Science, Idolatry, and Anthropomorphism

Last updated on: December 7, 2008 at 12:01 am by James F. McGrath

Here are two more quotes from Chet Raymo‘s book When God Is Gone, Everything Is Holy:

“If science has given one great gift to the world – greater than the wonders of technology, greater than modern medicine, greater than flights to the moon and planets – it has given us permission not to know everything” (p.63).

“Prescientific people invested every tree, brook, and celestial body with personhood. For all its grandeur and refinement, the modern idea of a transcendent personal deity who acts wilfully in the world is only the final manifestation of ancient animism. For the religious agnostic, this is the ultimate idolatry” (p.103).

What do you think? Obviously a book cannot be summed up in a few quotes. But I’ve often felt that, on the one hand, the highly anthropomorphic depictions of God one finds in ancient monotheistic religious traditions really are just the various anthropomorphic deities combined into one almighty and all-powerful God. Presumably we are meant to build on and at the same time move beyond such ideas to something better. Yet on the other hand, it is hard for me to imagine setting aside entirely the language of personhood in reference to God, not because I think of God as a person micromanaging events in the universe, but because I think that God is greater than that rather than something less. God is the ultimate transcendence, and speaking about God as “impersonal” seems to represent a reduction, a depiction of God as less than we are.

I’ve long found Hans Kung’s language helpful when he speaks of God as “more than personal”. Admittedly, we don’t have any idea what that means, but it seems to be pointing in the right direction.