Return of the King

I have been reading a book about the history of Europe, something I used to love doing as a kid. I've always found reading about Europe's past to be an astonishing journey into the psyche of the human creature. For instance, it is incredible how quickly the French revolution moved from fraternite, liberte, egalite to anarchy, then the execution of Robesepierre, and then finally back to dicatorship under Napoleon. Idealism became murderous frenzy and then turned back into cynical regal politics in the span of two decades.

One of the interesting features of Napoleon's century was the rise of atheism as a respected outlook. Few atheists today would be willing to acknowledge it, as they view their belief (or lack of belief if you prefer) as the natural evolution of the human mental prism, but atheism's heyday was not today, but the 19th century. While not declining in numbers, atheism has certainly declined as a serious philosophical proposition.

Part of the reason for that is the remarkable adaptability of religion to the circumstances it finds itself in. The rise of Martin Buber and Jewish mysticism helped innoculate Judaism from accusations that it was no more than a cult of archaic ritual law. Serious scriptural study of the Bible as more than a historical document began to transform the church. So did a heartfelt focus on getting to the essentials of Christian practice (from the Anglican Oxford movement, to C.S. Lewis' philosophical constructs in 'Mere Christianity', to finally, Vatican II in Rome.) And the arrival of Pentecostalism showed how 'feeling' religion could be.

But ironically, one of the things that reduced the impact of atheism was science itself. Although Darwin's Origin of the Species had given unbelief a significant boost (thanks in no small part to Christianity's petulant response to Darwin's challenge), Darwin himself suggested there was no reason evolution should give rise to disbelief. Still, those who had come to doubt seemed to take heart in a scientific theory that displaced the mythology of Genesis.

But with the arrival of the 20th century, science did something else: it discovered the universe was finite in both space and time. Atheist cosmology essentially demands a steady state universe, because the alternative leaves a gaping causal hole. And with the work of Einstein and Hubble, it soon became quite apparent that gaping hole was definitely there. The universe had originated in space in time, and was not eternal. Furthermore, its origin as a humble singularity no larger than a grain of dust made the universe a far less potent thing than the 19th century's philosopher kings would surely have hoped.

The Catholic Church, in the fifties, rushed to endorse the Big Bang theory, as it would come to be called. Further scientific development, such as the Anthropic Principle (in its weak, strong, and final variants), re-established that mysterious and inscrutable character of the universe that had led to religion in the first place.

That's not to suggest that faith is not still faith - it surely is. A few circumstantial hints of God's existence is not proof of even Deist conceptions, let alone specific creedal beliefs. But religion has regained a respect it once lost, as both a serious investigation of that eternal question "Why are we here?" as well as a comfort to those who need something more than chaos.