UNDERVIEWS: FAITH IN DOUBT

From a sermon at a Unitarian Church in Brunswick, Maine, by Weld Henshaw

I am an atheist. . . I thought it daring to begin my brief sermon with these words, these four words. Brief - the sine qua non of any summer sermon. But I can't just stop after four words. First, that sentence is not fully honest. Second, I should explain this derives from a real sermon by a real preacher at The Old Ship Meeting House in Hingham twenty-odd years ago. Freshly called to Old Ship, Ken Read-Brown started with, "I am an agnostic."

It took no small amount of courage and honesty for a rookie with a young family dependent on his ministry. The rest of that sermon was magnificent, something I have never forgotten. Any faith to be true has to be anchored in the bedrock of honesty. And when honesty calls for the confessions of doubt, so be it. . .

So, if I have doubts about the atheist bit, why did I use it? The answer lies in a point, made clear by celebrated evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. . . Let us guess that in the sentient population, something like twenty per cent are true blue "I know my God is real" types (and "He walks with me and he talks with me. . . ") Then there is, say, another group who believe in God with an unsteady faith, a belief something short of certainty, but who self describe as believers.

I read recently that a majority of Americans have only a "˜weak" belief in an afterlife. So down our this slippery slope we have another category, folks who somewhat vaguely believe in God but give it little thought and are conscious of passing clouds, ideations of agnosticism. Next to them are frank agnostics, who think it's all beyond our ken. Some of them, I for example, do not really believe in God and see no arguments that lead to faith in a real God. We could be called super-agnostics or non-assertive atheists. Without conviction, we guess God might well be a delusion, our own construct to fend off bleak thoughts of future non-being.

Finally, there are true blue flat-out atheists who know no god exists. These tough minded folk, tiny in number; hold an assertive no-doubts atheism to me flawed by a certainty where certainty does not obtain. Not even Dawkins identifies with these deniers; I'm with Dawkins on this. It just doesn't make sense to have leaps of non-faith. So this puts me as a leftist agnostic and something close to a functional atheist. I am unaware of any miracle or answered prayer in all human history. To me, the greatest miracle ever was Bill Mazeroski's home run in the ninth inning of the seventh game of the 1960 World Series, an event ignored by all theologians save a few from my home town, Pittsburgh. . .

The Blind Watchmaker makes plain and irrefutable that natural selection, the adaptations to conditions and changing conditions, will alter and enhance all life to survive in optimum harmony with its environment. A key to comprehending evolution is that over enough time even tiny advantageous mutations will gradually win out in the ensuing generations of reproduction.

A second lesson from Dawkins is that events do not require causes. It is generally accepted among the educated that our universe began with a monstrous explosion some 15 billion years ago. People far smarter than I are today busy trying to study the first nanoseconds of this Big Bang. What seems well established now is that events, including the Big Bang, do not require a cause or causes. This discovery has been a second setback for creationists. . .

A last mystery, the first life on earth, is still beyond man's ken, though theories are being postulated and tested. Lightening bolts into primordial soup? Pure speculation. Self-replicating crystals adopting reproductive genes? Intriguing, beguiling, not proven. Stay tuned. . .

So here I take my waffling stand: I am a hedging atheist. So why do I go to this church? Well, I get to associate with wonderful citizens, people filled with warmth, virtue, humor and empathy. I hear things worth hearing. I sing great songs, Most of all, I get to rub shoulders with fine people who live by our seven principles. Add to that I find shared values and principles far more compelling than shared superstitions.

If Unitarians had a major role in the management of this country, as once we did, how very different would be the conduct of our government towards our citizens, towards other governments and their citizens and towards our planet and all things living or inanimate upon it.

The inherent worth and dignity of every person. Justice, equity and compassion in human relations. Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth. A free and responsible search for truth and meaning. The right of conscience and the embrace of the democratic process. The goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all. Respect for the interdependent web of all existence.

There is nothing in these seven wise principles that requires a deistic faith, nor anything that excludes it. . .

Thomas Hardy once stated that he had been looking for God for fifty years and, that if he existed, Hardy should have found him. My inquiry has been for even longer and some of Hardy's heroes, particularly the obscure Jude, have helped lead me to where I find myself today. When I was a young Episcopalian Sunday School scholar, I was a believing and devout Christian. I was also terrified of my own inevitable though far-off death. When I assumed there was a God, he struck me as capricious and, too often, cruel beyond all reason. Now, having reached three score and ten, philosophy - Unitarian philosophy - gives me a large measure of peace about an extinction that cannot be far away. My faith is firmly placed in doubt. My principles and this aging carcass are very much at home right here. And our death does not remove us from this interconnected existential web, not ever.

And now, our finale, after which, let us go forth in peace, go forth in doubt, embrace our daunting conundrum; we have light and we have dark.