As a boy I was transfixed with All Is Vanity, an 1892 sketch by Charles Allan Gilbert. At first glance there is a woman beautifying herself in front of the vanity mirror. But by stepping back (or squinting) the larger picture tells a very different story. To a certain degree it reminds me of legalism. When viewed up close it gives the impression of being disciplined, working towards a goal, and following the right path. From a distance, or perhaps an eternal perspective, however, it may shrivel our spirit to the point of death.
What other perspectives are deadly illusions? There are some we hold onto with a vengeance, knowing we see reality. What about religion? How illusory is our understanding of God and how such beliefs are to be lived out? Is the belief in God’s existence one grand illusion? Is the belief in Not-God one such illusion?
Some theorists believe we, as a human race, “will evolve” out of these illusory tendencies. However, problematic questions arise from such claims. If evolution explains all, then why has it led us to a place where we must be enlightened so as to rid ourselves of religion? Why would natural selection lead us to religious formations in the first place?[1] It is quite an anomaly of natural selection that one of its outcomes would be to question its own efficiency in explaining the presence of mysticism and religion.
I am not the first to ponder this. Atheistic evolutionists have been addressing it for some time. Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, says, “Religion is so wasteful, so extravagant; and Darwinian selection habitually targets and eliminates waste.”[2] He acknowledges the tension between the assertion that natural selection should have gotten rid of religion, and the fact that it did not.
Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion and Eckhart Tolle in A New Earth expound on the virtues and elegance of the evolutionary process, that evil and a dualistic view of right and wrong are but temporary stages in a very elegant process. All this is said hoping to renew our trust in natural selection’s eventual overthrow of evil. But if evolution is as elegant as these theorists claim and if we are the products of such an efficient self-governing process, how is it that so few have been informed and the rest lack such knowledge? What inefficiencies in the evolutionary process have kept most of us out of the loop?
I believe it is a profound illusion to insist that we are in the process of evolving out of what religious peoples call evil, and will eventually arrive, even if it takes millennia, at a higher state, free from such inadequacies. First of all, nowhere in the evolutionary code is it written that we should ever know what we are going to evolve into. Knowing the outcome of the evolutionary process is contrary to natural selection itself! Secondly, how is it that these theorists have come to know what the best thing we could evolve into looks like? Where did they get the idea of good or better?
We do not know that we are going to evolve into something greater than our current state, one without evil. For all we know we will evolve into something far worse than we currently are.
Is the belief that we are going to evolve and rise above our current state an improvement over religious illusions? Or is it just another illusion? I have to admit that religions have wrought havoc over the millennia and one could argue that atheism is an improvement. Richard Dawkins seems to think so, pointing a finger at all the wars that have been waged in the “name of religion.” At the same time he also claims that no wars have been waged in the “name of atheism.”[3] I have heard claims to the contrary. In my lifetime alone wars have been waged by atheistic regimes with great devastation. Clearly, religion is not the only illusion with which we struggle.
Thomas Merton wrote, “We have become marvelous at self-delusion; all the more so, because we have gone to such trouble to convince ourselves of our own absolute infallibility.”[4] It seems that we need illusions to cope. We use them to rationalize away our ignorance. Jesus said, “He who says he has no sin lies.”[5] His words could be paraphrased, “He who says he has no self–deception is most self–deceived.” The worst of the worst of illusions is that we possess none!
We are enveloped by illusions of completeness, of consistency, of inerrancy, of absolutes, of clearly defined right and wrong. But if we live surrounded by so many illusions, how do we discern their presence in our lives? Where do we start? Perhaps we start at the very beginning.
– Sam Augsburger
[1] Though theorists, such as Richard Dawkins, attempt to address this question, their answers leave me empty and longing for more.
[2] Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006), 163.
[3] Ibid., 278.
[4] Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain (Orlando: Harcourt, 1948), 224-25.
[5] 1 John 1:8-10.
