John Hick maintains that
. . . in this post-Enlightenment age of doubt we have realised that
the universe is religiously ambiguous. It evokes and sustains
non-religious as well as religious responses. (An Interpretation of
Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent, Yale University
Press, 1989, p. 74)
Hick identifies non-religious with naturalistic and religious with theistic responses. I would argue that this identification is mistaken since a religious response to the universe need not be theistic (as witness Buddhism), and a naturalistic response to the universe can be religious (as witness Spinozism). This quibble aside, it is true that theism is a religious response to the universe, and that most contemporary naturalisms are non-religious responses to it. To simplify the discussion, then, we may identify a religious response with a theistic response and a non-religious response with a naturalistic response.
Hick's religious ambiguity thesis thus boils down to the claim that the universe allows, permits, sustains both a theistic interpretation and a naturalistic interpretation. Hick's case for the thesis involves "showing the inconclusiveness of the various philosophical arguments on both sides." (75) Hick tries to do this by surveying a number of theistic and naturalistic arguments.
But this suggests a question. Is the universe intrinsically such as to permit both theistic and naturalistic responses? Is religious ambiguity an intrinsic property of the universe? Or is it a relational property, a property it has only relative to beings who conceptualize it in different ways?
As the opening quotation suggests, Hick intends his thesis to be an avowal of the intrinsic religious ambiguity of the universe: it is the nature of the universe as it is in itself to allow or permit mutually exclusive interpretations. He says confidently that we have "realised" that the "the universe" is religiously ambiguous. But this thesis of intrinsic religious ambiguity is not supported by his argument. At the most, all his argument shows is that arguments on both sides of the issue are inconclusive, and thus that the universe is religiously ambiguous for us. It does not show that the universe is religiously ambiguous in itself.
Indeed, it is difficult to understand what the latter could mean. How could the universe in itself be neither such that it was created by God, nor such that it was not created by God? In itself, the universe cannot be religiously or metaphysically ambiguous. The ambiguity is on our side, residing in our incapacity to arrive at a rationally compelling view one way or the other. I chalk it up to the infirmity of our reason.
In this predicament we must decide what we are to believe and how we are to act. A leap of faith is required. But whether one's faith is naturalistic or religious, it affirms something about the universe in itself. As far as I can see, Hick has not made a compelling case for his claim that the universe in itself is religiously ambiguous.