Gratitude.
It's fitting that a nation founded on rights, which are
personal entitlements, should pause once a year to cultivate the
opposite emotion.
Yes, I'm thankful: that, for all its undoubted flaws,
something as mysteriously wonderful as America should really
exist. Also that for no good reason I can see, I, of all the 6
billion people on this Earth, should be one of those lucky enough
to inherit this nation. I'm grateful to all those who gave this
gift to me, from the first Pilgrim souls searching to build a new
heaven on Earth, to the Deist Thomas Jefferson methodically
stripping his Bible of every evidence of the miraculous.
This original tension between Athens and Jerusalem (reason and
faith) -- out of which much of Western civilization, but most
especially America, was formed -- is still very much with us.
Case in point: This month the Salk Institute for Biological
Studies in La Jolla, Calif., held a forum on science and
religion, which (according to The New York Times) "began to
resemble the founding convention for a political party built on a
single plank: In a world dangerously charged with ideology,
science needs to take on an evangelical role, vying with religion
as teller of the greatest story ever told." (See it at www.tsntv.org).
The scientists at this conference were almost all atheists or
agnostics. They pose as strong men of Athens, but in the intense,
lively, fascinating anger at religious influence, their clay feet
keep peeping out: in the deep discontent some displayed with
merely doing science as a rational activity, in their need to
find a greater meaning and purpose, and in their strong human
desire not only to proclaim the truth, but to suppress people and
ideas that they feel threaten their founding truths.
On the one hand, Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of New York
City's Hayden Planetarium, displayed heartbreaking pictures of
deformed newborns to disabuse the audience of any idea that an
intelligent, loving creator could be behind our existence. On the
other hand, Carolyn Porco of Colorado's Space Science Institute
displayed a photo of Saturn and its rings as evidence of the
universe's grandeur: "Let's teach our children from a very young
age about the story of the universe and its incredible richness
and beauty. It is already so much more glorious and awesome --
even comforting -- than anything offered by any scripture or God
concept I know." The fact that these are contradictory responses
to nature seemed not to make a dent in the faith of those present
that they are moved only by their profound commitment to
reason.
The emerging religion of science has its fundamentalist
prophets. Richard Dawkins, Oxford biologist and author of the
"The God Delusion," thundered: "I am utterly fed up with the
respect that we -- all of us, including the secular among us --
are brainwashed into bestowing on religion." Dr. Steven Weinberg,
who has a Nobel prize in physics, argued: "Anything that we
scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done
and may in the end be our greatest contribution to
civilization."
The greatest contribution to civilization is the capacity to
destroy?
At the La Jolla conference, Dr. Tyson pointed to a possible
antidote to this fear-based church of reason. At the human heart
of science lies not a fear, but a love -- the love of discovery:
"That's a really cool problem. I want to solve it." He frets that
having "God on the brain" will be the antithesis of this love of
discovery, but we don't have to share that anxiety.
The desire to create and to discover, along with the capacity
to love something outside of ourselves, is part of what being
made in the image and likeness of God means. "Perfect love casts
out fear." Happy Thanksgiving. |