And with that “magnification,” the Deity recedes from our comprehension and from our personal involvement. This Deity, remember, is “incomprehensible.” He acts, but never responds. The timeless Creator and sustainer of everything, He is not “personally” involved in particular with anything or anyone. But how can one worship that which one cannot comprehend? How can one have a personal connection with an infinite being that is “without body parts or passions”?
At this point, reasoned contemplation ends, and faith takes over – a faith wherein, as Kierkegaard said, we must “tear out the eyes of our reason” and believe because it is absurd.
And here too is the great divide: the atheist and agnostic insist that where reason and evidence end, so too must belief. To the believer (the vast majority of Americans), faith – “the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews, II-1) – suffices as justification for belief: belief that the Bible (or the Torah, or the Qu’ran) is the Word of God, belief in the divine mission of Jesus (or of Moses, or of Mohammed), belief that God (or Yahweh, or Allah) is the foundation of moral law.
Is morality possible apart from a personal God – a moral law-giver who is in addition a cosmic Santa Claus who knows when each of us is sleeping and awake, and if we’ve been bad or good? I believe that a morality apart from God is possible, as exemplified in the lives of many saintly and heroic atheists and agnostics. And this is fortunate, for a secular morality, belonging exclusively to no particular religion, offers itself as a neutral arbiter among all religions. This, presumably, is what the founders of our republic had in mind, when they wrote and ratified the First Amendment to our Constitution.
The question of the possibility of morality without religion is too large and complicated to deal with in this brief space. Perhaps I might take it up in another essay. (In the meantime, see my "A Progressive Ethical Theory" and "One Nation, Under God, Divisible”).
And so, having offended some ninety percent of those who might read this, perhaps I’d better stop here.
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