“Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, ‘I find no pleasure in them’.”

Ecclesiastes ch12 vs1

For some strange reason UK local elections are traditionally held in the first week of May, just after the bank holiday. UK politics are somewhat parochial at the best of times, and this round of elections is even more so — normally featuring a very low turnout.

However, news of a report from the Theos Think Tank entitled ‘Science and Religion: moving away from the shallow end’ which sets out a refreshing new maturity among young people on their perspective on the meaning of life, is warmly welcome.

So in this commentary, inspired also by the wisdom of Ecclesiastes in the quotation above, we greet this pragmatic approach and the initiative taken by Theos and the Faraday Institute of Science and Religion, and we recommend logic as the catalyst for resolving the mysteries of this relationship between science and faith.

Last Thursday I attended a lecture by economist Ariel Rubinstein in Cambridge, entitled ‘Economics without prices and without games: the permissible and the forbidden’. It interpreted everyday concepts of distribution in a series of complex algorithms, but it was at the same time very entertaining.

One of the concepts he discussed was the ‘Give and Take Economy’ (source: Sprumont 1991), as if each were a conscious and voluntary activity. But of course there is one point in the life cycle where giving is neither conscious nor voluntary — the point of death, which forces us to think seriously, not only about inter-generational behaviour and rebalancing, but also about the nature of the afterlife, and of our spiritual existence.

I enjoyed a short discussion with Ariel Rubinstein later that evening when we compared notes on matters or faith and optimism, and I'm looking forward to his comments on egalitarian capitalism, which I presented at the Z/Yen lecture last August.

The Theos report approaches these aspects from a very different perspective: that of young people. Its findings are quantitatively sound, being based on a YouGov survey of 5,153 interviewees (interestingly, exactly 5,000 more than the number of fish drawn up on Jesus’s guidance after his resurrection).

The report summarises views from a number of key perspectives:

  • Epistemology: how do we know what (we think) we know?
  • Metaphysics: what is the fundamental nature of reality?
  • Hermeneutics: how do we read texts, particularly authoritative religious ones?
  • Anthropology: what does it mean to be human?
  • Ethics: what is good and how do we progress as a society?
  • Politics: who gets to decide?

The answers were both mature and open-minded, and it was refreshing to note the absence of judgement and doctrine which so often surrounds debate on religion.

Indeed, there is something about the ageing process which often seems to lock in prescriptive views: we've seen so much of it in both western democracies and eastern autocracies recently. There’s plenty of evidence to show that rigid views do not lead to any improvement in morality: indeed quite the reverse, if Putin's War in Ukraine, Trump's insurrection, and falling standards in the UK Parliament are anything to go by.

I would welcome a broad debate at Theos contrasting the rather pessimistic tone of Ecclesiastes with the exploratory tone of their work with these young people, and including, of course, the members of the Faraday Institute of Science and Religion.

The key to unwrapping these dilemmas is to be found in logic.

For example, at least half of the young people interviewed were open to the possibility of a spiritual dimension alongside our material existence. If that is to have any meaning, our spiritual identity must be individually identifiable – which means that either our memory is vested in our soul, or that it is at least duplicated therein. I prefer the former, and a continuing ongoing conversation between our everyday experience through the modem of our brain.

The potential for the co-existence of both God and evolution was accepted by a clear majority of young people, with the ‘angry hostility towards religion engineered by the new atheist movement’ being over. Again, this opens the door for logic, since the foundational laws of material creation and evolution – that is, gravity, light and time – had to originate somewhere, and where better for them to be established than as manifestations of the unconditional love which St. John tells us is the nature of God?

Thinking back to my conversation with Ariel Rubinstein and the ancient book of Ecclesiastes, it's clear that pessimism can be rooted in too narrow view of the interplay between science and faith. It's really important that we do get to grips with things like the inter-generational cycle of life, so that proper provisions are put in place for material aspects (through processes such as inter-generational rebalancing) in order to address that ‘Give and Take Economy’ - and such as our continuing spiritual identity, giving meaning and immortality to the individual existence, the auto-biographical self.

So — hats off to the Theos Think Tank for discovering a fresh new open-mindedness among young people: let's continue our search for life, the universe and all that.

Gavin Oldham OBE

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