What is it about certain ideas that makes them unassailable? Consider one of the most hotly debated issues of all time: religion. Most conversations around this theme, even if they start out rational, degenerate into anger, aggression, and the extreme position that “you’re either with me or against me”.
I admit to taking the bait in such discussions, more than once. I have even taunted those whom I perceived to be “against me”. As the irrational anger subsides, I have always regretted it.
That is why, on stumbling upon a conversation published in The Guardian between Reverend Richard Coles, an Anglican priest, and the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, I scrutinised it with much interest. “What common ground could these people have,” I wondered. It turns out that what they had in common was a willingness to listen deeply, and to allow for — and even be enriched by — another worldview.
The two met, last month, as part of The Guardian’s Dine across the Divide series. In his life before priesthood, Coles had been openly homosexual. He then had a religious epiphany in 1990 and decided to commit to the Church. Dawkins, meanwhile, is known the world over for his outspokenness against religion. It was his fierce arguments that compelled me to reject religion and embrace atheism as a young man, much to the consternation of my devout Christian parents.
To their credit, they let me be. But I wouldn’t let them be. “What kind of a God allows people to die miserable deaths?” I asked them once. I had just returned from Bhuj, where I had been reporting on the terrible earthquake of 2001. The death and destruction I had witnessed felt incomprehensible.
In their chat, Coles speaks to Dawkins of the turmoil he felt on witnessing people die of HIV in the 1990s. He was studying for a theology degree in London at the time, and the death he saw around him caused him to question his faith. But, he says, it was in his faith that he found consolation. He describes this experience as “extraordinarily rich and surprising and counterintuitive.”
This had my attention. We both witnessed death and devastation, but we reacted differently. Upon reading further, I discovered why.
Coles speaks of being fascinated by Gregor Johann Mendel, now acknowledged as the father of genetics. Mendel is best known for growing peas in his backyard, becoming riveted by how they grew, and going on to compile the laws of genetic heredity as we know them today.
But, as Coles points out, Mendel was also an abbot. And he lived and worked amid the Scientific Renaissance of the 19th century, and the stormy reception to Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859). Mendel’s personal library contains a copy of that book, with passages highlighted. “It’s pretty clear he read it,” Coles tells Dawkins.
Could Darwin’s then-shocking theory that man evolved from apes have influenced how Mendel viewed the gentle developments in his backyard? Did he struggle to reconcile Darwin’s theories with his own faith? How did he marry the idea of evolution with the concept of a divine creator?
As I read on, this is the kind of question I am hoping Dawkins will ask the priest, and he does. Coles’s answer is most interesting. Why don’t we simply accept that not everything needs evidence, he says. A lovely piece of music, for instance, does not need any evidence to prove that it is indeed lovely. That it is beautiful is felt by the listener.
It’s hard to argue with that. But his statement gives me pause, because I realise that this is what my father had been trying to say. That he respected my opinion, but I ought to let him hold to his faith in peace. I wasn’t listening then; I was so sure I had the answers. For what it’s worth, Dad, I’m sorry.