This small book is author Sarah Taggart's reply to the questions: Does God exist? and Why do we care? It is written in simple language, with vivid stories and challenging ideas. It is intended for young people whose science classes have collided with their Sunday School educations, and also for adults who have struggled with life-long skepticism, even though they are regular members of traditional churches. The author has a Doctor of MInistry degree from the Ecumenical Theological Seminary, and has written three previous books about the connection between psychology and belief: The Elephant Called Reality (Doctoral Dissertation, 1990), Living As If: Belief Systems in Mental Health Practice (Jossey-Bass 1994) and Searching for Dr. God: The Healing of a Soul (Thomas More/RCL 2000) She has also written three novels and a book of poetry. She has three sons and six grandchildren, with whom she has had many challenging conversations about the nature of belief. She is an adult convert to Christianity, has belonged to several Protestant denominations, and received a valued education in a variety Roman Catholic settings as well. She has, as C. S. Lewis once described it, "spent a lot of time in the hallway.

Why Dogs Don't Worship God

By Sarah Taggart

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2009 Sarah R. Taggart
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4389-3426-6

Contents

Preface........................................................xiIntroduction...................................................xiiiChapter One The Human Animal...................................1Chapter Two When Science is not Scientific.....................9Chapter Three Creatures With Souls.............................17Chapter Four Communicating with God............................23Chapter Five The Devil In The Details..........................35Chapter Six The Great Unknowable...............................45Chapter Seven Christian Metaphors..............................53Chapter Eight Beauty, Truth and Goodness.......................59Chapter Nine God In The Details................................67Epilogue God at the Fringes of Science.........................75

Chapter One

The Human Animal Humans have animal needs and behaviors.

Living with a dog:

When I was fifty years old I acquired my first and only dog. Esther was a shepherd-collie mix, six months old when she escaped from my cousin during a visit to our cottage. I had fallen in love with Esther during the brief time my cousin was with us. Esther was polite, intelligent and obviously sweet, but after she was returned to me I realized that I knew nothing at all about living with a dog. In subsequent years I learned about puppy chewing behavior, housebreaking, cleaning up during walks (I didn't) and not soiling the neighbors' yards (she did). And there were many heart-rending lessons as Esther's health got worse at the end of her life. We struggled to get along, Esther and I, for the nearly twelve years she was with me, and when she finally died I couldn't believe how sad I was.

Until Esther came into my life I don't think I ever really felt like a member of the animal kingdom. Yes, we had cats (lots of cats), but my husband was the cat-guy. Cats were too different, too "other." I never felt much affection for them. And even horses, during the brief summer I was forced to take riding lessons, scared me.

We are animals:

Living with Esther reminded me that we are animals. We eat, breathe, eliminate waste, and have sexual feelings, just as all animals do. Our DNA differs from all other life forms (even vegetables) by only a tiny amount. So before we talk about God, we need to talk more about ourselves as animals.

When I was a girl I was taught that animals don't think, they operate out of instinct. But it was apparent to me that Esther could think. Esther understood my language ("Shall we go for a walk, Esther?") and my emotions (if I was upset she would lay her head in my lap) and my instructions. ("Esther, stay off the couch.") Apparently she understood "what" even if she didn't understand "why." So I have no patience with skeptics who say that animals don't think.

Why is this important? Because no matter how holy we try to be, we always have our animal selves to contend with. But maybe that is a good thing. We observe how clever and sensitive many animals are. For example, birds can respond to music. I once entertained a sparrow, who was sitting outside my open window, with a recording of a string quartet. The sparrow would sing its sparrow song while the recording played Mozart. When I stopped the record, the bird would stop singing. In a similar way I once watched a hawk hover outside an open church window while a soloist sang. The hawk flew away as soon as the singer was finished. So I have not a doubt in the world that birds appreciate musical sounds. And birds, butterflies and bees apparently have an aesthetic sense of color, which pulls them to brightly colored mates and brightly colored flowers. Furthermore, we know that whales and dolphins can communicate in ways that suggest thinking-with dolphins, even, in ways that suggest joking. So the idea that non-human creatures only operate out of instinct is apparently wrong.

Our animal natures also provide us with fundamental survival skills. I love watching the squirrels greedily collect nuts and bury them for the winter. Humans also need to be "greedy"-to care for their physical bodies-in order to survive. But unfortunately we also tend to become covetous and arrogant. We aren't just storing up nuts for hard times, we are building up our self-esteem by having the biggest possible pile of nuts. And then our self-esteem makes us proud of ourselves, so we strut around and become bossy and think we're better than everybody else.

Another animal trait leads to human evil. Animals need to be aggressive, not only to protect themselves from harm but also to acquire desirable mates, and they often fight ferociously to protect their territory. We can easily see that trait in ourselves as well. Fighting is part of our animal nature, and territorial aggression has been a significant aspect of human sinfulness. Our abstract reasoning provides excuses and weapons. We call it "war."

Talented animals:

Years ago, when we had lots of cats, they sometimes did something that made me laugh. A cat would sit in front of a blank wall and stare at it. Intently. Whatever it was looking at was hypnotizing. (If you are familiar with Kliban cartoons you will remember several drawings of cats staring at walls.) I would say to my husband, "She thinks she sees something," as though this was additional proof of how silly cats were. But in recent years I have come to wonder if, in fact, our cats were seeing something that we couldn't see. Because how do we know what other animals can see? Or, for that matter, how do we know what other animals can hear? We know that dogs seem to go crazy over high pitched sounds that we can't hear. And we believe that dolphins and whales communicate with sounds outside of our normal hearing range.

It is, I suppose, lucky that our seeing and hearing are limited. If we could truly see and hear everything, we would be overwhelmed. Let me tease your imagination here. Suppose you could see radio waves, and whatever other electronic waves make our TVs and computers and automatic clocks work. In your room you could have a TV, a radio, a cordless clock and a wireless computer operating at the same time, all tuned into different wave-lengths. I wonder what that would look like. A great confusing cloud of electronic waves? And then, if you add the CO2 you have just exhaled, and the vapors given off by your synthetic clothes and furniture covers, the air around you would no longer look transparent and empty. Would it?

Every living thing-plants, bacteria, insects, etc.-interacts with a jungle of invisible substances and forces, and our feeble animal senses probably only experience a small number of these. But certain hyper- sensitive people apparently have experiences that are unavailable to the rest of us. For example, I have known individuals who said they could see "auras," circles of colored energy surrounding human heads. While this has been ridiculed by many skeptics, it would explain the "halos" in classical paintings of holy persons. We will talk later about intuition and other kinds of paranormal experiences. These are experiences outside of our ordinary human-animal abilities. But the fact that they are not part of our everyday lives doesn't mean they are not "real."

What does all of this have to do with our basic questions: Does God exist? and Why do we care? These examples should cause us to rethink our conclusion that if something isn't...