双语·当呼吸化为空气 我在一个虔诚的基督教家庭长大

我在一个虔诚的基督教家庭长大，祷告和阅读《圣经》是每晚的仪式。尽管如此，我和大多数从事科学工作的人一样，相信现实的物质概念，拥有终极的科学世界观，遇事会力求用完整的形而上的方法去研究和解决，不去考虑那些陈旧的概念，什么灵魂啊，上帝啊，穿着长袍、留着大胡子的白人男子之类的。二十几岁的时候，我花了很长一段时间，努力去建立这样一种认知框架。然而，最终问题还是显现出来：把科学作为形而上的最终裁决标准，不仅否定了上帝在这个世界的存在，还同时否定了爱、恨与意义；这种思想中的世界，本来就与我们所生活的这个世界天差地别。当然，并不是说如果你相信人生的意义，就必须也要信仰上帝。准确地说，如果你认为上帝在科学中无立足之地，那么你就几乎一定会认为人生的意义在科学中也无法容身。因此，生命本身也毫无意义。换句话说，那些关于存在主义的言论没有任何分量，一切认知都是科学认知。
Although I had been raised in a devout Christian family, where prayer and Scripture readings were a nightly ritual, I, like most scientific types, came to believe in the possibility of a material conception of reality, an ultimately scientific worldview that would grant a complete metaphysics, minus outmoded concepts like souls, God, and bearded white men in robes. I spent a good chunk of my twenties trying to build a frame for such an endeavor. The problem, however, eventually became evident: to make science the arbiter of metaphysics is to banish not only God from the world but also love, hate, meaning—to consider a world that is self-evidently not the world we live in. That’s not to say that if you believe in meaning, you must also believe in God. It is to say, though, that if you believe that science provides no basis for God, then you are almost obligated to conclude that science provides no basis for meaning and, therefore, life itself doesn’t have any. In other words, existential claims have no weight; all knowledge is scientific knowledge.

然而，这其中就存在一个悖论。科学的方法论是人们的双手创造出来的，因此无法涉及一些永恒的真理。我们建立科学理论，是为了组织和掌控这个世界，将各种现象局限在可控的范围内。科学的基础，就是各种现象的重复出现以及人为制造的客观性。这是很强的后盾，让科学有能力去建立并阐释各种关于物质和能量的主张，但也让科学知识无法解释人类生命中存在主义的本能特性。人类生命本身就是独特的、主观的、无法预测的。也许在组织和研究重复出现的经验主义数据时，科学提供了最有用的方法，但另一方面，科学却无法用来解释人类生命中最为核心的方面：希望、恐惧、爱、恨、美、妒忌、荣誉、软弱、奋斗、痛苦和美德。
Yet the paradox is that scientific methodology is the product of human hands and thus cannot reach some permanent truth. We build scientific theories to organize and manipulate the world, to reduce phenomena into manageable units. Science is based on reproducibility and manufactured objectivity. As strong as that makes its ability to generate claims about matter and energy, it also makes scientific knowledge inapplicable to the existential, visceral nature of human life, which is unique and subjective and unpredictable. Science may provide the most useful way to organize empirical, reproducible data, but its power to do so is predicated on its inability to grasp the most central aspects of human life: hope, fear, love, hate, beauty, envy, honor, weakness, striving, suffering, virtue.

这些核心的情感与科学理论之间，总是存在一道鸿沟。没有任何思想体系能够完整地包含人生所有的体验。形而上学仍然停留在提供启示的范围，并没有那么宽泛（毕竟，奥卡姆的核心观点是这个，而不是无神论）。而只有在这样的基础上，无神论才是合理的。最典型的无神论者，大概是格雷厄姆·格林的著作《权力与荣耀》里的中尉，他的无神论，来自“上帝不在”的天启。唯一名副其实的无神论，必须建立在创造世界的愿景之上。很多无神论者都喜欢引用诺贝尔奖得主、法国生物学家雅克·莫诺的一句话，而这句话其实在掩饰无神论的一个富有天启色彩的特征：
Between these core passions and scientific theory, there will always be a gap. No system of thought can contain the fullness of human experience. The realm of metaphysics remains the province of revelation (this, not atheism, is what Occam argued, after all). And atheism can be justified only on these grounds. The prototypical atheist, then, is Graham Greene’s commandant from The Power and the Glory, whose atheism comes from a revelation of the absence of God. The only real atheism must be grounded in a world-making vision. The favorite quote of many an atheist, from the Nobel Prize–winning French biologist Jacques Monod, belies this revelatory aspect:“The ancient covenant is in pieces; man at last knows that he is alone in the unfeeling immensity of the universe, out of which he emerged only by chance.”

古老的圣言已经灰飞烟灭，人类终于知道，自己是这冷酷无情的广阔宇宙中孤独的存在，而自己在这宇宙的诞生，也是偶然的。
Yet I returned to the central values of Christianity— sacrifice, redemption, forgiveness—because I found them so compelling. There is a tension in the Bible between justice and mercy, between the Old Testament and the New Testament. And the New Testament says you can never be good enough: goodness is the thing, and you can never live up to it. The main message of Jesus, I believed, is that mercy trumps justice every time.

而我最终回归了基督教的核心价值：牺牲、救赎、宽恕。因为吸引力实在太大，令人叹服。《圣经》里，正义和仁慈，在《新约》和《旧约》之间都存在一种拉锯。《新约》说，从善没有尽头：善良就是人生的目标，你永远也不可能做到尽善尽美。我相信，耶稣传递的主要信息，是无论何时，仁慈都重于正义。
Not only that, but maybe the basic message of original sin isn’t “Feel guilty all the time.” Maybe it is more along these lines: “We all have a notion of what it means to be good, and we can’t live up to it all the time.” Maybe that’s what the message of the New Testament is, after all. Even if you have a notion as well defined as Leviticus, you can’t live that way. It’s not just impossible, it’s insane.

不仅如此，也许原罪传递的主要信息也不是“应该时时刻刻抱有愧疚之心”。也许这样解释反而更为恰切：“我们心中都有一个善的概念，但不是时时刻刻都做得到。”大概这才是《新约》想要传递的信息。就算你心中对“善”的认识和《圣经·利未记》中一样严苛全面，你也不可能像那样生活。真的不可能，疯子才会那样。
About God I could say nothing definitive, of course, but the basic reality of human life stands compellingly against blind determinism. Moreover, no one, myself included, credits revelation with any epistemic authority. We are all reasonable people—revelation is not good enough. Even if God spoke to us, we’d discount it as delusional.

当然，关于上帝，我无法提出任何明确的观点，但人类生命的基本现实，本来就是极度反对盲目决定论的。另外，包括我在内的任何人，都不认为天启论在认知领域拥有任何权威。我们都是讲求理性的人，天启论不足以解释所有疑惑。就算上帝真的与我们对话，我们也会认为那是幻觉。
So what, I wonder, is the aspiring metaphysician to do?

那么，我会想，有追求的形而上学者，应该做什么呢？
Give up?

放弃吗？
Almost.

几乎就要放弃了。朝着终极真理挣扎向前，但发现这是不可能完成的任务；或者说，有可能找到正确答案，但证实这个答案，是绝对不可能的。
Struggle toward the capital-T Truth, but recognize that the task is impossible—or that if a correct answer is possible, verification certainly is impossible.