Is there a God?
上帝是否存在？

To believe or not to believe
信，还是不信？（译/陈继龙）

May 31st 2007
From The Economist print edition

A writer who believes in science not God; a scientist who believes in both. But why are they that way? Nobody knows
信科学而不信上帝的是一名作家，既信科学又信上帝的却是一名科学家。他们为何有如此反差？无人知晓

SINCE arguments about God have run for thousands of years, it is a little peculiar to ascribe overwhelming importance to the publication of Darwin's “On the Origin of Species” in 1859. Yet the book did have a soul-sapping effect on unsuspecting Christians. In “Father and Son”, a memoir about loss of faith published anonymously in 1907, Edmund Gosse describes how it drove his father, himself an eminent zoologist, to take him to live on top of a cliff, cutting him off from the world in an attempt to protect him from this heretical notion. （1）The plan didn't work. Some spirit of rebellion stirred in the son, sending his mind wandering during marathon[1] prayer sessions, and he broke free in his teenage years. His father, disappointed, stuck with the God of Abraham.
关于上帝的争论既然都已经持续了数千年，那么再对1859年出版的达尔文《物种的起源》大书特书就有点不寻常了。不过，本书的确对不设防的基督教徒灵魂产生了深刻的影响。在1907年匿名出版、关于信仰迷失的回忆录《父与子》一书中，作者埃德蒙多•戈瑟（Edmund Gosse）讲述了他的父亲（一位知名的动物学家）是如何在此书（《物种的起源》）的驱动下，为了使他免受这一异教观念的影响，领着他住到悬崖之巅，让他过上与世隔绝的生活的。父亲的计划落空了，儿子内心已经涌动着某种反叛精神，他的思想在漫长的祈祷之中开始彷徨，十多岁的他便冲破了束缚。失望的父亲只好自己继续坚守着对上帝的忠诚。

（2）Looking at the recent crop of books on God and religion, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that whether people end up like Mr Gosse or like his father depends on whether they have an intrinsic feeling for religion or not. Christopher Hitchens, a polemicist whose tone is that of an erudite straight-talker, does not. Like Mr Gosse, he started non-belief young. Near the beginning of “God is Not Great” he describes his rebellion when confronted with an effusive divinity teacher at school who pointed to the beauty of hedgerows in the English countryside as evidence of His creation. Mr Hitchens has been skewering[2] the syllogistic[3] arguments of the religious in the name of science ever since.
看看最近一连串关于上帝与宗教的书籍，我们难免会得出这样一个结论，那就是人们最终的走向是类似于戈瑟还是类似于其父亲，取决于他们是否“心中有教”。辩论家克里斯托弗•希金斯（Christopher Hitchens）就不然。从他的言语中一听便知他是一个直言不讳的博学之人。像戈瑟一样，他打年轻的时候就不信上帝。他在《上帝并不伟大》（God is Not Great）一书的开头部分写道，他在上学期间遇到一位热情洋溢的神学老师，这位老师认为英国乡村的灌木篱墙美景都是上帝造物的证明，这让他萌生了反叛情绪。从此，希金斯便一直利用科学对信教者的诡辩进行讽刺。

Francis Collins, on the other hand, has it. Like Mr Gosse senior, Mr Collins is a scientist and a Christian. He confronts Darwin daily in his work as head of the human genome project. He writes well about how, as the code on which DNA is written began to reveal itself, his faith and sense of wonder increased. He stood by Bill Clinton (and worked with his speechwriters) when the then American president talked about DNA as “the language in which God wrote creation”. Mr Collins has no time for intelligent design but conceives God to be of the non-interfering sort, a kind of divine CCTV camera. Yet he believes that Jesus was His son and he prays regularly.
弗朗西斯•柯林斯（Francis Collins）则是另一种态度，那就是“心中有上帝”。像老戈瑟一样，柯林斯既是一位科学家，也是一名基督教徒。作为人类基因组计划的负责人，他每天在工作中都要与“达尔文”打交道。他坦言，随着DNA密码逐渐揭示出来，他对上帝的信仰及对科学的怀疑也与日俱增。美国前总统克林顿曾说DNA是“上帝用来记录所造之物的语言”，当时与克林顿演说稿撰写人共事的他对此表示支持。柯林斯对智能设计并不感兴趣，但他认为上帝是一种可抗干扰的、神圣的闭路电视摄影机（CCTV camera）。不过，他相信耶稣就是上帝之子，并按时祷告。

Belief in God and subscription to a religion are not quite the same thing, although both books treat them as if they were. Mr Hitchens makes the untestable case that the world would be better off without religion altogether. Stupid religious people would stop fighting stupid religious wars and a new enlightenment would ensue. The book is entertaining, meandering[4] and at times disingenuous[5]. Nobody ever went to war for atheism, says Mr Hitchens. But atheists tend to find other reasons to kill each other. （3）To the objection that irreligious fascists and communists found plenty of non-religious reasons for murder in the 20th century, Mr Hitchens retorts that these beliefs were types of secularised religion, and as such do not count.
信奉上帝和信仰某一宗教并不完全是一回事，但上述两部作品给人的感觉却似乎恰好相反。希金斯所设想的情形根本难以证实，他说如果没有宗教，世界将更为美好。愚昧的教徒不会再为宗教而争战，并将继之以一场新的文明运动。该书言语风趣，行文无拘无束，并且不乏狡黠之处。没有人曾为了无神论而诉诸战争，希金斯如是说。但是，无神论者往往会找到其他理由而相互残杀。有反对意见认为，非宗教性的法西斯主义者之所以在20世纪大开杀戒，都并非宗教的原因。对此，希金斯反驳道，法西斯主义是一种世俗化了的宗教，而且诸如此类的信仰都不应该算在内。

What is missing from the book is much sense of what a world without religion, or one that had not had religion in it, might look like. Lots of the principles that Mr Hitchens holds dear, like tolerance and justice, are secularised versions of religious ideas. Religious folk often do the right thing for what Mr Hitchens would call the wrong reasons. Taking faith away would in many cases take away the will to do them. That cost is worth considering.
一个再也没有了宗教或者从未有过宗教的世界，将会是怎样的一个世界，本书对此并未提出多少见解。希金斯所坚持的原则许多都是宗教观点的世俗化表现，比如宽容与公正。在希金斯看来，教徒们的行为是正确的，但其出发点却常常是错误的。在多数情况下，没有了信仰，教徒们就没有了干劲去做正确的事情，由此产生的代价不可小觑。

（4）Mr Collins argues for what he calls “theistic[6] evolution”, which he reckons is yet to catch on because it has such a terrible name. Though the mechanism of the origin of life is unknown, he says, once evolution was under way no special supernatural intervention was required. As for those parts of the Old Testament that bend the laws of physics, they are symbolic and should be read as such.
柯林斯则坚持“有神进化论（theistic evolution）”，不过他认为这种论点不太可能会被广为认同，因为其名字本身就让人感到不知所措。他说，尽管生命起源的机理尚不清楚，但一旦进化开始，就不需要任何特别的超自然力量的介入。《旧约》中某些内容虽然有违物理定律，但有其象征意义，应当等而视之。

（5）This is a God that would be almost as unfamiliar to Edmund Gosse's father, to John Calvin or the pope as it would to a Roman sacrificing a bull to Mithras. And for all their clarity, Mr Collins's arguments about why he believes in God do little to explain why he is a Christian. To understand that, it is probably enough to look at the Gosse family and conclude that either you get it or you don't.
这样的上帝，不管是在埃德蒙多•戈瑟的父亲、约翰•加尔文（John Calvin）或者教皇看来，还是在用牛祭祀太阳神的罗马人的眼中，几乎同样都是陌生的。柯林斯就自己为何信上帝所提出的论点难以解释自己为何信基督教。想想戈瑟父子，我们可能就不难领会自己到底有没有理解其中的缘由了。

注：John Calvin是法国基督新教加尔文教的创始人。

[QUIZ]
英译汉（请将划线部分英文翻译成中文）：

[NOTES](OXFORD)
1. marathon n. 拖时长久令人难以忍受的事情
2. skewer v.刺穿；串住；讽刺
3. syllogistic adj. 三段论的；演绎性的；诡辩的
4. meandering adj. 漫步的；漫谈的；漫无边际的
5. disingenuous adj. 不真诚的；狡猾的；装作不知道的
6. theistic adj. 有神论的