Bishop Barron's Sunday sermon arguing that science and morality both point toward God
Bishop Robert Barron delivers a Sunday sermon for the 19th Sunday of Ordinary Time, using the story of Elijah and the "tiny whispering voice" as a springboard for apologetic arguments about the existence of God.
Summary
Bishop Barron presents two apologetic arguments aimed at skeptics of religion, drawing on the First Book of Kings passage about Elijah hearing God not in wind, earthquake, or fire, but in a tiny whispering voice. His first argument holds that the intelligibility of the universe — the fact that it can be described by complex mathematics — demands a rational explanation that "I don't know, that's just the way it is" cannot adequately provide, and that the existence of a divine creative mind is a more rational answer. His second argument holds that the near-universal belief in objective moral values such as the wrongness of slavery and racism — values that transcend cultural consensus — points to a source beyond mere instinct or social agreement, which he identifies with conscience as the voice of God within the soul. He closes by connecting both arguments to the scriptural image of Elijah encountering God in the still, small voice.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Opening and Apologetic Framework
Bishop Barron: Peace be with you. Friends, for this 19th Sunday of Ordinary Time, I want to do a little apologetics with you. I promise, though, I will get to the readings.
I do a lot of work online with people who are often skeptical of religion, and you hear their questions. When I'm coming up against someone from the left wing who is just dismissive of religion — who says it's all tired superstition, it's irrational, and so forth — I usually ask a couple of questions.
The First Argument: The Intelligibility of the Universe
The first one is: do you believe in science? And without exception they say, "Well, yeah, of course — follow the science. I'm against superstition. I like modern science." I say, okay, good, I like science too. I say, you know, the condition for the possibility of any science is the keen sense that the world, in every nook and cranny, is intelligible. It can be understood. It has something like a rational pattern to it. Otherwise, science wouldn't get off the ground. If things were just utter chaos, if there were no intelligibility, I couldn't launch a science.
I can launch biology, psychology, physiology, because there's logos in all three. I'm looking for the logos in bios — what's the intelligibility of life? Psychology — I'm looking for the logos in the psyche, the intelligibility of the mind. Or take astronomy — well, it's not logos but nomos, which means law. I'm looking for the law of the stars. All of science, I remind them, depends upon the mystical intuition that reality is marked by intelligibility.
I've mentioned before the great physicist Eugene Wigner, who wrote an article in 1960 called "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Physical Sciences." What struck Wigner — who was a secular Jew, by the way, not a religious man — was how strange it is that we need the most abstract, complex mathematics to describe the qualities of physical reality. Why should it be true that there is such a rich intelligibility patterning within physical things?
How about Einstein? My favorite quote of his: "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it's comprehensible." Let that sink in. I often say to these critics of religion: the weirdest thing, the hardest thing to understand about the world, is that it's understandable.
So here's my question to my liberal critics of religion: how do you explain that? Why is that true? Where does this universal intelligibility, describable with the most complex mathematics, come from? The answer I typically get is: "I don't know. That's just the way it is." Good answer — said with a note of irony. I don't know any other arena of life where you think an answer like that is a good answer. "Hey, why is that the case?" "Well, I don't know. That's just the way it is. It's dumbly there."
I have a better answer. Why is the world marked by mathematically precise and complex intelligibility? Because it was made by a mathematician. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And all things that came to be came to be through that Word." I don't know about you, Mr. Rationality — I'll often say — but that strikes me as a much more rational answer to the question of universal intelligibility.
The Second Argument: Objective Moral Value
Then I say, while you're thinking about that, let me ask you a follow-up question. How is it that we are capable of understanding the intelligibility of the world? They say, "Well, it's from your mind, it's from your brain." Okay, but you're a complete materialist, right? You don't think there's any purpose or direction to the universe. It's under no intelligent direction. Things just happen by dumb chance, by the accidents of evolution — and that's how the brain was produced, according to you.
Here I echo the great John Lennox, the Oxford mathematician who is also an apologist. He said, "Well, why in the world would you trust it? This brain is just thrown together by haphazard chance and evolutionary accidents. Why would you trust it? If your computer was just thrown together by haphazard accident, would you trust its calculations?" The intelligibility of the world is met by an even more puzzling capacity to understand the world. The rational mind meets intelligible reality — we call that philosophy, or indeed science. How do you explain that? "I don't know. Dumb chance. Just the way it goes." That's a pretty stupid answer. I say to them: you call me irrational, you call me the avatar of superstition — that's a pretty stupid answer. I think the much better answer is that both world and mind come ultimately from a great, creative, and personal mind whom we call God.
Okay, there's the first set of questions I ask my skeptical interlocutors. Here's the second one.
People who say religion is crazy, there's no God, it's just a lot of old superstition — I'll say, "Do you think slavery is wrong?" And they say, "Yeah, of course I do." Well, what if I said no — that it's just the consensus of the culture? Most people agree to it, so we say slavery is wrong. But 200 years ago in our country, the consensus was that slavery was okay. There were opponents of it, sure, but the general consensus 200 years ago was that slavery was acceptable. Go way back to someone like Aristotle, a brilliant philosopher — he thought slavery was natural, that some people were suited for slavery. So what if I said, "Hey, someday the consensus might change again and we'd say slavery is okay"? No, no, no — my interlocutor always says, "No, no, no. Slavery is just wrong." Yeah, I agree with you. It is. It's not a matter of just consensus. It's really wrong.
Then I say, "How about racism? Is racism wrong?" "Well, yeah, of course it is." I agree with you. It's wrong. But even 150 years ago, a lot of people in our country would have said there's a difference between the races, some are superior and some inferior, and treating people accordingly and segregating them and organizing society according to hierarchies of race is acceptable. Very bright people and good people said that 150 years ago. "Yeah, but they were wrong." Yeah, I agree they were wrong. But what if in 150 years from now things shift around and there's a different consensus and people say slavery is okay? "No, no, no. Slavery and racism are just wrong." Okay. In other words, you believe in objective moral value. You think there are some things that are objectively right or wrong. Where does that come from? Where do these values come from that are not a matter of just vote, or consensus, or the opinion of the crowd — that are in themselves good and evil? "I don't know. Just the way it is." Really? That's your answer?
While you're thinking about that, let me ask you another one. How do we come to recognize these moral values and disvalues? How do we come to say, "Yeah, that's right," or "That's wrong"? Where does that come from? "Oh, I don't know. It's some kind of instinct that we have."
Elijah and the Tiny Whispering Voice
Let me go back now to the scripture. I think a great breakthrough in Western consciousness is reflected in this reading from the First Book of Kings. Remember the famous story of Elijah. He's on the run, and he comes to Horeb, the mountain of God, and he's in great distress. And the Lord says, "I'm going to be passing by." A strong and heavy wind was rending the mountains, crushing the rocks — but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind, an earthquake — the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake was a fire — but the Lord was not in the fire. Those are all classic, rather bombastic signs of God's presence. But then listen: after the fire, there was a tiny whispering sound. When he heard this, Elijah hid his face in his cloak and went and stood at the entrance of the cave. Where did he sense the presence of God? In this tiny whispering voice.
What is that? How do we recognize objective moral value? Just as our rational mind recognizes objective intelligibility, how do we recognize objective moral values? What John Henry Newman called the aboriginal vicar of Christ in the soul — the conscience — that we rightly call, mind you, the voice of our conscience. A voice that tells us: yes, that is right, that's a value; or that's wrong, that's a disvalue; seek and do this, avoid that. What is this voice but the presence of God within us — our capacity to discern moral value and disvalue?
Conscience Is Not Simply the Voice of One's Father
There is a kind of Freudian reading of conscience that says something like this: no, no, conscience is just the internalized voice of your father. Your father, when you were a kid, told you do this and don't do that, and you internalized that, and then you extrapolate from it, and as you grow up it becomes this sort of unconscious memory of what your father told you to do and not to do.
Let me tell you my argument against that. I'm reluctant to make it, because my father was the best guy ever — I love my father, he was a great man. But I remember the moment — I don't know how old I was — when I realized, "Hey, you know what my father just said there? That wasn't the nicest thing. That wasn't the best thing for him to do." If the conscience is nothing but the internalized voice of my father, I'd never be able to judge my father, or a president, or my mother, or an elder. Yes, the rules given by your parents play a role in the formation of conscience — yes, indeed. But conscience is much more mysterious than that.
It is rather the presence in you of an intelligent person who knows you intimately and rewards you for the good choices you make and punishes you for the bad choices you make. Isn't it interesting that when we do something morally wrong, we feel that we've offended someone, and we feel accordingly ashamed?
Let's say I'm a builder and I did something wrong — bad architecture, bad masonry, whatever, and it didn't work out well. I might feel, "Oh God, that was stupid, that was a mistake." But I don't feel like I'm ashamed in the presence of someone. I might feel stupid. But when you do something morally wrong, you feel as if you've hurt someone. When you do something morally right, you feel that you've pleased someone. There's a tiny whispering voice that enables us to know objective moral right and moral wrong.
Conclusion
Just as God placed these values in the world, so it is God who enables us to intuit them and understand them. So next time you're up against someone who is just completely dismissive of religion, ask those two questions. How stand you with science? How stand you with objective morality? I think if you follow both of those convictions all the way, you come to God — the author of intelligibility, the author of moral value, and the one who enables us to understand intelligibility and discern moral value.
And God bless you.