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Faith-Quake

“Old beliefs have decayed and new beliefs have not sprung forward to replace them,” said an editorial in the November 30, 1978, “The Wall Street Journal.” It was reflecting on the mass suicides in Guyana. It continued:

“The decay of religion is unmistakable. The appeal of the cults expresses the profoundness of the human will to believe, the longing for the certainty of faith. The last place anyone would look today to fill this longing is any of the mainstream religious denominations. They have little time for faith, being preoccupied with such issues as how to govern South Africa. Even the Roman Catholic Church, with its millenniums of experience in sorting evil and good in the religious impulse, is losing its power to touch the soul.”

Some look to science for hope, but the editorial did not. “Yet it is not only religious belief that has declined; so has the powerful secular faith that sprang from the Enlightenment. The power of reason, the power of science, the belief in progress—all are coming under increasing doubt. And in the secular world as in the religious one, it is often the established priests who lead the trend.

“The scientists who invented the atomic bomb also started a magazine with a doomsday clock on the cover of every issue—a stunning testimony to their own guilt and a stunning symbol of their own doubt that science is good. Today one can feel the scientific world tremble at the accumulating evidence for a ‘big bang’ origin of the universe. It raises the question of what came before, and the scientists’ most fundamental faith is shaken by being brought face to face with their inability to answer ultimate questions.”