Colorado Voices: Waiting for Godot
Posted: 03/25/2012 01:00:00 AM MDT
By David E. Faris
It occurred to me the other day that religion resembles nothing so much as a hobby. I quickly discovered this insight is far from original with me.
I'm not a professional atheist. Not a member of any humanist or secularist group. No theologian, logician or lawyer. I think of myself as your neighborhood non-believer. Appar ently there's a growing number of us. In 2008 researchers conducted for a third time the American Religious Identity Survey (ARIS), interviewing 54,000 Americans. Asked about religious identity, 15 percent of respondents answered "none." That's almost double the percentage from 1990. One researcher noted: "These people aren't secular ized. They're not thinking about religion and rejecting it; they're not thinking about it at all."
That last part doesn't quite fit me, since I do think about religion sometimes. I contend that's because there's always something unbelievable popping up on the religion front. I'm not talking miracles.
But let's talk miracles.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was in Denver recently to address the Living the Catholic Faith Conference. He seems to have had a lot to say about miracles. Sounding mostly defensive, but nonetheless adamant, Scalia opined: "What is irrational, it seems to me — irrational! — is to reject, a priori, with no investigation, the possibility of miracles in general and of Jesus Christ's resurrection in particular."
I thought lots of folks had investigated these matters. Over a couple of millennia. But as I said, no theologian, no lawyer, I.
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