Response to Irvin Yalom

First, I would like to applaud the Committee on Psychiatry and Religion for its selection of Dr. Yalom to be the recipient of this award-not for the stated reason that he dedicated himself to religious questions (though with an antireligious perspective), but because they knew deep down that he is a believer. In fact, everyone is a believer, the doubters and negators being the real believers. As Jung said, "We are all wired for God; we all need God." The atheists too need a God, however nonexistent He might be. Marathon swimmer and author, Lynne Cox, a confirmed nonbeliever, has a charming anecdote: Late afternoon. I am standing above the Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall, in the old section of Jerusalem. All the cracks [in the Wall] are filled with paper. Some are brittle and yellow, some are mere fragments, and some are in airmail envelopes and hotel stationery. I could see a few with words exposed: there was one in French, others in German and Hebrew and Russian and English. I wondered what these prayers were all about. Were they praying for someone who was ill, for friends, for family, for peace or prosperity? What were their hopes and dreams? Did they really believe they could get a message to God through this wall? Every single crack in the wall to my right and left, above my head and beside my feet was filled with paper. I kept looking. Three meters above my head was a hole the size of a tennis ball. I crumpled my note up into a tight wad, looked around, hoping that no one was watching. I leaned back and tossed my message. We negate God, we complain about Him, we accuse Him of all sorts of things. But, at the end of the day, we still pray that He exists. Similarly, Karen Armstrong tells a story of Jews in concentration camps who decide one afternoon to put God on trial. God is brought up on charges of cruelty and betrayal. Despite believing that God is supposed to counter evil, this impromptu death-camp court finds no evidence of divine intervention in their horrible world nor any extenuating circumstances that relieve God of culpability. The Rabbi announces the verdict: God is guilty as charged. But then the Rabbi glances up at those assembled and announces that the trial has concluded, "It is time for the evening prayer." Not unlike this Rabbi, after a very persuasive argument negating God's existence, Dr. Yalom glanced up at us and said, I quote, "Divine Essence." Now that we have firmly established that Dr. Yalom is a believer, let me move on to the content of his talk. Based on his early experiences, Dr. Yalom grew up to consider faith as a burden. God brings no burden. The distasteful training cloaked in rigidity and authoritarianism that he was unfortunately subjected to is commonly practiced religionism, not religion. We all know that, if anything, all religions teach tolerance, love, and compassion. God brings no burden. Sophists say, in fact, that man and God are like a bird and its wings. Imagine if a bird were unaware that its wings enabled it to fly; they would only add an extra burden of weight. Dr. Yalom says his understanding of existence led him to an inescapable scientific world view, however lamentable it was. Extraordinary claims of religion require extraordinary evidence, he says: the facts! As far as I am concerned, it is the facts that require explanation. Even Stephen Hawking is yearning to know "the mind of God." There is a cap on the actual knowledge we have about ourselves, obtained via psychology, philosophy, or science. In fact, there is a potential for a degenerative process. The search for the meaning of life through these avenues has brought man to an impasse, because "Man is fundamentally more than he can know himself," Victor Frankl says, "an existentialist, mind you ...... The existence of God can neither be proven nor disproven, because proof and disproof are exercises of logos (logic), which is the human attempt to master reality through language. …