Freethought: Filling In The Gaps
by Dr. Bob Collins
Freethought: Filling in the God Gaps
Fountain Street Church Sermon: 8/19/2007
Sherron and I found our way into Fountain Street Church 25 years ago with David Rankin’s arrival and found ourselves sitting in the left balcony looking across at DaVinci, Galileo, Louis Pasteur, Charles Darwin, George Washington and other enlightenment figures. We tried the right balcony for a while looking toward the “Religious” windows, but felt uncomfortable there. So we switched back! Sherron, trained as a quantitative chemist, tends to view all theological discussion as a variation on the question, “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” Me? I am a “behaviorist” with a strong physiological background from Indiana University’s Department of Psychology. In fact, that Department was recently renamed the Department of Psychology and the Brain Sciences in xxxx. How much more materialistic can you get? We have the chemist playing with the basic elements of matter and the behaviorists playing with the basic elements of human behavior and brain neurology.
As mature adults Sherron and I have always viewed the “mind” as having a basis in the material world and the material processes of the brain as lending us our sense of selves and awareness of the world outside of our selves. For example: music, language, images and mathematics are “real.” They are brain processes within us which may be used to connect us to the broader world outside of us. They can transform the world and our experience of the world and one another. Humanism or freethought has optimism (O.K., maybe it is faith) about our nature and our ability to understand it and the universe in which we exist. We don’t experience a “god shaped hole” or lack of meaningfulness. Indeed, the failure of the “God Construct” to satisfactorily explain the greater reality of our experience and the universe around us, likely gives us our sense of meaning. We don’t need God, but we do love filling in God’s gaps!
You can see the optimism and human spirit we are talking about on the internet at www.cfimichigan.org or by attending the many community events and lectures listed on this very rich website. The 10th year anniversary of our group was celebrated recently at a weekend retreat at the Long Lake lodge with 80 members in attendance. That retreat included 7 faculty members from the Psychology Department at GVSU! Hey, Psyche is Greek for soul so maybe we psychologists do have a real claim for your/our souls!? What was truly significant though is that this group grew out of the Basic Beliefs and Questions group here at Fountain Street Church, which is now led by Sherron and myself. Frankly, this church has lost members to the Freethought Association and sometimes I even question continuing my membership here. That issue, in part, is the topic of my sermon. I hope it helps to explain why Sherron and I remain here and find ourselves caught between two worlds.
There are 5 basic theses and anti-theses which illustrate the conflicts between religion and freethought. I am not including any issue of morality here because that is a pseudo-issue. The highest law of our land, The US Constitution makes no mention of God or Lord or Jesus within its text! Indeed, in my opinion, telling children about God looking down and threatening an eternal hell to control behavior is a form of child abuse. OK, back to the real issues.
1.The Random vs. Purpose-driven universe issue. Rick Warren in his best-selling book, “The Purpose-Driven Life,” and anti-evolutionists are fearful of a random-based process and indifferent universe out there. This is explained in that we are pattern-seeking creatures who seek a “meaningful” as opposed to a “meaningless” universe. On the random view side, we simply eat, poop, and die in the face of uncertainty. On the other, we have the comfort embodied in the concept of a Father God and an immortal soul. Ouch! Eat, poop and die, that is all there is?!! No, I protest, we pass on our culture, our ideas, our genes, and an earth/universe that we leave hopefully better than we found it! Even George Bush is concerned about his “legacy!” We freethinkers live life fully and then leave it behind when we die. Death makes our one life more full and meaningful.
2.The Goo vs. God issue. Darwin demonstrated that evolution moves us from simple cellular forms to complex life forms via natural selection processes. Creation “science” ridicules this as going from the ancient goo to the modern zoo. Evolution is a bottoms up approach. This contrasts to God’s top down approach as the CREATOR. He speaks us and the whole of life and the universe into existence. What a great and reassuringly facile explanation. Thanks Dad! Think about it, we live life forward. This gives us an illusion of purpose when actually what we are is more a product than a purpose!
3.The Reductionism issue. When I first arrived at what was then Grand Valley State College (GVSC) back in the old days in 1969 I overheard students in the hallways talking in shocked tones behind my back, “He’s a behaviorist!” This was the same year that three basic seminal Behavior Modification texts were published. One of those authors even invited me to Australia for a nine months appointment while GVSC generously granted me a sabbatical year. Thanks Don Lubbers! What was the implication of being a behaviorist? Well, presumably, behaviorists reduce man/woman to a soulless, mindless, automaton. Man is “soulless!” The rhetorical mistake here was that we analyzed down to basics and failed to emphasize and educate the public on how we recreate and improve life with a newer “synthesis.” Science both analyzes and synthesizes. The subject/object becomes more completely understood or explained in this process. The soul, like God, becomes unnecessary.
4.The supernatural vs. naturalism issue. In the naturalist’s view, all that exists, exists in a “real”, objective, “out there” material sense which can be known through reason and systematic observation, i.e., Science. Supernaturalism requires faith, John 29:20 stated it as, “Blessed is he who has not seen and believes.” By contrast, that great natural scientist and this nation’s founding Grandfather, Benjamin Franklin, pithily observed that, “To see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.” Ben used experimentation, observation, and reason to demonstrate the natural forces and principles of electricity. He even saved church steeples from lightening strikes. This was fought by some ministers of that period! Ben filled in many of God’s gaps which continue to benefit us to this day. Prayer and appeals to God comes in a poor second. Ben and we Yankees pride ourselves for our pragmatism. We can manipulate real things, not so for the supernatural and especially an omnisicient, omnipotent God. May the natural world view predominate. I am not counting on the rapture. Faith offers certainty without proof and science offers proof without certainty.
5.Art vs. Science, a difference. Wonderful stories, beautiful art, poetry, and music have the advantage of literary or artistic license while scientific theories demand precision in language or mathematics tied to observations, which are not so instantly grasped by lay people. Religion and theology have artistic and even supernatural license which I as a freethinker can enjoy at a relaxed, open, and receptive level. If you like, call that the “original SEARCH.” It is emotive and connotative with a real appeal and persuasiveness that is legitimate in its own right. However, science engages in “RESEARCH” which means that you repeat or comb through a lot of the original search and ruthlessly toss aside some of the products of that original search. Good-bye, flat earth, good-bye meaning in the stars or bumps on your head, and, yes, good-bye God and immortal soul and deceased loved ones!
So, why are we still here. No, I don’t mean a cosmic question. I mean Sherron and I at Fountain Street! Well, it is an artistic and human experience that we enjoy, so far! Could that change? Sure, that is what life and evolution is all about. I don’t believe in “amen” so, thank you for your kind attention and feel free to stay around here in the chapel for a talk back.
