure the maximum freedom consistent with the freedom of others. Of course that society will never come to fruition either ­ until we have abolished Original Sin. But at least we can work towards it. And here I am with the Pope when he says that no social system can ever work unless it is founded in the heart of man.

(Some you who know my style will be surprised by the use of the word “gay” in para 3. You will know that I never use the term since it is a value judgment , just as I never used the word “queer” for the same reason. The word crept in after the ms had left my hands.)

It is of course well known that religious people, and especially Catholics, live a miserable life. Obliged to worship an egotistical and vengeful deity who demands nothing but praise and endless sacrifice, they are trapped in a web of sinfulness which touches every aspect of their lives. They are ultimately motivated by the selfish reward of eternal happiness, the nature of which they do not know, but they are extremely unlikely to get there. They are much more likely to arrive in a place of eternal torment - in which fire and brimstone is the expected environment. And should they be fortunate enough to avoid this they will undergo a lengthy and painful cleansing process continuing until the least sin has been expiated.

No wonder Catholics live out their lives in anxiety, guilt and fear. They, and others, need to be told that “there is probably no God. So stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

The only problem with this conclusion is that it does not concur with what actually happens. Let’s look at the evidence. We might start with a study, reported in March 2008, by the University of Toronto. The researchers concluded: “We found that religious people or even people who simply believe in the existence of God show significantly less brain activity in relation to their own errors. They’re much less anxious and feel less stressed when they have made an error.” They actually had greater cognitive control. “Believing in God can help block anxiety and minimise stress” was the summary headline.

Studies which tracked older people over a number of years, conducted by the Rush University Medical Centre, looked at outcomes related to people’s sense that they had a “higher purpose” which inspired their lives. A person with high purpose in life was about half as likely to die over the follow-up period compared to a person with low purpose.

A study, reported in March, from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, looked at people dying from cancer. The study’s author reported: “Recent research has shown that religion and spirituality are major sources of comfort and support for patients confronting advanced disease.” We should not be surprised at this, given that it was reported in September 2008 that Catholics viewing a religious image, compared to a secular image of similar quality, experienced 12 per cent less pain on receiving electric shocks. This was confirmed by scans of brain activity. Atheists had no such reduction.

Broadening out the scope, the University of Miami’s study (reported in January) which evaluated eight decades of religious studies from different countries found “… persuasive evidence from a variety of domains within the social sciences, including neuroscience, economics, psychology, and sociology, that religious beliefs and religious behaviours are capable of encouraging people to exercise self-control and to more effectively regulate their emotions and behaviours, so that they can pursue valued goals… This, in turn, might help explain why religious people tend to have lower rates of substance abuse, better school achievement, less delinquency, better health behaviours, less depression, and longer lives.”

The BBC News channel published an interesting overview of the advantages of religion, including a dissenting statement from Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society. Broadly, we get a similar picture of religious observance, summed up in the phrase “They had higher levels of life satisfaction.” You might like to check the pros and cons (see first link below).  And we enjoy this satisfaction for longer; a longitudinal study by Yeshiva University reported, in November 2008, that women who attended religious services regularly had a 20 per cent lower mortality than those who did not. This corroborated earlier studies, showing a 25 per cent reduction.

To bring us up to date, recent scientific work, reported in the Sunday Times on September 6, shows that a tendency to religious belief is hardwired into the human brain, using a network of neural connections rather than a simple “God spot”, as originally thought. The argument, as one might expect, is that this tendency arises from its evolutionary value - adding a sense of identity, social cohesion and bonding to the kind of advantages I have already described.

And that brings me to a point of considerable importance. The studies which I have quoted cannot in themselves be taken as proof that any reality lies behind religious belief in general - let alone the beliefs of any particular denomination. They are scientific observations made, we may hope, with proper scientific objectivity. The most we can say is that, whether religious belief be true, it does appear to be useful in areas such as sense of purpose, freedom from anxiety, ability to endure pain, higher levels of life satisfaction and greater longevity. The bus advertisement should have read: “There is certainly a God. So stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

But the spiritual side of man - whether we are talking about faith, the exercise of free will, our response to our aspiration to do good and to avoid evil and so on - does not exist in a vacuum. In this life it operates through the machinery of our biology, just as the violinist can only express his inspiration through his violin. We should be surprised not to find the biological correlates of spirituality in the brain.

In order to find spirituality we have first to look inside ourselves. You must forgive subjectivity here, for I can only look inside me. I find that, at a deeper level, faith (pace the penny catechism) is not an assent to a collection of truths, but an active encounter. When I say that I believe in God, in the Nicene Creed, I am not making a metaphysical statement (what an impertinence to inform the Almighty that I believe that he exists!) but that I have confidence in Him and, however inadequately, I commit myself to Him.

So faith is not a state but an active journey. In my case it is a bumpy, boulder-ridden path as I thread myself through the obstacles of temptation and sin. I look continuously at the compass, which is Christ, and almost invariably find that I have to correct or even reverse my direction. Am I making overall progress? I can hope, but only God knows.

At the heart of this is prayer. Whether we think in terms of prayers of worship, gratitude, repentance, intercession or a deeper and wordless contemplation of God, prayer is always the fundamental encounter which sustains the determination and direction of the journey. I find that the Eucharist has become more and more important as I age, and that I need the Holy Spirit more frequently in the dilemmas of life. I wouldn’t miss for anything my conversations with Our Lady; they are by no means one-sided. She has a lovely sense of humour, as Bernadette revealed in one of her accounts. Truly, in prayer the veil between heaven and earth is so translucent that you would not know that it was there.

So I was delighted by Archbishop Vincent’s pastoral letter on prayer last week. Forgive my using just the name by which he will be known in heaven. When I first met him he was nobbut a priest - albeit a priest with the sort of backbone which travels. His choice of models for us is just right.

St Thérèse (my wife’s baptismal name) is the saint for the straphanger in the bus, or, in my case, the saint for finding me a lower syncromesh gear on a steep hill. Cardinal Newman is the model for those who must struggle towards faith and an uncompromising clarity of vision. Surely he should become the patron of all writers in this newspaper. And the Curé d’Ars, about whom I first wrote in these pages 50 years ago, made no claim to a great brain; indeed, he was only accepted for the priesthood because his virtues so exceeded his academic abilities. But he had the quality which is the one essential for the pastor: the quality of holiness.

God calls each of us according to our individual temperaments. But I find that I cannot choose between the models the Archbishop offers. I find that each one has something to teach me.

Here are the links to the brief, professional accounts of studies I mention. They will give you a fuller picture. You may well want to comment, adding further thoughts, and telling us whether you agree.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7302609.stm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090304160400.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090615144207.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090317162842.htm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/3096743/Belief-in-God-really-can-relieve-pain.html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081231005355.htm