Dean Hess, Preacher and Fighter Pilot, Dies at 97


By SAM ROBERTS

MARCH 7, 2015


Dean Hess, a flying preacher who unwittingly bombed a German orphanage during World War II and six years later helped rescue hundreds of Korean foundlings endangered by Communist troops converging on Seoul, died on Monday at his home in Huber Heights, Ohio, near Dayton. He was 97.

His death, after a short illness, was confirmed by his son Lawrence.

As a young minister of the Disciples of Christ Church, Mr. Hess preached his first sermon at 16 and flew a Piper Cub as he hopscotched from parish to parish in the Midwest. But after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, he decided to enlist in the Aviation Cadet Program.

The church elders were incredulous. But he recalled telling them: “If we believe our cause is just and necessary, how in all conscience can I ask others to protect it — and me — while I keep clean of the gory mess of war?”

His wartime exploits — he flew more than 300 combat missions over Europe and Korea and retired as a lieutenant colonel — were immortalized in an autobiography, “Battle Hymn,” and a movie of the same name. (“Wing and a Prayer” was taken.) He was played by Rock Hudson.

Photo
In World War II, Col. Hess unwittingly bombed an orphanage. CreditU.S. Air ForceHe was also a consultant to the film and, for the airborne scenes, flew the plane at the center of the story: an F-51 bearing the number 18 and, on the engine cowling, Korean characters that translated as “By faith I fly.”

After enlisting, he was sent to France in 1944 and flew 63 combat missions there for the Army Air Forces. On one, he wrote in “Battle Hymn,” he was strafing railroad yards at Kaiserslautern, Germany, when a 1,000-pound bomb he had dropped overshot its target and struck a brick apartment building. Dozens were killed.

“A little hole appeared in the wall from the penetration of the bomb casing, and a moment later the insides of the building spilled out,” he wrote.

Sometime later, driving a jeep through Kaiserslautern, he learned that the blackened shell of the building that his bomb had destroyed had been an orphanage and a school for hundreds of children of local war workers. He tried not to look.

“But it seemed to stare at me like some malevolent eye,” he wrote. “I wondered if beneath the piles of bricks a few small bodies still lay, as yet undiscovered.”

After the war, he earned a master’s degree in European history at Ohio University and was working on his doctorate at Ohio State in 1948 when the military recalled him. (By then the Army Air Forces had become the Air Force, a separate branch.)

He was deployed to Korea, ostensibly to train the fledgling South Korean Air Force, but there was no keeping him out of combat — or from intervening to provide relief for starving and homeless children orphaned by the war.

According to the National Museum of the United States Air Force, Colonel Hess; Lt. Col. Russell L. Blaisdell, a command chaplain; Staff Sgt. Merle Strang; and other Fifth Air Force airmen and Korean social workers started what they called Operation Kiddy Car.

They rounded up orphans in Seoul, found them shelter and medical care, and collected contributions of food, clothing and cash. After commandeering 16 C-54 transports, they evacuated the children from Incheon to Jeju, an island off the southern Korean coast where Colonel Hess helped establish an orphanage.

President Syngman Rhee of South Korea awarded him a medal in 1951. Colonel Hess later donated the proceeds from the book and film to support a second orphanage near Seoul and adopted a 5-year-old Korean girl in 1960.

A reporter for The Air Force Times once conjectured that Operation Kiddy Car represented atonement of sorts for the accidental bombing in Germany.

“I do not know,” Colonel Hess said. Of course, anyone would be sympathetic to the plight of children, he said, but added, “At the time of the bombing, it seemed like just another mission, accomplished with a degree of success because at least one bomb had found its intended target in the railroad yard.”

As he flew back to France from Kaiserslautern, he recalled, he wondered whether he had killed anyone, but was more concerned about whether he had fulfilled his mission. “If I was suffering,” he wrote, “it was in some remote and subconscious part of my mind; for when I became a combatant, it was with the full knowledge that I had to accept killing in behalf of the way of life I had sworn to protect.”

Dean Elmer Hess was born on Dec. 6, 1917, in Marietta, Ohio. His father, Lemuel, was the city government’s electrician. His mother, the former Florence Miller, was a homemaker. Mr. Hess was a graduate of Marietta College.

After returning from Korea, Colonel Hess served in recruiting and public affairs roles until he retired from the Air Force in 1969. He later taught high school economics, history and psychology in Ohio. He never returned to the ministry. Besides his son Lawrence, he is survived by two other sons, Edward and Ronald; a daughter, Marilyn Hess; seven grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. His wife, the former Mary Lorentz, died in 1996.

Lawrence Hess said his father had grown up wanting to be a pastor. According to an article in Life magazine in 1957, when the film “Battle Hymn” was released, Colonel Hess once said his life so far — it was not even half over — had been a confluence of flying and faith.

“Flight brought me many times closer to God,” he said.

While I serve in elective office, I am keenly aware that the most serious problems facing our country today are not purely political, or even mostly political. I would argue that what is ailing our country is profoundly moral in nature and, as such, necessitates a spiritual antidote. It demands, in the words of Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, speaking of the American church he beheld in the 19th century, “pulpits aflame with righteousness.”

What better place to start in reflecting on the spiritual and moral health of our nation than with the first of the Ten Commandments: Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

According to the Bible, the Israelites were given the Ten Commandments after God delivered them from bondage in Egypt. They were not arbitrary laws to restrict or punish the Jewish people, rather they were intended to remind those freed from captivity of God’s demonstrable power and abounding love. This is perhaps most true of the first commandment in which God tells his people that he alone is worthy of their love, honor and ultimately worship.

When the prophet Moses, revered in the traditions of the three Abrahamic faiths, descends from the mountaintop, tablets in hand, he finds the Israelites worshipping a golden calf. Hard to envision today perhaps, but the temptations toward various forms of idolatry are no less real and arguably more sinister as they increasingly become the cultural norm. Think of the scourges of pornography, gambling, unbridled materialism, lust for power and drug abuse to name a few, and the broken lives they leave in their wake.

Today in America we bear witness to an insidious relativism that teaches that concepts of right and wrong are old-fashioned, antiquated and even judgmental. Vices are elevated. Virtues are mocked. Faith is squeezed out of the public square. Our culture is coarsened as a result.

These seemingly intangible realities have profound implications. Consider the following: In court case after court case the ability to display the Ten Commandments is debated and in some instances threatened. Such cases have more than symbolic relevance; they are a bellwether of sorts. But perhaps more significant is the reality that the display of the Ten Commandments is hardly as significant as the truths they contain: truths which beginning with the First Commandment to worship none but our Creator are under assault not just in courtrooms but in our culture.

Much has been written about the demise of American exceptionalism. But I believe that just as significant is the extraction of the hand of Providence from our shared national narrative.

Any faithful student of American history should be able to point to countless examples when a simple turn of events would have resulted in a drastically different outcome — an outcome which threatened the very future of this “shining city on a hill.” This is perhaps no more true than at our founding when a hearty band of patriots defied all odds and defeated the mighty British Empire.

George Washington himself famously said, “The Hand of Providence has been so conspicuous in all this, that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations.”

Indeed, whether hailing from the Judeo-Christian tradition or some other tradition altogether, every American who enjoys the fruits of liberty ought to contemplate the “Hand of Providence” in so richly blessing this unlikely venture in self-governance.

Such contemplation can’t but result in gratitude, which is itself at the heart of worship.

Rep. Frank Wolf is in his 17th term in Congress. He represents a part of Virginia just across the river from Washington, D.C. He is the co-chairman of the bipartisan Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, which advocates for the voiceless around the globe and is often called the “conscience” of the House. He is retiring at the end of this Congress.


Read more at http://national.deseretnews.com/article/1295/Frank-Wolf-First-Commandment-shows-shining-example-of-American-exceptionalism.html#EUhPKgcyDv2duhF0.99

By Michelle Boorstein, Published: June 24

Each morning and night, Sigfried Gold drops to his knees on the beige carpeting of his bedroom, lowers his forehead to the floor and prays to God.

In a sense.

An atheist, Gold took up prayer out of desperation. Overweight by 110 pounds and depressed, the 45-year-old software designer saw himself drifting from his wife and young son. He joined a 12-step program for food addiction that required — as many 12-step programs do — a recognition of God and prayer.

Four years later, Gold is trim, far happier in his relationships and free of a lifelong ennui. He credits a rigorous prayer routine — morning, night and before each meal — to a very vivid goddess he created with a name, a detailed appearance and a key feature for an atheist: She doesn’t exist.

While Gold doesn’t believe there is some supernatural being out there attending to his prayers, he calls his creation “God” and describes himself as having had a “conversion” that can be characterized only as a “miracle.” His life has been mysteriously transformed, he says, by the power of asking.

“If you say, ‘I ought to have more serenity about the things I can’t change,’ versus ‘Grant me serenity,’ there is a humility, a surrender, an openness. If you say, ‘grant me,’ you’re saying you can’t do it by yourself. Or you wouldn’t be there,” said Gold, who lives in Takoma Park.

While Gold’s enthusiasm for spiritual texts and kneeling to a “God” may make him unusual among atheists, his hunger for a transcendent experience with forces he can’t always explain turns out to be more common.

New research on atheists by the Pew Research Center shows a range of beliefs. Eighteen percent of atheists say religion has some importance in their life, 26 percent say they are spiritual or religious and 14 percent believe in “God or a universal spirit.” Of all Americans who say they don’t believe in God — not all call themselves “atheists” — 12 percent say they pray.

Responding to this diversity, secular chaplains are popping up at universities such as Rutgers, American and Carnegie Mellon, and parents are creating atheist Sunday schools, igniting debate among atheists over how far they should go in emulating their theist kin.

Atheists deny religion’s claim of a supernatural god but are starting to look more closely at the “very real effect” that practices such as going to church, prayer and observance of a Sabbath have on the lives of the religious, said Paul Fidalgo, a spokesman for the secular advocacy group the Center for Inquiry. “That’s a big hole in atheist life,” he said. “Some atheists are saying, ‘Let’s fill it.’ Others are saying, ‘Let’s not.’ ”

Prominent atheists, including writer Sam Harris, are exploring the spiritual value of “non-
ordinary states of consciousness,” he wrote in a recent essay. However, “there is a lot of resistance to that among other atheists, who think it sounds very hocus-pocusy,” Fidalgo said.

Gordon Melton, a historian of new American religions, said that it’s only been in the past decade that atheists have become organized and the range of their views has therefore become more known. Sociologists have also just begun asking more complex questions about faith to a wider range of respondents.

“It’s only been recently that people who are atheists said, ‘One can do spirituality in an atheist context,’ ” Melton said. “We’re getting more comfortable with idiosyncratic behaviors [in general], mixing things we’d not think of as going together. We see people are kind of making up their own religions as they go along. . . . When we think of people sitting in the pews we shouldn’t think of them homogeneously; they are all over the fields — they just aren’t voicing it.”

For example, what exactly do theists mean when they say they believe in God, to whom do they pray, and how do they feel the benefits from prayer happen? How would atheists who describe themselves as spiritual define the word? And how do the 6 percent of self-
described atheists who pray define the practice?

An atheist praying may seem like an oxymoron, and some atheists interviewed for this article reacted angrily to the concept.

“Like anything about humans, there are variations or perceptions, and some humans seem to be born with this perception of ‘otherness’ or non-physical presence, and it’s a mystery to me what they’re talking about,” said Steven Lowe, 62, who is on the board of directors for the Washington-area Secular Humanists.

But for other atheists, the concepts of spirituality and prayer have meaning.

Pete Sill, a 79-year-old from Arlington, attended weekly Catholic services most of his life, was a parish Scout leader and considers himself “very spiritual.” He meditates or does yoga for at least five hours a week and embraces various religions because he sees them as an expression of the most biological of human instincts: the need for survival. They provide a way to relate to one another and grapple with the fear of being alone, of dying. He thinks more atheists pray than the Pew statistics reveal, though he defines the word as encompassing the deep contemplation of ideas and philosophy — and, most of all, living.

“I think prayer is important because it takes your mind away from the horrible aspects of everyday life.”

Vlad Chituc, a 23-year-old manager of a social neuroscience lab at Duke University, said he started college thinking religion was a negative thing but now wants its benefits. He’s working to start a regular meditation practice and seeks out places where he can pick up “that energy you feel when you’re in sync with a group of people,” such as at dance parties.

He wrote in an e-mail that he was open to the word “spirituality,” which “really is just kind of shorthand for feeling a deeper connection to something greater than yourself.”

But what would an atheist see as “greater” than self?

“Maybe ‘greater’ is a loaded term,” he said. “Finding meaning in something other than yourself . . . not something supernatural.”

Interest in atheist spirituality is climbing in Britain. Widely reviewed there last year was best-selling writer Alain de Botton’s book “Religion for Atheists,” which said non-theists like himself could achieve everything from better relationships to an end to “feelings of envy and inadequacy” by emulating the religious. A “godless congregation” (note the lowercase “g”) called the Sunday Assembly that opened this past fall in London was immediately jammed with more than 1,000 people and had to open in other locations.

Tanya Luhrmann, a Stanford University anthropologist who studies how evangelicals use imagination in prayer, said Sigfried Gold is “common and uncommon.” He’s demonstrating a typical way some people are taught to pray, she said, by sharpening their imaginations. A common Christian exercise, for example, involves envisioning meeting and talking with Jesus.

The goal of those prayers, she said, “is to use your imagination to make what you’re focusing on more present. That changes you. . . . You’re not making more real your ideas about going shopping. You’re making more real this person who is the best possible person.”

Gold’s ideal is embodied by a female image he began drawing decades ago, a 15-foot-tall goddess he named “Ms. X” after Malcolm X. There are drawings of her around the house, as well as spiritual pieces of art. His two children have middle names taken from Greek Gods, and he is open to someday changing his mind about the existence of God.

He even prays about it.

“God, if You want me to actually believe you exist, I’ll do it; I’m not married to my intellectual pride; You’ve given me so much, just give me a little whisper,” he wrote in a prayer included in a recent essay about his journey.

“But God has maintained her stately silence.”

Big Man of Faith
by Michael Lee

The moment will never be forgotten, because it represented a possible detour — or end — to the life and career of a man who had already overcome such hardscrabble beginnings. But the dates, the feelings, the struggle had mostly been buried into the crevices of Nene’s memory, a chapter in his life that doesn’t require any special celebrations or recognition years later.

For Nene, surviving a diagnosis of testicular cancer at age 25 only serves as a reminder of how much the Washington Wizards forward has been blessed, and how he believes God chose him to handle yet another seemingly insurmountable obstacle to serve as an example for others.

Nene, 30, didn’t even realize that last month he had reached the fifth anniversary of his surgery to remove the tumor because he was more concerned about fighting through a stomach virus to help the Wizards defeat the Orlando Magic that evening. Still feeling the effects of his stomach ailment a day later, Nene simply reacted with a smile and surprise when told of the milestone as he munched on a grilled cheese sandwich and sipped soup in his hotel room.

“Wow. I don’t keep track,” he said. “I don’t keep track.”

But when the Wizards made a surprise visit to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis a few weeks later, Nene was forced to confront his toughest physical challenge as the players walked through the patient care center and medicine room, where children received cancer treatment. There, Nene was suddenly overwhelmed by the sensations of his own chemotherapy treatments — the burning in his limbs, the goose bumps, the taste on his tongue that he described as “salty and spicy,” and the fear that his organs would eventually shut down.

“It was like, amazing. A long time I don’t feel like that,” Nene said, before reflecting on that difficult period. “For four weeks, I was sick, I was weak. I could feel the liquid moving in the veins. I feel like a science fiction movie, where the liquid comes all over your body. It was like that.”



‘God is going to provide’

Nene credits his deep faith for helping him become the first player from Brazil to be drafted into the NBA and for giving him the strength to get through the many physical and emotional hurdles that have followed.

Before cancer, there was the torn anterior cruciate ligament, sprained medial collateral ligament and torn meniscus in his right knee suffered two minutes into the 2005-06 season. Before the knee injury, there was leaving tiny Sao Carlos as a teenager and adjusting to a different culture while speaking little English. And before moving away from all he knew and loved, Nene had to prove himself as a worthy basketball talent, playing in cheap shoes covered in duct tape after they had completely splintered and surviving on what little scraps his poor family could provide.

“I always remember what I’ve been through to be here,” said Nene, who was born Maybyner Rodney Hilario before having his name legally changed to the Portuguese word for “baby” in 2003. “I have no shoes, I have no clothes, but I was blessed. I remember my mom. She have money to buy the food or give to God like you’re supposed to, because we’re Christian. She give to God and say, ‘You know, we don’t have food today, but God is going to provide our future.’ ”

Nene’s future is set financially: He has earned more than $70 million in his first 10 seasons in the NBA and is in the second year of a five-year, $65 million contract. Those riches were a fantasy for Nene when he first began playing professional basketball at age 15. He was motivated by a trading card of former NBA great Shawn Kemp that was given to him by a friend, and by a former coach who told him that a man of his size would have a career as a nightclub bouncer or grocery store bagger if he didn’t stay committed to the game.

Where God Talk Gets Sidelined Sports journalists are reluctant to tackle faith on the field.

• Articl

Peter King, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, admits his own skepticism when players bring up their faith after a game. "I've seen enough examples of players who claim to be very religious and then they get divorced three times or get in trouble with the law," Mr. King said earlier this week. "I'm not sure that the public is crying out for us to discover the religious beliefs of the athletes we're writing about."

Faith is the belief in things unseen. Sportswriters are trained to write about the observable. "One of the problems that we have is determining the veracity of a person's claim that he has just won this game for his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ," Mr. King said.

In the Baltimore Sun before last year's Super Bowl, Washington Post reporter Rick Maese characterized his fellow journalists as "notebook-toting cynics who worship at the altar of the free media buffet." But he softened his language and cut his colleagues some slack when I spoke to him recently. A sports reporter might write one story with a strong religion angle and feel like the idea is no longer fresh for the next athlete he covers, Mr. Maese told me. "It's not like the reporter's going to bring an athlete's beliefs or religious affiliation up out of the blue," he said. But "if that's something the player cites as a motivating factor, I don't think you're telling the full story if you don't explore that angle a little bit."

Reporters might also be apprehensive about giving an athlete a platform to espouse his beliefs. "When athletes give their testimonies in interviews, there's impatience, sometimes an outright hostility to religion, because they feel like an athlete is pushing religion on people," says Shirl James Hoffman, author of "Good Game: Christianity and the Culture of Sports." "Sportswriters who write on Christian athletes might be generally sympathetic to the moral life that they present off the field. When an athlete says anything that hits on their faith as the only way to salvation, now you're in real trouble."

On occasion, an athlete's religion cannot be ignored by the press, as when the superstar boxer Cassius Clay became a Muslim in 1964, changing his name to Muhammad Ali and citing his religious beliefs as the reason he refused to be inducted into the military.

More recently, reporters have found it hard to ignore Jesus-professing athletes like the quarterback Kurt Warner, who retired on Jan. 29. Mr. Warner, who went from stocking shelves at a grocery store to winning two MVPs, is outspoken about his faith. When a reporter attempts to separate the high-caliber athletes from average ones, they begin to look for some intangible qualities, and faith is sometimes a part of that. "There is dishonesty in telling his story if you ignore what drives him, especially if you accept its role in one of the NFL's great success stories," the Arizona Republic's Paola Boivin wrote before last year's Super Bowl.

Sports journalism often lends itself to lengthy profile-driven features. Sportswriters have some of the best opportunities to tell human-interest stories, and in some cases that means connecting the religious dots for people. But when you look closer into what it means to be religious, it usually involves divisive opinions on matters like heaven and hell, and, in some cases, abortion.

Millions of people will watch Mr. Tebow's mother recount her story on Sunday. But fewer people may know that Brett Favre's wife, Deanna, faced a similar decision when she became pregnant after her second year of college, before the couple were married. Their Catholic faith was a key factor in their decision not to seek an abortion, Catholic News Service reports.

In 2006, Mr. Warner cited his faith as his reason for appearing in a political advertisement opposing a proposal that would have allowed embryonic stem cell research in Missouri.

If journalists are asking the right motivational questions (why did an athlete retire? why does he do prison ministry?) they might find religion in the answers. When appropriate, it's the reporter's responsibility to dig out the underlying story and present it to readers.

Despite his expressed skepticism of athletes' God talk, SI's Mr. King recounted on Jan. 8, 2008, how former Washington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs's faith affected his decision to retire. "We don't write things like this very often in this business," Mr. King said in his Web column. "But devout people say and feel devout things and are driven by their relationship with their God. I think Gibbs is one of those people."

Even Mr. King, it seems, admits that faith can force itself into a journalist's notebook—and into the final version of the story.

Ms. Bailey is online editor for Christianity Today and a contributor to GetReligion.org.

Debating the Really Big Questions of the Universe

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The combination of Richard Dawkins and Karen Armstrong as presenters of two contrary views on the existence of God ("Man vs. God," Weekend Journal, Sept. 12) is in itself a "creative act." For one, God is a fairy tale, and for the other "at least it's a nice fairy tale." One may as well have asked Osama bin Laden to write his thoughts on America and then ask Hugo Chávez for a counter perspective.

Mr. Dawkins says: "What is so special about life? It never violates the laws of physics." Let's grant him that for the moment. But the fact of physics is that however you section physical, concrete reality, you end up with a state that doesn't explain its own existence. Moreover, since the universe does have a beginning and nothing physical can explain its own existence, is it that irrational a position to think that the first cause would have to be something nonphysical?

A spiritual, moral first cause is a much more reasonable position than questions that smuggle in such realities without admitting it.

G.K. Chesterton said: "When belief in God becomes difficult, the tendency is to turn away from him. But in heaven's name to what?"

Ravi Zacharias

Norcross, Ga.

Unwilling to concede that God is cruel, Ms. Armstrong seems to conclude that God isn't in control. But there are other ways of resolving the age-old question, "If God is good and all-powerful, why do evil and suffering exist?"

The best answer was provided by the medieval theologian, Thomas Aquinas. In his "Summa Theologica," he wrote that God wills only the good directly but permits some evils and indirectly wills others. God wills the beautiful harmony of the whole created order, but for the sake of the whole, God permits and indirectly wills defects in some of its parts.

While Thomas Aquinas didn't conceive of evolution, his thought complements it, for evolution teaches us that defects produce conditions for new, more wonderful things to emerge.

The wisdom of this plan peaks in humanity. But while we are the high point of this world, we are its most dangerous part, uniquely able to destroy the whole. Why would God make something capable of such evil? God permits the evil of sin because God directly wills the good of human freedom.

The ultimate wisdom of this order is apparent only in light of what Jesuit theologian Bernard Lonergan calls the "supreme good," namely love. There is no love without freedom, and no freedom without the chance of evil.

Thus, this world order—with all its current imperfections—shows not that God is redundant as Mr. Dawkins believes, nor that God is not all-powerful as Ms. Armstrong implies. Rather, an evolutionary world order demonstrates more clearly the wisdom, goodness and power of God.

Mark T. Miller

San Francisco

As a retired scientist, I know that while parts of evolution are well-explained, there is no scientific explanation of the origin of life. If you accept that life began only because of random events, then you and science are acting on faith. Accepting an explanation on faith isn't a part of science, but is the way to God.

Howard Deutsch

Atlanta

Albert Einstein famously said: "I shall never believe that God plays dice with the world." Mr. Dawkins has taken Einstein up a notch and has chosen to play dice with God. Any bets on the outcome?

Mr. Dawkins fails to recognize that religions view this world as fallen. This fall doesn't impugn or dismiss a creator. We learn from the challenge.

Chris W. Kite

Cornelius, N.C.

My friend and erstwhile neighbor, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was asked by reporters in the 1960s for his reaction to the fact that some intellectuals thought God was dead. The president replied, "That's odd; I was just speaking to him this morning." Mr. Dawkins goes one better; he says God was never alive in the first place. I'll cast my lot with the former president, as well as the Psalmist who wrote "The fool says in his heart there is no God."

Ms. Armstrong opts for God, but her God is no more than a mythic evolutionary journey on a road less traveled that we make up as we go along. No "unsustainable certainty" for her. Presumably she's OK with the "story" of the death and resurrection of Christ, for example, if (making no pretentions to historical accuracy) it gives one the needed psychological boost to cope with human grief and helps one find ultimate meaning in life's struggles. St. Paul would beg to disagree. Writing to the early Corinthian church, he said that if Christ isn't raised, then our faith is in vain; and if we only have hope in Christ in this life, we are of all people to be pitied. Once again, I vote with St. Paul rather than Ms. Armstrong.

John E. Archibold

Denver

So life has evolved from the simple to the complex, and there can be no intelligent design to the universe because intelligence itself is complex and therefore can only exist through Darwinian evolution? I'm supposed to look at this amazing planet and galaxy and universe (with my eyes and brain), and rule out any intelligence behind its design based on this weak argument? I don't think so.

The only thing of which I am truly convinced is that anyone who claims to know the origin of the universe and our astonishing lives is certain to be wrong.

Marianne Mason

Austin, Texas

Mr. Dawkins should leave the God question to others and stick to the evolution-versus-creation debate. Even I, an agnostic scientist, find his commentary polemic and off-putting. It is no wonder the God crowd is gaining in number; they are easier to read.

Katherine Helmetag

Troy, Mich.

If we accept Mr. Dawkins's point of view, we have only the human mind left to worship, and if we accept Ms. Armstrong's description of God beyond God, we are in danger of wandering off into the ethereal mists. While her approach may work for mystics and academicians, it offers little solace to most of us as we slog through our work-a-day world.

Whether God is a separate reality (my view) or a figment of our wishful thinking, we are a deeply flawed species and need God to save us from ourselves. Voltaire recognized this fact when he wrote, "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."

Thomas M. Hyers

St. Louis

I only had two semesters of college physics, so I must have missed the part where Mr. Dawkins's much vaunted laws of physics began permitting man to love, laugh and cry.

Joseph Furman

San Antonio, Texas

I could tell which side Mr. Dawkins was on. I wasn't sure about Ms. Armstrong.

Mike Guthrey

Franklin, Tenn.

One day Mr. Dawkins will discover God, not by looking up into the cosmos and failing to see God, nor by looking down into an electron microscope and failing to see God, but by looking deep within himself and finding his own inadequacy. When that day comes he will be astonished and delighted, not that he has invented God, but that long before he ever thought of God, God invented him. God will also be delighted, but not astonished.

William G. White

Franklin Park, Ill.

I conclude from their writings that both essayists are here on planet Earth totally by accident, and that their ancestors evolved from some primeval stuff that just happened to be around. That leads one to think that there is no reason for their existence. They have no purpose, no one to answer to, nothing to look forward to after death, and when they die, they will cease to exist. Their accomplishments during their 70 years of life, compared to eternity, will be completely insignificant. Boy, what a bummer!

However, I have a purpose and a future. I was created by God to worship him and to enjoy being in his presence forever. I am in unity with God through his son Jesus Christ and am assured of going to be with him when I die. I will live forever with joy, contentment, etc. No pain, no tears.

Frankly, I prefer my position to theirs.

Donald C. Dowdy

Greensboro, N.C.

Ms. Armstrong doesn't speak for Christians, who believe that historical events are foundational to faith in God. Whether God used evolution or some other means to create the Earth, the belief that he did so in an historical act is foundational to the Christian faith.

For Christians in the mainstream of the faith, God was never as Ms. Armstrong asserts, "merely a symbol that points beyond itself to an indescribable transcendence."

The Rev. Josh Miller

Church of the Ascension

Pittsburgh

We commissioned Karen Armstrong and Richard Dawkins to respond independently to the question "Where does evolution leave God?" Neither knew what the other would say. Here are the results.

Karen Armstrong says we need God to grasp the wonder of our existence Richard Dawkins has been right all along, of course—at least in one important respect. Evolution has indeed dealt a blow to the idea of a benign creator, literally conceived. It tells us that there is no Intelligence controlling the cosmos, and that life itself is the result of a blind process of natural selection, in which innumerable species failed to survive. The fossil record reveals a natural history of pain, death and racial extinction, so if there was a divine plan, it was cruel, callously prodigal and wasteful. Human beings were not the pinnacle of a purposeful creation; like everything else, they evolved by trial and error and God had no direct hand in their making. No wonder so many fundamentalist Christians find their faith shaken to the core.

Nippon Television Network Richard Dawkins argues that evolution leaves God with nothing to do. But Darwin may have done religion—and God—a favor by revealing a flaw in modern Western faith. Despite our scientific and technological brilliance, our understanding of God is often remarkably undeveloped—even primitive. In the past, many of the most influential Jewish, Christian and Muslim thinkers understood that what we call "God" is merely a symbol that points beyond itself to an indescribable transcendence, whose existence cannot be proved but is only intuited by means of spiritual exercises and a compassionate lifestyle that enable us to cultivate new capacities of mind and heart.

But by the end of the 17th century, instead of looking through the symbol to "the God beyond God," Christians were transforming it into hard fact. Sir Isaac Newton had claimed that his cosmic system proved beyond doubt the existence of an intelligent, omniscient and omnipotent creator, who was obviously "very well skilled in Mechanicks and Geometry." Enthralled by the prospect of such cast-iron certainty, churchmen started to develop a scientifically-based theology that eventually made Newton's Mechanick and, later, William Paley's Intelligent Designer essential to Western Christianity.

But the Great Mechanick was little more than an idol, the kind of human projection that theology, at its best, was supposed to avoid. God had been essential to Newtonian physics but it was not long before other scientists were able to dispense with the God-hypothesis and, finally, Darwin showed that there could be no proof for God's existence. This would not have been a disaster had not Christians become so dependent upon their scientific religion that they had lost the older habits of thought and were left without other resource.

WSJ Illustration Symbolism was essential to premodern religion, because it was only possible to speak about the ultimate reality—God, Tao, Brahman or Nirvana—analogically, since it lay beyond the reach of words. Jews and Christians both developed audaciously innovative and figurative methods of reading the Bible, and every statement of the Quran is called an ayah ("parable"). St Augustine (354-430), a major authority for both Catholics and Protestants, insisted that if a biblical text contradicted reputable science, it must be interpreted allegorically. This remained standard practice in the West until the 17th century, when in an effort to emulate the exact scientific method, Christians began to read scripture with a literalness that is without parallel in religious history.

Most cultures believed that there were two recognized ways of arriving at truth. The Greeks called them mythos and logos. Both were essential and neither was superior to the other; they were not in conflict but complementary, each with its own sphere of competence. Logos ("reason") was the pragmatic mode of thought that enabled us to function effectively in the world and had, therefore, to correspond accurately to external reality. But it could not assuage human grief or find ultimate meaning in life's struggle. For that people turned to mythos, stories that made no pretensions to historical accuracy but should rather be seen as an early form of psychology; if translated into ritual or ethical action, a good myth showed you how to cope with mortality, discover an inner source of strength, and endure pain and sorrow with serenity.

In the ancient world, a cosmology was not regarded as factual but was primarily therapeutic; it was recited when people needed an infusion of that mysterious power that had—somehow—brought something out of primal nothingness: at a sickbed, a coronation or during a political crisis. Some cosmologies taught people how to unlock their own creativity, others made them aware of the struggle required to maintain social and political order. The Genesis creation hymn, written during the Israelites' exile in Babylonia in the 6th century BC, was a gentle polemic against Babylonian religion. Its vision of an ordered universe where everything had its place was probably consoling to a displaced people, though—as we can see in the Bible—some of the exiles preferred a more aggressive cosmology.

There can never be a definitive version of a myth, because it refers to the more imponderable aspects of life. To remain effective, it must respond to contemporary circumstance. In the 16th century, when Jews were being expelled from one region of Europe after another, the mystic Isaac Luria constructed an entirely new creation myth that bore no resemblance to the Genesis story. But instead of being reviled for contradicting the Bible, it inspired a mass-movement among Jews, because it was such a telling description of the arbitrary world they now lived in; backed up with special rituals, it also helped them face up to their pain and discover a source of strength.

Religion was not supposed to provide explanations that lay within the competence of reason but to help us live creatively with realities for which there are no easy solutions and find an interior haven of peace; today, however, many have opted for unsustainable certainty instead. But can we respond religiously to evolutionary theory? Can we use it to recover a more authentic notion of God?

Darwin made it clear once again that—as Maimonides, Avicenna, Aquinas and Eckhart had already pointed out—we cannot regard God simply as a divine personality, who single-handedly created the world. This could direct our attention away from the idols of certainty and back to the "God beyond God." The best theology is a spiritual exercise, akin to poetry. Religion is not an exact science but a kind of art form that, like music or painting, introduces us to a mode of knowledge that is different from the purely rational and which cannot easily be put into words. At its best, it holds us in an attitude of wonder, which is, perhaps, not unlike the awe that Mr. Dawkins experiences—and has helped me to appreciate —when he contemplates the marvels of natural selection.

But what of the pain and waste that Darwin unveiled? All the major traditions insist that the faithful meditate on the ubiquitous suffering that is an inescapable part of life; because, if we do not acknowledge this uncomfortable fact, the compassion that lies at the heart of faith is impossible. The almost unbearable spectacle of the myriad species passing painfully into oblivion is not unlike some classic Buddhist meditations on the First Noble Truth ("Existence is suffering"), the indispensable prerequisite for the transcendent enlightenment that some call Nirvana—and others call God.

—Ms. Armstrong is the author of numerous books on theology and religious affairs. The latest, "The Case for God," will be published by Knopf later this month. Richard Dawkins argues that evolution leaves God with nothing to do Before 1859 it would have seemed natural to agree with the Reverend William Paley, in "Natural Theology," that the creation of life was God's greatest work. Especially (vanity might add) human life. Today we'd amend the statement: Evolution is the universe's greatest work. Evolution is the creator of life, and life is arguably the most surprising and most beautiful production that the laws of physics have ever generated. Evolution, to quote a T-shirt sent me by an anonymous well-wisher, is the greatest show on earth, the only game in town.

Indeed, evolution is probably the greatest show in the entire universe. Most scientists' hunch is that there are independently evolved life forms dotted around planetary islands throughout the universe—though sadly too thinly scattered to encounter one another. And if there is life elsewhere, it is something stronger than a hunch to say that it will turn out to be Darwinian life. The argument in favor of alien life's existing at all is weaker than the argument that—if it exists at all—it will be Darwinian life. But it is also possible that we really are alone in the universe, in which case Earth, with its greatest show, is the most remarkable planet in the universe.

Bettmann/CORBIS Charles Darwin

What is so special about life? It never violates the laws of physics. Nothing does (if anything did, physicists would just have to formulate new laws—it's happened often enough in the history of science). But although life never violates the laws of physics, it pushes them into unexpected avenues that stagger the imagination. If we didn't know about life we wouldn't believe it was possible—except, of course, that there'd then be nobody around to do the disbelieving!

The laws of physics, before Darwinian evolution bursts out from their midst, can make rocks and sand, gas clouds and stars, whirlpools and waves, whirlpool-shaped galaxies and light that travels as waves while behaving like particles. It is an interesting, fascinating and, in many ways, deeply mysterious universe. But now, enter life. Look, through the eyes of a physicist, at a bounding kangaroo, a swooping bat, a leaping dolphin, a soaring Coast Redwood. There never was a rock that bounded like a kangaroo, never a pebble that crawled like a beetle seeking a mate, never a sand grain that swam like a water flea. Not once do any of these creatures disobey one jot or tittle of the laws of physics. Far from violating the laws of thermodynamics (as is often ignorantly alleged) they are relentlessly driven by them. Far from violating the laws of motion, animals exploit them to their advantage as they walk, run, dodge and jink, leap and fly, pounce on prey or spring to safety.

Never once are the laws of physics violated, yet life emerges into uncharted territory. And how is the trick done? The answer is a process that, although variable in its wondrous detail, is sufficiently uniform to deserve one single name: Darwinian evolution, the nonrandom survival of randomly varying coded information. We know, as certainly as we know anything in science, that this is the process that has generated life on our own planet. And my bet, as I said, is that the same process is in operation wherever life may be found, anywhere in the universe.

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WSJ Illustration What if the greatest show on earth is not the greatest show in the universe? What if there are life forms on other planets that have evolved so far beyond our level of intelligence and creativity that we should regard them as gods, were we ever so fortunate (or unfortunate?) as to meet them? Would they indeed be gods? Wouldn't we be tempted to fall on our knees and worship them, as a medieval peasant might if suddenly confronted with such miracles as a Boeing 747, a mobile telephone or Google Earth? But, however god-like the aliens might seem, they would not be gods, and for one very important reason. They did not create the universe; it created them, just as it created us. Making the universe is the one thing no intelligence, however superhuman, could do, because an intelligence is complex—statistically improbable —and therefore had to emerge, by gradual degrees, from simpler beginnings: from a lifeless universe—the miracle-free zone that is physics.

To midwife such emergence is the singular achievement of Darwinian evolution. It starts with primeval simplicity and fosters, by slow, explicable degrees, the emergence of complexity: seemingly limitless complexity—certainly up to our human level of complexity and very probably way beyond. There may be worlds on which superhuman life thrives, superhuman to a level that our imaginations cannot grasp. But superhuman does not mean supernatural. Darwinian evolution is the only process we know that is ultimately capable of generating anything as complicated as creative intelligences. Once it has done so, of course, those intelligences can create other complex things: works of art and music, advanced technology, computers, the Internet and who knows what in the future? Darwinian evolution may not be the only such generative process in the universe. There may be other "cranes" (Daniel Dennett's term, which he opposes to "skyhooks") that we have not yet discovered or imagined. But, however wonderful and however different from Darwinian evolution those putative cranes may be, they cannot be magic. They will share with Darwinian evolution the facility to raise up complexity, as an emergent property, out of simplicity, while never violating natural law.

Where does that leave God? The kindest thing to say is that it leaves him with nothing to do, and no achievements that might attract our praise, our worship or our fear. Evolution is God's redundancy notice, his pink slip. But we have to go further. A complex creative intelligence with nothing to do is not just redundant. A divine designer is all but ruled out by the consideration that he must at least as complex as the entities he was wheeled out to explain. God is not dead. He was never alive in the first place.

Now, there is a certain class of sophisticated modern theologian who will say something like this: "Good heavens, of course we are not so naive or simplistic as to care whether God exists. Existence is such a 19th-century preoccupation! It doesn't matter whether God exists in a scientific sense. What matters is whether he exists for you or for me. If God is real for you, who cares whether science has made him redundant? Such arrogance! Such elitism."

Well, if that's what floats your canoe, you'll be paddling it up a very lonely creek. The mainstream belief of the world's peoples is very clear. They believe in God, and that means they believe he exists in objective reality, just as surely as the Rock of Gibraltar exists. If sophisticated theologians or postmodern relativists think they are rescuing God from the redundancy scrap-heap by downplaying the importance of existence, they should think again. Tell the congregation of a church or mosque that existence is too vulgar an attribute to fasten onto their God, and they will brand you an atheist. They'll be right.

—Mr. Dawkins is the author of "The Selfish Gene," "The Ancestor's Tale," "The God Delusion." His latest book, "The Greatest Show on Earth," will be published by Free Press on Sept. 22.