The Believing Agnostic

2010-06-20T14:31:00.000-07:00

Can an Atheist “Choose”

to Believe in God?

Shane Hayes

In a June 16th comment to my posting Empirical Theism: A Thought Experiment P. Coyle said:

“Hmmmm. Can one actually ‘choose’ to believe in God? Speaking for myself, I would find it quite difficult to wake up tomorrow, sit up on the bed, and think to myself, ‘I guess I'll try believing in God today and see how it works out.

“What do you think, Shane? To what extent can a person ‘choose’ to believe in God?”

My reply

Missionary efforts for the last two thousand years have all been based on the proposition that a person can choose to believe in God. Their notable success indicates that the proposition is true. There were a handful of Christians when Jesus died. Three-thousand were converted on Pentecost. Many times that number have been converted to atheism by the books and lectures of Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, Dennett, and Stenger. The New Atheists wouldn’t argue so vigorously if people could not change their minds on the question of God’s existence. And I wouldn’t be writing this blog if I didn’t think so.

A Key to Inward Change

Perhaps the real thrust of your question is: Can a sophisticated widely read atheist in this era choose to believe in God? My answer is an emphatic yes -- but with a qualifier appended: If he wants to. In my essay Is God’s Existence Improbable? I said:

“In our talks about the existence of God my atheist friends nearly always say something to this effect: ‘My feelings have nothing to do with this. Yours clearly do, and you admit it. But mine don’t. I just weigh the evidence and seek the truth.’

“Among several important things I can’t prove but am convinced of is this: In deciding whether or not to believe in God, no one, on either side of the issue, is completely objective. Nor should one be, since the arguments are weighty on both sides, and neither proves its case. Evidence and logic leave us dangling. In forming an opinion on what is unknowable, personal considerations become relevant, even determinative.”

The Role of Desire in Belief

On the question of God’s existence most people end up believing what they want to believe. There is much weighing of evidence and pondering of argument, but these don’t produce a conclusive yes or no. So a subtle – often complex – form of personal preference carries the day. I am a Pure Theist (and a Christian) because I want to be, and you are an atheist because you want to be. Until the wanting changes neither of us is likely to budge. But if the wanting did change, we could change too.

I don’t mean we can push a mental button and transmute in an instant. It might take months or years of intense grappling with evidence, argument, and our inner life. But evidence and argument depend so much on the light in which we view them, and that is so determined by our psyches (which is what I mean by our inner life), that an atheist can, ultimately, choose to believe in God if he wants to.

A theist, too, can go the other way. Every year a great many convert to the opposite view. The New Atheists pull them toward No God. Writers like me in our way – and organized religions in theirs -- try to pull them toward God. Self-determination in such matters is the rule, not the exception.

Three Factors that Make Choosing Possible

To illustrate the difficulty of the change, its possibility, and an essential element in it, let me cite an incident from the New Testament. A father pleading with Jesus to heal his ailing son said, “… if you can do anything, have pity on us and help us.” Jesus echoed his doubting phrase, “If you can! All things are possible to him who believes.” (Emphasis added.) Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!” Jesus healed the child.

The dramatic episode highlights three principles: (1) The starting point is a desire to believe; the father wanted to think help was there; (2) Belief can be mingled with unbelief; (3) Conscious effort may be needed to acquire faith.

The incident is not presented here as an argument for Christianity, but to show the elements of transition from atheism to Pure Theism. The man in the story needed help. An atheist who contemplates a change of mind (and heart) may – or may not – do so because he feels a need for strength beyond what human resources provide. Someone said, “Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity.” I have found that to be so. Those who feel weak are probably more open to faith than those who feel strong. But this doesn’t mean the strong are right and the weak are wrong.

Humility and Truth

In an earlier posting How the Improbable God Probably Works I laid out my God hypothesis. It ended with these two paragraphs:

The ancient mystic who wrote The Cloud of Unknowing said: “By love he may be gotten and holden, but by thought, never.” John said, “God is love.” The atheist Bertrand Russell said, “Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence,” to justify his unbelief. Believing requires not only an act of faith but an act of humility. The prouder we are of our intellect, of its superiority to lesser minds, and of the dazzling science it produced, the harder it is to humble ourselves and believe. Yet the Designer of the Universe arranged it so that he, his ultimate truth, and life’s shining Sequel can be found only by the humble and believing.

We cannot accept his love unless we acknowledge his existence. We can brush aside the outstretched hand. He will neither compel faith, nor make it unnecessary. On those terms, we can take him or leave him. Receive his embrace or turn away. Our decision is our fate. [End of quoted paragraphs.]

The Bold Crossing

A skeptic who acknowledges there may be a God, and would like to connect with Him if it’s possible, must take a bold step. He must move from abstract thought to a new kind of consciousness that is both outreaching and receptive. In Empirical Theism: A Thought Experiment I describe a bridge from the mental to the spiritual, and try to walk the reader across it, as I crossed it decades ago. It shows how an atheist who wants to, can begin moving toward belief in God and a relationship with Him.

2010-06-09T14:16:00.000-07:00

Empirical Theism:

A Thought Experiment

Shane Hayes

What I propose is not a new theology. It is a sliver of existing theologies that one never sees separated from them and standing alone. Pure Theism is that sliver, in its limpid crystalline essence.

The door from atheism to theism opened for me when I read this stunning affirmation by William James:

“We and God have business with each other, and in opening ourselves to His influence our deepest destiny is fulfilled.”

We and God… The plain-stated linkage is intriguing. Have business with each other… The unpiousness, the urbanity, the practicality, the suggestion of profitable commerce, an interchange that does not require me to abase myself before starting. Nothing clerical or preachy in this appeal. In opening ourselves to His influence… How easy to visualize! Just stop shutting him out; open myself. Well, there’s no doubt I’ve been closed to him. Influence has a less intimidating sound than compulsion or command, and is more comprehensible than grace. Our deepest destiny is fulfilled… That is what atheism utterly lacks – a stirring destiny. Our future is so short and opaque. However much speed we gather in life, it ends with a crash into the wall of death. They cart our wreckage away, and it’s over.

Where New Faith Begins

That powerful sentence by William James, not a verse of scripture, was the embryo of my Pure Theism. I read 507 pages into The Varieties of Religious Experience before I came to it. That book, so charged with the vision, insight, and erudition of a great scientific and philosophical mind, convinced me that believing in God is intellectually respectable. The sentence that lodged in my brain like a mustard seed and, after much repetition, finally took root, is worth repeating:

“We and God have business with each other, and in opening ourselves to His influence our deepest destiny is fulfilled.”

Call it the James Affirmation. Memorize it. Carry it with you. Gaze at the world for minutes every day through that illuminating lens. Experiment with its insight. Sit still and quiet. Let your breathing become deep and regular. Shut out the myriad distractions and concerns. Suspend your skepticism -- relax your white-knuckled grip on it. Repeat the affirmation silently or aloud. Meditate on each of its four elements, one by one.

We and God. Those three words brim with the essence of theistic faith. Creature and Creator in a state of mutual awareness. Mutual acknowledgement. Ahh, but you say, I acknowledge only a remote possibility. That’s enough, I reply. That’s enough for now.

Have business with each other. Think of it. A transaction between God and man. Between God and you. You can do something for him, and he can do something for you. Not just one transaction, though it begins with that. A working relationship will develop if you let it. A daily interchange. But if there is a God, you ask, what can I do for him? He’s infinite, he needs nothing. You can believe in him, I reply. Does he need that? No. But you need it, so he wants it for you, because you’re incomplete without it. He wants you to be complete. Without him you can’t be. And you can’t have him if you deny he exists.

And in opening ourselves to His influence. How would I open myself, even if I wanted to? you ask. Einstein arrived at his greatest scientific insights not by lab experiments but by what he called “thought experiments.” He would imagine what might happen if a certain set of facts came together in a certain way. Often the facts were quite abstract and impossible to duplicate in the material world; for example, a bucket of water rotating in outer space. How would its contents react, given certain gravitational or non-gravitational hypotheses?

A Thought Experiment

Let’s emulate the great scientist and do a thought experiment. For the sake of it, and for the moment, imagine that a cosmic intelligence exists. Savor the idea that the supreme benevolent reality is conscious of you, has not rejected you (though you’ve rejected him), and is eager to connect. He might be there, and he might care, is your first hypothesis. Wade into the depths of that glistening possibility. Yield yourself to its enveloping warmth. Experience its buoyancy.

He might be there, and he might care… about you, deeply. If that were true, nothing would be the same. Everything would be new. Meditate on the majesty of that thought, and expose your consciousness to its meaning and consequence. Allow yourself to be touched and stirred by the invisible hand that called you out of nothingness -- and wants you never to descend into nothingness again. Be passive, receptive, welcoming. Open.

Our deepest destiny is fulfilled. What do you think of as your destiny? Love. Gratifying friendship. Success in your work, profession, or art. Recognition. Fame. Affluence, even wealth. A splendid place to live. Handsome progeny who achieve distinction. Then a long serene travel-filled and fascinating retirement. Finally a stately well-attended memorial service, with eloquent eulogies by the tearful many who loved you and lament your passing. Then a grave, a vault in a mausoleum… or a scattering of your dust on some picturesque land- or seascape. An honorable destiny, to be sure. It may satisfy your imagination. It does not satisfy God’s.

Immortal, he designed you to share his immortality. Timeless, he will bring you beyond time and death to a realm where nothing decays, nothing tarnishes, nothing dies. Great hearted, he will expand your heart, and help you love people, his world, yourself, and him in a way that will make you stronger and more joyful than you’ve ever been. He will not deliver you from life’s toils, ills, frustrations, losses, and tragedies. But he will help you bear them, get through them, look past them.

Indestructible

You will see things differently when you feel that he, a Spirit, has made you part spirit, and that the spirit part of you is indestructible. The bond of love that grows between you and him will be indestructible too. Breath will cease, but love will endure. And in the silent promise of that love is hid your deepest destiny. He will start leading you to its fulfillment – a slow illuminating process – as soon as you ask him to, as soon as you let him. Open yourself. At least a little. Now.

2010-06-03T16:49:00.000-07:00

The Only Way Out of Atheism
(Pure Theism)

Shane Hayes

[My article Why People Become Atheists, which appears below, ended with this paragraph: “These objections to religion are heartfelt. We can’t dismiss them lightly. Even weightier arguments can be made. And there are strong counterarguments to vindicate belief. I will not give them here. Instead I’ll propose an alternative to all organized religion – yet one that organized religion should not object to. But if atheists don’t want to hear it, why bother?”]

The Downside of Atheism: Renouncing Hope

Because however heartfelt the aversion to religion is in many atheists, there is an occasional doubt. The sense that God may exist in spite of all their arguments and denunciations. Still more embarrassingly there is in many a recurring wish that he did exist, because, well… he wasn’t all bad. Atheism delivers us from restraints, inhibitions, and irritations. It does not deliver us from the frailties and vulnerabilities of the human condition. We are weak and mortal in a brutal universe. Whether there is a God or not, we need one. Without him we’ll perish – and most of us don’t want to.

Moreover we have a subliminal hunger that is felt if seldom recognized – a craving for something ineffably beautiful and good that we can seize and hold and never lose. We want to be happier than anything or anyone ever makes us. The Dream, in all its splendor, never comes true. Or at least never stays true. We must soon learn to love the dream without the splendor. Honeymoon becomes marriage. We must lower expectations and be content with the irksome and mundane, with small love moments, not the enveloping rapture we once tasted, or divorce will follow.

Art, romance, success, wealth, erotic adventure, fame for a few – all can be thrilling, but the thrill fades, the glories fade, we fade, and all will be taken from us, or we from it. The only possible satisfaction of our thirst for unfading love, bliss, and glory is God. So for every atheist who occasionally doubts the infallibility of his denials, and feels the tug of the transcendent, I propose… Pure Theism.

One Step Out of Atheism

Look anew at the question of God’s existence completely apart from the Bible, Judeo-Christian theology, and the theology of any organized religion. The doctrines and scriptures of Jews, Christians, and Muslims need have no bearing on the elemental question of whether a personal and loving God exists. If he does, we can conceive of him apart from all established theologies and scriptures. We can commune and build a relationship with him directly -- without intervention of a rabbi, priest, minister, or imam.

Though I have embraced an organized religion, I was a pure theist for years. For me it was the only way out of atheism. I began with the most simplified and essential concept of a supernatural being: One who created the universe, loves what he made, and follows with benevolent concern the fate of every human life. Not the God of Abraham, not the Trinitarian God we Christians believe in, not Jesus, the incarnate Son of God. That would have been too much for me – and I had said no to it again and again. Just God, a Supreme Being who cares about his human creatures and wants a relationship with them. The distance between No God and Just God, Pure Theism, is immeasurable. I was there for two years after atheism, before Christianity became possible for me.

Grasp the Essence

Pure Theism is a life-altering option that should be considered by anyone who cannot accept the images and stories of God – or onerous rules of conduct – that are embedded in established religions. I could not have emerged from atheism directly into any formal religion, so I don’t advocate that. Nor do I insist on Christianity as the destination for everyone who comes out of atheism. Organized religion is an option but not a requirement for a new believer.

Pure Theism can be the start of a journey, as it was for me – or a harbor where you cast anchor and build a home. Whether you move on or stay, you will not be cosmically alone, as you were before. When the divine penetrates the human, present and future are transformed. You see the world, yourself, and your destiny with a changed eye. You are freed from atheism’s demand that you suppress hope in its most luminous forms. Death, though still grim, is transitional. Life, though still hard, has a transcendent source of wisdom and strength – and a shining sequel.

[To be continued.]

2010-05-26T08:04:00.000-07:00

Why People Become Atheists

Shane Hayes

Would atheists regard it as heresy if I were to allege that most of them, like Christians and other theists, occasionally have doubts? The atheistic doubt, of course, is a suspicion that despite all their well-crafted arguments – and the science that undergirds them – God may exist. Some deny that such puerile thoughts ever cross their mind, but others admit they do. The Doubting Thomas is not just a Christian phenomenon; skeptics waver too.

In fact the same wide range of gradations -- from unshakable faith, to strong faith, to fragile faith, to wobbly faith – marks both the atheist and the theist communities. At different times in our lives we may find ourselves at different places on that spectrum. The unshakable may be shaken; the wobbly may become strong. And every year each camp boasts converts from the other.

Simplicity vs. Complexity

Since I was once a convert to atheism, and later in my life a convert from atheism, I know something about conversion and the complex of factors, intellectual and emotional, that bring it about. One advantage atheism has in making converts is that it asks them to assent to an extremely simple proposition: There is no God. The Catholic, the Protestant, and the Jew, by contrast, must convince the prospective convert not only that God exists, but that a hundred – nay, a thousand – things about him and his interactions with mankind are true.

The Protestant Bible contains 66 books (39 OT, 27 NT); the Catholic Bible contains 73. The prevailing Christian view is that all those books are not only sacred but trustworthy – error free -- in every line. Add to this the numerous theological “confessions,” one for every Protestant sect, the 700-page Catechism of the Catholic Church, Torah and the Talmud for Orthodox Judaism. You can see why it’s easier to exit a formal religion than it is enter one. “It’s all rubbish” is a much easier sell than “it’s all true, you must believe it, and you must live by it.”

Biblical Cruelty Provokes Atheism

For many the complexity of an established religion is not the major problem. They point to one or two dogmas, behavioral rules, or Biblical events, and those are enough to make them recoil from the sect. I am astonished at how often people give scriptural reasons for their atheism. The Christian doctrine of eternal damnation to a fiery hell, for grave sin (or because of predestination), terrified many when they were believers. Better to abolish God entirely than live in fear of being immolated by his wrath. Atheism offers escape from that horrific aspect of the Christian worldview. Better no God, some decide, than one who might torment me for eternity.

Some see the God of the Old Testament as unpardonably cruel and obsessed with being worshipped. What kind of God, they say, would demand that Abraham be willing to slaughter his own son with a knife to prove his devotion? But he didn’t really demand that, I point out; he relented at the end. He demanded that Abraham be willing, they insist; that was monstrously egocentric.

Slaughter at Jericho

Others point to atrocities that the God of Abraham ordered and did not relent from. When he gave his chosen people the Promised Land it was filled not only with milk and honey but with inhabited towns and cities. The residents were living normal lives; working for a living, raising and loving their families. We are not told they were wicked like Sodom and Gomorrah. Yet when Joshua had his army march around the walled city of Jericho, just before the walls collapsed, he said to his people: “Shout; for the Lord has given you the city. And the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction….”

The trumpet sounded, the people shouted, the wall fell. “Then they utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and asses, with the edge of the sword…. And they burned the city with fire, and all within it; only the silver and gold, and the vessels of bronze and of iron, they put into the treasury of the Lord.”

New Testament Harshness

Atheists can go on, citing dozens of atrocities like these from the Old Testament and the New. Some rival fundamentalists in their knowledge and memory of selected scriptures. But where, you ask, did God do something brutally cruel in the New Testament? I know a Catholic woman who never left the faith but could not forgive God for requiring that his Son be crucified, though Jesus implored, “Let this cup [of torment] pass from me.” How could a caring Father turn a deaf ear to that plea? He must have loved his Son much less than she loved hers. My pointing out that Father and Son were one, and that the sacrificial death redeemed us all, did not avail. She would never have consigned her son to the cross. (Since I was that son I smiled indulgently at the heresy.)

Tedious Demands and Impossible Standards

Yet barbaric cruelty, ordered or sanctioned by the deity, is not always the main indictment. For many the numerous demands and constraints of religious teaching are enough to make God unpalatable. What a killjoy, they protest. He takes all the fun out of life. Who needs him? Who needs this nonsense about dietary laws and keeping holy the Sabbath -- dragging yourself out of bed every Sunday morning, even if Saturday’s fun kept you up till three? Sitting through services so boring you couldn’t stay awake even if you weren’t sleep-deprived?

Who can live by the impossible standards Christ preached? All this stuff about loving vicious enemies; turning the other cheek when someone hurts you, blessing those who curse you, lending with no expectation of repayment, going the extra mile for people who oppress you, forgiving a nasty relative 490 times (“seventy times seven”), feeling guilty of adultery if you cast a lustful glance at a woman, and defiled if you bed one out of wedlock.

Then the Church adds that you’re in mortal sin if you use a condom with your wife. It’s all so unnatural and extreme, they say, I’d be a neurotic if I tried to practice it. And I’d be psychotic if I feared that a sin or two would cast me into “outer darkness” where there’s “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Talk about fire and brimstone – it’s not for me. I not only don’t believe, I don’t want to believe!

An Alternative to Organized Religion?

These objections to religion are heartfelt. We can’t dismiss them lightly. Even weightier arguments can be made. And there are strong counterarguments to vindicate belief. I will not give them here. Instead I’ll propose an alternative to all organized religion -- yet one that organized religion should not object to. But if atheists don’t want to hear it, why bother?

[My next posting Pure Theism: Ponder It is a continuation of this piece.]

2010-05-21T05:06:00.000-07:00

“New Atheist” Challenge,

Believer Response

Shane Hayes

My friend is deeply versed in the New Atheist literature that is so in vogue among intellectuals. He states categorically: “There is no evidence -- zero evidence -- that God exists or that he created the universe.” For a moment I’m nonplussed. My mind draws a blank. I have loads of arguments, but… evidence? What does he want, footprints? Are there no clues?

Then the lawyer in me reflects: What is evidence? The Oxford English dictionary gives this definition: “evidence: 2. An indication, a sign... 3. Facts or testimony in support of a conclusion, statement, or belief… b. something serving as proof.” Evidence need not be proof. In the matters we’re examining, I see no evidence on either side that rises to the level of proof. But “facts in support of a conclusion or belief…” That we have.

A World of Evidence

To those who say there’s no evidence of a Creator-God I reply: The universe itself is evidence. Abundant and in many ways highly convincing evidence. It is a vast complex of facts that can be seen as supporting the belief that a Cosmic Mind exists. The appearance of inventive thought is everywhere in our universe, from the laws and patterns that govern the galaxies to the composition of matter.

If matter were simply a blob of undifferentiated clay, as it appears to the eye, it would be easier to suppose it just happened. But matter is composed of molecules, and molecules are composed of atoms. Even atoms are not simple -- they resemble a small solar system. The planetary model describes electrons “orbiting” a nucleus at the center, composed of positively charged particles called protons and electrically neutral particles called neutrons.

And there are subatomic particles: muons, pions, hyperons, mesons, baryons, and tachyons, to name a few. And then there are quarks. They come in six varieties, known as flavors: up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom. A proton is made of two up quarks and one down quark. Among the intrinsic properties of quarks are electric charge, color charge, spin, and mass.

The Miracle of Matter – and Mind

When I got to the level of quarks it hit me: The astoundingly complex structure of matter – which only brilliant scientists could discover and comprehend – is evidence of a Mind whose ingenuity far exceeds the human, One whose intellective fingerprints are all over the world. Maybe “a blob of glup” just happened. But the elegant architecture of the invisibly fine – of the atomic and subatomic realm -- is no accident. Natural selection does not explain it. There’s no Darwinian challenge to it. It’s simply there, and has been for fourteen billion years, since the dust settled after the Big Bang. One can’t help contemplate it with a wild surmise.

Our own species is the most prodigious and inscrutable facet of the entire cosmos. Human consciousness and its phenomenal achievements – scientific, philosophic, and cultural – are evidence (“signs, indications”) of a Cosmic Intellect whose creative exploits went beyond matter, with its micro wonders, to create the even more dazzling phenomenon of life; and beyond that to create consciousness; and beyond that to create a species of primate with peak specimens like Aristotle, Shakespeare, Newton, Michelangelo, Bach, and Einstein.

Unproven, Not Disproven

“No!” you shout. “That’s the old Argument from Design, resurrected in the lab of particle physics and dressed in the robes of genius. 200 years ago Paley argued that a watch requires a watchmaker. Now Hayes says, A genius is a Work of Genius. We’ve put all that behind us.” No, we haven’t. At most we’ve conceded that it’s not proof. It doesn’t compel belief. But we can’t deny it the status of evidence. Evidence of a highly probative kind.

The evidence is ambiguous. It may be variously interpreted. But it is evidence of something exceedingly hard to explain. We can disagree on what that something is: a cryptic force of nature, or a Cosmic Consciousness that stands apart from the awesome world it produced. A reasonable case can be made for either position. Let me sum up my take on the evidence with two questions I often ask:

Which View Is More Credible?

Did the Big Bang ultimately produce Plato, or did a cause more like Plato produce him? Did cosmic dust evolve into a great mind, or did a Great Mind produce the cosmos?

Viewed in that light I think the case for God is stronger than the case against. But since neither theist nor atheist has proof on this crucial issue, uncertainty is our fate. We can’t know. We can only believe – in God or in No God. We who choose God can legitimately cite the universe – at the macro and micro level -- as evidence.

2010-05-17T14:16:00.000-07:00

Do Billions Who Never Heard of God

Prove There Is None?

Shane Hayes

On 5/14/10 P. Coyle commented on my posting entitled How the Improbable God Probably Works, which appears below. I quote here part of what he asserted, rather eloquently, and then reply to it.

His Challenge

“Shane:

“You may care, and you may reach out to unbelievers, but you are not God. Reaching out always seems to require human agency…. [Mr. Coyle gives a list the vast multitudes who were not reached by Saint Paul’s missionary journeys, including over 100 million in China and on the Indian subcontinent. He also cites the “600 human generations… before the ancient Hebrews decided there was only one god, and that they were his chosen people.” He continues:]

“The number of people to whom the Christian God failed to reach out runs into the tens of billions. Why? I have my theory -- there was no God to do the reaching out. What's your theory? Why did the Christian God, who supposedly cares so profoundly that people believe that he exists, never bother to make known to so many the possibility of his existence?”

My response

P. C.,

Though I am a Christian I am not a Christian apologist. Many can defend Christianity better than I, so I generally speak here as a Pure Theist (to be defined in essays soon to be posted). My reflections on the Christian God may be unorthodox, but I’ll make a few as I argue the simpler case for a caring personal God.

You're right, God usually works through human agents. But he sometimes stirs the heart directly. Though even Christians admit that the Argument from Universal Belief is not conclusive, its premise is relevant here: “It is generally true that every people or tribe of men has had some kind of belief in a supreme being.” (Catholic Encyclopedia) Even you, P. C., might concede that the impulse to worship something greater than oneself has been widespread since the dawn of history and probably before. If the God of my hypothesis has implanted such a need and urge in humankind, he would allow for its expression in forms appropriate to the knowledge, opportunity, and mental capacity of each of his creatures.

A Pagan Aboriginal

If a tenth-century Australian aboriginal never heard of Christ or Yahweh, her kneeling down, extending her arms skyward in grateful wonder, and worshipping the sun would, for her, be as pleasing to my pure-theistic God (and I believe to the Judeo-Christian God) as attendance at a solemn high Mass.

If she stayed awake for long weary hours cradling her sick child, administering a potion of boiled roots believed to be medicinal, and intoning primitive incantations to the sun on his behalf, divine wisdom would see her as having fulfilled Christ’s two great commandments – to love God and love people – as admirably as Jairus, who implored Jesus directly on his daughter’s behalf.

The caring God of my hypothesis is not indifferent to any human creature of any era. Nor does he demand of the most afflicted and isolated, any more than their poor capacities and constricted circumstances allow them to do, be, or believe.

Blameless Ignorance

In judging moral culpability Church teaching contains the concept of “vincible and invincible ignorance” (ignorance that’s our own fault and ignorance that we can’t help). My tenth-century aboriginal was invincibly ignorant of everything proclaimed in the New Testament and therefore blameless for not believing in Jesus and his Gospel. She felt innate promptings to acknowledge a being of superhuman power, somehow related to her life, and responded by worshipping the sun. Her mate may have resisted those same promptings, and been unwilling to bestir himself, or sacrifice any comfort, to succor the suffering child.

A kind and omniscient God could apply the two great commandments to them, in their era and cultural milieu, as wisely and justly as he could apply them to me when, at age twenty, after fourteen years of Christian education, I renounced all I had once believed and became an atheist.

The All-Embracing Arms

God thus conceived could have existed through all the ages of the Earth, in the vast expanse of global cultures you point to, and had loving interactions with each of those nameless billions who groped toward him in their darkness. Though their literal concept of God was wrong, the earnestness of their effort to worship and connect was right.

Homage to a golden calf, by one who knew no better, might have been seen by a compassionate God as a metaphor for worshipping Him. And refusal to act on the worship impulse, by one who valued nothing beyond himself, might have been, in that time and culture, a metaphor for atheism. Was the One who inspired the Book of Genesis, whose Son called himself “the Lamb of God,” incapable of seeing truth in a metaphor?

This same large-hearted, all-seeing God could have planned and implemented an Incarnation, a Crucifixion, and a Resurrection, without excluding any who lived before or after them, from the ultimate beatitude of his love, unless they chose to exclude themselves. And those who exclude themselves, as I did, will feel persistent invitations – some silent, some quite audible – to return. He doesn’t give up on us lightly. Every time we glance at him he beckons.

Shane

2010-05-12T08:41:00.000-07:00

Thoughtful Challenges from Readers

In a May 9th comment Autumnal Harvest quoted me as saying: "That challenging fusion of belief with uncertainty is what makes faith a virtue." Then he asked: “Why is this a virtue? Normally holding a belief and acting on that belief, when there's insufficient evidence for it, is considered an error in judgment, not a virtue.”

In an April 28th comment P. Coyle said: “Here is a theological possibility for you to consider: What if the reason we don't know how God created the universe is not that we're too dumb to understand it, but because God does not want us to know? Would that not be consistent with your position, as the "believing agnostic," that we cannot know whether God exists? Doesn't your theology imply that, if we cannot know whether God exists, surely that must be because God doesn't want people to know that he exists?”

Both are thoughtful challenges. The following essay, which I wrote and posted before the questions were asked, explains why I see faith as a virtue and why I think God doesn't want people to know (be able to verify with certainty) that he exists.

How the Improbable God

Probably Works

A World View and a God Hypothesis

Shane Hayes

Here’s a world view in a thousand words – and it took me only fifty years to compose it. I offer it as a hypothesis – my effort to explain how God must think and act if we are to reconcile his existence with the world, and human life, as we find them. In part they are speculations about the mind, the values, and – to use a crude term for want of a better one – the personality of God. (If he is a person, must he not have a personality – “the complex of characteristics that distinguishes an individual”?) Assume each part is true till you get to the end. Then, when you view it whole, decide if it might possibly account for what we see and what may be behind it. For me it does.

The Personality of God

There is a cosmic intelligence, an all-powerful personal God who created the universe. The Big Bang, evolution, and natural selection may have been his modus operandi. His mind is infinite, and his methods are very subtle. A sense of humor is one of the finest aspects of human intelligence, so we should not suppose our creator is without one. Irony, and a predilection for the incongruous, the unexpected, the mysterious, and the imponderable are manifest in all his works.

He has made some of the greatest truths about his world – from the roundness of the earth, and the stillness of the sun, to his own invisible existence -- appear improbable. He reveals himself, but always under a cloak of ambiguity that lets us explain him away, if we want to. He does this not maliciously, but with a benevolent purpose that has something to do with freedom and what might be called soul making. His “heart” is as vast and limitless as his mind.

Man is the creature in whom he takes the greatest interest, because man is the most Godlike creature – the most able to reflect on his condition, and alter it by using his mind and his power of choice. Man is the only creature capable of knowing God and forming a relationship with him. The only creature with a sense of humor.

The Values of God

God loves all of his creation, especially man, and he has made man more capable of love than any other creature. He can love not only himself, his mate, and their offspring (as other mammals do), but a wide circle of other human beings – potentially all of them. And God made it possible for man to love him. He has made love crucial to a healthy human psyche. We are happiest when we love God and other people, but we are free not to.

Such choices are the essence of morality, and God constructed the universe around them. Despite the vast sweep of its galaxies, it is essentially a moral universe – designed to provide moral challenge and opportunity, to require moral striving, and to produce in every life a measurable degree of moral success and failure, which are of keen interest to God.

Our happiness is important, but must often be deferred. God is eternal – he takes the long view, and requires that we learn to. The long view includes both life, which is brief, and its Sequel, which is endless. Though the Sequel is infinitely larger than life, it’s as invisible as God, therefore easy to forget or not believe in.

Deceptive Appearances, Hidden Truths

God has filled his universe with ironies. The principal irony is that often things are not what they seem. Learning to deal with that is a great moral challenge. We must learn to “see” the invisible, to “hear” the inaudible, to grasp what we can’t touch, and to believe what we can’t prove. The most important reality is God, but he’s hidden from us. Deliberately, maddeningly, and distressingly hidden. The shining Sequel to life -- its fulfillment, point, and purpose -- is so out of sight as to be generally out of mind, even for those who expect it.

God has made it possible for man to know a great many things with certainty. We know obvious things by simple observation. Much that is hidden can be learned by study, experiment, and the exercise of reason. At its best, reason is so amazing that we’re tempted to think it’s the only human faculty that can lead us to truth. In fact, it can lead us to only certain kinds of truth: practical, theoretic, scientific. But the ultimate truth – interpersonal and mystical -- is quite beyond its reach. We can reason to the possibility of God, but he has strewn other possibilities in our path, so that certainty about his existence and our origin cannot be had.

Unprovable, but not Unreachable

Dealing with this uncertainty is another moral challenge. God has made himself not only hidden but unprovable. The only way to connect with him is by believing what we can’t know. Those are his terms and we must accept them or reject him. When reason brings us to God’s threshold (he is one possibility among several), other faculties must carry us across, and if we disdain them we’ll never reach him. They may work in this sequence. Hope says, “I wish there were a God; I want there to be a God; I hope there is a God.” Love says, “I find the idea of God wonderfully appealing; I love the idea of God; I love the possibility of God.” Then faith says, “I extend my hand into the darkness; I believe in God” -- and the divine connection is made!

Humility and Truth

The ancient mystic who wrote The Cloud of Unknowing said: “By love he may be gotten and holden, but by thought, never.” John said, “God is love.” The atheist Bertrand Russell said, “Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence,” to justify his unbelief. Believing requires not only an act of faith but an act of humility. The prouder we are of our intellect, of its superiority to lesser minds, and of the dazzling science it produced, the harder it is to humble ourselves and believe. Yet the Designer of the Universe arranged it so that he, his ultimate truth, and life’s shining Sequel can be found only by the humble and believing.

We cannot accept his love unless we acknowledge his existence. We can brush aside the outstretched hand. He will neither compel faith, nor make it unnecessary. On those terms, we can take him or leave him. Receive his embrace or turn away. Our decision is our fate.

2010-05-07T18:56:00.000-07:00

Believing Without Proof

Shane Hayes

“You can’t be both a believer in God and an agnostic,” I am told.

“Well then,” I reply, “which am I not? Because I think I’m both. I believe in a personal God who created the world and cares about his creatures, and I pray to him daily – often hourly. Am I not a believer?”

“If you say so, I guess you are. But then you’re not an agnostic.”

There, I think, is the nub of the dispute. Most people think an agnostic is one who does not believe in God. And most people who call themselves agnostics probably don’t. But agnosticism per se does not exclude belief. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines “agnostic” as: “A person who holds the view that nothing can be known of the existence of God or of anything beyond material phenomena.”

“Agnostic” Does Not Mean “Unbeliever”

Here's my simple working definition: “An agnostic is one who says we can’t know whether there is a God or not. His existence can’t be proven, and it can’t be disproven.” This does not conflict with the more formal language, above. To state, as OED does, that nothing can be known of the existence of God is not to say God doesn’t exist. It speaks of the limits of our knowledge, not the limits of reality.

OED gives eleven definitions of “know.” The one most on point for us – and most revealing -- is the tenth: “Comprehend as fact or truth; understand with clearness and certainty. Freq[uently] opp[osed to] Believe." To know is to have certainty, and that’s often seen as the opposite of believing. To say we can’t know of the existence of God is not to say we can’t believe in it. I say we can’t know of the existence of God, which makes me an agnostic. But I believe in it – very strongly.

A. Philosophical Position

We’re not just parsing words here; we’re touching on the complexity of human nature and a distinction (almost a dichotomy) that even philosophers often miss. We are many-faceted creatures. When my rational mind – after utmost exertion -- concludes that we can’t know whether there is a God or not, that his existence can’t be either proven or disproven, my mind has done all it can. In terms of philosophical position I’m an agnostic.

B. Personal Belief

But it doesn’t end there -- because I’m not a disembodied mind. I’m a human being with a physical, emotional, social, and – I submit – even a spiritual life. Here I am, on an obscure planet, adrift on the great sea of time, trying to figure out who and what I am and where I’m going, in the short term and the long term. And wondering if the long term ever ends. I have to move on. Get from here to there. Plot a course, form strategies, make assumptions, and draw conclusions from limited evidence. In evaluating my situation, mundane and cosmic, the question of whether God exists has profound relevance. Philosophy and science don’t answer it. In that department I’m an agnostic. But the imperatives of a reflective human life require that I form an opinion on what I can’t know, that I proceed as if there is a personal and loving God or as if there is not.

At age twenty I came to believe that there was no God. That was my chosen creed. So I was an agnostic philosophically, and an atheist in personal belief. Years later, without changing my philosophical position, I embraced theism and later still the Christian faith. So I am in fact an agnostic and a Christian.

Proof-Claiming Theists

Do I contend that agnosticism is the only right philosophical view and that everyone, including Christians, Jews, and Muslims, should be philosophically agnostic? Here I’m a little inconsistent. I do hold that agnosticism is the most reasonable view. But if believers in God think they can prove his existence, I won’t argue against them. I would be glad if they’re right and I’m wrong. I will argue against atheist claims that they can prove God does not exist. As one who has chosen to believe, I have a strong bias in favor of the God hypothesis. I would not impose it on anyone, but I will defend its reasonableness against attacks.

Uncertainty and Faith

The last point I will make here is important though not novel. The essence of believing is to hold as true what you cannot prove. OED in its nine definitions of “believe” uses such phrases as “have confidence or faith in… hold an opinion, think… give credence to… hold as true the existence of….” All imply an element of uncertainty.

We don’t believe in the existence of the house we live in. We know it’s there; our senses confirm its reality. We don’t believe in the law of gravity. We experience and deal with it all the time. I contend that we can’t believe in God if God’s existence is an absolute certainty. If that were so, we would be knowers, not believers, and our religion would be a body of knowledge, not a faith. When in the gospels Jesus urged people to believe, he was asking them to hold as true something unproven – often something that seemed incredible. That challenging fusion of belief with uncertainty is what makes faith a virtue. And it should make believers tolerant of philosophical agnosticism, even if they think God’s existence as provable as gravity.

2010-05-03T07:30:00.000-07:00

Admitting Our Uncertainty

Shane Hayes

[This responds to remarks by P. Coyle that appear in the Comments section below my posting entitled “Magic: Divine and Human.”]

P. Coyle,

In your comment you quote me as saying, "As an agnostic I renounce pontificating." Then you say: “And yet you offer, not explanation, but pontification. You offer the vision of ‘a supremely intelligent and powerful Being (who) may have been the First Cause who produced the singularity and all that proceeded from it,’ even though you could not ‘explain how this Divine Reality, which exists outside of time, space, and the material world, could make matter out of nothing.’ Yada, yada, yada.”

My reply: To pontificate, as I use that term, is to say “my explanation is right and yours is not even an explanation.” But to say, as I do, that “yours is a valid explanation, one that can be rationally be held, and mine is too; that reasonable minds may differ in choosing between them; that you may be right and I may be wrong,” is to avoid pontificating.

In “Magic: Divine and Human” I made this statement: “I don’t claim to know that God created the universe. I do claim that is a possible, and not irrational, explanation of its origin.” I said later: “It is reasonable to say that you reject the theistic hypothesis, based on any of several arguments. I think it unreasonable to claim that a transcendent power and mind, like the God I describe, cannot possibly account for the origin of the universe.”

Agnosticism and Humility

There are atheists who do not pontificate, and others who do. There are theists who do not pontificate, and others who do. Philosophical agnosticism says: “We can’t know whether there is a God or not. His existence can’t be proven, and it can’t be disproven.” That proposition is, it seems to me, profoundly true. It is also humbling and conducive to civil and fruitful conversation about the kind of issues we debate on this blog.

If I became acerbic in “Magic: Divine and Human” (regrettably, I did), it was not in declaring the atheist position wrong, but in challenging this assertion -- that the Divine First-Cause Argument is not an explanation at all. It has been viewed as one by serious minds for centuries, and neither particle physics nor the Hubble Telescope has diminished its relevance, vigor, or logical force.

Powerful as I think the argument is, I respect your right to reject it. It’s a reason to believe, not a proof.

Shane

2010-04-30T06:48:00.000-07:00

More Plausible than God?

Shane Hayes

[This responds to remarks by Autumnal Harvest that appear in the Comments section below my posting entitled “Is God an Explanation?”.]

Autumnal Harvest,

In your comment you said: ‘[I]f my car breaks down, does saying that it broke down because "God did it" meet your criteria for being an explanation? Does it make the breakdown of your car "more comprehensible"? Does it "offer reasons for" the breakdown of your car? For me, it does not, and I don't see what criteria you've given that distinguishes this case from the origin of the universe case. I understand, of course, that you think that the breakdown of your car is not due to a "First Cause," but what I'm asking is what criteria you have for an "explanation" that makes "God did it" an explanation for the origin of the universe, but (presumably?) not for the breakdown of your car.’

Natural Limitations: Transcend Them

My Answer:

Saying “God did it” for the breakdown of your car would be an explanation but a bad one, because there are better explanations for that occurrence – blocked carburetor, faulty fuel pump, dead battery. For the origin of the universe (where did the singularity come from?) there is no better explanation than “an infinite mind and will created it.” In fact, there is none as good.

I never insist on a supernatural explanation when a natural explanation is will do. Even New Atheist Victor Stenger said this in his book “God: The Failed Hypothesis”: “If no plausible natural explanation can be found for an observation, then a supernatural cause may be considered.” (p. 262). That’s simple logic.

In reflecting on the Big Bang singularity in an earlier posting “The Greatest Scientific Mind” I said:

“A magic particle, smaller than an atom, that contained the whole universe. Did it simply spring into being, charged with potentiality so stupendous that all space and time, all matter and energy – all of natural and human history – were compressed in this invisible unmeasurable inexplicable seed? Is there a work of science fiction that rivals the imaginative genius of that plot premise? Are we to believe it had no Author?”

“First” Means Uncaused

And, yes, the Author had to be eternal, uncreated, uncaused, in order to be the First Cause. But that’s not natural, you say. No, it’s not. It’s supernatural. Without an uncaused supernatural starting point, you have an endless chain of secondary causes – an infinite regress -- and common sense regurgitates an infinite regress. Ergo… God.

You may, like Stenger, prefer to think that the singularity popped out of nothing, that nothing caused something; that ultimately nothing caused everything. Would you call that a natural explanation – or a supernatural explanation? Or an unnatural explanation? Whichever, can you seriously argue that nothing is more plausible than God? Maybe we can agree on this statement, though we inflect it to have opposite meanings:

Nothing is more plausible than God.

Shane P.S. Nothing!

2010-04-27T09:58:00.000-07:00

Is God an Explanation?

Shane Hayes

[This responds to remarks by Autumnal Harvest, and some by P. Coyle, that appear in the Comments section below my posting entitled “Magic: Divine and Human.”]

A. H. and P.C.,

Welcome back. You ask me to say “what constitutes an explanation.” American Heritage Dictionary gives this definition: “explain: 1. to make plain or comprehensible… 3. To offer reasons for; justify.” The God hypothesis does make the origin of the universe comprehensible; more comprehensible, for me, than any other explanation I have heard. It does offer reasons for:

(1) the existence of a material world, which once did not exist;

(2) the complex structure of the cosmos, the laws that govern it, and even of the atom (that structure appears to be the work of a brilliant inventor and, on the God hypothesis, it is).

It throws light on the purpose of the cosmos, of human consciousness, and of the human struggle to prevail over adversity and even death.

The Only Rational Way Out

So the God hypothesis is an explanation as dictionaries define one. It is not a scientific explanation, which is the kind you seem to demand (“the mechanism by which the universe came to be…”). It does not give a progression of mechanical details, because a transcendent Being is not accessible to the empirical method. You can apply that method, I contend, to every cause but the First Cause, which by its nature is uncaused. An uncaused First Cause is the only way out of an infinite regress of secondary causes (A was cause by B, which was caused by C, which was caused by D, etc., etc. ad infinitum). Science can deal only with such “secondary causes.”

If there is the First Cause that Aquinas and others have posited, he is beyond the probing techniques of science. To the extent he can be explained at all, it must be by non-empirical speculative disciplines like philosophy and theology. And no, they don’t provide scientifically verifiable certainty. As a Believing Agnostic I contend that on the ultimate questions such certainty cannot be had. Since we can’t know what is true, we must either take no position, or one that is in essence an opinion, which is to say, a belief. Theism is a belief. Atheism too is a belief.

First Cause Durability

Unlike attacks on evolutionary theory, the First Cause argument is not a “God of the Gaps” argument. It aims not at weak links in the scientific chain, but at the foundation of all reality. Nor does it depend on the Big Bang theory being true. Aristotle toyed with it in the fourth century B. C. Aquinas refined and solidified it in the thirteenth century A. D. It applied equally to the geocentric theory of Ptolemy (d. 165 A.D.), to the heliocentric theory of Copernicus 1400 years later, and to the “steady state” cosmological model that was eclipsed by Lemaitre’s Big Bang hypothesis. I have applied it to Big Bang theory because that is now the most widely accepted cosmological view.

If Big Bang dies with a whimper, its successor will face the same dilemma: An infinite regress of secondary causes is the only alternative to a First Cause. New Atheist Victor Stenger has recently argued that the universe, or the singularity it came from, may have popped out of nothing in the natural course of things. Well, that’s one way out of an infinite regress. Proponents of the God hypothesis say the world was created from nothing. Now a New Atheist says it was created by nothing. Stenger is right to this extent: When you look for a First-Cause that is not a Divine Intelligence you find… nothing.

Shane

2010-04-16T16:19:00.000-07:00

Magic: Divine and Human

Shane Hayes

P. Coyle,

This response is to the first comment you made on this blog, under “Does Atheism Break Down Here?” Welcome to The Believing Agnostic.

You quoted me as saying, "A supremely complex cosmic intelligence, existing from all eternity, does not require a bigger explanation. Nor does it ‘explain nothing.’ In fact, it explains everything about the origin of the universe. It’s the most adequate explanation there can be. It’s where the need for an explanation ends."

Then you said: “I disagree. It does indeed explain nothing, because the ‘explanation’ is, at bottom, ‘It was magic.’ Invoking magic, and leaving it at that, is not an explanation. To have a genuine explanation, you need to be able to specify how the trick was performed. But this is precisely the kind of explanation that you not only cannot provide, but that you seem to think is rendered superfluous by invoking a ‘supremely complex intelligence, existing from all eternity.’"

Rhetoric Versus Substance

First, Mr. Coyle, we must separate rhetoric from substance. Belittling an idea by expressing it pejorative words is not genuine refutation. For example, on atheist websites I often see God referred to as “the Sky Fairy.” No one wants to admit he buys into fairy tales, so poorly fortified theists may be nudged away from theism, and atheists who use the term feel less threatened by the substance of theistic arguments. This is not a high order of rational discourse.

You said, my first-cause “‘explanation’ is, at bottom, ‘It was magic.’ Invoking magic, and leaving it at that, is not an explanation.”

Throwing the word “magic” at the First-Cause argument is like calling God a Sky Fairy. It may be rhetorically effective, in a superficial way, but it clouds the issue, obfuscates, sheds no light. Magic has a number of meanings associated with superstition, sorcery, casting spells, and trickery. No serious theist, least of all this one, has any time for that, and I think you know it. But Webster also gives this definition:

“magic: (2) an extraordinary power or influence seemingly from a supernatural source.”

Creation and Mystery

Now, that definition of “magic” is not incompatible with rational discourse. The God I believe in, and hypothesize for this argument, is a non-material being, which is to say a spirit, of immense intellect and power, able to conceive of our physical universe – a thing apart from himself -- and then make it real in space and time. The existence of the universe, with its astounding variety, complexity, and inconceivable dimensions, may be seen as manifesting “an extraordinary power… seemingly from a supernatural source.” To the extent that “magic” means wrought by supernatural power, beyond the reach or comprehension of man, yes, there was a magical quality to divine creation.

You also said: “To have a genuine explanation, you need to be able to specify how the trick was performed. But this is precisely the kind of explanation that you not only cannot provide, but that you seem to think is rendered superfluous by invoking a ‘supremely complex intelligence, existing from all eternity.’”

I must point out that science itself often cannot “specify how the trick was performed.” They don’t know what caused the singularity to exist in such extreme densities or temperatures, or to detonate with a big bang when it did, 13.7 billion years ago; they can only speculate. Nor do they know how the singularity became imbued with the DNA, so to speak, the cosmic genetic map, that blossomed into our universe – and ourselves. That is shrouded in mystery, but the big bang is still deemed a valid explanation.

Philosophical Versus Scientific Explanation

I don’t claim to know that God created the universe. I do claim that is a possible, and not irrational, explanation of its origin. A supremely intelligent and powerful Being may have been the First Cause who produced the singularity and all that proceeded from it. If that were the case, the divine intellect might be so vastly superior to the human that we could not penetrate its depths or grasp its methods. (Can divine fiat even be called a “method”?) Nor could we explain how this Divine Reality, which exists outside of time, space, and the material world, could make matter out of nothing.

Our inability to “specify how the trick was performed” in no way invalidates the hypothesis. If the nature of the case prevents a more detailed explanation (a scientific one), a philosophical explanation has to suffice. Some things are beyond the reach of science, galling as that may be. We must take the universe as we find it. If at its root there is a transcendent God who works in mysterious ways, all of us – even scientists – must live with that. To say it can’t be that way, because science demands a universe fully accessible to its methods and explicable by its theories, is puerile. If science can probe and fathom every cause but the First Cause, it still has a very grand portfolio.

It is reasonable to say that you reject the theistic hypothesis, based on any of several arguments. I think it unreasonable to claim that a transcendent power and mind, like the God I describe, cannot possibly account for the origin of the universe. We should be able to reject each other’s explanations – challenge their logic and premises – without denying that they are explanations.

Atheism and Infallibility

As an agnostic I renounce pontificating. I wish more atheists would do the same. To paraphrase an economic proverb: There are two kinds of philosophers: Those who don’t know whether God made the universe, and those who don’t know that they don’t know. The former – both theists and atheists – are content to believe (in God, or in No God). The latter – pontificating atheists -- speak with oracular certainty. How can they be so sure of the unknowable? Have they some… magic?

2010-04-12T13:44:00.000-07:00

What’s Left for God to Do?

Shane Hayes

[In his long comment under my “Notice to First-Time Visitors” Wayne said, in part: “I am currently reading Finding Darwin’s God by Kenneth R. Miller. I highly recommend this book. He very astutely shows how evolution stands the test of time, but he also shows sensitivity to religion.”]

Wayne,

I like the thrust of the first passage you quote from Miller’s book, but I’m struck by how completely he contradicts it in the second quoted passage. It’s almost as if he changed his mind in the interval between writing them. He ends up in the same camp as the New Atheists he initially rebukes. Miller seems to say the New Atheists are wrong to proclaim, based on science, that there is no God, BUT “we are a practical species interested in getting results,” so they are right, after all. His second thought is weaker than his first, and there’s no logic in his reversal of position. Our being a practical species doesn’t mean God is a delusion.

In his latter passage he says, “Science works because it is based on causality.” I agree. Then he says, “We can exclude the spiritual as the immediate cause for any event in nature by showing how that event is determined in material terms.” I concede even that (accent on immediate cause), but with one exception. Science may explain every natural event, but it cannot answer the question, “Why does nature exist? Why is there a world – ‘something instead of nothing’?”

God’s Contribution to Science

The God I believe in created the universe to contain, in its structure and functioning, all the laws and forces that govern it. Those laws and forces produced nature’s greatest marvel, the human mind, capable of art, philosophy, and scientific inquiry. Divine intervention is not needed to explain why the seasons change, why volcanoes erupt, why earthquakes occur, why energy can change form while its quantity in a closed system remains constant (the First Law of Thermodynamics), or why time brings disorder to isolated systems (the Second Law of Thermodynamics). Those fall into the category of secondary causation, and science can explain them without reference to the transcendent.

A Trifle Scientists Overlook

Miller ends by asking rhetorically: “Could there be anything left for God to do?” I reply, “Yes. Create the universe!” Here the question is primary causation. In a recent posting I said this:

“Even if every gap were filled, every scientific question answered, the philosophical conundrum would remain: Do these explanations merely tell us how the Cosmic Intellect did its work, or do they explain God away? Where did the infinitely dense “singularity” come from, the “point of zero volume” that exploded with a Big Bang at the birth of the universe? The singularity caused the Big Bang, but what caused the singularity?

“A magic particle, smaller than an atom, that contained the whole universe. Did it simply spring into being, charged with potentiality so stupendous that all space and time, all matter and energy – all of natural and human history – were compressed in this invisible unmeasurable inexplicable seed? Is there a work of science fiction that rivals the imaginative genius of that plot premise? Are we to believe it had no Author?

Two Explanations: Take Your Pick

“Can you seriously ascribe it to chemical randomness or blind chance? And if you can, is that the best theory? Is it more likely that some arcane chemical quirk caused the singularity and its infinite consequences, or that an immense intellect conceived these wonders and had the power to make them real in time and space? A chemical quirk, or a dazzling intellect? Which better explains? (At moments like this, I confess, my agnosticism is shaken. But it will recover.)”

Those three paragraphs are from my essay The Greatest Scientific Mind, posted on 3/5/2010. I suggest you scroll down and read it to see the argument in context.

Shane

2010-04-06T07:28:00.000-07:00

Notice to First-Time Visitors

Shane Hayes

The main business of this blog is to engage in civil and rational debate with atheists and unbelieving agnostics about the existence of God. The New Atheists have convinced thousands of educated readers that theism is neither true nor intellectually respectable. I show here – in my agnostic way -- that believing in God is a rational, intelligent, prudent, and practical option. I invite readers to agree or disagree, and to comment on what they read. A comment may be lengthy or as short as short as one word: “Yes!” or “No!” "Right" or "Wrong." "Good" or "Awful."

I am a Christian. And I am an agnostic. I hold as true what cannot yet be verified. An agnostic is one who says we can’t know whether there is a God or not. His existence can’t be proven, and it can’t be disproven. That is a philosophical position. Though we can’t know, we can form a personal belief. Mine is theistic and Christian. Many of my readers are also philosophically agnostic, but their personal belief is atheistic (few will admit it’s a belief and not a scientific certainty).

My Limited Goal

I don’t generally argue for Christianity here; I leave that to others. My specialty is doing part of their job -- advocating one step out of atheism. It may be the first of many steps, as it was for me, or it may be the only one. In any case it’s transformative and far better than none. I call it Pure Theism. Read my various postings, especially the next few, and you’ll see what I mean by the term and the case I make for it.

Caring Critics Needed

Sometimes I’ll comment on current issues affecting Christianity or one of its branches, e. g., the Catholic Church. I love the Church as I love my children and as my parents loved me. At times it is the part of love to criticize and even castigate, as Christ did his disciples, and as even Paul upbraided Peter. The human element of the Church is not above reproach, nor are its policies and practices, as distinguished from its doctrines. I hope Catholic readers will bear this in mind: Even when I speak harshly I speak out of love for a great and venerable institution. The next posting, "The 'Third Rail' of Church Policy Making," is an example of this.

To those who say, "Who are you, to criticize?" I reply: One who invites criticism of everything he says. There's a comment box at the end of each posting.

2010-04-06T07:05:00.000-07:00

The “Third Rail” of Church Policy Making

(A Letter to Three Friends)

John K, John F, and Peter F,

Caveat: I express strong views in this letter, and I express them in language that may be found abrasive. The views themselves, even if stated in mild terms, would deeply offend some whose feelings and friendship I value. I’ve clenched my teeth for a few days, but I feel compelled to test those friendships again.

The article you sent me was balanced and, I think, fair. Pope Benedict in his papal role evokes much less fondness than John Paul II did. Benedict has been as weak in dealing with the pedophilia scandal as his predecessor, and as unwilling to seriously castigate its perpetrators. John Paul II rewarded Cardinal Law with a position of dignity in Rome after he was run out of Boston, and Benedict rewards the Irish primate by leaving him in office despite a clamor for his removal.

The article didn’t even mention the issue of mandatory celibacy, on which Benedict won’t yield an inch. Cardinal Schonborn of Vienna had the courage to write in his archdiocese magazine that the Vatican should carry out an “unflinching examination” of the causes of the sex scandal, including “the issue of priests training,… question of priest celibacy, and the question of personality development. It requires a great deal of honesty, both on the part of the Church and of society as a whole.”

Silence Imposed

What was Benedict’s response? That kind of honesty is off limits. “The Vatican said the remarks [by Schonborn] had been misinterpreted.” Cardinal Hummes said, “Priestly celibacy is a gift of the Holy Spirit.” (What does that mean?!? How is the mandatory lifelong frustration of nature’s strongest urge, to mate and reproduce, with the loneliness and maladjustment it inflicts on many, be called “a gift.” It’s more like a punishment. Call it a sacrifice to the Holy Spirit, if you wish, but don’t call it a gift from Him. If it were really a gift, there would be no need to require that every priest accept it, like it or not.)

Cardinal Schonborn caved in. Through his spokesman he issued “a clarification” (read “retraction”) later, claiming that the cardinal was not “in any way seeking to question the Catholic Church’s celibacy rule.” (This does not speak highly of clerical regard for the truth: he meant to do exactly that.) The Times reported that “Sources in Rome said he had been obliged to issue his ‘clarification’ under pressure from the Holy See.”

Hot Issue Must Be Aired

I am greatly disturbed by that silencing of Cardinal Schonborn. Mandatory celibacy for male clergy and nuns is not a doctrine, not a matter of faith and morals, on which the Pope is deemed infallible. It is a matter of Church policy on which he has no right (though he has the power) to muzzle and censor opposing views. I see this as papal tyranny. The issue of celibacy is crucial to the revival – perhaps even the long-term survival -- of the church. Strong arguments can be made that it’s a major flaw in the screening process that has led to a clergy in which homosexuality and pedophilia are more common than they should be, and a major factor in the drastic decline of vocations in the last half century.

Counter-arguments can be made, of course. The point is that the issue needs to be aired and argued. The ecclesiastical power structure, with Benedict XVI at its head, continues its refusal to let it be freely and openly discussed by the laity and hierarchy of the Church, at a Church-sponsored forum.

I make this bold suggestion: Widespread aberrant sexual behavior by priests, conspiracy by the hierarchy to cover it up and protect perpetrators, the ruinous financial losses this causes to the Church and its lay contributors, a drastic decline of vocations to the priesthood and religious life, and the belief by many priests and laymen that mandatory celibacy is at least an aggravating factor in all these problems – these should be at the core of an agenda for a Third Vatican Council. And they couldn’t convene it too soon.

Shane

2010-03-11T10:33:00.000-08:00

Does Atheism Break Down Here?

Shane Hayes

[This is a reply to a reader’s comment on my posting “The Greatest Scientific Mind.” The full text of his comment can be found by clicking “comments” under that essay, which appears below.]

Autumnal Harvest,

Richard Dawkins makes the precise argument you advanced in your comment. In Chapter 4 of The God Hypothesis he says: “… the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer. The whole problem we started out with was the problem of explaining statistical improbability. It is obviously no solution to postulate something even more improbable.”

In the margin beside that statement I wrote: “But can’t we explain something complex and amazing (the play Hamlet) by pointing to a cause even more complex and amazing (Shakespeare)?”

In the same chapter Dawkins says: “To suggest that the first cause, the great unknown which is responsible for something existing instead of nothing, is a being capable of designing the universe and of talking to a million people simultaneously, is a total abdication of the responsibility to find an explanation. It is… thought-denying skyhookery.”

Hiding Weakness with Rhetoric

That is a rhetorically forceful statement; many are convinced by it. But if you examine it closely it is not a refutation of the First Cause argument – it is mere intellectual name calling with no rational substance. Pasting the label “abdication” and “skyhookery” on a solid argument that threatens his position, shows how weak the position is, and how illogically Dawkins, for all his brilliance, tries to hide such weaknesses.

To say the wondrous world could not have had a still more wondrous creator is to deny the obvious. An inventor is greater than his machine. DaVinci was greater than his paintings. To say the more wondrous creator must have had a creator is simply untrue. The argument that a creator must have had a creator, who must have had a creator, who must have had a creator, etc., etc., ad infinitum, is to involve oneself in an infinite regress, which keeps begging the question and solves nothing.

A Rational Way Out

The only way out of an infinite regress is to posit that it stops somewhere, and that the end-of-regress is the First Cause of all that is, itself uncaused. Yes, there could have been a starting point, a Being that always existed, before time began, whose intelligence and powers are not limited, as ours are, but are vast beyond our imagining. Who created the universe and set it in motion, perhaps by making the singularity that exploded with a Big Bang, giving birth to the galaxies, our planet, life, evolution, and all of history, human and natural. That kind of an all-sufficient starting point in no way violates logic. In fact logic requires it. And common sense regurgitates the theory of an infinite regress.

Dawkins, again in Chapter 4, says that “any God capable of designing a universe… tuned to lead to our evolution, must be a supremely complex and improbable entity who needs an even bigger explanation than the one he is supposed to provide.”

Again, that’s flatly untrue. A supremely complex cosmic intelligence, existing from all eternity, does not require a bigger explanation. Nor does it “explain nothing.” In fact, it explains everything about the origin of the universe. It’s the most adequate explanation there can be. It’s where the need for an explanation ends. You may not like it. If you hate the idea of God you’ll hate the argument. But don’t say it explains nothing, and smear graffiti on it like “abdication” and “skyhook.”

Help!

In fact, it’s such a powerful and comprehensive argument, I’m not sure how we get around it. Is infinite regress the best we can do? Or is “the singularity just happened” the best? Is there a real rebuttal? Help me! My agnosticism is tottering. This looks like a proof.

The Believing Agnostic

2010-03-04T08:36:00.000-08:00

The Greatest Scientific Mind

by Shane Hayes

[This is a reply to a reader’s comment on my posting “Is God’s Existence Improbable?” The full text of his comment can be found by clicking “comments” under that essay, which appears below. I quote here only the last paragraph of it.]

Autumnal Harvest,

Your algebraic way of expressing thoughts and arguments is interesting and impressive. Alas, my poor brain is so unmathematical that I can't reply in kind.

The point of my essay is simply that the improbability argument cuts both ways. I don't claim that because science has not accounted for the existence of life and consciousness, the God hypothesis must be true. I merely say that to embrace that hypothesis is a rational choice, no more improbable than life occurring by chemical accident, and to my mind more credible. The New Atheists talk as if they have an absolutely sure thing (Stenger and Harris) or a virtually sure thing (Dawkins), and that the pro-faith position is “delusion.” My essay contends that their attitude is arrogant, and their assessment of the probabilities is so unbalanced as to be, well, self-delusion.

You misread me if you think I’m offering a God-of-the-Gaps proof for God’s existence. I'm an agnostic. I don't attempt proof. I do have the impudence to point out weaknesses in the case for God’s nonexistence (despite the ire this arouses in Dawkins et al). I applaud science’s efforts to fill the gaps; most scientific advances improve the human condition. I’m pro-science. It’s no threat to my faith.

God and Einstein

Even if every gap were filled, every scientific question answered, the philosophical conundrum would remain: Do these explanations merely tell us how the Cosmic Intellect did its work, or do they explain God away? Where did the infinitely dense “singularity” come from, the “point of zero volume” that exploded with a Big Bang at the birth of the universe? The singularity caused the Big Bang, but what caused the singularity?

A magic particle, smaller than an atom, that contained the whole universe. Did it simply spring into being, charged with potentiality so stupendous that all space and time, all matter and energy – all of natural and human history – were compressed in this invisible unmeasurable inexplicable seed? Is there a work of science fiction that rivals the imaginative genius of that plot premise? Are we to believe it had no Author?

Can you seriously ascribe it to chemical randomness or blind chance? And if you can, is that the best theory? Is it more likely that some arcane chemical quirk caused the singularity and its infinite consequences, or that an immense intellect conceived these wonders and had the power to make them real in time and space? A chemical quirk, or a dazzling intellect? Which better explains? (At moments like this, I confess, my agnosticism is shaken. But it will recover.)

Lemaitre -- with help from Einstein, Friedmann, and Hubble -- gave us the Big Bang theory, but he didn’t give us the Big Bang. That required creativity of a higher order.

The God of my hypothesis is not the paper tiger – the intellectual primitive – atheists delight in attacking, based on a literal view of Genesis. The God I believe in had a scientific mind as superior to Newton’s and Einstein’s as theirs were to the Neanderthal. Which is greater, the mind that propounds grand theories, or the Mind that produced the mind -- and the universe the theorizing mind explains? I don’t pray to the God of the Gaps but to the God of the Gestalt, the God of the Totality. I can’t prove him, but his existence is eminently credible. And highly probable.

The Sovereignty of Hope

The last paragraph in your comment said: “As for life after death, I wouldn't say that there's evidence against it, or that I have any meaningful way of assessing the probability of life after death. I would just say that generally before one believes in statement Z, we require more than a statement that no one has shown Z to be impossible - we generally require positive evidence for Z.”

Even if there were no evidence of life after death (there is some), the possibility is so intriguing – it would make so vast a difference -- that to hope for it is neither irrational nor unjustified. If true (and it well might be) think how it transforms our perception of ourselves, our universe, and our future!

I know of a writer who showed no evidence of talent, but hoped it was there, acted on unsubstantiated hope for decades, and finally saw it materialize. If he had not staked his future on hope alone as a starting point, it would never have been fulfilled. So with forming a view of the universe, of the origin and destiny of human life: Clues of the divine abound; yet were there none, a real possibility, even without evidence, can justify hope. And life with hope is better than life without it.

Shane

2010-02-24T06:07:00.000-08:00

Is God’s Existence Improbable?

Does Probability Matter?

Shane Hayes

In our talks about the existence of God my atheist friends nearly always say something to this effect: “My feelings have nothing to do with this. Yours clearly do, and you admit it. But mine don’t. I just weigh the evidence and seek the truth.”

Among several important things I can’t prove but am convinced of is this: In deciding whether or not to believe in God, no one, on either side of the issue, is completely objective. Nor should one be, since the arguments are weighty on both sides, and neither proves its case. Evidence and logic leave us dangling. In forming an opinion on what is unknowable, personal considerations become relevant, even determinative.

Where evidence is overwhelming we should sweep our feelings aside. For example: The proposition that all men are mortal and doomed to die is unpleasant to contemplate. When we look at a mortally ill person, ravaged by disease, or a desiccated body at a viewing, the thought that their fate will inevitably be ours is grim and morbid. Yet every rational person disregards his emotional preferences and believes that gruesome truth. A mountain of historical evidence, actuaries, the obituary pages, and our own observation, all confirm that death is the terminus of every human life.

But does human consciousness survive death, and if so in what form? Now, there is a question for which we have almost no observable evidence. True, the lifeless body shows no signs of consciousness and never will again. Neural science has discovered much about the connection between awareness, perception, reasoning, and various parts of the brain. Does the fact of those connections during life prove that consciousness apart from them is impossible after death?

Is our knowledge of All That Is so complete that there can be no dimension of it in which human consciousness exists unmoored to a body? Might that possibility depend on whether the material universe (whose existence science can’t explain) had a nonphysical cause -- an omnipotent mind outside the world, who created it? If an infinite intelligence is the uncreated source and inventor of matter, himself independent of it, might he not want his human creatures to exist independent of it too, when their mortal moral life has ended?

When Evidence Is Fragmentary

Here we move into a realm in which evidence is absent, ambiguous, or inconclusive, so answers must be conjectural -- a combination of guesswork and surmise. Rationality cites facts and makes arguments but admits in the end: I can’t be sure. Some shrug and leave it at that, taking no position, forming no opinion. But to move from indecision to belief in either direction, as most of us do, we must either flip a coin or weigh factors that are not purely rational. Though we hate to admit it, our feelings come into play – and they should.

“Not so,” my atheist friend insists. “I base my conclusion on assessing the probabilities. That’s a quantitative judgment which has nothing to do with emotion. God’s existence is so extremely improbable that atheism is the only rational choice.”

But how improbable is the alternative to God? Science admits it doesn’t know how life began. The odds against spontaneous generation of life, by random events, are staggering. Not only must non-living chemical matter come alive, it must just happen to contain the kind of DNA or RNA necessary to reproduce itself genetically. Otherwise the extraordinary phenomenon would die with no offspring, no consequence. So two virtual miracles must occur at once!

All efforts to create the most rudimentary forms of life in a lab, under ideal conditions, beginning with Miller and Urey in 1953, have failed. Bill Bryson in his wide-ranging survey of scientific developments (“A Short History of Nearly Everything”) says this:

“Despite a half century of further study, we are no nearer to synthesizing life today than we were in 1953 and much further away from thinking we can…. The problem is proteins….. By all the laws of probability proteins shouldn’t exist…. To make [the protein] collagen you need to arrange 1,055 amino acids in precisely the right sequence. But… you don’t make it. It makes itself spontaneously, without direction, and this is where the unlikelihood comes in. The chances of a 1,055 sequence molecule like collagen spontaneously self-assembling are, frankly, nil. It just isn’t going to happen.”

Monkeying Around with the Odds

A contrary view is expressed by atheist Richard Dawkins, who argues that because there are a billion billion planets in the universe, a billion-to-one shot – like dead chemicals springing to life -- becomes a sure thing. The same kind of mathematical prestidigitation has produced “the infinite monkey theorem,” which Wikipedia describes thus: “A hypothetical chimpanzee… hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare.” With this kind of mathematical wizardry to light our path, who needs faith? Or common sense?

So my friend, the coolly rational atheist (a brilliant guy, by the way), has no problem believing that spontaneous generation of life took place, despite a level of improbability that can hardly be quantified. He puts faith in mathematical theories that are prima facie farfetched, and in no way explain how dead matter not only comes to life but does so with reproductive capacity and eventually, with no outside help, evolves the still more dazzling prodigy of consciousness. Yet he can’t believe in God because his existence is “too improbable.”

Conclusion

The probability of God’s existence is a legitimate question, which the uncertain must grapple with, and which will be a factor in reaching their conclusion. I would argue:

(1) In this context, probability is too nebulous to assign a percentage or a ratio to.

(2) Just as with God’s existence itself, reasonable minds may differ on whether the greater probability is that he exists or that he does not. Both sides see the scales as tipping in their favor. And,

(3) One’s feelings (preferences) enter into a probability assessment, just as inevitably as they do into the final decision about whether God exists. And that’s fine, if we overcome our denial and admit it, at least to ourselves.

In pondering the probability issue in my essay “An Agnostic Argues for Faith” (posted below on this home page) I asked myself these two questions:

Did the Big Bang ultimately produce Plato, or did a cause more like Plato produce him? Did cosmic dust evolve into a great mind, or did a Great Mind produce the cosmos?

Viewed in that light, I think the case for God is stronger than the case against. But even if you think the case against is formidable, and God quite improbable, a small ray of rational hope that he exists is enough to make belief a legitimate choice. What seems unlikely, even extremely unlikely, often proves to be true. Here is where human considerations – like the benefits of belief versus the detriments of unbelief – can reasonably and prudently be taken into account.

2010-02-15T09:01:00.000-08:00

Fear and Faith

(An Exchange of Letters)

[I just received this email from a friend. He is a retired Marine infantry officer and veteran of the Vietnam and Gulf wars.]

Shane:

Thanks for sending [notice of posting “Of Love and Fear”]:

I don't know if you will find this relevant but I was reminded of something as I read through your writings. I recalled a sentiment shared with me by a Medal of Honor recipient from the Vietnam War. He said, "There are no atheists in a foxhole." In other words, it is only when we are in harm's way and survival is in question that we tend to find we are not atheists or agnostics but believers.

After retiring from military service and getting wrapped up in a civilian career, I tended to forget this. It was only as my own son deployed to Iraq in 2008 and after his return there again in Jan[uary] -- where he is defusing roadside bombs -- that I again find myself a believer, praying daily for his survival and safe return. I feel guilty at times I tend to be a "fair weather" believer rather than an ardent one. When my son returns home safely from Iraq and Afghanistan (where he deploys in April), I trust I will gratefully remember my prayers have been answered and to Whom I owe eternal thanks. Just a rambling thought from one who -- as his years advance -- so too does his rambling. :)

Jim

I replied:

Jim,

Thanks for those personal reflections. I wondered if religion was any part of your life. That tells me it is, and to what extent it is.

When I was a child my mother often quoted me the aphorism you refer to, “There are no atheists in foxholes.” Her brother, a Purple Heart veteran of WW II, quoted it to her. It dates back at least to WW II, if not to WW I. Some attribute it to journalist Ernie Pyle. The WW I version was “in trenches.”

As we advance in age, and the sense of our mortality becomes more intrusive, we all find ourselves in metaphorical foxholes. Many remain atheists to the end. But the foxhole of age or infirmity opens some of us to at least a flickering of faith. “Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity.”

I will add your brave son to my prayer list.

Shane

2010-02-09T07:16:00.000-08:00

Of Love and Fear

[A reader made a comment in reply to the posting immediately under this, entitled “My Theological Eccentricities.” You can click on the comment box under that posting to see the full text of his remarks. This is my reply to his comment.]

Wayne,

In your last four sentences you say: “Since I no longer believe in Christianity, I am well aware of the possibility that there may not be any continuance [of life and consciousness] after death and that bothers me. However, in the same instance, there is a relief that there is no longer a fear that I could end up in Hell. Also, I actually prefer the fact that I believe that Christianity is not factual. You see, I prefer to know the truth rather than live a fantasy.” (Emphasis added.)

Your self-analysis is unusually candid. Most readers don't admit that their feelings affect their beliefs and often determine them. You call yourself an agnostic. If you really were one, you would admit that you don’t “know the truth” and your belief in the Christian God’s non-existence, or Christ’s being “a failed prophet,” may turn out to be fantasies in the end. Hiding from divine reality may be the ultimate self-delusion -- and the most perilous.

If you feel disbelief gives you a sure doubt-free grasp of truth, I think you deceive yourself. The believer’s creed may be a fantasy, but so may the unbeliever’s. That is the uncertainty we must live with, and atheism is no escape from it. In the last three paragraphs of my essay “An Agnostic Argues for Faith” (posted below) I explain why the decision I’ve made seems to me the most prudent, and why I commend it to non-theists.

This morning as I left church I reflected on your comment and asked myself: Why has the fear of hell that haunts so many, and once vexed me, receded to insignificance for me? The answer I realized is this: I don’t just believe. I love God and I love Christ, whom I believe to be his Son. I express that love every day and feel it most hours of the day. God, who is much better at loving than I am, doesn’t love me any less than I love him.

When I underwent a four-hour heart procedure three months ago, I knew there was a small risk things could go awry and I could die of a stroke or a heart attack. I felt peace and confidence as they wheeled me into the operating room that if the worst happened, I would meet someone magnificent, whom I have loved for forty years. That was not a terrifying prospect. “The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms.” Deut. 33:26. Jesus said, “Perfect love casts out fear.” I don’t have perfect love, but I know what he means. Even imperfect love makes fear small and manageable.

Why Christianity and not Buddhism or…?

You say: “Ok, let’s assume there is a god. What makes you so sure that the Christian religion describes this god? Why not Buddhism?”

As I said in an earlier comment, the philosophical agnosticism I argue for does not require a pronouncement that my belief is right and others are wrong. I contend that neither atheism nor theism can be proven. I don’t think Judaism, Christianity, or Islam can be proven either. But the fact that we can’t prove a hypothesis does not mean we can’t believe it. For those who feel dissatisfied with atheism, that leaves open the question, what – if anything – shall we believe? The process of deciding was not, for me, quick and easy. I describe it in some detail in a segment of the book I’m writing, which I trust you’ll read someday.

For now, a short answer is that the Western culture we live in certainly militated against Buddhism and Hinduism (with which I experimented) and favored Christianity. But my first stop out of atheism was Pure Theism, which I’ll enlarge on soon. I was surrounded by ardent Christians during that time, in a tight-knit social group in Manhattan in the late ‘60s. I began to feel they had something very precious that I didn’t have. That predisposed me to Christianity. I saw how impassioned faith illuminated their lives, and I wanted it to illuminate mine. The figure of Christ and his gospel became more and more compelling. Even then it took some remarkable experiences – and a couple of years -- to help me cross the chasm between Pure Theism and faith in Christ. I can’t explain that adequately here.

How do I know Christianity is right, rather than Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, etc.? I don’t know, but the person of Christ and the Christian worldview appealed to me much more strongly than the religions of the East. I want Christianity to be true, and I see no rational barrier to its being true. Objections, sure. Reasons not to believe, plenty. But none that is rationally insurmountable. I look at them all, weigh the counter-arguments, and say, “Might this possibly be true?” The answer is a resounding, Yes! I don’t have to be sure. I don’t have to know. Belief, over time, became possible. I chose to believe. After forty years it is still the best decision I ever made.

Shane

2010-02-06T19:11:00.000-08:00

My Theological Eccentricity

(Explaining It to a Friend)

by Shane Hayes

This is an email I sent last May to an old friend and frequent correspondent. It was part of a multi-party multifaceted exchange that led someone to suggest my starting this blog. It announces several of the themes enlarged on in the postings below.

John,

In your email of 5/17/09 you said, among other things:

I am also a bit confused by your reference to agnosticism - since it is not pure atheism - but an admission or statement of "not knowing God" or that “God cannot be known." Isn´t the first question out of the Baltimore Catechism "why" and the first part of the answer "to know"?

Thanks for your comments and reflections. This was the part of my letter you found confusing:

To further compound my theological eccentricity I am also an agnostic, philosophically. Not an atheist (though I once was) but an agnostic. “[An agnostic is] one who says we can’t know whether there is a God or not. His existence can’t be proven and it can’t be disproven.” That quote is from my essay “An Agnostic Argues for Faith.”

I don’t say we can’t “know God” or that “God can’t be known.” I say his existence can’t be proven. Since we can’t know whether there is a God or not, we must choose to either believe or disbelieve. Those who disbelieve are atheists. Those who believe are theists. A theist can “reach out to God” in faith and form a vibrant sense of God’s presence in his life; the faith can be so strong that it banishes all doubt and so compelling that he would die for it.

Here’s my agnostic view (with which Christians who claim certainty disagree): Our religion is based on faith, not on knowledge; on believing, not on knowing. Only after we pierce the veil of death will we stop believing that there is a God and begin to know there is a God. The atheist says no, when you die you will know nothing, you will cease to exist. I believe the atheist is wrong, but I won’t know he is wrong until I pass through death into another life. In that sense I am a believing agnostic. Maybe I should call my book The Believing Agnostic.

You mention The Baltimore Catechism, which we were taught from in Catholic grade school. In answer to the question “Why did God make us?” it says: “God made us to know him, to love him, and to serve him in this world and to be happy with him forever in heaven.” I believe that is true, but I don’t yet know that it is. I don’t think Christ called us to know, he called us to believe. He said to Mary by the tomb of her brother Lazarus: “’… whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?’ She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the son of God, he who is coming into the world.’” I believe that too.

Why do I even mention that I’m an agnostic and raise the issue of knowledge versus faith? To make the point that agnosticism, as a philosophical position rightly understood, is no barrier to faith. An agnostic can become a believer without shedding his agnosticism. We don’t have to argue him out of it and prove there is a God, to win him over. Religion is not for only those who think God’s existence can be proven and known beyond any doubt. It is also for those who see weakness in the “proofs” of God’s existence and weight in the arguments against it. So long as the latter, like the former, are less than proofs, we can believe in spite of them.

It took years for that to dawn on me when I was an atheist. Until I could see that it was intellectually respectable to believe I was imprisoned in atheism. The Gospel couldn’t penetrate the rational walls that seemed to shut it out. These agnostic arguments I make were liberating for me. To disprove the atheistic position and prove the theistic one is much harder than to show that no one -- on either side -- knows, so belief is a matter of personal choice. It is just as rational to believe there is a God as to believe there isn’t. Moreover the benefits of believing far outweigh the benefits of not believing.

This line of argument raises a lot of questions I can’t answer in a letter like this (already too long). But I’m confident I can answer them, and that the approach I will take in my book (or booklet) is a needed, though tiny, supplement to the splendid outreach of the Christian churches. That outreach generally targets the apathetic and indifferent rather than hardcore unbelievers. Newsweek’s cover story announced in April that “the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since 1990, rising from 8 to 15 percent.” Hardcore unbelievers – witness the New Atheism -- are multiplying at an alarming rate. Something beyond traditional outreach is needed to penetrate their defenses. Having been one of them for eight years I speak their language better than those who have never strayed from the faith. In any case I feel a growing urge to try.

I make this sound consequential. It is, but only for me. The odds against publication are high. Should this deter me? No. Only the writing part is in my power. I will attend to that.

Shane

2010-01-18T18:41:00.000-08:00

How the Improbable God

Probably Works

A World View and a God Hypothesis

Shane Hayes

Here’s a world view in a thousand words – and it took me only fifty years to compose it. I offer it as a theory, a hypothesis for your consideration and comment. Try to assume each part is true till you get to the end. Then, when you view it whole, decide if it’s a plausible account of what we can see and what may be behind it. For me it is.

There is a cosmic intelligence, an all-powerful personal God who created the universe. The Big Bang, evolution, and natural selection may have been his modus operandi. His mind is infinite, and his methods are very subtle. A sense of humor is one of the finest aspects of human intelligence, so we should not suppose our creator is without one. Irony, and a predilection for the incongruous, the unexpected, the mysterious, and the imponderable are manifest in all his works. He has made some of the greatest truths about his world – from the roundness of the earth, and the stillness of the sun, to his own invisible existence -- appear improbable. He reveals himself, but always under a cloak of ambiguity that lets us explain him away, if we want to. He does this not maliciously, but with a benevolent purpose that has something to do with freedom and what might be called soul making. His “heart” is as vast and limitless as his mind.

Man is the creature in whom he takes the greatest interest, because man is the most Godlike creature – the most able to reflect on his condition, and alter it by using his mind and his power of choice. Man is the only creature capable of knowing God and forming a relationship with him. The only creature with a sense of humor.

God loves all of his creation, especially man, and he has made man more capable of love than any other creature. He can love not only himself, his mate, and their offspring (as other mammals do), but a wide circle of other human beings – potentially all of them. And God made it possible for man to love him. He has made love crucial to a healthy human psyche. We are happiest when we love God and other people, but we are free not to.

Such choices are the essence of morality, and God constructed the universe around them. Despite the vast sweep of its galaxies, it is essentially a moral universe – designed to provide moral challenge and opportunity, to require moral striving, and to produce in every life a measurable degree of moral success and failure, which are of keen interest to God.

Our happiness is important, but must often be deferred. God is eternal – he takes the long view, and requires that we learn to. The long view includes both life, which is brief, and its Sequel, which is endless. Though the Sequel is infinitely larger than life, it’s as invisible as God, therefore easy to forget or not believe in.

God has filled his universe with ironies. The principal irony is that often things are not what they seem. Learning to deal with that is a great moral challenge. We must learn to “see” the invisible, to “hear” the inaudible, to grasp what we can’t touch, and to believe what we can’t prove. The most important reality is God, but he’s hidden from us. Deliberately, maddeningly, and distressingly hidden. The shining Sequel to life -- its fulfillment, point, and purpose -- is so out of sight as to be generally out of mind, even for those who expect it.

God has made it possible for man to know a great many things with certainty. We know obvious things by simple observation. Much that is hidden can be learned by study, experiment, and the exercise of reason. At its best, reason is so amazing that we’re tempted to think it’s the only human faculty that can lead us to truth. In fact, it can lead us to only certain kinds of truth: practical, theoretic, scientific. But the ultimate truth – interpersonal and mystical -- is quite beyond its reach. We can reason to the possibility of God, but he has strewn other possibilities in our path, so that certainty about his existence and our origin cannot be had.

Dealing with this uncertainty is another moral challenge. God has made himself not only hidden but unprovable. The only way to connect with him is by believing what we can’t know. Those are his terms and we must accept them or reject him. When reason brings us to God’s threshold (he is one possibility among several), other faculties must carry us across, and if we disdain them we’ll never reach him. They may work in this sequence. Hope says, “I wish there were a God; I want there to be a God; I hope there is a God.” Love says, “I find the idea of God wonderfully appealing; I love the idea of God; I love the possibility of God.” Then faith says, “I extend my hand into the darkness; I believe in God” -- and the divine connection is made!

The ancient mystic who wrote The Cloud of Unknowing said: “By love he may be gotten and holden, but by thought, never.” John said, “God is love.” The atheist Bertrand Russell said, “Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence,” to justify his unbelief. Believing requires not only an act of faith but an act of humility. The prouder we are of our intellect, of its superiority to lesser minds, and of the dazzling science it produced, the harder it is to humble ourselves and believe. Yet the Designer of the Universe arranged it so that he, his ultimate truth, and life’s shining Sequel can be found only by the humble and believing. He will neither compel faith, nor make it unnecessary. On those terms, we can take him or leave him. Our decision is our fate.

2009-12-29T17:20:00.000-08:00

Believing Without Proof

Shane Hayes

“You can’t be both a believer in God and an agnostic,” I am told.

“Well then,” I reply, “which am I not? Because I think I’m both. I believe in a personal God who created the world and cares about his creatures, and I pray to him daily – often hourly. Am I not a believer?”

“If you say so, I guess you are. But then you’re not an agnostic.”

There, I think, is the nub of the dispute. Most people think an agnostic is one who does not believe in God. And most people who call themselves agnostics probably don’t. But agnosticism per se does not exclude belief. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines “agnostic” as: “A person who holds the view that nothing can be known of the existence of God or of anything beyond material phenomena.”

My simple working definition does not conflict with that: “An agnostic is one who says we can’t know whether there is a God or not.” To state, as OED does, that nothing can be known of the existence of God is not to say God doesn’t exist. It speaks of the limits of our knowledge, not the limits of reality.

OED gives eleven definitions of “know.” The one most on point for us – and most revealing -- is the tenth: “Comprehend as fact or truth; understand with clearness and certainty. Freq[uently] opp[osed to] Believe. “ To know is to have certainty, and that’s often seen as the opposite of believing. To say we can’t know of the existence of God is not to say we can’t believe in it. I say we can’t know of the existence of God, which makes me an agnostic. But I believe in it – very strongly.

We’re not just parsing words here; we’re touching on the complexity of human nature and a distinction (almost a dichotomy) that even philosophers often miss. We are many-faceted creatures. When my rational mind – after utmost exertion -- concludes that we can’t know whether there is a God or not, that his existence can’t be either proven or disproven, my mind has done all it can. In terms of philosophical position I’m an agnostic.

But it doesn’t end there -- because I’m not a disembodied mind. I’m a human being with a physical, emotional, social, and – I submit – even a spiritual life. Here I am, on an obscure planet, adrift on the great sea of time, trying to figure out who and what I am and where I’m going, in the short term and the long term. And wondering if the long term ever ends. I have to move on. Get from here to there. Plot a course, form strategies, make assumptions, and draw conclusions from limited evidence. In evaluating my situation, mundane and cosmic, the question of whether God exists has profound relevance. Philosophy and science don’t answer it. In that department I’m an agnostic. But the imperatives of a reflective human life require that I form an opinion on what I can’t know, that I proceed as if there is a personal and loving God or as if there is not.

At age twenty I came to believe that there was no God. That was my chosen creed. So I was an agnostic philosophically, and an atheist in personal belief. Years later, without changing my philosophical position, I embraced theism and later still the Christian faith. So I am in fact an agnostic and a Christian.

Do I contend that agnosticism is the only right philosophical view and that everyone, including Christians, Jews, and Muslims, should be philosophically agnostic? Here I’m a little inconsistent. I do hold that agnosticism is the most reasonable view. But if believers in God think they can prove his existence, I won’t argue against them. I would be glad if they’re right and I’m wrong. I will argue against atheist claims that they can prove God does not exist. As one who has chosen to believe, I have a strong bias in favor of the God hypothesis. I would not impose it on anyone, but I will defend its reasonableness against attacks.

The last point I will make here is important though not novel. The essence of believing is to hold as true what you cannot prove. OED in its nine definitions of “believe” uses such phrases as “have confidence or faith in… hold an opinion, think… give credence to… hold as true the existence of….” All imply an element of uncertainty.

We don’t believe in the existence of the house we live in. We know it’s there; our senses confirm its reality. We don’t believe in the law of gravity. We experience and deal with it all the time. I contend that we can’t believe in God if God’s existence is an absolute certainty. If that were so, we would be knowers, not believers, and our religion would be a body of knowledge, not a faith. When in the gospels Jesus urged people to believe, he was asking them to hold as true something unproven – often something that seemed incredible. That challenging fusion of belief with uncertainty is what makes faith a virtue. And it should make believers tolerant of philosophical agnosticism, even if they think God’s existence as provable as gravity.

2009-12-05T09:04:00.000-08:00

Darkness and Light
Shane Hayes

We are nocturnal creatures. Darkness is our element. The future is shrouded in deep mist and shadow. We can’t see very clearly and we can’t see very far, so we feel our way, grope, and guess at what’s ahead. Faith is our candle, flickering, dim, uncertain, but necessary. Faith in science, faith in our intuitions and calculations, faith in luck, faith in God. There are many kinds of faith. We live by one or more of them. Without it we weaken, we fall, we perish.

Not only scripture but all of human experience tells us we need something strong, good, and wise to believe in. For some it’s a statue of Zeus or Sophia, for some kinetic theory and the empirical method, for some the writings of a brilliant atheist, for some Confucius, Buddha, Allah, the God of Abraham, or Christ. To believe is to hold as true what cannot yet be verified. It’s a conviction, a sense of direction, that helps us move bravely through our darkness. And face what lies beyond it – the blackness of utter extinction or endless light.

2009-12-05T08:27:00.000-08:00

An Agnostic Argues for Faith

Shane Hayes

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins becomes an international bestseller. The New Atheism is trumpeted by other eloquent voices: Harris, Hitchens, Dennett, and Stenger. Essays proclaiming there are no good arguments for God’s existence appear on Op-Ed pages of large metropolitan dailies. Three close friends surround me after dinner and declare that Christians give only inane reasons for believing in God in the face of human suffering and tragedy.

The tide of modern intellectual culture flows strongly toward atheism, a destination congenial to some but abhorrent to others. For me it was like Antarctica -- glacially cold and wind-lashed, an ice-bound waste devoid of tree, shrub, or flower, no hint of blossoming life visible to the horizon, and beyond the horizon… nothing. I endured it for most of a decade. Then, drawn homeward, I swam against the tide for years, made a grueling journey back to the island of faith – for me a lush Capri of the soul. Drifting with the tide is pleasant and easy, but is atheism where you want to go? Or stay?

What "Agnostic" Really Means

I am a Christian. And I am an agnostic. I hold as true what cannot yet be verified. An agnostic is one who says we can’t know whether there is a God or not. His existence can’t be proven, and it can’t be disproven. Thomas Aquinas gave reasons to believe in God. I see the best of them as strong arguments but not proofs. Bertrand Russell, a great exponent of atheism, admitted he couldn’t be absolutely sure God doesn’t exist. Chapter 4 of Dawkins’ book is entitled “Why There Is Almost Certainly No God.” Almost certainly. Dawkins isn’t sure either.

Since none of us can know, the great question isn’t “to be or not to be,” but to believe or not believe. I believe. Atheists choose not to believe. I can’t tell them they’re wrong, and they can’t tell me I’m wrong. We all grope in existential darkness. I use religious faith as a compass. They think it’s worthless.

I don’t say everyone should believe. I’m a pragmatist, not an evangelist. I know how different people are. What worked for me may not work for you. But believing in God can enrich the lives of many who have ignored or rejected that option.

The Way Out of Our Maze

We’re in this mess together -- all human, vulnerable to illness, crushing accident, the carnage of war, calamities of every kind. We’re aging and we’re mortal. We don’t know whether there’s an all-powerful God who cares deeply about his creatures, or not. There is reason to think there is not. There is reason to think there is. Either hypothesis seems far-fetched in light of certain observable facts. From six-day creation, to creation over eons with evolution, to Cosmic Inflation, to the Big Bang theory, there is no explanation of the universe that is not from some point of view wildly improbable.

So we must have either no explanation or an unlikely one. To some rational minds the theistic view is less unlikely than the atheistic. Did the Big Bang ultimately produce Plato, or did a cause more like Plato produce him? Did cosmic dust evolve into a great mind, or did a Great Mind produce the cosmos? Since the keenest powers of human reasoning leave us without proof on this crucial issue, uncertainty is our fate. We can’t know. We can only believe.

But the atheist says, “I don’t believe.” Ahh, but you do, I reply. You don’t believe in God, but you believe in No God. You believe in the hypothesis that there is no God. I believe in the hypothesis that there is a God. Mine is a religious belief. Yours an unreligious belief. But we both believe. Some atheists would rather die than admit this.

Questions We Can't Escape

I can’t say with certainty that there is a God. But I can say with certainty that if there is a God that makes a huge difference in the character of the universe and of human life. Consider these three questions that we can’t escape, because they keep coming at us: (1) When faced with problems or troubles that seem overwhelming, is supernatural help available or not? (2) Are we ephemeral creatures who expire utterly with our last breath, or is there a spirit in us that survives physical death? (3) If death is not the end of human consciousness, if there is a whole realm of being beyond that, is it good or bad – or might it be either, depending on how we relate to each other and how we relate to God… while we’re here?

Atheists have decided that there is no supernatural help and death ends all. Fine, but that belief has consequences. The world feels different because they view it in that light. If supernatural help is available only to those who reach out for it in faith, they won’t get that help. The joy of feeling the presence of a loving God in their lives, and connecting with him in prayer, will never be theirs. Thoughts of our mortality are more daunting if we can’t link them to thoughts of our immortality. Grief is blacker if the lost child, parent, friend, or lover is gone forever, not just gone ahead. And if this life is harder because we have rejected belief in God, a future life might be harder still because we’ve done that.

Somber or Radiant?

These are a few ways in which faith can enrich people’s lives and its rejection can impoverish them. Since we can’t know whether the world is Godless or God-filled, why not embrace the radiant view and enjoy its benefits? Why not swim against the tide?