How We Believe_ Science and the Search for God - Michael Shermer [62]
Interestingly, the primary reasons people gave for not believing in God were also the intellectually based categories of “there is no proof for God’s existence,” followed by “God is a product of the mind and culture,” “the problem of evil,” and “science provides all the answers we need.” For example, an eighteen-year-old Jewish male who considers himself an atheist, writes: “I don’t believe in God because it is impossible for a being to be what God must be in order to be a god without being obvious and undeniable. In short, God is philosophically impossible and scientifically and cosmologically unnecessary.” By contrast, and following the tendency to attribute to others emotional reasons for belief, he says other people believe in God because: “It’s comforting. Additionally, some people find it easier to deal with problems if they believe it is ‘God’s will.’”
ALL’S RIGHT WITH GOD IN HIS HEAVEN
In his 1781 classic work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon concluded his discussion of religion with this observation: “The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.” As we have seen, belief in God in the modern world is a function of a complex array of reasons that, while true for some people and false for others, certainly are equally useful. Consistently we find a fascinating distinction in belief attribution between why people think they believe in God and why they think other people believe in God.
This distinction was not lost on the psalmists of the Old Testament. To the choirmaster of Psalm 19:1, the author proclaims: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork.” Yet in the psalm for the sons of Korah, Psalm 46:13, it is declared: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.”
Are these not, in a way, two sides of the same coin? For believers, the heavens declare God’s glory; for other believers He provides strength in their time of need. Or, as Robert Browning wrote in Pippa Passes: “God’s in His Heaven—All’s right with the world.”
Chapter 5
O YE OF LITTLE FAITH
Proofs of God and What They Tell Us about Faith
Faith has to do with things that are not seen, and hope with things that are not in hand.
—Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, LVII, c. 1265
On Sunday, November 15, 1998, I debated God at the Church of the Rocky Peak, in Chatsworth, California, in the northwestern end of the San Fernando Valley. More precisely, I debated Dr. Doug Geivett, a professor of philosophy at the Talbot School of Theology and the author of such books as Evil and the Evidence for God and In Defense of Miracles, on the subject of “Does God Exist? Where Does the Evidence Point?” As a testimony to the interest in this subject, more than 1,500 seats were filled in this giant, modern church, with droves of students sitting on the floor in front of the dais, and standing room only at the back. The minister of the church, Dr. David Miller, was extremely accommodating to me, given that I was likely to be outnumbered in this venue. Was I ever. Miller asked for a show of hands of those who came specifically to support me. About fifty arms went up.
Dr. Geivett went first, presenting the standard arguments for God’s existence, including: Big Bang cosmology is described by Genesis 1; the anthropic cosmological principle and the fine-tuned nature of the universe implies a creator; life has all the appearances of design; humans are moral and