Posted by Jason on: 01.26.2009 /
Continuing on from last week I’m listing some of the more common reasons why many people fail to believe in gods or God. So far I’ve talked about different kinds of atheism, about how evidence and how it does not lead to God and about how God isn’t necessary to living. Alone each of these reasons may not be sufficient to reject belief in God in the face of the reasons that people do have for belief.
This week I’ll look at some of the common proofs of God’s existence and try to explain why they are not convincing enough for me and many other atheists to make that leap of faith. This time I want to start off by saying that I accept that these arguments are enough to convince some, they just don’t convince me.
The Argument from Design
Mike alluded to this back in the discussion about evidence when he talked about the totality of existence being evidence for God. We live in a universe that seems perfectly suited to life. It is beautiful and apparently orderly, at least the rules of physics remain orderly wherever we look. Surely such a wondrous thing is proof of design? If we can infer design then there must be a designer and only God could have designed it. The argument for design says that the universe exists so God must exist.
On the face of things this seems pretty reasonable except that the universe isn’t that beautiful or that orderly. Look at evolution for example and you see massive waste with evolutionary dead ends seeing the extinction of 99% of all life that has ever lived on this planet. You see carnivores that have to kill in order to survive. You see lives snuffed out for no reason. You see suffering and death, destruction and torture at every turn. Human beings, supposedly the pinnacle of God’s creation, are wrought with flaws too numerous to mention. We are less created in God’s image than thrown together out of whatever working parts could be found.
However, even if the universe were a perfectly ordered and beautiful thing, and I’m not disputing that we can see beauty and order within it, even if it were perfect, why should there be a designer? Modern science has shown us that natural explanations exist for a wide variety of thinks we once thought of as designed. Laws are devised to explain the effects of gravity, theories are formed that explain natural processed like evolution or the chemical imbalances in the brain that lead to some mental illnesses.
The “Ontological” Argument
The ontological argument uses logic and reasoning based on an a priori proof proposed by Anselm of Canterbury way back in the 11th century. It is an argument that seeks to put God in a place where He is necessary for existence.
Ever since I first heard this I’ve always disliked it. I find it childish and silly and I really don’t see why anyone takes is seriously.
The First Cause Argument
Unlike the ontological argument I actually like the first cause argument. Among my “real life” friends who hold to no particular religion but retain a belief in a mysterious “something” the first cause is a favourite reason. “Well something must have started it all off” they say and they are quite correct. If everything has a cause then the universe must have a cause. isn’t it fair to say that this cause must be God?
Actually, no. If you want to put God up as a first cause then that is just begging the question of who or what caused God. If everything needs a cause then so does God. If God doesn’t need a cause then why does the universe? Saying that God is uncreated and perfect, that He somehow lives outside of the universe and outside of time, well, that isn’t satisfactory. It’s just begging the question again. If God was already perfect then what reason did he have for creating the universe?
Also, if the universe was caused why does that mean that God was the cause? Perhaps Odin was the cause, perhaps Ra, perhaps some unknown, natural process. There is room for doubt and lots of it.
Comment by: Stephan
1These are increasingly looking like you are reaching pretty deep to find excuses not to believe.
Simply because there is a natural explanation does not rule out design. If God is the designer, then He would have designed the natural processes by which these things are created.
I’ve never been a big fan of the Ontological Argument either, so I’ll give you that one.
Regarding the first cause, I believe you fall into the same pit as Dawkins (probably not by mistake). He defines God as something that cannot possible exist, then proves that He doesn’t exist. He sets up the rules under which he believes God could exists, then says that God does not meet those rules so He cannot exist. He starts with incorrect assumptions about God, then balks when those assumptions aren’t met.
I believe in the First Cause because it makes perfect sense. If God created, then He can exist outside of that creation, outside of our time and space. That is perfectly logical, just as a sculptor can exist outside of a sculpture, or a painter can exist outside of a painting. For anything to have a “beginning” it must exist within time as we know it. For God to exist outside of that is not only believable, it is necessary.
Comment by: Eliza
2Concur on Ontological Argument. It seems to me that it starts with the supposition that God exists, since the first line begins, “God is that entity…” so then using it to “prove” God’s existence seems circular.
First Cause doesn’t seem convincing to me, for the reasons Jason outlined. The painter had a “cause”, the sculptor had a “cause”; why wouldn’t God have a “cause”? The universe contains space-time - why couldn’t it be the thing which has an existence outside of space and time as we know them (if something has to)?
Comment by: Seren
3Stephan:
Uh oh. Now you’ve introduced the ugly task of defining god/s.
one of the reasons i describe myself as agnostic is that god/ess/s is something terribly difficult to describe, let alone define.
I’m wondering if Jason will get to convincement? Those are the interesting discussions (arguments, most often, if i’m honest) IMO.
Comment by: Stephan
4Seren, the point is that Dawkins (and Jason (and many other atheists)) start with assumptions about God that are patently absurd, and then say that since they are absurd they cannot be true.
Of course they are aided and abetted by fundamentalist believers who actually believe these absurdities without examining them.
** CAUTION: GENERALIZATIONS AHEAD**
In my reading and interacting with atheists I have found that they have more in common with fundamentalist Christians than I do. They demand a literal reading of the Bible, they insist that theism and science are incompatible and then perpetuate the stereotype that only extremists are true believers.
I agree that defining God is an ugly task. I attempt to keep that definition as broad as possible while still trying to follow Jesus. I consider myself a little bit agnostic, a little bit deist and all Christian.
Eliza, for something to have a “cause” it needs to exist in time. If God is able to exist outside of time then no cause is needed. I do not believe that anyone has suggested that matter as we know it can exist outside of time, thus it needs a cause.
Comment by: Jason
5Stephan wrote
Really? Not being convinced by the arguments isn’t an excuse.
Granted but if he isn’t the designer then we’d know no different.
I don’t follow your logic on first cause at all. You’re assigning properties to a creator in order to get the idea to fit your premise. That isn’t objective and it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. The truth is that we simply do not know what caused the Big Bang event (or last Big Bang event) and so it would be dishonest to claim to know. Perhaps it was a creator, perhaps it was an unknown but natural event. I’ve read some mind boggling theories about overlapping dimensions and quantum states of existence that try to explain mathematical ideas for a natural first cause. They make my head spin and I haven’t a clue if they are even close to the truth.
“If everything has a first cause” is an assumption based on powerful evidence. Everything we know has a cause but we’re not talking about everything we know, we’re talking about a unique event in space time that is beyond our experience and possibly beyond our conception. It is unrealistic to claim knowledge of this event and assign it to a god. What connection do you have to God that makes him the first cause? A 3400 year old collections of scrolls dealing with two distinct creation myths. Everything else has been assigned to God based on your presupposition that God exists.
If there are incorrect assumptions about God then we need to strip them away. We need to start afresh and reexamine the evidence and the ideas without assumptions. Not an easy task with thousands of years of culture and faith built on the back of earlier creation myths and earlier ideas.
The problem, of course, is that when we strip everything away we are left with nothing but our own thoughts. We are placed in the same situation as Descartes and must define our knowledge from a tenuous grounding. “I am thinking, therefore I exist” tells us nothing of the past or future. We must build on our reason with evidence and assumptions but keep in mind at all times that we may well be deceived by our assumptions or by bad evidence. Descartes use the ontological argument to escape this trap, something that I would consider a false assumption and some pretty circular reasoning.
I’d like to return to your charge of “atheist fundamentalism” later. It isn’t the first time you’ve brought it up and while I think you are wrong I want to give it proper consideration and a full explanation. I also want to avoid “arguing” as I’d much rather “discuss”. We can’t do that when we’re at odds on something so basic as how we see one another’s point of view.
Comment by: Eliza
6Does time have a cause?
If the universe is defined as “everything that exists”, how can god exist outside the universe?
I like this definition of god: “God is God”…it is somewhat circular :) but it’s hard to argue with its accuracy (and brevity)!
Comment by: Seren
7Stephan, i’ll try to respond to your experiences of fundamentalists.
I think it’s difficult for a non-theist to do otherwise. when a theist reads the bible as a holy book, they (believe they) are reading the inspired word of their god, and, as such, are guided by their god in understanding it.
a non-theist can’t possibly do this. i can read what’s there, i can read /about/ what other people say what’s there really means, and sometimes the varying interpretations are interesting, but i have no way of deciding which one is right.
yes, we’re back to the old bug-bear - theists of a variety of descriptions don’t agree with each other about their holy text. what is a non-theist observer to do?
we’ve had different experiences of non-theists here, so i can’t speak from experience on this one.
it is interesting to examine the differences between scientific and religious belief.
i think probably the reason non-theists don’t think god-beliefs should be brought into the realm of science is that the knowledge claims are very different in nature.
there is much to discuss in relation to the philosophy of science and of religion.
how can a statement of faith sit in a working strucutre (this thing called science) which constantly evolves and holds everything up to the evidence of repeatable experiment?
in a practical sense, as an example, there was recently a discussion here about whether the human capacity for empathy is evidence of them being made in god’s image.
one might believe this, and be a practicing scientist. but if that belief is brought into the world of experiment and stuff, it will have odd implications for biology, sociology, psychology.
for instance: when similar behaviours are displayed by other primates, are we to call it empathy? does this mean we accept that some primates are also made in the image of a god? or should we choose another word for the same trait in non-human animals?
surely you just mean Sam Harris (who contradicts himself on this point anyway) and Dawkins?
do you honetsly think that Jason, Eliza and I don’t think you are a true believer because you are not a fundamentalist? that’s not true of me. i’ll let the others speak for themselves.
Eliza, i think you’ve come up with something we can all know about God!
Comment by: Stephan
8Sorry if my tone sometimes appears less than civil. It’s something I’m working on (by the Grace of God).
Seren, I am confident that non-theists can read the Bible in a way other than literal, just as you can read any other literature as something other than literal. Read the historical context, read the literary context, read what others believe about it, consider the audience, etc. It takes some work, but I believe it is worth it, considering the existence and nature of God (if He exists at all) is a rather important question.
I did give a disclaimer regarding generalizations, but I apologize for insinuating that those here would not consider me a true Christian. Nobody here has ever said that about me.
Ah, but this is exactly what non-theists do when they ask for evidence for the existence of God - they bring god-beliefs into the realm of science, and then declare them to be incompatible. It is only when one is able to look beyond the scientific method and put some trust in personal experience, the testimony of others, ancient literature and tradition that one is able to embrace a belief in God. At that point science and theism no longer look so disparate.
Comment by: Eliza
9Can I assume that ancient literature and tradition are pertinent for the transmission of personal experience & other-testimony they offer? (Let me know if you see them offering something more, or different, than that.)
If so, then you (and others) are holding up personal experience of self & others as the source of extra-scientific evidence about the existence of God; is that correct? (Again, let me know if I’m making unwarranted assumptions, or conceiving and phrasing it wrong.)
Then, the pertinent question seems to me to be: Is personal experience (of self & others) reliable as evidence about the existence of God? (I freely admit that this is a “rational” or scientific approach to examining personal experience, which I can imagine one could then dismiss as completely misunderstanding the nature of personal experience, or God. Again, say the word if you feel the reliability of personal experience can never be examined using scientific methods.)
The new & growing field of Neurotheology is interesting; the experiments must be difficult to design, but aim to sort out how spiritual sensations & experiences are handled in the brain. Of course, it could be that there is a spiritual sensing portion of the brain through which God relays experiences of spiritual contact, but it’s very interesting that the same sense of having had a spiritual experience can be caused to occur in a research setting.
From that Wikipedia page on Neurotheology:
It’s well known, and shown in research, that eyewitness testimony, even immediately after a highly “memorable” event, is reliably unreliable - another reason to question the reliability of personal experience of self & of others.
Comment by: Eliza
10An analogy (not perfect - no analogy is): color perception.
Colors exist only in the brains of animals which can perceive them. Outside of brains, there is no such thing as color - there are electromagnetic waves, of which we perceive a small section as “visible light”, with a wide range of colors assigned to the wavelengths within that range.
Humans have written moving poetry about colors, have painted awe-inspiring works using color, can talk about color, can compare colors, can testify about colors. Yet “color” does not exist outside our brains. It’s simply our perception of a natural phenomenon.
Comment by: Stephan
11I would agree with that, which explains why many atheists do not believe.
(More generalizations)
Most atheists I have talked to have little regard for personal experience and testimony. Now the question is, do they disbelieve because the disregard the testimony? Or do they disregard the testimony because they do not want to believe?
Regarding color perception, I see your point. But look at it this way - by conservative estimates 80% of Americans believe in God. If 80% of people see in color, and only 20% do not, would you not concede that the 20% are more likely to be wrong?
I can see us getting wrapped around the semantic axle here while trying to define color. You say color does not exist, but the fact is those different wavelengths exist, and some people simply lack the sensitivity to perceive that as color. Is there something wrong with the light waves? Or is there something wrong with the perception of people who cannot see color?
Comment by: Eliza
12Even if 100% of people see color, that doesn’t change the fact that colors ARE very rich & very real experiences to us, YET do not exist outside of the functioning of our brains. There is no such thing as “the color red” outside of a brain’s experience. (There is “the wavelength which is experienced as red by someone with working eyes, color vision, and a functioning brain.”)
Comment by: Jason
13It’s not disregarding the testimony but not finding it compelling. lack of compelling evidence is but one reason why I do not believe as I am trying to lay out in this series. To avoid emotion laden examples it is often simpler to pose this sort of question as a thought experiment. Carl Sagan used a wonderful example in The Demon-Haunted world where he experimented with the claim that a dragon lived in his garage. The dragon happened to be invisible, intangible, odorless and emitted no heat or sound. A simple answer is to disregard the claim that a dragon is in the garage. If you cannot detect it then it isn’t there.
This is unsatisfying though because the experimenter hasn’t made a reasonable exploration of the claims. Perhaps our ears cannot hear the dragon but sensitive audio equipment might. Perhaps the dragon leaves footprints and we can test for them by laying down a powder on the floor. We can think of new experiments to test the validity of the claims of the person who has a dragon in his garage.
Yet if all our experiments fail to find any record of the dragon what should we conclude? That the dragon does not exist or that the dragon cannot be detected by any means that we have available? Where to we draw the line between scepticism and credulity? Where do we stand if the neighbour of the man also claims to have seen the dragon yet we still cannot detect it?
Rejecting personal testimony isn’t about wanting to disbelieve but about drawing a line between what we can reasonably expect to believe and what we define as unreasonable. Yet even when we do draw that line we still keep in mind that maybe, just maybe, there really is a dragon in the garage. Maybe one day we’ll find it or evidence for it. Until then we have to act as if there are no dragons in garages.
Eliza, I love the colour perception idea. The colour of an object is simply the most reflected part of the visible light spectrum. Colours change as the light changes. Red looks black under an orange light but is it really black or do our eyes just fail to see the red?
It reminds me of the Thomas Nagel’s question on the philosophy of the mind where he asked “What is it like to be a bat?” Not a human in a bat body but a bat with a bat mind and bat ears, no concept of colour but a well developed sensory system based on echolocation. Do bats see colour in sound? Are minds ever independent of perception? From the question of God point of view I wonder what it is like to believe. Unlike Helen and others I’ve never held a faith and lost it. I have only my intellect to reason what it is like to hold a firm belief but that is like reasoning what it is like to have echolocation. I can make an educated guess but I’m probably wrong.
The colour perception idea also reminds me that what we see as a solid, opaque object like a wall is mostly space with nothing in it. If a wall is mostly space then why can’t we walk through it? After all we are mostly space as well. I know this to be true but I’m not fool enough to run at a wall to try to get to the room on the other side.
Stephan, you ask if the majority holding an opinion is an indication of the validity of the opinion. It sounds reasonable but I bet you can think of dozens of examples in history where the majority have been very wrong about something. The argument ad populum held to a flat earth, slavery as acceptable and the divine right of kings. Of course the majority isn’t always wrong. I’ll bet the majority believe that the sun will rise tomorrow morning and I’ll bet that they are right.
I’m still thinking about the “fundamentalist atheist” charge but I’ve yet to work out what could form the basis of an atheist’s “fundamentals”. It’s an interesting exercise. I find myself challenged on my opinions of fundamentalists. The idea is to build upon a firm base and provide a good way of living after all. Don’t we all do that?
Comment by: Eliza
14Stephan wrote:
Eliza had written:
Stephan, do you have any thoughts on my question about the reliability of personal experience, esp. since there are examples of it being unreliable in other circumstances? (witness testimony, internal experiences being manifestations of neurologic processes & not direct proof of the same thing existing outside the brain & sensory organs, etc)
Comment by: Stephan
15Jason, the “dragon in the garage” thought experiment is interesting, but it doesn’t quite fit. Again, you are bringing science into a non-scientific field, or bringing God into science. I have never claimed to “prove” God’s existence, but I think there are far too many things that point to it than can be easily dismissed. Just as you claim that none of your doubts is enough, on its own, to bring you to unbelief, all of them together convince you.
Eliza, your statement that “color does not exist” is exactly the semantic axle I didn’t want to get wrapped around. If you define it as our perception of light, then you are right, it only exists in our brain. But if you define it as certain wavelengths on the spectrum of light radiation, then it exists independent of our brains. This is the same way that Harris and Dawkins define God as something that cannot exist and then say they have proven that He does not exist.
I realize that personal experience and testimony are not the most reliable evidence, and ad populum is not the strongest argument, I believe that when enough people testify to a similar experience it adds weight to an argument. I’m not talking here about the details of individual religions, because we all know that they are highly contradictory, but the bottom line is that most people alive today and throughout history have believed in some form of God, due in part to their personal experiences.
The reliability of a personal testimony is partly based on the reliability of the person giving the testimony. The people I trust most in my life, my family and close friends, all claim to have close personal experiences with God. It’s not like some nut on the corner pounding a Bible and saying Jesus is coming back tomorrow (which I would doubt up until the moment I heard the trumpets). These are people I trust saying things that agree with each other and agree with my own personal experience. That, to me, gives it weight and reliability.
I understand that you don’t share these experiences and may not have close friends of family members that have these experiences, so it is far easier for you to dismiss them.
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
16What the brain processes as color is information that exists outside the brain. So, even though perhaps it’s correct to say ‘color doesn’t exist outside the brain’ - it is a perceptive rendering of something that does exist outside the brain. Particular wavelengths of light existing outside the brain initiate the brain’s perception of color.
People who believe they experience God are likewise processing something - the question is, is it God that initiates the experience or something else?
My mental illness experiences showed me that I can’t always trust my brain and made me wonder whether my experiences I thought were from God really were. Most people don’t go through mental illness and so they wouldn’t have the reason I had to reevaluate what their experiences may mean.
I’m not convinced that personal experience can be totally separated from ’scientific evidence’ as if one is unreliable and the other is reliable. If someone has a consistent series of personal experiences pointing to the existence of God then how is that different from doing an experiment a number of times and getting the same results? Except that the personal aspect of it means another person might not be able to reproduce it (although as Stephan points out, many people do seem to have similar personal experiences of God)?
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
17About fundamentalists, since that’s been brought up: I think atheists can be fundamentalists. I also think it crosses the line into incivility to assert particular individuals are fundamentalists without having given clear specific demonstration of fundamentalist characteristics.
I don’t think over-generalizing or about others or having less than completely accurate views of them makes someone a fundamentalist per se because I think it’s something we all can easily fall into. To me, how a person responds when others point out that’s not true is what is most indicative of whether the person who said it was true has fundamentalist characteristics. If that person ignores what others say and continues to assert “No, that IS what you are/believe” then I would say they have fundamentalist characteristics. Because I think of a fundamentalist as someone who tenaciously holds onto their views regardless of the evidence. They have boxes they put other people and the world around them in and they are not open to adding more boxes or recategorizing even if their boxes don’t fit how people are and the real world is.
If that person says “I take your point - I over generalized. I have met SOME people like that but I see that you are not all that way” then I would not describe that person as a fundamentalist because clearly they are listening and learning.
That’s how I would define fundamentalist, but maybe that’s not the usual definition.
Comment by: Jason
18Stephan wrote:
Thought experiments seldom do fit perfectly but the simplification is usually helpful to clarify things.
Ah but when a claim is made about the real world it comes under the domain of science. “First cause” is a claim to a real event, “design” is a claim to the real world. Both should be investigated as any other real claim, with as few assumptions as possible.
Having said that I do agree with you about science and religion.
Science is a way of knowing. Religion is a belief system. It might be fair to compare how they benefit or limit people but comparing them directly is unfair to both. By doing so you’re setting a false dichotomy and buying in to the sort of thinking that creationists are keen to promote. Science and religion don’t operate on the same scale. It is only when they cross over and make claims about the other that there is disagreement. Religious groups have been happy to do this for an awful long time, it is hardly surprising that the non-religious are joining in the fun.
Nor am I trying to disprove God’s existence. I’m trying to show that there isn’t enough for me and many others to accept the claim. One of the reasons I enjoy the exchanges on Off the Map is that I am often exposed to new ideas or old ideas from a new perspective. All the reasons for atheism that I’ve given and will give are not even scratching the surface. Each of us has our own reasons for holding or rejecting certain beliefs. I’m certain that many of them are very interesting and that I’ve never even considered some of them. Similarly I hope to expose some ideas that others may not have considered.
While you say that this is a positive claim for God’s existence I am much more interested in what it is about people and societies that fosters this belief. Are we hard wired for God belief? Is God belief a kind of meme spread throughout societies? Where does the myth and legend end and fact begin?
Comment by: Stephan
19I like that question and believe that there is some of both in any religious belief system, including Christianity.
Comment by: Eliza
20To return to the variably-received color analogy: even though we can all agree that “grass is green” and that the light coming off of grass has certain wavelengths predominating (when we all look at our spectro-meter-thingies), it’s fascinating that we have NO way of determining whether one person’s experience of “green” is the same as another person’s. Maybe the image I see is red-shifted compared what you see, but since we each have internal consistency about colors we assume we’re seeing the same thing.
And, as Jason has said, our color perception is relative to the light level and the backdrop. Gray looks white when paired with black in low light, and looks like black when paired with white.
And, broadening the analogy to all of vision, optical illusions offer a repeatedly reliable manner of demonstrating that in any number of circumstances we see things which are not there…not there at all.
Stephan, I didn’t see whether you agreed or disagreed that personal experience (of ones self or of someone else, told directly or through oral or written histories) is the only indication anyone has of the existence of God - I won’t say “proof” or “evidence” ;-)
Is there anything external to people that we can use to verify the very vivid & believable personal experiences, to get some glimmer as to whether something called God exists, external to people’s minds/brains/personal experiences? (I know some people say “all of creation” but I’m looking for something I can get more of a handle on, & don’t otherwise have a good explanation for. For me, “all of creation” doesn’t help support people’s description of spiritual experiences.)
All of my talk about the unreliability of personal experience is in response to Stephan’s comment in #1 above:
I do beg to differ. I don’t have control over what I believe or don’t believe. I can only search for some indication that there’s a reason to believe, and for me those reasons have not yet shown up.
Comment by: Stephan
21Eliza, sorry I have not been direct in answering your question. I guess I don’t have a really good answer. Probably the best way I could say is to see the difference this belief makes in people’s lives, although you could turn it around and attribute it to natural causes, so we’re right back where we started.
I think it still comes back to atheists looking for a level of “proof” that just isn’t there. You can probably find a “natural” explanation for just about anything if you try hard enough.
I’m sure this can be attributed to many things. Conservative Christians would say atheists are denying what they know in their hearts is true. While I think this is possible in some cases (and I have been told this by former atheists who are now Christians) I am not willing to judge the motives of others. It could be cultural, it could be a different sensitivity to spiritual things (just as some people have a more acute sense of smell or hearing) or it could be myriad other things.
Unlike many other Christians I am not willing to condemn you to hell for your unbelief. I believe God will judge everyone based on the gifts given to them, and if you weren’t given the gift to sense His presence then I’m sure He is aware of that.
Comment by: Jason
22Isn’t that the point though? If you can find a natural explanation for something, for everything even, then there is no room for supernatural. The advantage, of course, is that a natural explanation is supported by evidence, often by experimentation that can be repeated to give the same results. Furthermore when science gets the explanation wrong there is a mechanism in place to correct the error. Natural explanations work really well.
Some atheists think the same thing of Christians. I don’t doubt that in some cases there are people only going through the motions of Christianity for an easy life. That may be true with some atheists but where is the social pressure to conform? Where is the support network that Christians enjoy with their churches and church activities?
Glad to hear it. The condemnation of hell is a monstrous thing. I wrote about this waay back in November.
Comment by: Chris C
23I’m off the pace again with this: sorry. But let me try and do some catch up.
Some bit points first.
The point about living in a Universe that’s suited for life is not it’s beauty, Jason, but that the probability of such a Universe arising by chance is vanishingly small. Hence, the idea that it was designed by God to have the right properties has some appeal.
I agree with Stephan that, as physics theorises that time began with the Universe, a Creator outside it doesn’t need a first cause: first implies a timed event. As for God being the first cause of such a Universe, it’s significant that the 3400 year Old Testament scrolls should ascribe to God the sort of properties that science now hypothesises the Universe creator would have: timelessness, beyond the Cosmos etc., unlike the creation stories of many other ancient faiths.
We’ve touched on the question that Eliza and Seren raise about the validity of Christian experience on the previous topic. Perhaps it needs developing a little?
Millions of Christians have testified to their personal experience of the presence and power of God in their lives. Many have been extraordinary and dramatic. Not surprisingly there have been attempts to explain them away. These are usually in terms of natural phenomena, such as nothing but neurological, psychological and even psychiatric manifestations. There is the idea of a God centre in the brain which gives us the imaginary impression that we are experiencing God. Support for this hypothesis comes from experiments, which show that electromagnetic stimuli or, very rarely, brain tumours or severe trauma can give rise to religious experiences or convictions. Then there is the observation that, in emotional situations, cognitive dissonance can convince people that they are actually seeing or experiencing things that they have a deep desire to. There is also the hypothesis that there is an awareness detection device in the brain, which interprets phenomena, such as moving shadows, as a threat. If this device becomes hyperactive (HADD), it could make us believe falsely we’ve seen or experienced real encounters with the spiritual or mystical.
I could go on. But the point is that whilst any of these could and probably do account for some religious experiences without the need for God to enter the equation, they are completely inadequate explanations for most. Nearly all Christian-God encounters happen to those with no abnormal brain stimulation either experimentally or pathologically. Unlike the custom in some other faiths, they happen without the need for intense meditative procedures, physical deprivations or the use of drugs or detailed rituals (such as in Newberg’s work that Eliza quotes). They often happen in unemotional settings and when they are not anticipated (see my experience at the http://www.offthemap.com/ebayatheist/index.php site) and occur to people who are known to be rational. Many produce experiences which were not expected, sometimes against what was believed or wished for (Acts 9:1-5). Ruling out cognitive dissonance. Sometimes the experiences occur to many or last for hours or even days and then disappear never to return so dramatically. This rules out any HADD misinterpretations.
But in spite of the huge variety of presentations, to people from all cultures, races and backgrounds, in very different situations and across thousands of years, there is a common feature. However dramatic or otherwise, sudden or gradual the event, individuals are left with the conviction that they have met with God. In many cases there is evidence of this not only in their accounts of the experience, but in the changed life leading to millions of examples of transformed attitudes, broken addictions, healed diseases, forged relationships with the impacted sometimes going on to lead lives of outstanding sacrifice.
I’m not saying that there isn’t a God centre in the brain through which our heavenly Father communicates to us spiritually. After all in Jesus’ ministry people saw with their eyes and heard with their ears, God communicated through normal neurological pathways.
Comment by: Eliza
24Yes, but we would have 0% chance of existing if the Universe weren’t, at least in one small corner, suited for life. The fact that life exists does not explain the mechanism by which life came to exist, nor the probability that life could have come into existence given initial conditions. (This is true of the outcome of any probabilistic event.)
Comment by: Eliza
25Yes, as have people of other religions, though they almost always describe the experience in terms of the god/s they have been brought up to believe in.
I find it interesting that absent any prior exposure to Christian teachings, no-one (to my knowledge) has come up with a spontaneous belief in Jesus or the trinity. Saul/Paul underwent a dramatic conversion from Judaism to Christianity but he had, of course, heard of Jesus before his experience on the road to Damascus.
I can’t comment on whether or not people of other religions need certain external conditions such as drugs, ritual, meditation, or physical deprivation to feel a connection with their god/s. It seems possible that what one is taught about how to connect with god influences one’s experience of connection with god.
It seems possible that if a person believes (e.g. is taught, then believes) that God is everywhere, always present, listening to prayers & thoughts, & cares about (and influences) events in daily life, that that person may well be more likely to experience God in his/her daily life, in just those activities. Seems like that could potentially be studied, at least the idea that there’s a high correlation between people’s expectations of connection w/ god and their experiences of connection. (But it would be hard to determine someone’s expectations before any connection-experience.)
Does anyone know whether most Christians tended to feel connection with God frequently before the Protestant reformation, back when people received teaching from a hierarchical church but weren’t encouraged to feel a personal/direct connection? Seems like many of the reports of personal connection experiences back then were from monks and nuns who were cloistered and spent hours each day praying/meditating while living in a state of relative physical & sensory deprivation. But, of course, they (at least the monks) were also more likely to be literate than the average person, and may have been the more spiritually-oriented (HADD? who knows) than the average person.
Comment by: Stephan
26The difference is that the natural explanation isn’t always better and it isn’t always supported by evidence. In the case of a person who is made better by being a Christian the best non-theistic conclusion would be, “Maybe he could have been better even without religion.” MAYBE. That’s the problem with personal experience - you really can’t test it or reproduce it. You can only say “maybe”. That leaves a lot of room open for theism.
Comment by: Eliza
27It could be studied, just not easily (or ethically?): Expose otherwise similar people to very different religious teachings they’ve never heard about before, and see whether their experiences are different (& whether they match what these people have been taught, by researchers, to expect). I do suspect that this experiment wouldn’t be approved by any IRB, nor would most people approve of it, obviously.
Regarding transformation of lives through Christianity, one question is, “Are people’s lives really better, or do they (& others around them) just interpret them as better?” (Would have to define “good” and “better” and “used to sin” - if “good” simply means “matches the expectations of a religion” then it’s a circular example.) (I know people will have examples of transformed lives, and powerful spiritual experiences, and I don’t mean to make light of this - just to question a bit what is going on. I know that some people would define me as a sinner because I’m not Christian, & think my life could only be better if I became Christian.)
The other point is that some of us would say, “Well, it doesn’t matter; it’s a good thing.” And others would reply, “OK…but how is that evidence of something powerful which exists largely outside of people?” Sort of depends on what one’s goal is in this type of consideration.
Comment by: Jason
28or it doesn’t matter if it is real or not because it make you feel better. Even if your faith is entirely false and exists only in your own mind it still makes your life better than it was without it. I cannot possibly refute that entirely subjective assessment and am more than willing to concede that your faith grants you satisfaction and joy in life that you might not have otherwise with the proviso that your experiences are not everyone’s. What is subjectively good for you may be subjectively bad for me and anyway, when all is said and done, does it make it real? And for fairness sake, does it make it any less real?
Comment by: Seren
29There are too many confounding factors to know. Is it the community support? Is it the identity - feeling part of a group, simply by identifying as “Christian”? In U.S. society, you’ve gone from being in a minority, to the majority (if the Barna surveys can be trusted). Can do wonders for self esteem!
That said, at the moment these stories are anecdotal. personally, i became much happier and healthier after i lost my Christain faith.
what would need to be done for anecdotes to become evidence?
One thing i do agree with you on is that,
Life is not a repeatable experiment.
Comment by: Jason
30Going back to this point
for a moment. What do you mean by better? Do you mean happier? More moral and law abiding? Do you mean healthier? Wealthier even? I know of some prosperity preachers who make this claim. Happiness, law and order, health and wealth are measurable as is religiosity. A statistician could easily correlate say murders per 100,000 population with percentage religiosity or GDP of religious nations with GDP of non-religious nations. Personal happiness might not show up on a statistical correlation but presumably large portions of a population experiencing this same personal happiness would have a measurable effect. There are ways of measuring happiness in a population. Health is also something that can be correlated.
Of all the surveys and statistical analyses that I am aware of there is no measurable benefit to holding a religion or faith view. I can certainly concede that for some it is an enormous benefit but for others it must be a terrible burden. For a believer does that mean that God punishes some and rewards others in order to balance the books or that the benefits of faith are those of faith alone?
I think we’ve mentioned that the proportion of atheists in prison is significantly lower that the proportion of the population. The Friendly Atheist Forum has two topics on graphing religiosity that shows murder rate, gun ownership, abortion rate and life expectancy all worse for those of higher religiosity.
However, correlation does not always mean causation. Also correlation says nothing of existence of a deity, it only indicated the effects of belief.
Comment by: Chris C
31Eliza said
No, I don’t believe that the personal experience of God (in the sense of a relationship with Him being at the heart of the faith, as it is in Christianity) is a central feature of other religions. Islam, for example, has no concept of God as father. This doesn’t mean that God doesn’t give people of other faiths experience of His reality. In the last twenty years or so, some Muslims have become Christians through dreams and visions of Jesus. God also often begins with what people already know of Him in other faiths, it’s one of the best ways of building a relationship.
If you don’t believe in God, then Jesus came up with the belief. If you do then it was God’s idea. Paul of course was a dramatic change, from aggressive opposition to total commitment. His comment on the road and Jesus’ response would suggest that he had little real knowledge of Christianity (Acts9:5-6).
Yes, the promise and experience of a personal relationship with God was a feature of the early church (read Acts). However, we don’t need to go back then. In the first 70 years of the 20th century, it was not a teaching emphasised by the Church. Yet in revivals, like that on the island of Lewis in 1947, off the Scottish coast, there are records of dramatic experiences of the presence of God by islanders and sailors in dance halls, outside the police station on boats and in their houses: people who weren’t even at the meetings or churchgoers. Then, from 1960 onwards, many people from secular backgrounds started to have experiences of God as they came to faith. They neither new the NT teaching on the subject, nor were they told that such experiences could occur. It was a complete surprise and a revelation. How do I know this, because I was one?
In answer to Eliza, Seren and, I think, Jason here, I wasn’t making a claim about the ethical, moral, health or feel-good value of the God experience. I could do. But here I was just using the diversity, ubiquity, impact and inexplicability (in material terms) of the experience as evidence for the real presence of God in the lives of Christians. However, since you ask for examples of changed lives, John Newton and me. Now whether these lives are just better in terms of what the Bible says is irrelevant. Indeed, if the convicting experience was from God, you’d expect the renewed life to conform more to what the teaching of Jesus required, even if the person didn’t know, at first, what was expected. And that is what you find.
Comment by: Eliza
32I’d previously asked whether Christians (Roman Catholics, outside of popes, priests, monks, & nuns) commonly felt this connection before the Protestant reformation; that question still stands. Anyone know?
I’m not a religion expert, but how about Sufism? “Sufis also believe that it is possible to draw closer to God and to more fully embrace the Divine Presence in this life. …the seeker may be led to abandon all notions of dualism or multiplicity, including a conception of an individual self, and to realize the Divine Unity.”
Or Bhakti Hinduism? “Bhakti marga, or devotion, is the most common path in Hinduism today. Bhakti involves cultivating a very personal connection to the divine through a conduit, found in the form of a deity.”
Just because we don’t hear much about the personal experiences of people who practice other religions, doesn’t mean that some of them don’t experience something similar.
Comment by: Jason
33Chris wrote
I’m not aware of any passages in the bible where Jesus sets out to form a new religion. Also the claims in Scripture that Jesus was God are cryptic. It is only much later at Nicaea that the divinity of Jesus is decided. Even for early Christians the change could hardly be described as spontaneous.
Besides that quite minor point converts typically come to a faith and then grow within it as the teachings nurture their new beliefs. There is a moment of emotional attachment that you could even call revelation :) and then a building of intellectual support for that emotion. The two are mutually sustaining and any negative comments about the faith a dismissable on an emotional level. Once the convert is emotionally invested in the faith the intellectual arguments are explainable.
This is perfectly understandable, people do it for all kinds of beliefs from favourite scientific theory to sports teams. I’m sure that any parent thinks their kids are better than anyone else’s for just this issue of emotional attachment even though my kids are the best.
Conversions and anecdotal personal experiences are only useful for the person who has experienced them or those who seek support for their own similar experiences. By definition they cannot be objective or measurable. Of course that says nothing about their validity, only how useful they are for others.
Comment by: Chris C
34Thanks for your postings on Sufism and Hinduism, Eliza. Nearly all faiths seek to draw closer to God in one way or another, and these are two examples where the practice is developed. However, as I mentioned before, in other faiths this attempting to draw near, whether it’s central to the religion or not, requires the undertaking of (often extensive) rituals, ceremonies, meditative arts, physical deprivations etc etc (men/women trying to work their way to God by their own efforts) and this is exactly what we find in the two examples you quote (see your refs). But here, on this topic, we’re not considering such ritualistic practices, but the often-spontaneous Christian experience of God: Him coming to Christians and staying with them, in a sense being within them. And this is His gift. This experience of God comes without us having to work at it, in fact it can’t come by us just working at it. Sometimes, when it happens around the time of conversion, it comes completely unexpected and even without knowledge that’s it’s available, in all sorts of circumstances (in my case when I was driving the car). This is completely different from the ritualistic rites in the religions you mention.
Aren’t Paul, Peter, Stephen and John before the reformation and outside Popes priests, monks and nuns?
Comment by: Chris C
35Jason wrote
Jesus didn’t come to start a new religion, but to complete a faith by being Immanuel, God with us, fulfilling the prophetic promises of the OT. Hardly a page of the NT goes by without this being developed. Yes, Jesus’ many assertions that He was Immanuel, God with us, are cryptic. Any overt declaration would have affected His ministry of drawing people to Him and moved it closer to demanding their allegiance. But these claims, although cryptic, were obvious enough to recognised by the Jews who opposed Him (Mark2:6-7; Matthew26:63-64; John5:16-18; 8:57-59). Such claims were also recognised and accepted by the first Christians (John20:28; Romans9:5; Philippians2:5-6; Colossians1:19) and almost all the early Church. At Nicaea all we have is the rejection of a late peripheral schism (the Arian controversy that suggested that Jesus wasn’t fully God), the sort of distortion that develops on the back of any successful philosophy. It was defeated by 300 votes to 2, hardly a major threat to what the Church had believed for 300years.
Well sometimes, but mostly it’s much more than a moment. Mine lasted 3 days; Blaise Pascal’s, two hours and they often arise from unemotional settings. But I do agree there is a building of intellectual support on the experience. The essentials of the Christian faith are quite logical.
Comment by: Eliza
36I was actually wondering about the experiences of the “man on the street” before the Protestant reformation - the ones you listed started off as “men on the street”, in a way, but seem to have experienced something different - new, more profound, more ongoing? - from the average person of that time, or at least that’s the way I understood it.
I do hear that several people here, and in fact many Christians, have had very meaningful personal experiences. I’m not ignoring that (though I’m expressing some skepticism that it’s so completely different from experiences of people in other religions, or that the expectations promised may be the expectations fulfilled).
I was brought up without religion and though I have felt awe and “connection”, I have never felt anything I interpreted as being “god”. However, I did have 2 interesting experiences during the ~14-week conservative Lutheran RE class I took 2 yrs ago (and wrote about, here). It was also interesting to me that some Christians, reading about my experiences, suggested that I did feel God during those experiences, whereas I believe it was mundane human psychology.
First, in one of the classes, the often-jocular pastor got especially serious & told everyone that Jesus was in the room with us, watching us. The message that God is always there had already been given, but there was a different intensity or tone to the pastor’s comments at that moment. Most of the class attendees were members of that church, yet they got very quiet, even though they were presumably long-time Christians. It seemed to me the atmosphere one might have created in a room by telling a ghost story, leaving the listeners with a vague sense of unease, wondering whether they’re being watched (even people who don’t believe in ghosts). I went up & asked the pastor after class how he pictured God & Jesus being in the room with us, if we couldn’t see them. He answered that he pictured them in another dimension (the 5th, for example), & as we were talking I could picture God and Jesus in another dimension, watching us. Now, my picture might have been different from his - I pictured an old white man and his 30-yr-old son, crammed together in something that looked like a photo booth (don’t ask me why), there but not there, watching us. I interpret this as purely a bit of imagery my brain created from his words, and I can call up images of space aliens in the same sort of arrangement, with the same emotion attached (weird; I’m being watched). Nothing felt positive, uplifting, or “spiritual” about this, for me.
The second was in class #9, “the forgiveness of sins”:
I haven’t felt anything before or since, and I still am convinced that what I felt was a response to the message, as well as the repetition (though the repetition did not go on long & was not fancy).
Comment by: Chris C
37Thanks for sharing that, Eliza. Scary though, experiences of God in a conservative Lutheran class: wow, God’s bigger than I thought He was (smile). Seriously though, I believe both of your experiences were God given. Why? I haven’t any evidence, they just seem like the way God’s been working over the last 30years or so, especially the second. However, I can understand why you’re sceptical as the repetitive wording or the atmosphere could, as you say, induce the experiences. I had no such excuse: my experience had no trigger what so ever.
But if it was God reaching out to you, I believe He would honour and confirm it if you took the risk of giving Him a try. How do you do that? Go where you won’t be interrupted and ask Him to start to show you that He’s real. Then be open to anything that happens: in you; what others say; perhaps even have a go at reading the NT in a modern translation (try John’s Gospel). It’s a journey into a relationship, not just feelings, but in relationships how we feel about something is important.
In the meantime I’ll see if I can find some testimonies of Christians that were post 1st cent. but pre-reformation.
Comment by: Eliza
38Chris C, thanks for your comments. Yet I think we return to the seemingly insolvable quandary of not knowing whether you’re correct (things like this are experiences of God), or I’m correct (things like this have a nontheistic explanation), or even whether the truth is something different (we’re both correct, or we’re both wrong & the truth is something we’ve never even thought of so far).
It’s like prayer. I’ve heard many people (including the pastor who taught that course) say that God always answers, and the answer is always Yes, No, or Wait. But that’s the set of options that covers what always happens “next” - what you hoped would happen, or what you were hoping wouldn’t happen, or something different. (Depending on the situation, any one of these could include: no change occurring).
As long as God (if he exists) holds back as he has been, I don’t think we’ll ever reach unanimous agreement on these questions :-)
Comment by: Chris C
39Thanks Lisa
All I can say is, give Him a try. I assure you, somewhere down the road to a relationship, you will know that you know.
Comment by: Eliza
40Chris C, thanks for your support & encouragement. I appreciate that you have had your faith strengthened by your own experiences & foresee that I could have the same experiences and certainty.
I have been looking into this whole religion thing for more than 4 yrs, though I know some will claim that I’ve been “doing it wrong.” Well, I’m a skeptic - I need things to make sense & seem to be reasonable (& ideally very good) explanations - otherwise I’m can’t take the bait. Not “won’t” - “can’t”. If God made me, that’s the way he made me, and he would know better than anyone what it would take to nudge me in his direction, or even convince me 100%, without taking away my free will. Scientists can do it; why can’t God?
Why would I need to go where I/we wouldn’t be interrupted? Isn’t God everywhere, couldn’t God make contact I could recognize in a normal-life setting?
Wouldn’t I be “working on it”, which shouldn’t be necessary?
How is “being open to anything that [then] happens” different from expecting a prayer to be answered, whether Yes, No, or Wait? I might start thinking that anything which happens subsequently is a sign…but that could be wishful thinking, or fooling myself, couldn’t it?
The 2 experiences I mentioned above were, of course, during a Lutheran ARE class, with a pastor repeating over and over that God & Jesus were present. Hardly the type of neutral situation in which I would be one-on-one with any supernatural force, uninterrupted. (Besides which, I didn’t feel any supernatural force was present…I could picture what I though he was envisioning as how that could happen, in the first case. And I felt cheap euphoria with a bit of urgency to it the second time, like “Grab it while it’s still on sale, even if you don’t need it!”)
I do think about God in contemplative situations. Often, when I’m walking the dog late at night on the quiet streets in our neighborhood, I look up at the stars, & moon if it’s the right phase & time, and I ask whether God exists. (Not out loud; maybe that’s my problem?) But my reaction on contemplating the night sky is that the stories about God & Jesus just don’t make any sense, & that I doubt a God exists, but if it does then it doesn’t care about what I or anyone else thinks, and we’ll never know for sure. And I celebrate the moon, stars, & galaxy. (Or, the earth’s atmosphere, if it’s raining.)
And, disclaimer that this reflects my own personal experience: reading the NT is not the situation in which I would expect to feel closer to God. I actually felt something more akin to horror on first reading the NT about 4 years ago - wondering how people could take this literally at all - especially on encountering a disclaimer preceding Mark 16:9, and on recognizing that the genealogy in Luke 3 is different from the one in Matthew 1. There were so many inconsistencies, and on review of apologetics & biblical scholarship, it was clear that the explanations were of the hand-waving type (having to make the text fit the pre-existing conclusions). Also, I was quite discouraged to figure out that most of Christianity is based on Paul’s teachings, not Jesus’s. (Jesus’s are more inspiring, imo.)
Sorry to be so long-winded.
Comment by: Eliza
41(I responded last night, but that post is still awaiting moderation)
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
42Sorry about the delay Eliza - it’s been released from the moderation queue now :)
Comment by: Eliza
43Thanks, Helen!
Comment by: Chris C
44Thanks Eliza for sharing so clearly. And a nice push back too, with regard to my comments on the significance of spontaneous appearances of God and then suggesting that you work at it a little. I just meant that I think you may have had the former in your Lutheran experience and found it unconvincing, so why not try a more formal approach.
I hear what you say about that approach, with regard to the obstacle for you in each suggestion. Just one comment of the detail here: the problems you have with reliability of scripture are not evidentially sound. There have been many attacks on the reliability of the NT, but none have been sustained and there are explanations for discrepancies like the genealogy issue. The fact that we know we’ve lost the end of Mark’s Gospel strengthens the view that almost all Biblical analysts now hold: we have the NT as it was written and what few doubts we have are annotated, the Mark example being the largest.
However, this is a detail. I believe that whatever personal characteristics God knows we have, He wants a genuine relationship with us. Not a one sided one, that we are pulled into by the sheer weight of evidence, but one that we actually have some desire to have. If we are always putting obstacles in the way of any approach He could have made, then there is a strong possibility that we might not wish the relationship, however good the evidence. We do have to want to make some step of faith, give it a try and go with the flow, so that a two-sided relationship can be built. If we didn’t take this faith step and yet God still pursued us, it would be like Him stalking us and we might finish up in His presence, but where we didn’t wish to be.
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
45Chris C wrote:
Chris, it seems to me that even if God proved his existence to someone it wouldn’t force that someone to have a relationship with him - they’d still have a choice wouldn’t they?
Just like I have no doubts about the existence of people I see every day but I have a choice whether to get into a relationship with them or not.
Comment by: Chris C
46Helen, people you see every day are only showing their existence to you. Belief, in the Christian sense, is not just knowing God exists, the Devil knows that. Christian belief/faith means admitting we were wrong, following/accepting Jesus into your life/making Him Lord: it’s a journey. It’s the only sort of belief that God’s interested in, because it’s the only sort of belief that does us any good. If it’s really entered into, it rebirths us to be a new creation. Now, that’s life changing. For it to be fruitful we need to be willingly contributing into it, like any relationship. If we’re fighting it all the time it’s not only a pain, but eventually pointless, perhaps worse than pointless. So we need to have at least some slight willingness to give that journey a try before God is likely to give us any sort of convincing evidence that, if I read her correctly, Eliza is requesting.
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
47I see what you mean, Chris, that believing in someone’s existence is not the same as having a relationship with them.
That’s actually why I don’t understand why God would link the two and not give someone evidence he exists until they show an interest in him.
Comment by: Chris C
48I agree, Helen. But he does give some evidence, He gave me a little, that’s why I took that step of faith, to give Him a try. I believe He’s also given Eliza some. But it’s where we go from these initial promptings. If we step back from those and then, worse, start saying, “Look I don’t think similar evidence in other areas is going to convince me either”, what’s God to do. I’ve already suggested why I don’t think that in these circumstances a blast from a transcendent God would be appropriate. But, what the heck, God’s bigger than my puny ideas. I’ll pray and lets see what He does!!