Religion
Not quite rational
Martin Sullivan
Professor Sir A. J. Ayer has just completed his Gifford lectures. The third, broadcast on Radio 3, and dealing with the so-called classical proofs of God's existence, has been published in a recent issue of the Listener (August 9, 1973). St Freddy on his charger slays these inoffensive dragons right and left. But who cares! They were dead before this knight attacked them. What do the 'proofs' achieve? Kant did a hatchet job on the ontological argument and Bertrand Russell claimed to demolish the teleological approach. No one today builds a case for God's existence on these 'proofs,' and it is odd to hear the Gospel against them so vigorously and yet so tediously preached. "Go ye into all the world," St Bertrand said, "and proclaim the good news," and his chief disciple has taken him at his word. The cult of no God' has its own followers. Ayer's sermons give him the air of the intelligent man's Billy Graham. "The Bible says" roars Billy; "unanswerable logic demands" says Freddy. And both of them are wrong. Suppose we could borrow H. G. Wells's Time Machine and travel backward instead of forward. We might have a look at two doctrines which professor Ayer has described as improbable, the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection, and submit them to a first-hand examination. We could take a non-believer with us, and prove by ocular demonstration these dogmas so much contraverted. We could go to Bethlehem, wit ness the accouchment of Christ's mother and satisfy ourselves that her physical condition was not that of other married women. We could visit Joseph's garden, watch the angels rolling away the heavy stone, helping the risen Lord out of His grave clothes, folding them up and putting them in a corner, furnishing Him with other robes, and then see Him come out of the vault, Could we. then say to our companion, "The faith of a Christian is now established on an absolutely sure basis?" We would not have proved anything by these facts alone, no by the absence of them.
I am convinced that God's existence can either be proved nor falsified. 1 leave the issue at that. Of course it is possible to find ways of supporting one's belief, and it is equally possible to discover methods of detracting credence from it, No really important act of faith can be held without that ambivalence. As I look back on the relationship which, as her son, my mother bore me. I honestly believe that she loved me. I have gown up in this belief and revere my mother's memory because of it. But I could well have been wrong. She may indeed have regarded me more as an abstraction and used me to satisfy her selfishness, or indulge her whims. She may have done all this thinking that she loved me. 1 shall never know, and even if she could return and both of us be subjected to analysis, no certainty would emerge. The love I treasure may never have existed. Something I must have mistaken for it has nevertheless had a most powerful influence upon me. My religious experience is rather like that, a life of faith diversified by doubt, rather than a life of doubt diversified by faith."
We must be careful not to think we have said the last word. Some years ago I worked with a very conservative, methodical colleague. He always wrote up the Church register in exactly the same way and in very characteristic handwriting. No Saint's day was ever recorded unless it was honoured in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.. One day I went into the vestry and found a strange entry. St Patrick's Day it read, in unfamiliar handwriting. This was clear evidence that someone (and I was quite sure I knew who it was) had interfered with the register. I set off to find and rebuke the culprit and ran into my colleague. He was greatly amused by my anger and the reason for it. That person had no right to do this," I exclaimed. "But I did it," he replied.
You see, you" (and another of the staff whom he named) "are of Irish descent, so I thought I would depart for once from my habit, to do you both honour." "But the handwriting," I went on, "why is that so different?" "Well," he explained, "the entry is at the very bottom of this long page, and I had to hold my wrist steady with my other hand and virtually print the letters." It was as simple as that, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. You never can tell. The world is rational but not quite, as Chesterton has reminded us.
Martin Sullivan is the Dean of St Paula, and also the new chairman of the London Tourist Board,
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