Chi Alpha @ Stanford

Note to guests: these are the notes from a mes­sage I shared at one of our Chi Alpha meet­ings. My goal in this mes­sage was not to estab­lish Chris­tian­ity as true, but rather to demon­strate that God’s exis­tence is a rea­son­able belief. Most every­thing I said applies to any the­ist, whether Chris­t­ian, Mus­lim, or Deist.

But Smart Peo­ple Don�t Believe in God!
There’s a wide­spread assump­tion that faith isn’t a viable option for smart and well-educated peo­ple: [Carl] Sagan was fas­ci­nated by the phe­nom­e­non that edu­cated adults, with the won­ders of sci­ence man­i­fest all around them, could cling to beliefs based on the unver­i­fi­able tes­ti­mony of observers dead for 2000 years. “You’re so smart, why do you believe in God?” he once exclaimed to [cleric Joan Brown] Camp­bell. Newsweek, 3/31/1997

Like­wise, Anne Lam­ott in her book Trav­el­ing Mer­cies notes that “None of the adults in our cir­cle believed. Believ­ing meant that you were stu­pid. Igno­rant peo­ple believed, uncouth peo­ple believed, and we were heav­ily couth.”

Is it true that smart, well-educated peo­ple don’t believe in God? Not at all!

We have a list of promi­nent con­tem­po­rary sci­en­tists who are Chris­tians.

In addi­tion, there are sev­eral out­stand­ing philoso­phers who are Chris­tians:
some who come to mind off­hand are Alvin Planti­nga (Notre Dame), Dal­las Willard (USC), Richard Swin­burne (Oxford), and Nicholas Wolter­stoff (Yale).

There are smart peo­ple at the apex of every dis­ci­pline who believe.

I would like to point out that this doesn’t prove God exists any more than a list of promi­nent athe­ists proves God doesn’t, but it does demon­strate that we shouldn’t be so quick to assume that smart, well-educated peo­ple don’t believe.

I’d like to pro­pose the fol­low­ing motto for tonight: “The con­flict is thus no longer between faith and rea­son but between a rea­son­able faith and a faith­less rea­son.” Robert Morgan

A Few Thoughts On Method­ol­ogy
Most true things can�t be proven with philo­soph­i­cal rigor, just demon­strated rea­son­able (that grav­ity will work tomor­row, that other peo­ple really exist, that this isn’t the Matrix, etc).

Our goal, then, is not proof but com­pelling evi­dence. In this, God is not unlike other fun­da­men­tal parts of real­ity but exactly like them (which is what we should expect).

In the final analy­sis, we must employ faith. This is true for both athe­ists and theists�we must trust in a con­clu­sion we can­not prove. That’s not to say that there will be no evi­dence, but that the evi­dence will always leave poten­tial for doubt in either direction.

Whence Nature?
By tak­ing a long and thought­ful look at what God has cre­ated, peo­ple have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eter­nal power, for instance, and the mys­tery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse. Romans 1.20, Message

There is a very well-known argu­ment for the exis­tence of God that grounds itself in the fact of exis­tence. It goes like this:

1) The uni­verse and every­thing in it are finitely old.
2) Every­thing that is finitely old began to exist.
3) Every­thing that begins to exist has a cause for its com­ing into being.
4) There­fore, the uni­verse must have been caused to come into exis­tence.
5) That cause was either infi­nite or finite. If it was finite, it begs the ques­tion.
6) If we push it back, we must ulti­mately arrive at an uncaused cause.
7) That cause must also exist inde­pen­dently of the uni­verse. It is there­fore
super­nat­ural (not nat­ural). It is also stag­ger­ingly pow­er­ful.
Say �Hello, God.�

The sound bite ver­sion of this argu­ment is “What went bang?” In other words, assume the Big Bang the­ory is true and then reflect on the fact that it begs the ques­tion of origin.

The argu­ment as I’ve pre­sented it is lean and clean. Argu­ments about the argu­ment get messy quickly. You can read much more about cos­mo­log­i­cal argu­ments for the exis­tence of God here.

Whence Moral­ity?
When out­siders who have never heard of God’s law fol­low it more or less by instinct, they con­firm its truth by their obe­di­ence. They show that God’s law is not some­thing alien, imposed on us from with­out, but woven into the very
fab­ric of our cre­ation. There is some­thing deep within them that echoes God’s yes and no, right and wrong. Romans 2.14–15, Message

1) Moral oblig­a­tion is a fact. We must do good and refrain from evil. For exam­ple, we have a real oblig­a­tion to not rape small chil­dren regard­less of our cul­ture, beliefs, or per­sonal cir­cum­stances. This is a fact just as 1+1=2 is a fact.
2) Moral­ity is not an emer­gent prop­erty of matter�it pre­sup­poses a non­ma­te­r­ial real­ity in which it is embed­ded.
3) Wel­come to a reli­gious worldview.

The sound bite ver­sion of this argu­ment is “Can we be good with­out God?” That may sound offen­sive at first, and I don�t mean it to. There are many athe­ists who are moral peo­ple. But please notice that I said �Can we be good with­out God,� not �Can we be good with­out a belief in God.� You may very well take cer­tain actions apart from your faith or lack thereof, but to label those actions moral or immoral pre­sup­poses the exis­tence of moral­ity and that�s what I�m get­ting at. Where did moral­ity come from? In what are moral laws rooted and on what do they operate?

I con­tend that the con­cept of real and bind­ing moral prin­ci­ples is mean­ing­less if mat­ter is all that there is. At most you can get to enlight­ened self-interest, which doesn’t take you nearly as far as some peo­ple pre­tend.

You can also read an ear­lier essay I wrote on athe­ism and amoral­ity.

One last thought: the most com­mon dodge to this argu­ment is to deny that real moral laws exist. Some thoughts can be thought but not lived. In prac­tice the peo­ple who make that claim do not truly live as though it were true. If they don’t believe their own objec­tion, why should I?

Whence Reli­gion?
God has done all this, so that we will look for him and reach out and find him. Acts 17.27, CEV

1) Peo­ple in every soci­ety claim to have encoun­tered the super­nat­ural.
2) This is not a hand­ful of peo­ple here and there�we�re talk­ing about the over­whelm­ing major­ity of peo­ple who have ever lived (includ­ing some of the smartest).
3 )They were (and are) either lying, mis­taken, or cor­rect.
4) That they were lying seems incon­gru­ous with the moral­ity many of them embodied�we�re talk­ing about some of the great­est moral teach­ers ever!
5) If they were mis­taken, then you must account for their expe­ri­ences.
6) The best answer seems to be that there are reli­gious peo­ple because there are expe­ri­ences which are best explained religiously.

The sound bite ver­sion of this ques­tion is, “Do I believe most peo­ple are stu­pid liars?” If not, then you have some data to wres­tle with. The prob­lem is that this data isn’t in the pub­lic sphere–it’s all tes­ti­mo­nial in nature.

Con­duct The God Exper­i­ment
There­fore, I chal­lenge you to acquire some data of your own. You see, by say­ing that the God ques­tion can’t be set­tled philo­soph­i­cally I’m implic­itly assert­ing that it has to be set­tled sci­en­tif­i­cally: based on exper­i­men­taiton and data. One way to acquire data about a hypoth­e­sis is to con­struct an exper­i­ment based on the assump­tion that it is true and see whether the results line up with the hypothesis.

So for the next thirty days, live as though God were real and prac­tice the four G�s.
* Golden Rule: try to treat other peo­ple the way you want to be treated.
* Grat­i­tude: try to thank God for every good thing you can, rang­ing from life and laugh­ter all the way down to food and rest.
* Gen­eros­ity: try to give to oth­ers (time, hos­pi­tal­ity, respect, money) lib­er­ally
* Going: com­mit to attend­ing reli­gious ser­vices faithfully

In The Final Analy­sis
I’ve not proven any­thing tonight. I didn’t set out to. You can quib­ble with every one of these argu­ments, but that does not make them any less arguments.

As I told you at the begin­ning, it’s going to become a mat­ter of faith. You will live your life based in part on a con­clu­sion you can’t rig­or­ously verify.

Frankly, agnos­ti­cism isn’t really an option. In prac­tice, you wind up either liv­ing as though the claims of the Bible were true or as though they were false. Come Sun­day, you will either go to church or you won’t.

You’ll either live as some­one who is reli­gious or as some­one who is not. I chal­lenge you not to hide behind agnos­ti­cism and be hon­est about where you’re at. This is quite dif­fer­ent from say­ing pre­tend to know things that you don’t know–there are peo­ple who are gen­uinely puz­zled over these issues and I’m not talk­ing to them. I’m say­ing don’t use agnos­ti­cism as a way to say you’re unde­cided when you have, in fact, decided.

In the final analy­sis, only you can choose. I hope these lines of evi­dence help you to think more clearly about the exis­tence of God.

To Learn More
C. S. Lewis Mere Chris­tian­ity
Os Guin­ness Long Jour­ney Home: A Guide To Your Search for the Mean­ing of Life
Brian McLaren Find­ing Faith: A Self-Discovery Guide For Your Spir­i­tual Quest