On Goodenough and religious naturalism
Before I start, please be aware that I have worked against the terrible urge to make puns on Dr. Goodenough’s name. You won’t find any of them here, although they cry out “use me in your title!” every time I start to write on her book. I’ve been wanting to write on this topic for a while. Since I avoid talking about my own views on Arbitrary Marks, evolution in my thought goes unnoticed until I drop a comment in a post somewhere.
What follows, then, is a reflection on religious naturalism. For myself, that term is interchangeable with “religious humanism”, but since there are some differences in emphasis, I’ll quote Jerome Stone’s fine paper on the topic to begin:
On the negative side [religious naturalism] involves the assertion that there seems to be no ontologically distinct and superior realm (such as God, soul or heaven) to ground, explain, or give meaning to this world. On the positive side it affirms that attention should be focused on the events and processes of this world to provide what degree of explanation and meaning are possible to this life. While this world is not self-sufficient in the sense of providing by itself all of the meaning that we would like, it is sufficient in the sense of providing enough meaning for us to cope.
And so we, who have to live with some kind of framework, must respond–”Does it really give us what we need to cope?”
Evolution as Crane, not Skyhook
Let me backtrack briefly and talk about the “events and processes of this world” that religious naturalists refer to–natural selection, primarily. I will disclaim that my study in this area is only that of a humanities major, so I will have to leave technical details to the experts. But in essence, the idea of evolution is that a “mindless, purposeless, algorithimic process”[1] is responsible for the vast array of diversity we see around us. Beginning with chemical compounds which arrange themselves into RNA, then into simple cells, then into multi-cellular organisms, up through insects, fish, mammals, etc, the environment + time + the logic of these building blocks = the present world.
Note that I did not say time + chance. From as best as I can understand it, evolution is not a “random” process as we would usually use the term. There are a certain number of configurations of chemical compounds that will allow them to reproduce in a given environment. This means that any mutation that survives has a kind of “design”, a fit for the world around it.[2] The world, however, the Everything of matter, is still a mystery of sorts, since there is no naturalistic explanation for why there is something rather than nothing, why there are algorithims rather than nonsense.
One useful distinction that Daniel Dennett makes is between “skyhooks” and “cranes.” A skyhook is a god or a being outside of the system of the mindless, purposeless, algorithimic process. It reaches into the system and tweaks things in order to make them turn out in a certain way. A crane is the way that the system “tweaks” itself (over time and following the forced moves available to it). A religious naturalist is one who does not believe in skyhooks, but stands awestruck by cranes.
Worshipping a Skyhook or a Crane?
Religious naturalists, like Ursula Goodenough, have cosmologies just like religious supernaturalists might (evolution is, as Dennett says, a “historical narrative”). Someone who has a Skyhook God (I’m going to set aside any Process Thinkers for the moment) has a story about how this Skyhook intervened, created, etc. The religious supernaturalist will hang meaning, purpose, everything, upon this Skyhook. Their emotional response to the world they see around them is attributed to the Skyhook, as worship and gratitude. For example, Alvin Plantinga, in describing the properly basic belief in god which all human beings are justified in having, says
It has seemed true to the vast majority of mankind that some being worthy of worship, whom we all worship and who is responsible for our existence and the like, that some such being does exist. I think that has been obvious to the bulk of mankind. That’s fundamentally what Calvin is saying when he speaks of the sensus divinitatis.
In contrast, Goodenough writes poignantly about her response to the mystery of the origins of Everything, after learning about the vastness of the universe through physics:
The night sky was ruined…a bleak emptiness overtook me whenever I thought about what was really going on out in the cosmos or deep in the atom. So I did my best not to think about such things. The Sacred Depths of Nature, 10.
However, as Goodenough continued on in her studies of nature, as a cell biologist, her perspective shifted. She made a “covenant with Mystery,” in which she “[lies] on [her] back under the stars and the unseen galaxies and [lets] their enormity wash over [her].” For Goodenough, the mystery of the existence of Everything is experience that has a double-edged potential: “the gasp can terrify or the gasp can emancipate.”
I smiled when I read Goodenough’s description of this double-edged sword. I don’t think this is so different than a theistic experience. There are stories in Christian history of saints in anguish over their eternal fate. Consider the possibility that there is a god who orders the universe, and upon whose arbitrary grace your eternal situation depends. Is the Reformed doctrine of predestination much more a comfort than the mystery of Everything? In either interpretation, we are faced with something greater than ourselves, over which we have no control, and to which we simply must respond as best as we are able.
Granted, the similarities quickly break down–Goodenough’s covenant is one-sided. Mystery did not walk between two halves of an animal for her, or spread its arms out on a cross. But then again, her covenant is with a more Ancient Mystery, with depths that open to us upon examination, regardless of whether we are grafted into Israel’s vine. It is a Mystery which–whether we have “free will” or not, something I am coming to doubt just as I did in seminary–at least leaves our response to us. We can strive to be the Ubermensch and to find joy in our brief gasp of a life, or we can bewail our smallness and shrivel in fear for the short eighty years we might have.
What to do with the Crane?
I’m not finished with Goodenough’s short book yet. I could read it in one sitting, probably, but I’ve decided to do something I haven’t in years: use it as a devotional. She points out that it is set up in this way, with readings on evolution, biology, etc. followed by reflections that most would consider “religious.”
The last chapter that I read makes a fitting conclusion to this post, which is less analytic than reflective. After talking about what kind of awareness human beings might have, in contrast to amoebas and other beings, Goodenough reflects on experiences that many might call “mystical”, where a sense of oneness with the Divine permeates the individual. She says,
As a non-theist, I find I can only think about these experiences as wondrous mental phenomena. But in the end it doesn’t matter: All of us are transformed by their power. I have yet to reach in meditation anything approaching Nirvana, but when I am invaded by Immanence, most often in the presence of beauty or love or relief, my response is to open myself to its blessing…It becomes a part of my self that I most cherish and value, the part that most deeply celebrates the fact that I am alive, the part that sustains me through discouragement and loss.
For Goodenough, it is comforting merely to reflect upon the fact that she is alive, that she exists (a highly improbable outcome of mindless algorithims, which could have turned out any number of individuals but instead realized her). She becomes “lost in something much larger than [her] daily self”, which is the experience that religious persons seek after in becoming part of the Body of Christ or taking refuge in the Dharma.
At the end of the day, is a terrible tragedy made less horrific knowing that a personal deity has ordained it as part of a “plan” or that it is merely an aspect of the ongoing manifestation of life? For me, I see no way to choose which is “better”, only to seek after what framework fits all of reality best… and then to grapple with the consequences.
I’m enjoying Goodenough’s grappling…and it doesn’t spoil some of my favorite poems, even if it does mean that I must reinterpret some aspects.
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shiningg from shook foil;
It gathers to greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s small: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning at the brown brink eastward, springs–
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wingsGod’s Grandeur, Gerard Manley Hopkins
Notes
[1] Quoted from Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, page 320, Daniel Dennett. This chapter talks about Teilhard, briefly, and why his attempt at reconciling theism and evolution is, instead a betrayal of the latter in favor of the former.
[2] My pastor gave a sermon this Sunday on jazz that reminded me of how algorithims can bring about beauty. She told the story of Winton Marcellus, whose performance was interrupted by a cell phone. He took the cell phone jingle, incorporated it into the tune, and then moved from there to the conclusion he was aiming at, before being interrupted. It was a great example of how design space (the scales and rules of jazz music) constrain getting from point A (cell phone jingle) to point B (the intended conclusion)… but don’t mean that the results are obvious or ugly. Fractals are algorithims…and art.