I watched 'A case for God?'..

..and was supremely underwhelmed by Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks responses to his questioners...

When confronted directly by Howard Jacobsen: Are you SURE 'he's' there? Sacks prevaricated; he smiled, looked shifty, laughed, and couldn't answer. He quickly changed the subject to use one of his many allegories, all of which I found flimsy and none stood up to close inspection. Examples: on Jacobsen asking why we had to have our lives so ordered by religion that even the clothes we wear and food we eat must be proscribed, Sacks gave an analogy of a marriage, where the man looks after the big things, and the woman looks after the little things... this was supposed to be a justification for the redundant proscriptions of religion. He said religion had to be in the small details as well as the large details. When Jacobsen asked why, he had no productive answer.

At no time did Sacks come any where near providing a case for 'God' or 'God's' existence, IMHO. He cited Beethoven for example as proof of God; Why? How? Surely Beethoven is proof of HUMAN ingenuity? The idea of a 'God' is not needed to explain any of the things Sacks cited. At the same time, I found the scientist Blakemore too closed minded at times, for example in having the hubris to say 'we understand life' and that life could be understood simply because we now know about molecules, atoms, physics and complexity. He said the idea of a 'life force' was unnecessary. I disagree. I think the idea of Life Force is essential to understanding existence, for surely it is the same life force, in essence, that animates us, life, the sun, the stars, the universe and so on. Nevertheless, this life force in no way needs to be anthropomorphised into a 'God'. We can simply accept that there is life force, an energy, that runs through all existence. It does not need to have motive or design, and that is key.

I find myself often somewhere between the religionists and the scientists, for the scientists can be as closed minded as the religionists, and to fail to include philosophic understanding in any description of existence is a failure to grasp anything approaching the whole. Much of Einstein's theory of relativity embraces philosopophy and even the mystic, and Einstein, with great humility, suggested that he may have indeed been describing the nature of reality.

In his final discussion with Professor Lisa Jardine, he completely failed to justify religious fundamentalism in his statement that 'religious faith is the courage to stand out against the crowd'. How about the fact that so often, religious 'faith' leads to the opposite? To mob mentality, the worst kind of xenophobia, and extremism?

He also had to concede that Humanism was as capable of providing morality, good actions and decency as was religion. The case for religion was not proven either, in this debate.

All in all, I felt that Sacks questioners were far too respectful of Sack's opinions, as if they sensed (this seemed palpable to me) that Sack's faith, his illusion, was really, under all the layers of semantics and sophisticated argument, so vulnerable, that it would not be fair to seriosuly cross-examine him.

In conclusion, I find no significant case was made by Rabbi Sacks. Why do you need a 'God' to either justify or praise human actions or existence? You don't.