The Hidden God

"The absence of God will bring you comfort, baby"

Rilo Kiley

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's 36 Arguments for the Existence of God is an at times clunky novel of religious theorizing as it plays out in academia and Orthodox Judaism (as novels of ideas go, I'll stick with Dostoevsky and Mann), but the jewel of the book is its philosophical appendix, a compendium of 36 arguments for the existence of God followed by their convincing refutations. In this analytic tour de force, theistic justifications are systematically dismantled. However, the disproof of the final argument (The Argument from the Abundance of Arguments) ends as follows:

Few people rest their belief in God on a single, decisive logical argument. Instead, people are swept away by the sheer number of reasons that make God's existence seem plausible--holding out an explanation as to why the universe went to the bother of existing, and why it is this particular universe, with it sublime improbabilities, including us humans; and, even more particularly, explaining the existence of each one of us who know ourselves as unique conscious individuals, who make free and moral choices that grant meaning and purpose to our lives; and, even more personally, giving hope that desperate prayers may not go unheard and unanswered, and that the terrors of death can be subdued in immortality. Religions, too, do not justify themselves with a single logical argument, but minister to all of these spiritual needs and provide a space in our lives where the largest questions with which we grapple all come together, which is a space that can become among the most expansive and loving of which we are capable, or the most constricted and hating of which we are capable--in other words, a space as contradictory as human nature itself.

Yes, that's it. Logically, these refutations are relentlessly persuasive, but I can't imagine them having any effect upon believers, because belief rests upon existential need and emotional disposition. However, one can imagine those who, contrarily, disbelieve not merely out of a respect for logic, but because belief in a God who, to judge from the evidence of the world, could just as easily be sadistic as benevolent is best avoided. History may be more consistent with the cruel God of the Old Testament than with that of the New; is it really desirable to be trapped in the universe, beyond death even, with an omnipotent being with questionable or at least inscrutable motives?

Missing the Forest

"But philosophy has no direct influence on the great mass of mankind; it is of interest to only a small number even of the top layer of intellectuals and is scarcely intelligible to anyone else. On the other hand, religion is an immense power which has the strongest emotions of human beings at its service."

Freud, "The Question of a Weltanschauung"

Unlike some of the highly vocal neo-atheists like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the militantly unbelieving Freud did not underestimate the opposition--he recognized that religion's roots go far deeper than the relatively thin soil of the intellect. A few sentences on in the essay quoted, he argues that religion performs three crucial functions: "It gives [human beings] information about the origin and coming into existence of the universe, it assures them of its protection and of ultimate happiness in the ups and downs of life and it directs their thoughts and actions by precepts which it lays down with its whole authority."

Providing (purported) knowledge, existential succor, and morality all at once, religion is the ultimate in one-stop shopping. Its transcendental simplicity is hard to beat, not least because the experience of it is both deeply personal and reassuringly communal.

Arts and Letters Daily today provides a link to an Edge article by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein that dispassionately dismantles 36 proposed arguments for the existence of God. All of the classic ones are there--the argument from ontology, from design, from pragmatism--and the fatal flaws of all are coolly and mercilessy exposed; I have come across many alleged proofs and disproofs of God, but never so neatly summarized in one place.

It's all there, literally in black and white, and yet the believer could still say that if this is what logic and consistency demonstrate, then so much the worse for logic and consistency. Indeed, considering the overwhelmingly religious history of humanity, this kind of logical coup de grace really shows how unphilosophical (in the narrow logical sense) human beings tend to be.

For believers, faith is least of all a matter of empiricism or logic. It is a tradition, a way of life, and a profound emotional need, but it is a philosophy only in the post hoc sense that cognitive dissonance must be suppressed somehow. And as some increasingly argue, religion's pride of place in human nature may have a deep evolutionary source.

Given that religious traditions have arisen independently but in parallel patterns across millenia and across the world, it isn't hard to imagine that faith may have offered a survival advantage to groups in a range of circumstances. In this respect religion has been likened to language--the innate capacity is there, and in both cases children famously absorb the tradition in which they are raised.

How to explain agnostics then? Language is so deeply genetic that, barring severe disorders or early linguistic deprivation, its capacity is universal. Religion obviously isn't like that. I wonder if evolution could have provided not only for the propensity for religion, but also for a certain fractional dissent therefrom. I'm speculating that groups with a truly universal religious "gene" may have tended to become rigid or complacent as compared to groups with more flexible religiosity, even if that made it possible, even inevitable, for agnostic psychology to flourish at least as part of a population. Indeed, religion may benefit, even require, an agnostic opposition in order to remain viable over the long term.

Evidence shows that agnostics and atheists, taken individually, can be as healthy, happy, and productive as believers. But the question for the future of religion is whether it is morally and culturally feasible for unbelievers to constitute a majority or even all of a population. Yes, Europe is famously growing quite secular, but birthrates there have also fallen alarmingly. Are relatively agnostic societies, like agnostics themselves, the exceptions that prove the rule?

Airy Nothings

In The New Republic Jerry A. Coyne coolly dismantles another instance of fuzzy theological thinking, this time Robert Wright's The Evolution of God (unread by me). According to this and other reviews of the book I've read, Wright argues not only that religion has become globally more beneficent and tolerant over historical time (a questionable enough claim), but also, without venturing to affirm that God does in fact exist, suggests in myriad hedging ways that it certainly looks as though he could exist, inasmuch as humanity is supposedly following the Golden Rule more often as the centuries pass.

Folks never tire, it seems, of trying to adduce evidence, whether scientific, historical, or sociological, for God's real existence. Kierkegaard--and many others besides I'm sure--had a lot to say about the folly of this undertaking. If you're going to believe, fine, but do so as a leap of faith, and stop saying that science suggests anything about the nature of God. There are a number of things in life that science per se can't help us with (such as how to live, what to do), but what it does do--explain the nature of material reality in testable fashion--it does very well indeed. There are things science can't explain yet, such as how the universe came to be, but science as of 1800 couldn't explain viruses either.

Not having read Wright's book, I obviously can't say much, but it seems to me that if humanity is becoming somewhat more peaceful and pro-social over time, it is less likely due to some kind of divinely inspired evolution than to the simple fact that the planet is getting a lot more crowded, and it's a lot harder than it ever was to swing one's elbows without hitting a neighbor. Folks could tolerate six-shooters on the frontier, but not nuclear weapons (or excessive carbon dioxide emissions) down the street. It's becoming more apparent as history passes that humanity resides not in a fortress, but in a boat. We can't allow ourselves to use up the fish or shoot up the hull.

Seeking to use science to buttress religion is precisely a lack of faith. I personally wouldn't care for any God who would allow (her)self to be captured in the nets of science.