The brilliance of Rene Girard

Evolutionary Biology has a lot (a lot) to say to Christians. Asa Gray, Ronald Fisher (whom Dawkins has called the greatest biologist since Darwin),  David Lack, Theo Dobzhansky, undoubtedly four of the greatest evolutionary biologists to live, as Christian believers had their faith informed by how God brought life to human form. But so does Evolutionary Religion.

Enter Rene Girard, the French Anthropologist and long-time Stanford Professor whose thought development is as impressive as it is important for Christians to understand how religion has evolved. In his seminal "The Scapegoat", Girard presents his hypothesis in stunning, dramatic and convincing manner. (I use hypothesis because, unlike Psychology and string theory, Girard's work should be considered science simply because it is falsifiable, albeit perhaps not in the traditional experimental sense).

Girard's thought developed over years of studying different cultures over different time periods, and the myths that come from these cultures. Through these experiences, Girard forms his "mimetic" theory, the essence which surrounds the idea of mimetic desire, that humans not only phenocopy but photocopy each other's desires, and, to avoid conflict, have entered into an ancient, and since recently, repeating circle of scapegoat violence. Back to that in a moment, and the Girard Hypothesis is indeed significantly more complicated than this. But there is something else though that is equally important, and I admit, maybe more so for me.

There are two things that intellectually bother me about Christianity. The first is, if God is whom we think God is, it is very difficult to reconcile the violence and genocide described in the OT. It is equally difficult to reconcile the violence and the shear amount of death and suffering (though I'm not sure how much the quantity matters) in nature. In short, the problem of evil is alive and kicking in Christian circles, and, if anybody tells you differently, they are either not being truthful with you, themselves, or they know something that I don't about it.

Equally challenging a problem for me, as a Christian, is what I would call the literal-myth-Kenosis problem. Essentially, Jesus believed certainly in the validity of what I am personally convinced we can see as myth. From the Creation to the Flood to Jonah, my feelings are it is reasonably unlikely that one can reconcile these stories with a purely literal interpretation. To complicate things, Jesus, if we are to believe was Divine, would be expected to carry those traits of Divinity which Orthodox Christians ascribe to God -- omniscience, among those. Yet, Jesus clearly believed that the Flood, for example, was in some ways a real event. So what is the solution? (I hardly, from the mounds of evidence saying otherwise, have to even eliminate Jesus was not God as one possibility).

One thing Girard does, convincingly, is bring myths outside of our limited post-modern Western cultural viewpoints, and illuminate them in the cultures that they were originally intended for. This significantly changes their meaning, and should change our understanding of them. Myths, thus, are mixtures of truth and untruth: one part truth, another part moral lesson, and another part embellishment, ignorance and untruth. Just because a culture wasn't familiar with Germ-Theory does not mean that their viliage did not suffer a  catastrophically fatal event. They just did not die as a result, let's say, of the sun god not being happy. And as such, the correct understanding of myths serve as an important signpost to how to understand, for example, how God could be truth yet allow His Son to teach the Flood as, what Hebrews of the time would understand it, a literal event.

Back to the Girard Hypothesis. It is brilliant, but I cannot begin to say enough about it to give it justice. I would say, if you enter Girard's thoughts with an open-mind, it can be revolutionary. I implore anybody to find out themselves. "The Scapegoat" is a great place to start.

I will divulge one piece of the puzzle that should be startling. The Gospel Myths, as written in the NT, have all the elements of every myth written across every culture throughout human history (so every myth ever told/recorded has the same main elements -- yeah, that is wild, but appears rather true). The difference, of course, is that "the Scapegoat" hitting the reset button, in this case, was truly fully innocent. And so, there is stands. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the at the same time written in the same fold of every myth, yet stands as the culmination, the fulfillment, and the destruction of every myth. And, since myth is a tapestry of truth and untruth, it is the destruction of the human need of scapegoating. In a human history filled with human sacrifice, the evolving human deals with its problems and rivalries in the same manner. Yet, in a space-time point, Jesus enters the Cosmic fray, and, fully human and Divine, acts as the final sacrifice. The final myth. The final Scapegoat.

This reminds me of work done by the eminent contemporary (and as of a few years ago, newly-converted Christian) sociologist of Religion, Rodney Stark, in his seminal, "The Rise Of Christianity." Here, Stark makes the point that one of the reasons Christianity was so successful in its earliest stages -- it's treatment of women was far superior to what anybody else was doing. Much like Judaism did before, with God demanding Jews to treat slaves with dignity, a totally unheard of notion in the Ancient Hebrew times, Jesus' relationship with women caused a total reversal of how women were to be treated in the future. In a more global way, Calvary is a reversal of how humans should treat humans, in total abandonment of and treachery to, our Darwinian drumbeat, to our violent desires, to our Scapegoating impulses.

I suspect, though I do not know, Dobzhansky, and Fisher and Lack and Gray saw this. Humanity turning itself on its head to feed the poor, clothe the sick? What was that? What is that?

In the same vein that God's commands started to break the chains of slavery and Jesus' acts broke the chains of male chauvinism, Girard's Hypothesis blows the cover off, precisely by revealing, mimetic desire, as it explodes in the fabric of myths sweeping across every culture in every time, and, exposing the Gospel myths for what they also are -- the termination of myths as we know it, God's revelation to humanity of the Divine Scapegoat, and the insertion of the exclamation point after St. John's words: God is Love!

Pick up Girard's work. Keep an open-mind. I predict, as we already see happening now, Girard's Hypothesis will bleed into many fields, not just Ethnology. There is just too much revelation here that is critical to help us understand how we should understand the world. And, for the Theist, particularly the Christian, what God has told us in Scripture, how Evolutionary Religion, like Evolutionary Biology, can illuminate our understanding of precisely who we are and what we are swimming up-tide against. And, more neatly, give us more insight into how God prepared this Universe and our minds to either reject Him or accept Him, to choose eternal life, or eternal sadness.

justifiedfullybywhat?

"Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith" Romans 3:28a

"It's all a big nothing." Livia Soprano


If we drew a relationship Atheism->->Deism->->Theism->->Jesus Christ, then what Paul has to say to the Romans here must be what bridges Theists to Jesus Christ. While the overwhelming majority of Theists that lived never have read these words, its nonetheless the most important philosophical piece of information in the New Testament and, I would argue, human history.

But what about those that never progress to Theism? Kant's third of three questions that need to be answered in any thinking person's life, as illustrated in the seminal "The Critique of Pure Reason", is "what is the purpose of our existence"?

For a young Atheist, there should not be a problem. Young Atheists have their lives to look ahead to write their own history; knowing many, and fortunate enough to call many "friend", they seldom think about this through anything but a glass darkly, if at all. Particularly in cultures like America and Japan, where, upon drawing the morning shades, any urge to take a morning stroll in the crisp, Autumn morning is usurped as soon as we remind ourselves our smart phones have not been checked since the prior night.

But for Atheists in their twilight, it is a much different story. When they look back and realize, if their worldview is correct, it is, and has been, all just sound and fury. Machines (us) reacting to chemical reactions, coming from a Big Bang, leaving when the sun burns out or most likely much, much sooner, with no record of our existence, our universe leaving not even shadows of existence. Atheists on their way out must admit, if their worldview is correct, then there is no truer words then from the old hag from the Sopranos -- "It's all a big nothing". Or, perhaps a tad more elegantly, as the great Catholic writer GK Chesterton penned, "Atheism is the most daring of all dogmas, for it asserts a universal negative."


The great movie director Sydney Pollack, before his recent death, was asked if he ever would stop making movies. His answer was no, for if he stopped, he would lose purpose in his life. Of course, he is not alone, by any stretch. When others are pressed for the purpose of their life, some talk about their kids, and assert that their life serves plenty purpose so long as their kids are happy and healthy. As nice as that sounds, its for all the same reasons as above, nonsensical, and, as an aside, is almost always actually utterly selfish. When Leo Szilard told his friend Hans Bethe, two nobel laureates of Physics, that he was thinking of keeping a diary to record information for God, Bethe replied by asking Szilard didn't he think that God already knew the facts. Szilard replied, " Yes, He knows the facts, but He doesn't know this version of the facts." Justified fully by kids, work, charity, or, in Szilard's case, by making incredible strides in understanding the materialistic backbone of this universe -- these are totally incoherent concepts, clutching at existential straws, in every way, nonsensical. Indeed, even the most influential and thoughful modern philosophers, even the secular Atheists, like Alexander Rosenberg, Richard Rorty and Thomas Nagel, understand the rational purposelessness and persistent human need for justification for the Atheist based on their worldview.

I cannot imagine a more somber setting then the deathbed of the Atheist with even the most celebrated lives. For even the most thoughtful and contributing Atheist, to look back at all the wonderful things they have done for the human race -- the great movies and pleasure Sydney Pollack brought to many, for example -- and to realize it was all meaningless chemical reactions.

For the Theist, death can also be quite horrible, but for very different reasons. To look back at all the terrible things we have done, all the things we failed to do, and how terrifying it should be to anybody to give an account of our lives to the personal Creator of the Universe. If we as Theists are being honest, our deathbeds should be exponentially more disturbing and worrisome.

But then we get to Romans 3:28. Why God stays ostensibly behind the curtain crosses paths with our greatest and deepest needs. We understand what Kierkgaard meant and what millions of Christians mean, when they utter, "the proof of Christianity is in the following". But we must understand precisely where that still fails. As modern psychology has revealed, our behaviors and societies are as important to inform our beliefs as the other way around. When we surround ourselves with a community of believers, when we live our lives by serving our secular and non-secular neighbor, we still only realize our deathbed is tragic, disturbing and worrisome. Christianity has been plagued for 2000 years with people whom have justified themselves by something far worse than jobs or kids or great intellectual achievements. They have attempted to justify themselves by themselves, and, in their wake, disaster. We must admit to Dr. Dawkins, Yes sir, Religion is often horrendous, and religious people, particularly dressed up in the righteousness of Christianity, are the most accountable, because they have the most information.

But then we get to Romans 3:28.

If only every Aztec "believer", every Native American "believer", every Babylonian "believer", that died in fear and despair that they were simply not good enough for whatever they thought was out there, or up there, or down there, could have read these words, then they would have had a much different ending. Death becomes not death, but a shadow and an echo of death.

When the question mark is replaced by grace, it is only then that the universal veil is lifted.

With Atheism dying, on to "spritual agnosticism"

"That the universe has in it more than we understand, that the private soldiers have not been told the plan of campaign, or even that there is one, rather than some vaster unthinkable to which every predicate is an impertinence, has no bearing upon our conduct. We still shall fight — all of us because we want to live, some, at least, because we want to realize our spontaneity and prove our powers, for the joy of it, and we may leave to the unknown the supposed final valuation of that which in any event has value to us. It is enough for us that the universe has produced us and has within it, as less than it, all that we believe and love." O.W. Holmes Jr, 20th century Supreme Court Judge

"Evolution has reached the limits of what is possible on planet Earth. In particular our doors of perception can only be extended by scientific instrument, enabling a panorama from the big bang to DNA." Simon Conway Morris, University of Cambridge Eminent Paleontologist

"Real genius in nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought." Simone Weil

"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." (1 Corinthians 13:12) 

Fifty or sixty years ago, the consensus from intellectuals across most Western world campuses were uniform -- inevitably, Theism would be replaced by Atheism. There was no more need to provoke a God to explain phenomena -- ( though a strange reason to believe in a personal God to begin with). So were these intellectuals correct?

Well, anybody keeping up with pollsters and even liberal media outlets know the answer.

The reasons for this spritual revival over the past five years are starting to manifest in all the oddest places. An example of this are books like the one from the historically anti-Theist Michael Krasney, titled, " Spiritual Envy: An Agnostic's Quest", or from the the eminent atheist philosopher turned Deist/Theist Anthony Flew, "There is a God." (For publicity reasons, I'm guessing, the "no" is crossed out and replaced with "a" on the book cover). Even more surprising, is where this revival is being led -- in the ivory towers of philosophy and sociology departments across America.

This is a topic that's intersting but cannot in any meaningful way be discussed in this kind of forum. I recently read the late Christopher Hitchens, "The Portable Athiest", which, I highly recommend to anybody. It is a signficant and thorough collection of essays and book excerpts from the leading Atheist voices over the past couple hundred years. Firstly, anything Hitchens writes, even if it's just added commenatary, is colorful and intelligent, although rough-around-the-edges (for instance, he refers to Billy Graham as a "boring racist charlatan"). At any rate, it's always important to understand the latest arguments against religion and Christianity (though they are almost somewhat recycled versions of Nietzsche, Marx and Freud's objections to Christianity, with some extra scientific twists). But, that is exactly all they are. Negative statements. And, as I have pointed out before, it's just too bad many (not all, Carl Sagan and Stephen Weinberg, two brilliant scientists, seem to have a good idea of Christian thought) leading Atheist/Agnostic voices don't have a complete, and in cases like Sam Harris (I would not recommend any of Harris' work) or Richard Dawkins (he is an excellent scientist and an even better science writer) their understanding of Christianity/Theology/Philosophy would be comical if their ignorance wasn't such a serious matter.

I and much more elegant thinkers and writers have harped on one of the major problems with Atheism: The religion of Atheism is just too far-fetched. Atheism at its heart (no facetious pun attended) posits that a Big Bang Program (whether originating from a multi-verse or whatever) has resulted in me writing these words and you comprehending and rolling your eyes at them, in the absence of an intelligent agent getting us from point A to point B.  And, as it must follow, to come to that conclusion, we need to rely on something we call "senses" and "reason", which are analogous to the serendipitous construction of atomic molecules. Is it a worldview with explantory power? I would say no. If you can put your faith in that worldview, I envy your faith. And, for you, it will work out in the short-term, because obviously this world is set-up that it is precisely those folks that will get ahead -- and they will have much more pleasure in this world to boot.

When I was in graduate school, I became an Agnostic shortly after reading Dawkins' The Selfish Gene. I must have been close to get there before reading Dawkins, and I'm not sure I wasn't a lifelong Agnostic up to that point.  At the time, in my extended family, there may have been two or three Christians, and within my nuclear family at the time, one Christian. Thus, it was much of an Agnostic household as anything else. We went through the routines of a post-modern "Catholic" household in 1990's America, but that was about it. I had essentially done no inquiry -- after all, I was young, into other things that were much more fun at the time, and had little to no use for God, nevermind if we could explain our physical existence through materialism.

It is here, I disagree with Morris (one of the most distinguished paleontologists of our time). I think we will one day be able to explain everything from the big bang to this moment in materialistic terms. I think a reasonable human being does not nor will ever have to invoke God, or Gods, or the marshmellow man, to explain their existence. While science is a million miles away from this reality (there is a real dissention from Darwinism right now, amongst all the origin problems, etc), I do think we will get there. And for my faith, that is a good thing.

The God the Bible has revealed to us, if my understanding is correct, would never allow this. One of the major reasons the Judeo-Christian God is the God that exists, amongst thousands and thousands of past gods from different cultures, is because this is essentially a primary component of the God the Bible reveals. Harris makes the recycled and aggregiousy ignorant argument in "Letter to a Christian Nation", wondering why God didn't write something in the Scripture that exhibited supernatural knowledge (If I'm remembering correctly he uses an example about including somewhere information about what DNA is in Scripture). I've read this argument from much more informed skeptics, in different forms. It's the, "I am God written in the Sky" argument.  However, our idea of the Judeo-Christian God would collapse if this happened, or if the former happened. And, as an extension, I don't expect there to be any revelations that force people to consider a supernatural Creator as there only option of a worldview.


In this sense, Atheism should and needs to always be a viable option, or, pardoxically, it will effect our Jewish/Christian Theistic views.

But what Atheists are encountering as they are thinking and living through the decision to put aside God, is a giant hole, that success, love, and therapy aren't filling. Is this the whisper of God that Jews and Christains always speak of, or is it solely a product of evolutionary trickery, the unguided and meaningless process that Atheists attribute their feelings and logic to in the first place?

Hmmm. That's quite a tough position to be in. It's no surprise, that even in the poshest, most isolated offices in the post-modern world, where folks like Dawkins and Harris write their books from, and shrug off their colleagues' suggestions (for every Richard Dawkins there is a Simon Conway Morris, for every Sam Harris a Malcolm Jeeves) that things may be not as they think. Or to paraphrase the French Agnostic turned Christian Mystic and human rights advocate Simone Weil, "find that supernatural virtue of humility that will lead them down a different path". Folks like Krasney are indeed now on that path, with a herd of intellectuals in his shadow of his sojourn, out of the wilderness, and while some may only be in "spritual agnosticism" territory right now,  perhaps one day their reasoning and new found humility may lead them to the Promised Land.

They hear that whipser, that echo. They listen to their reason. They use their brain that God has given them to understand their worldview has very limited explanatory power. Atheists like OW Holmes Jr. can imagine that his life has (or in his case, had) meaning, but, looking through the lens of his worldview, he mind as well never existed and it wouldn't matter at all. That isn't harsh -- it's an honest appraisal. The Fundamental Christian, the Anthony Faber, the Simone Weil, even Paul the Apostle -- see through a glass, darkly, of course, with all our pre-suppositions, our biases, and our limited knowledge of God and His creation. The absolute reductionist, indeed the Atheist, doesn't see through a glass, darkly -- not at all. Instead, he looks through everything -- and when you look through everything, you see, much less than if you look through a glass, darkly -- you instead see nothing.

And that may be ultimately the eulogy of Atheism. Not incontrovertible evidence of an intelligent Creator. Not Jesus flying through the sky with fire behind him.  As Soren Kierkegaard rightfully points out, the proof of Christianity is in the "following". Fifty years after ordering the coffin and writing the eulogy of religion and Christianity, ironically, as Christianity enjoys a revival in post-modern university halls and globally, it appears we can now see others saying exactly the opposite -- the fallacy of Atheism is in the following.