What is Truth?

Any attempt to explain religion today must address the issue of science.

It is simply impossible to communicate with any reasonably informed person today about religion and not be able to relate what is said to what science says.

This means we have to being with what we understand science to be about. I would identify three important characteristics of science:

1. A scientific theory exists within a community of expertise, and it enables the community to work collectively on its area of expertise, in such a way that the community is able to objectively evaluate new theories. So, for example, an experiment must be reproducible, a theory must say something that is capable of being disproved, and a theory must make sense of the available relevant data.

2. Any theory is liable to change - because some new experiment suggests a different explanation to the current data, or because a new paradigm explains the existing data in a more elegant way, and perhaps is able to explain data that had not previously been included in previous scientific paradigms. Data by itself does not disprove a theory - a theory may continue to be held by scientists, even if there exist experiments that "disprove" the theory if there is no suitable new paradigm available to better explain both the new data and the old.

3. The idea of purely objective knowledge does not exist in science - scientific knowledge is always provisional, and liable to change, it is simply the best explanation we have at any one time, and it is expected that in time the current theory will be discarded for a better theory.

This makes it very difficult to "build" what we usually understand by theology into any relationship with science. Theology deals with the eternal and unchanging revelation of God. Unlike science it is not expected that this revelation will continually change and develop, and that new revelations will replace previous ones.

This means if we suggest some theological explanation X for a scientific theory, we may in time need to revise X if the scientific theory it was built on now changes. We can't propose some theology that will always be true when we make that theology dependent on science, because that science will change.

So how then do we do theology? Do we not let it have any relationship with science? Some people would do this - it would keep "unchanging" theology away from "changeable" science. But if we do this, theology no longer relates to the world around us.

So instead, do we relate theology to science? Of course, but if we do this we must immediately recognise that theology now becomes as provisional and changeable as science. Indeed, more so that science - science can change based on the views of the scientific community, but theology then needs to change itself, if the science it was based on was faulty in some way, or has now been succeeded by some new science.

But here is the problem - theology isn't a science - it doesn't provide an objective explanation of the data using a theory that is shared by the theological community. Instead theology is simply interpretation - it is speculation - as one person's argument is as good as anyone else's. There is no established method to objectively change and develop theology, so its worth or merit lies in how we make sense of what we know from science, plus other areas that are not completely under the rule of science - e.g. ethics.

So now theology becomes as changeable and variable as any other part of modern society. We have to make what sense we can from science, and then build on that with our understanding of the rest of the world. That understanding may and will change - if the past is anything to go by.

Therefore theology becomes a story to explain our lives, given the discoveries of science. Theology is a human creation - no more objective than a novel or a poem - and we need to see those who attempt to practise theology as creative artists - who are able to wrestle with language and make some sense of our lives.

Life - the pull into Being

We might think of life or culture as some sort of "pull" into Being - the attraction of life - what we lose ourselves in. This could be relationships, nature, ethics, work, art, culture, sport, politics, science, superstition, religion, hobbies, care of the self, the home, comedy, music, drugs, families, friendship, peers, travel, achievement, education, film, creation, shopping, reading, dreaming, sleep, driving, subcultures, dancing, cooking, playing video games... the list goes on. All these activities call out to us, some we listen to, some we like the way they call us.

So our life is overloaded with good things, we don't have enough time for them all. Then "religion" - which is itself one of these activities - is presented to us as something more important than these other activities. In other words, we now have to swap something we like doing for this new activity. What is the deal? What is the exchange? What can I give up to have time for religion? What will religion give me?

I know what cooking gives me, what walks in the country give me, what playing video games give me... or do I? Am I able to articulate and explain why I do things? Do I just do them because I feel a some desire, some pull towards that activity?

We have lost time - we have no time for what we want. Reality is too complex for us to understand it - there is a fractalization of our taxonomy of reality. Is it even healthy to give up something for religion?

But perhaps a better paradigm is the story. We explain what we do to ourselves with a story. We have a story about any activity and our life we try to make into a story of all these stories. We have a story of our political activity, a story of our family life, a story of our career, so we also try to make a story out of all these stories, to make our life understandable - if not understandable at least communicable to some imaginary other.

To err is to wake up. It is to come across a reality that we didn't anticipate or didn't know existed. When we err, we bump into something, and have at last an opportunity to engage with a new reality. Mostly we never take it, we try to ignore our errors, but error can be the source of art, our imagination, of a new story. We need a new story to make sense of the error. We have to be careful in case we stop looking at the error - "I wasn't really so wrong, I was nearly right" - the error can be fresh air, it can be a doorway to some new world.

Sometimes we are overcome with our life story - Richard Dawkins has a vision of a world without religious differences - or at least without religious bigotry. The story possesses him and animates him. He has a clear vision and is able to communicate that vision with passion and certainty.

The nihil is the lack of a story. It is not being able to put a story together - to narrate what is happening - we might have the pieces, we don't have the narrative.

With realist religion the story comes from God or it is written in the stars - everyone has the same story and the story never changes.

With non-realism we discover our own story, the story is a creative process of discovery - we appropriate our story, we all have different stories, the story changes, it is told and retold and changes in the telling.

Perhaps there are two paths to the light of the world - to the vision - to your story. One is a blinding light - the angels appearing to the shepherds, the road to Damascus - the sudden dawning realisation of what the story is.

The other is the slow journey of the wise men, following the star - not sure where it will lead. At first they are led to the wrong palace - they take a wrong turn. Eventually they arrive, to behold the light - the truth, to know their story.

Perhaps both ways end in a sort of worship, an awe of the numinous, the sublime experience of being. The ineffable where the truth of the story overcomes you and words are no longer enough.