The Believing Brain - Michael Shermer [95]
Does God Actually Exist?
Despite the overwhelming evidence that God is hardwired into our brains, believers could reasonably argue (1) that the question “Why do people believe in God?” is a separate question from “Does God exist?” and (2) that the deity hardwired himself into our brains so that we may know him. In other words, the biology of belief is a separate matter from the target of belief. Whether or not belief in God is hardwired into our brains, the question remains: does God actually exist?
What Is God?
Studies by religious scholars reveal that the vast majority of people in the industrial West who believe in God associate themselves with some form of monotheism, in which God is understood to be a being who is: all powerful (omnipotent), all knowing (omniscient), and all good (omnibenevolent); who created out of nothing the universe and everything in it; who is uncreated and eternal, a noncorporeal spirit who created, loves, and can grant eternal life to humans. Synonyms include the Almighty, Supreme Being, Supreme Goodness, Most High, Divine Being, Deity, Divinity, God the Father, Divine Father, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Creator, Author of All Things, Maker of Heaven and Earth, First Cause, Prime Mover, Light of the World, and Sovereign of the Universe.
Do you believe this God exists? Do you deny that this God exists? Or do you withhold judgment on this God’s existence? These are the three questions the theologian Doug Geivett, a professor at the Talbot School of Theology at Biola University in Los Angeles, offers in our public debates on God’s existence, demanding that I and audience members choose one. My response is twofold:
1. The burden of proof is on the believer to prove God’s existence, not on the nonbeliever to disprove God’s existence. Although we cannot prove a negative, I can just as easily argue that I cannot prove that there is no Isis, Zeus, Apollo, Brahma, Ganesha, Mithra, Allah, Yahweh, or even the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But the inability to disprove these gods in no way makes them legitimate objects of belief (let alone worship).
2. There is evidence that God and religion are human and social constructions based on research from psychology, anthropology, history, comparative mythology, and sociology.
Let’s look at these two matters more closely.
Theist, Atheist, Agnostic, and the Burden of Proof
I once saw a bumper sticker that read “Militant Agnostic: I Don’t Know and You Don’t Either.” This is my position on God’s existence: I don’t know and you don’t either. But what does it mean to be an agnostic? Isn’t that someone who is withholding judgment until more evidence is gathered? Earlier in the book I said that I don’t believe in God, so doesn’t that make me an atheist? It all depends on how these terms are defined, and for that we should turn to the Oxford English Dictionary, our finest source for the history of word usage: Theism is “belief in a deity, or deities” and “belief in one God as creator and supreme ruler of the universe.” Atheism is “Disbelief in, or denial of, the existence of a God.” Agnosticism is “unknowing, unknown, unknowable.”
Agnosticism was coined in 1869 by Thomas Henry Huxley—Darwin’s friend and most enthusiastic public explainer of evolution—to describe his own beliefs: “When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist … I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer. They [believers] were quite sure they had attained a certain ‘gnosis,’—had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble.”16 I, too, am convinced that the God question is insoluble.
Of course,