Onslaughts on religion have increased a lot lately one side and on the other, there is a steady increase in the number of atheists on the planet. In such circumstances where people are more concerned about the technical dangers to the world like global warming, there is a growing fear that religion is losing not only its grip but also its power.
In the half hour feature for the BBC, ‘The Case for God?’ has Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks who has decided to test his faith (and place it on the line for public debate) by facing the sharpest and cleverest atheists – Howard Jacobson, Alain de Botton, Professor Colin Blakemore and Professor Lisa Jardine.
Novelist Howard Jacobson is of the opinion that the religion is too bogged down by rituals, rules and regulations which, in the Chief Rabbi’s opinion are essential part of the religious practice. Jacobson doesn’t want the religion to decide what he eats and what he wears. He feels that the God should be concerned about the bigger things and not small ones like what he had for breakfast. To this the Chief Rabbi says that God is in the details and Jacobson counters by mentioning that ‘the devil is in the details’. A clever anecdote in the conversion goes to the Chief Rabbi and not to the novelist where Jacobson asks if the Chief Rabbi could love a self-righteous Jew as himself and the Chief Rabbi replies, of course and that he once thought that Jacobson was once such a Jew. Kudos!
Philosopher Alain de Botton wants to ‘pick and mix’ from various religions to form one religion and tries to convince the Chief Rabbi of it. However the Chief Rabbi is quick to refer to the roots of the word ‘heresy’ which means pick and mix. The Chief Rabbi further puts forth the example for clarifying that some pick and mix combinations can be disastrous.
Intriguing was the session with Scientist Colin Blakemore who is of the opinion that science explains everything and these rational explanations make everything obsolete. In his words, he sitting there was the sum of all the events that took place in the past. He further hypothesized that inside everyone of us there is something that knows what it’s doing and feels the need to be liberated into a universe that is devoid of God. The Chief Rabbi’s rebuttal cites Beethoven again, saying that science cannot explain the beauty of the music that we feel.
Lastly, Professor Lisa Jardine posses the universal question as to why God allows suffering. She questions why the God allowed the Holocaust to happen. To this, the Chief Rabbi does not provide a straight answer but says that when he reflected on holocaust, he lost faith in humanity but never lost faith in God.
In the beginning, Chief Rabbi says that he would be stepping into a lion’s den (of atheists) but it seems a bit like the opposite. Maybe it was due the editing of the program to fit it into a half hour slot that the conversations were limited to only one topic. Nonetheless, the program seemed to lose its point in those conversations. There was hardly a case against God and seemed more like a case against the Jewish God, which in the end was non-existent to me.