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John Polkinghorne And The Existence Of God

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Polkinghorne says that in theology there is no assumption that newer insights are better than older ones just by virtue of their being newer. He says, “Theology’s anchorage in human encounter with the divine means that it is more sensitive to experiential context than is the case for science.” To ask the question that is often posed in the 21st century, does God exist?, Polkinghorne says “The discourse of theology is not concerned with ‘proofs’ of God’s existence that only the stupid could deny.” So one doesn’t ask the question. But one can learn that theology is very clear that one can know God by being open to the experience of awe, respond to the duty of worship and the mandate to obey. But in this world we need to know the insights …show more content…

In time, quantum discoveries led to a changing mindset about the world and this made it necessary for religious thinkers to cope with it. It could be part of the reason John Polkinghorne went into the priesthood. Some of these ideas affect religious beliefs, mostly the rigidity known to fix religious beliefs once learned. Polkinghorne never abandoned the search for truth, and he did not move away from the rational pursuit of it, but theology had to follow its own kind of discourse in the quantum world. He compared the concept of the duality of the wave/particle phenomenon to the idea of duality of Jesus Christ being truly human and truly divine. While the Newtonian world is “clear and orderly”, the quantum world is based on the uncertainty principle explained by Heisenberg, and it is “cloudy and fitful” and counterintuitive. A different kind of quantum logic has to apply in the quantum world. So, Polkinghorne says science and theology both require a rational strategy and what he calls ‘bottom-up theory,’ and move from reliance on experience to the attainment of what he calls “well-motivated belief and understanding.” Relying on a “top-down approach is not preferred as it is based on the hope that one has prior access to clear and certain general ideas from which one can then descend to the consideration of the particularities of experience.” He is very strong on the argument that belief must be well-motivated. It is after this discussion that he says he holds a “passionate belief in the unity of

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