Blogtrotter

"Why Faith Matters": Rabbi David Wolpe.

In the August 29th "Forward," Rebecca Spence interviews the rabbi of one of our city's leading synagogues, Temple Sinai on Wilshire Boulevard in Westwood. "Keeping the Faith, L.A. Rabbi Grabs a Pen." Wolpe debated Sam Harris, author of "The End of Faith," and critiques Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Since I read and reviewed (here for D & H and all three on Amazon) these neo-atheist champions, I figured Wolpe's response, plugging his newly published "Why Faith Matters," might be intriguing. Recovering from cancer, Wolpe figured he'd better join the debate sooner than later. He seeks to address the same audience that Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris have engaged. I share the core of Spence's brief chat with Wolpe.

D.W.: I believe that the book makes a very compelling case that religion is not responsible for war, and that science is compatible with religion. The other way it enters the dialogue is by refocusing people on the real content of religion. Eighty-five to 90% of religion is not about abstract ideas; it’s about the way people live their lives, and when people are in trouble, or rejoicing or need community, or are sick, or have died, suddenly religion steps in as that which supports and cares for them. There is no real understanding or acknowledgment of that in many of these polemics.

R.S.: Do you think such books have had an effect on perceptions of religion, or are they merely literary phenomena?

D.W.: I actually do think that they’ve had an effect on the perception of religion. That perception — and what I’ve tried to counter — is the idea that you can’t be intellectually sophisticated and morally sensitive and still be religious. That’s the real underlying case that the atheistic books make, and that’s just wrong. And someone has to say that clearly and concisely, and that’s why I tried to make the book short and readable while at the same time trying not to sacrifice the content of the argument or of my own experience.

The 85%-90% of religion not as intellectual but as palliative may be precisely what clergy like Wolpe deal with on a daily basis with their congregants, I reckon. The neo-atheists, like their theological counterparts, mull over philosophical speculation, given their academic training and often their tenured positions. I doubt if Harris or Dawkins in their university settings, or Hitchens in his liberal Washington-London polarity, deals much with those suffering, in doubt, or in despair who reach out to a loving God. This may sound harsh, but it's similar to elite colleges, where few faculty have to teach the types of street-wise, academically unprepared, recovering veteran, and/or full-time/minimum wage students that I do, in a less rarified classroom that sits by a freeway in an "office park" masquerading as a campus.

My point here? There's enormous leaps that most intellectuals rarely have to hop from their coddled suites into the realm where ordinary people think, work, live, pray, and doubt. One chasm opens between top-tier education and lower ranks of universities. Dawkins at Oxford, Harris at Stanford, and Hitchens as a product of the British upper echelon of schools lack these encounters with everyday folks, unless they run into them on book tours or in airports.

Certainly Wolpe's correct when he comments how the secularists have (often subtly or outrageously?) belittled anybody who tries to claim one can be highly educated and still stay-- or become?-- a believer. The gaps between conservative and liberal, working-class and privileged, and atheist and devoted widen in much of our urban society. Not many outside of certain teachers or social workers or medical providers perhaps must bridge the divides that gape across so much of the civilized world.

They tell me there's "purple" states neither red nor blue, but I can count the number of Republicans my family knows on one hand and still wave fingers about. When there's such lacunae in our conversations, how much more will there be among the professional class, the literati, the pulpit rabbis, and the tenured ranks? These people talk among themselves, unless they volunteer for debate to sell a book or earn a honorarium (see below). They make their living this way, and I'm not complaining. I'm making a point about how much of the God vs. no-God argument goes on with the two sides smugly chattering amongst themselves, two camps, two rooms.

Meanwhile, 92% of Americans believe in God, and two-thirds in demons and angels. And nearly half in the world being made in six days as narrated by inerrant Holy Writ. Few of these faithful, I suspect, will be weighing carefully Dawkins, Hitchens, or Harris' counterclaims. Having read hundreds of reviews on Amazon of "The God Delusion" before posting my own, I can attest that most readers tended to parrot their own previously held beliefs in their responses to Dawkins.

Wolpe works on the tony Westside, and his temple's one of the wealthiest around. His rounds probably encompass machers and shakers in the entertainment industry, academia (nearby's UCLA), and media mavens. Many of them, on the other hand, may be much more likely to have read Harris, Hitchens, and Dawkins than most synagogue members elsewhere. So, he may be much better placed to answer the neo-atheist claims with his own erudition, having previously taught at the JTS, the flagship seminary of the Conservative movement of Judaism in NYC.

Still, when the rabbi steps in to stress the feel-good nature of religion, this may be tossing ameliorative apples to butt against neo-atheist oranges. The trio, from my reading of them, all strive to offer alternatives for religion that can comfort us. They suggest turning away from scare tactics, simplistic legends, and moral restrictions based on outdated cosmologies peddled by half-literate nomads. They tell us to grow up, stop praying to discredited Middle Eastern nobodaddies in the sky, and accept both human limitations and mortal possibility.

Not that I've been totally convinced that contemplating a quasar (or as I've mentioned, why not then a cancer cell as one of the wonders of creation?) can replace the quiet or forceful encounter with a deity that many insist that they continue to have and cherish. This appears to me the moral of Hitchens, Harris, and Dawkins. They cook up for us a spartan diet to replace the sloppy feast of past religious experiences, for all their blend of what's good for you and what's not.

The neo-atheists diminish what culturally religion has brought us; they heighten what politically, sexually, and emotionally religion has wrought to crush humanity. Substitutes, as clever vegans invent pork-like fare or non-dairy Twinkies, appear the answer for our soul's cravings. But, the smells of animal sacrifice, on the grill or the altar, tempt many even who try to eschew their former revelry or gluttony. I wonder if we can evolve away from the sky-god, given our slow pace, our need for illusion, and our wish for escape. For me, the cloudy glimpse at the glow of stars can be scary as well as soothing. The trio tells us we can find hope in verse, concert halls, or the Hubble's photos. These can give, they say, solace more fitting human potential rather than the putdowns of an overloaded hierarchical system bent on conformity, submission, and shame at shul, revival tent, or parish.

Ultimately, the neo-atheists turn back to the venerable lack of proof that outrages every skeptic. They tire of the wriggle room that allows believers an out, a recourse to One who is not there. They want the lab report, the dissected corpse, the solved equation. Yet the neo-atheists appear to me often as naive in assuming that music or poetry can replace mysticism or inspiration as felt by the faithful.

On parallel tracks to those pursued by believers, the rabbis and the professors may never meet. Such a Being as sought by Wolpe may, of course, not be plotted with the accuracy given a quadratic equation or a double helix. The neo-atheists demand "habeas corpus": let the body be produced. Those pursuing the soul's satisfaction may never be able to deliver the quivering goods to the empiricists. I understand both the believer's yearning and the scientist's precision. The sheer dissimilarity of talking about faith and discussing evidence appears to be a divide that by definition cannot be answered.

I think of Anselm, a millennium ago with his Ontological Principle, addressed by all three neo-atheists with varying degrees of success. (Dawkins tried hardest.) He came to Canterbury from the frontier of Lombardy and Burgundy, one of the first British intellectuals. I doubt if Russell gives him much notice; he skipped over most of the Middle Ages in his survey of what mattered in the West for those in the know. After all, Anselm silenced "the reply on behalf of the fool" who says there is no God, that straw man Ganilo. Reminiscent of Harris vs. Wolpe today?

I recall the bishop's own motto: "fidens quaerens intellectum." Faith seeking understanding. At a certain point, my medieval studies taught me, the theologians had to stop and bow. So do scientists, but they do not stop out of reaching the end of inquiry, only the edge of their knowledge.

Wolpe last year debated Sam Harris on the Jewish TV network. (Wolpe on left; Harris on right in snapshot above.) I cannot view the video due to an incompatible Flash Player, but maybe you can? "Does God Exist?" Elsewhere on the web, Hitchens debates "Kosher Sex" author British rabbi Shmuely Boteach over basically this the oldest of questions.