THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK

Last week I finally saw a photograph of one of my heroes: Mr. Nicholas Walter, secretary of the Rationalist (i.e. atheist) Press Association. I like Mr. Walter because he cuts through religious arguments based on sentimental waffle. Anyway, I had imagined a rather dour, severe figure, but Mr. Walter has a round, jovial, bearded face as if he were the captain of a ship. Mr. Walter is, sadly, seriously ill and is having to give up his work. I won’t wish him God speed, which would be offensive, but I certainly wish him well.

This time Mr. Walter was saying: "How can it be argued (as it is) that human beings are genetically programmed for religion, as they are for music, language, etc.?" Although many people have religious leanings, even if they do not subscribe to an ‘official’ religion, can one actually say people are incomplete if they do not have a religious sense?

That’s rather a good question. The First Vatican Council (1871), basing itself on some words of St. Paul in Romans 1: 19,20, tells us that God can be known by the power of human reason. In other words, we are capable of working God out without him personally revealing himself to us. Many theologians would say that is actually going a bit far. Looking up at the stars may suggest there is a God, but it certainly doesn’t prove it. Arguments that everything must have a beginning, and the beginning of everything is God, are also faulty, because …. must everything have a beginning?

But that’s not quite the same thing as saying that everybody is, by their very nature, open to God. Formerly it was believed there was a part of our anatomy where our spiritual self resided; we would not say that now. Does having a sense of wonder, which everybody has – at least until other people extinguish it in us – equate with having a sense of God?

We believe that "grace perfects nature": in other words, the way God has made us allows us to be increasingly open to him. In the case of atheists we would say that they know God in the negative way; their openness to him is revealed by their shutting him out.