Ultimate and Absolute Mystery

Chet Raymo, whom I often refer to as today's finest science writer, has posted a characteristically thoughtful piece on "A Reality Inscrutable." He begins with a quotation from 19th-century thinker Herbert Spencer (as quoted in turn by Jeremy Campbell):

In the early days of Darwinism, the nineteenth-century scholar Herbert Spencer wrote that religions tend to harbor a secret fear that everything may some day be explained, which suggests they are hiding a residual doubt as to whether God as an Incomprehensible Cause is really as incomprehensible as they supposed. What they must face up to, Spencer said, is that it is only in the assertion of a reality utterly inscrutable that religion can be reconciled with science. "A permanent peace between science and religion," he said, "will be reached when science becomes fully convinced that its explanations are proximate and relative, while religion becomes fully convinced that the mystery it contemplates is ultimate and absolute.

Raymo responds:

As Campbell notes, the first of Spencer's two conditions has arguably been met. As we enter the 21st century, I don't know any scientist or philosopher of science who does not admit that scientific knowledge is partial, tentative and subject to change. There is no theory of science so thoroughly entrenched that it would not be overthrown if the evidence demanded it or if a more economical theory came along.

But we are no closer to meeting the second condition than we were in Spencer's time. Indeed, it could be argued that God as Ultimate Mystery is in full retreat. Billions of people right across the planet claim to know God's mind, or claim a personal relationship with the presumed creator of the universe. The God of many churches, mosques and temples is not Ultimate and Absolute Mystery -- to which all of us might reasonably bend our knee in adoration -- but a cross between an avuncular Bill Gates and Michelangelo's po-faced Moses, a God who turns his ear to the congregant's every prayer and asks nothing in return but a generous tithe, or perhaps blowing oneself up in a crowded marketplace.

I agree fully with Raymo. But I would want him to know (as he surely does) that there are many of us religious people, in all faith traditions, who rejoice in the findings of science but who also give the totally inadequate name "God" to the Ultimate and Absolute Mystery--as an inexpressible answer to the unanswerable question "Why is there something rather than nothing?"

Back in May 2006, I quoted Bruce Feiler, author of Where God Was Born, Walking the Bible, and other books:  

Religion . . . breeds overconfidence, and one challenge for today's believers is to rediscover in the fire of faith the source of warmth that can overpower the flames of destruction. This change can only be achieved by fellow believers, I think. The first conviction I took from my journey is that the only force strong enough to take on religious extremism is religious moderation.

Feiler's term "moderation" should not be read as "halfheartedness." Rather, it denotes, for me,

• radical love, acceptance, and respect for all our fellow creatures regardless of their religious faith or lack thereof
• the practice of gratitude, humility, and celebration in the face of the Ultimate and Absolute Mystery

Raymo continues to demonstrate wonderfully that he joins a great many of us people of faith in striving to practice gratitude, humility, and celebration. The outward forms that our gratitude, humility, and celebration take may look different. But that's hardly important.