Does mystery point to faith or skepticism?

A Christian correspondent recently sent me the following except of an article by Episcopal priest and bestselling author Richard Bolles: 

=============================
I think the universe is swathed in mystery, with a capital “M.”  And if we think it is faith’s job to remove all mystery—hence if “mystery persists,” that’s proof we have a “lack of faith”—oh my! We are living in a fantasy world.  Mystery always remains.

But we do have different mysteries.  Every man and every woman chooses not merely what they will believe, but also which mysteries they are willing to live with.

The Christian, for example, chooses to live with the mystery of why we are born on a restless planet with earthquakes, floods, and famine.  And why we live in a world with so much suffering, why the good die young, why endless troubles afflict some people but not others, and why Jesus didn’t return as soon as he prophesied he would, and so on.

The atheist chooses to live with the mystery of why there is no much beauty, music, wonder, and love in the world, when it doesn’t seem called for by implacable evolution.  Why our bodies sometime run so well, why order sometime arises out of chaos, why faith in the idea that we have a Creator seems to be persistent in the world down through history, why heavenly music evolves out of someone’s miracles (for example, I actually died in 2002 but then came back, I know not why or how).

=============================

I appreciate the humility in this piece; Bolles is more circumspect that the stereotypical evangelical apologist who's sure that the evidence points unmistakably toward evangelical Christianity and that those who reject this evidence do so out of willful rebellion against their creator, thereby subjecting themselves to eternal damnation.

Bolles is surely correct that mystery is a part of life, regardless of which worldview we adopt. Unless I'm missing something, no atheist can say with certainty what caused the Big Bang, or what if anything preceded it, or why our universe has the particular laws it has, or why there is something rather than nothing. To be sure, there are many interesting hypotheses (some more plausible than others) that have been put forward as possible answers to these questions, but none at present enjoy much if any empirical backing. Physicist Lawrence Krauss has shown that matter inevitably arises from empty space, but I confess I haven't yet read his book, A Universe from Nothing, so I don't know whether he convincingly addresses an even more fundamental question: Why should the laws of nature be so construed that something is likely to arise from nothing?

Some believers may find it gratifying to hear me say that there's a lot we just don't know about the origin of the universe. But an argument from ignorance lends no support to the supernatural or to the spiritual. Just because we don't know why something is the way it is doesn't give us license to invent or adopt an explanation of our choosing. If we don't understand what causes thunder, and everyone around us says it's due to the god Thor's riding a chariot drawn by two goats, we should ask for evidence of said god, said chariots, and said goats before accepting this explanation. Let's say that believers in Thor then retort, "Well, the evidence for Thor is that thunder exists, and if you don't have a better explanation for it, then you must accept that Thor is the cause of thunder!" No, we are not obligated to accept this argument from ignorance; if we have no other explanation, we must confess we simply don't know what causes thunder. It doesn't matter how many millions of people invoked Thor as an explanation for thunder, or for how many centuries they did so; there's still no evidence for his existence, let alone for that of his goat-drawn chariot. 

Likewise, when we are confronted with mysteries such as those that Bolles highlighted above (e.g., why do we enjoy music?), if we don't know the answer, it's perfectly legitimate--no, intellectually honest--to admit we don't know. For the record, I've read some evolutionary hypotheses that attempt to explain why we enjoy music, but I'm not sure I fully understand them or find them satisfying. Yet it would be an illegitimate and inquiry-squelching shortcut to say, just as our believers in Thor did, "Well, the evidence for God is our unexplained appreciation for music (or some other mystery), and if you don't have a better explanation for it, then you must accept that God is the source of our appreciation for music (or some other mystery)!" I don't know why (or even whether) natural selection would make it so our brains produce endorphins and give us a high when we (in the generic sense of "we") smoke marijuana. Perhaps it's just an accident that our brains respond this way under the influence of certain drugs, or that our grey matter responds to certain rhythms and melodies the way it does. Or perhaps there's some sort of selective advantage in our evolutionary history that explains why our brains produce pleasure-inducing endorphins in the presence of these stimuli. I just don't know.

Like Bolles, I am prepared to accept mysteries and questions, to realize I do not and will not ever have all the answers. On the other hand, I am not prepared to accept ideas clearly contradicted by the evidence. These are two fundamentally different concepts that should not be confused: mysteries and contradictions. For example, say I'm hiking in the countryside and I spot a boulder on a hilltop. I'm puzzled as to how it got there; heavy objects tend to roll downward, so I can't explain how it got to the top of the hill. I could probably come up with some hypotheses (for example, an ancient flood, a volcanic eruption, or a bygone civilization deposited it there), but I wouldn't really know without further research, and even then I might not ever be able to figure out how it got there. In other words, it would be a mystery. On the other hand, if someone were to claim that the moon is made entirely of cheese and to declare it a "mystery" why astronauts found rocks instead of cheese on its surface, I would respond that no, it's not a mystery; the only mystery is why you persist in believing it's made of cheese when your belief is contradicted by the evidence.

In Bolles' list of mysteries that challenge the Christian faith, at least one stands out to me as being a contradiction rather than a mystery, namely, that Jesus promised to return in his own generation but failed to do so. I'm heartened by Bolles' admission that this is a problem; too few Christians know of this difficulty, let alone admit it to the world. (If you haven't already done so, please see my introduction to this problem starting near the bottom of page 216 of my book.) The great novelist and apologist C.S. Lewis recognized it as a problem but offered a solution that few evangelicals are willing to entertain--that Jesus was ignorant (which means he was not only ignorant but also mistaken in his promise to return in his generation):

================

The facts, then, are these: that Jesus professed himself (in some sense) ignorant, and within a moment showed that he really was so. To believe in the Incarnation, to believe that he is God, makes it hard to understand how he could be ignorant; but also makes it certain that, if he said he could be ignorant, then ignorant he could really be. For a God who can be ignorant is less baffling than a God who falsely professes ignorance (Lewis 1960, 99).
================

There is a contradiction between believing Jesus was truthful in all he said (including his unambiguous promise to return in his generation) and the reality that he did not return as promised. Of course I'm aware that apologists offer various attempts to explain away this contradiction (again, see my book for more details), but these look like special pleading to anyone who doesn't already hold a commitment to eliminating all contradictions from Jesus' statements.

Again, though, I do share some common ground with Bolles: there is a great deal of mystery in this universe, and we need humility to recognize when we're ignorant, but let us not attempt to solve one mystery (e.g., the origin of the universe) with another mystery (e.g., God) that itself lacks empirical evidence. And let us not hide behind "mystery" to sidestep the fact that Jesus did not return when he said he would; it's a fact to be acknowledged (as C.S. Lewis did), not a mystery to be swept under the rug.