Editor’s Note: Theologians, with their deep academic knowledge, are equipped to make a strong case against religious belief – if they are so disposed. Bart Ehrman and Anthony Pinn have done it and now there is a new generation of theologians, including our next contributor, who after leaving academia, influence the way we think about religion with their carefully referenced and constructed arguments

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By David Madison, PhD

“I don’t think you ought to read so much theology,” said Lord Peter. “It has a brutalizing influence.” Dorothy L. Sayers, Whose Body?

In 1923, astronomer Edwin Hubble, using the 100-inch Hooker telescope on Mount Wilson, made a momentous discovery:

a Cepheid variable star in the Andromeda galaxy. With this identification—because of the peculiar behavior of Cepheid variable stars—Hubble was the first person to determine the distance to this other galaxy. It was far outside our Milky Way Galaxy.

This settled a debate that had been raging among astronomers and it changed forever the way we can think about ourselves. It became clear that the cosmos was vastly more immense than had been previously understood.

We now know that there are perhaps 100 million other galaxies. This prompts the feeling that we are very small. We knew that even before that photo was taken. In 1923, however, our isolation in the cosmos was magnified beyond imagining. From this perspective of radical isolation, we are forced to acknowledge that we know virtually nothing about the cosmos.Do I overstate? Consider this observation, by science writer Timothy Ferris:

If we possessed an atlas of our galaxy that devoted but a single page to each star system in the Milky Way (so that the sun and all its planets were crammed on one page), that atlas would run to more than ten million volumes of ten thousand pages each. It would take a library the size of Harvard’s to house the atlas, and merely to flip through it, at the rate of a page per second, would require over ten thousand years. Add the details of planetary cartography, potential extraterrestrial biology, the subtleties of the scientific principles involved, and the historicaldimensions of change, and it becomes clear that we are never going to learn more than a tiny fraction of the story of our galaxy alone—and there are a hundred million more galaxies. (Coming of Age in the Milky Way, p.83)

As the physician Lewis Thomas writes,

The greatest of all the accomplishments of twentieth century science has been the discovery of human ignorance.

And Timothy Ferris agrees:

Our ignorance, of course, has always been with us, and always will be. What is new is our awareness of it our awakening to its fathomless dimensions, and it is this, more than anything else, that marks the coming of age of our species.

We have not been able to compare notes with other thinkers in the Milky Way about religion. We are totally in the dark. Theologians should take the hint.

One of Sam Harris’ most provocative statements is the following:

“…theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance.” The End of Faith p.173

But is this really so outrageous? Mr. Harris has merely stated the reality of our post-1923 world. Over the centuries theologians have claimed to know about the gods. Sacred books are filled with ‘information’ about gods, and theologians have written thousands of books elaborating on this ‘information’—arriving, by the way, at vastly different conclusions. But we are simply not in any position, equipped with our mammalian brains and on one planet, to make pretentious claims about ‘ultimate reality’—as theologians themselves would put it. Theologians can be credited with thousands of years of guesswork.

We are in the dark, literally and figuratively.

From this perspective, here are examples of bad theology.

Bad theology pretends to know about god(s), but fails to demonstrate that its sources of knowledge of god(s) are reliable and verifiable. When I pick up a book about theology, I want to read on page onehow the author knows what he is about to tell me about God. If he talks about god(s) based on the Bible, prayer, visions, revelations or mediation, we have a right to be suspicious.

Bad theology assumes the validity of personal opinions and feelings about god(s). But these count for nothing when we’re trying to figure out how the Cosmos works. Ordinary folks are even more prone to bias, emotion and guesswork than the theologians, and ridicule the request for verification.

Anything that looks like rationalization of ancient barbarism, e.g., human sacrifice, the death of Jesus to satisfy an angry god, is bad theology which also projects the worst aspects of human personality, e.g., anger and jealousy, onto god(s).

Theology that clearly emerged from a twisted, fanatical mind is bad, e.g., Joseph Smith and Mormonism.

Bad theology offers sophomoric excuses for why God allows suffering and evil, e.g., he punishes people, gives them pain to improve character, has a rival (the devil) who causes all the trouble; these excuses are deeply flawed.

Bad theology makes promises about what will happen to people when they die. People are commonly terrified that consciousness ceases forever when they die. Religions have, throughout history, traded on such fears. The afterlife pitch is unconscionably immoral.

Theology that glories in ignorance is bad theology. It can’t come to terms with advancing human knowledge and the findings of science. Timothy Ferris chose an appropriate title for his book that was quoted above: Coming of Age in the Milky Way.

We have been coming of age during the last two centuries. It’s no good pretending that Hubble’s 1923 discovery didn’t change the way we are obligated to contemplate the Cosmos and our place in it. The knowledge revolution since the Enlightenment has put theology in a defensive position. The ad hoc justifications have multiplied, and the result is usually bad theology.

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Bio: David Madison was raised in a conservative Christian home in northern Indiana, where he shared his mother’s fascination with the Bible. He served as a pastor in the Methodist church during his work on two graduate degrees in theology, but by the time he finished his PhD (Biblical Studies, Boston University) he had become an atheist. He gave up his ordination, left the church, pursued a successful business career and eventually joined The Clergy Project. Still, his interest in the Bible continued and his thinking about Christianity’s many points of vulnerability resulted in the book due for publication in 2016: 10 Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith.

>>>>>Photo Credits:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:100_inch_Hooker_Telescope_900_px.jpg#/media/File:100_inch_Hooker_Telescope_900_px.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NGC7293_(2004).jpg#/media/File:NGC7293_(2004).jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Gutenberg_Bible.jpg

Madison bio photo: Andrea Reese http://www.andreareesephotography.com