Atheism and Awe, Faith, and Life

Here is a good interview with Edward O. Wilson, conducted by Steve Paulson. (Click on the title to go to the article, or try this: http://www.salon.com/books/int/2006/03/21/wilson/index.html. ) What is the existing tension between religion and science? Evolution and religion? and why heaven would by hell to Mr. Wilson. A nice piece, so you can read it for yourself.

What struck me in the piece was the question of awe. Awe, which we have all felt as some point in time, typically when it hits us that the world is so much larger than we are, or that we are so intimately connected with the world. Wilson point out that this awe has been used as currency for religions. Clearly this is a wonderful point of departure for some thoughts of our own. Yes, the world is larger than we are. No, in all probability, I myself did not create this world. No, I can't really construct a strong or convincing explanation of the origins of life. Where do we go from here? This is the great question.

Religion has positioned itself as a dominant answerer of those questions in the past. As a thought experiment, however, the origins of these religions seem to be firmly human. So, for any skeptic, just where the divine stops and the human starts is a question. Just how can it be divine, if it is stated by, and propagated by humans?

The crux of the matter here is that biologically, humans do not like to exist in the realm of the unknowable. So in the face of awe, in the face of that which is greater than I - or even us - then we must have our best guess as to who could have possibly made us. Those historical guess - most of them the great father in the sky - don't seem all that compelling. Even if the god has an ethical system that meets our approval, that may not be enough reason, not today.

Can't we just say we don't know who got us here? If you don't wish to back down the chain of logic too far, you can say that our god will have the characteristics of life as we know it. Beyond that, as to say, where are we and how did we get here (or there) we just have to say, we don't know. And if you wish to rewrite human history in terms of domination over others, in the personal expansion of material possessions, then you might postulate that constructs of God and organizations of community built around these constructs- from the imagined pre-historical tribal village to our current "Crusade for Oil" -- that these constructs of god serve simple purposes that have little to do with the awe of life as we know it and provide virtually no answers into the origins of life.

Safe to say that at the present moment we know more about the origins of life than we ever have. Which is to say we are positioned now to explain the source of that awe we all feel. With this deeper intelligence it is quite clear we are not closer to solving that mystery than we ever were. Is now the time that socially, we can transform the domination and destruction that those who purport to know the mysteries of life create?