Archbishop of Sydney

With Or Without God?

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
8/6/2008

The arrival of the Muslims has shaken up the religious situation, especially in Europe.

I am not talking about the small minority of Islamist terrorists, but about the broader Islamic communities with their explicit faith in God, religious loyalty and their higher birth rate.  In many parts of Europe, Christian faith is weak and nominal Christians and ex-believers are reluctant to have children.  This provides an interesting mix and various cultural challenges, especially for those who value our way of living, but no longer believe in God.

In Italy a small number of “Catholic” atheists contribute regularly to public discussion defending the Western traditions of public debate appealing to reason, the equality of the sexes, the separation of Church and State, social justice, compassion for the battlers, and the equality of all, believers and non-believers, before the law.  They recognize that our present situation would be radically different without Christianity, but they seem unable to believe in God.

Most people are religious in one way or other.  This is part of our natural make-up and if God is driven out, other forces come in to fill the vacuum.  Some of these are not too noxious, primitive superstitions like trying to know the future from the stars, but others, like Nazism and Communism, can be demonic and destructive.  Strong faith is infectious for good or ill.

Christians believe God is personal, good, and loving towards us.  We also believe God has set moral standards and will judge us at death.  For many this is objectionable as they have chosen to make their own rules.  This is a formidable psychological barrier to believing.

But the reality of the universe remains and believers recognize God as its creator.  To deny that God created and sustains the universe is to deny God’s existence, to affirm that everything, humans too, are the result of chance, cosmic flukes.

Recently a sympathetic unbeliever told me he found it hard to believe in God because the universe is so immense and humans came along so recently, so long after the “Big Bang”.  I countered by claiming that God did not need to be in a hurry and he acknowledged there was too much truth, beauty and goodness for it all to be a fluke.

The natural sciences tell us how things came about, which is not the function of religion.  The great Christian thinker St. Augustine told us nearly 1600 years ago that Christ did not send us the Holy Spirit to explain the course of the sun or moon, or the number of the stars.  The Bible does not propose any scientific theory for us, but science is not the only way to approach reality.

You need more than science to ask why there was the Big Bang and what was beforehand.  But God has given us the freedom and intelligence to ponder these questions.