The rationality of belief in God
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| English: Alvin Plantinga after telling a joke at the beginning of a lecture on science and religion delivered at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Rationality is less concerned with adopting a particular starting point or conclusion than with the rules that regulate reflective discussion leading to a conclusion. New Atheist writers often define the term beyond its fundamental sense, holding that it demands we interpret the world in a specific way that excludes belief in God. Yet this interpretation clearly involves smuggling in a host of value judgements, assumptions and unverifiable starting points about the nature of reality that are, strictly speaking, not demonstrable by reason. Here, for example, in a rather colourful passage from a lecture given at the Edinburgh Festival some years ago, Richard Dawkins asserts that religious faith is simply and necessarily a revolt against reason and evidence:
Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence … Faith is not allowed to justify itself by argument.6
Dawkins seems to overlook the legion of religious writers—such as Richard Swinburne and C. S. Lewis—who insisted that faith could and should justify itself by argument. Perhaps some religious people do refuse to think. My studies of New Atheist websites lead me to believe they’re not alone in that. But it’s just nonsense to represent this as typical of either religion or atheism.
But where is there any recognition of the limits of reason? In debate with Dawkins, he once challenged me to prove—by science or reason—that there is a God. If I could prove it, he would believe it. Unfortunately it’s not that simple! As will become clear in this chapter and the next, there are in fact rather few things that can be proved by reason or science, and God isn’t one of them. Nor, for that matter, is anything else of ultimate importance—including the core values and ideas of atheism.
The great British philosopher and intellectual historian Sir Isaiah Berlin (1909–97) pointed out some years ago that human convictions can be grouped together under three categories:7
1 those that can be established by empirical observation;
2 those that can be established by logical deduction;
3 those that cannot be proved in either of these ways.
The first two categories concern what can be known reliably through the natural sciences on the one hand, and what can be proved through logic and mathematics on the other. The third category concerns the values and ideas that have shaped human culture and given human existence direction and purpose, but cannot be proved by reason or science.
What sort of values and ideas? Here’s one.
In 1948 the United Nations ‘reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights’. The statements of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, such as ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood’ cannot be proved, logically or scientifically; nor can the belief that democracy is better than fascism, or that oppression is evil. But many noble and wise people make upholding such things their life’s work, trusting that they are, in the first place, right, and in the second, important. Nobody thinks they’re mad for doing so. As the literary critic Terry Eagleton rightly points out, ‘We hold many beliefs that have no unimpeachably rational justification, but are nonetheless reasonable to entertain.’
The philosopher Alvin Plantinga made this point years ago with reference to the perennial philosophical problem of ‘other minds’. To explain briefly: while I have direct knowledge that I have a mind, I can’t absolutely prove that you, the reader, have a mind, and you can’t absolutely prove that other people have minds. But nobody’s unduly bothered about this. It’s a safe assumption for us to make and chimes in with the way things seem to be. Plantinga argues for a parallel between proving the existence of ‘other minds’ and proving the existence of God.
Neither can be verified, and good arguments can be raised against both—but to their defenders, both seem entirely reasonable.
The New Atheism refuses to confront the inconvenient truth that every world-view—whether religious or secular—goes beyond what reason or science can prove. That’s just the way things are.
The ‘ultimate questions’ about value and meaning won’t go away. Both the New Atheism and Christianity represent and rest upon convictions. Both are based on what they know cannot be proved, yet nevertheless hold to be trustworthy. As has often been pointed out, that’s how world-views and belief systems—whether religious or secular—work.
All such ultimate questions and their answers about life and death, sin and suffering, hope and healing, finally elude our intellectual grasp and strict logical proof. In the end we say simply, ‘I am doing this because I believe that this is the nature of life and that my ultimate happiness depends on my acting in accord with my deepest commitment and dearest beliefs.’11
Christopher Hitchens declares boldly that New Atheists such as himself do not entertain beliefs—‘Our belief is not a belief.’12 It’s one of the best examples of blind faith I’ve come across—a delusion that makes his whole approach vulnerable. To give one obvious example: Hitchens’ anti-theism rests on certain moral values (such as ‘religion is evil’ or ‘God is not good’) that he is unable to demonstrate by reason. Hitchens simply assumes that his moral values are shared by his sympathetic readers, who are unlikely to ask inconvenient questions about their origins, foundations or reliability. When he’s called upon to prove them (as he regularly is in debates), he finds himself unable to do so. His beliefs are indeed beliefs, even if he prefers not to concede this decisive point. Welcome to the human race, Mr Hitchens. That’s the position we’re all in—including you.
McGrath, A. (2011). Why God Won’t Go Away: Engaging with the New Atheism (pp. 58–61). London: SPCK.
