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In discussing the Resurrection as event, not
just metaphor, this past Sunday I quoted Steven Weinberg’s
book, Dreams of a Final Theory. Weinberg, recipient of the
Nobel prize for physics in 1979, can best be described as an
agnostic leaning toward atheism. The quotation is worth further
circulation. Here is a portion of it:
Religious liberals are in one sense even
farther in spirit from scientists than are fundamentalists
and other religious conservatives. At least the conservatives
like the scientists tell you that they believe in what they
believe because it is true, rather than because it makes them
good or happy...
Wolfgang Pauli was once asked whether he
thought that a particularly ill-conceived physics paper was
wrong. He replied that such a description would be too
kind---the paper was not even wrong. I happen to think that
the religious conservatives are wrong in what they believe,
but at least they have not forgotten what it means really to
believe something. The religious liberals seem to me to be
not even wrong.
One often hears that theology is not the
important thing about religion---the important thing is how
it helps us to live. Very strange, that the existence and
nature of God and grace and sin and heaven and hell are not
important! I would guess that people do not find the theology
of their own supposed religion important because they cannot
bring themselves to admit that they do not believe any of it.
But through out history and in many parts of the world today
people have believed in one theology or another, and for them
it has been very important.
Such people were the early Christians. Their
attitude was: Call us liars if you must, but don’t patronize
us with talk of metaphor (I Corinthians 15:14-15).
 C.
David Hess
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