An Introduction

If I ever wrote another nonfiction book, the one I would like to write would be titled, The Grand Enigma. The real grand enigma is the fact that we and the universe exist, and while there must be a reason we exist, all possible answers eventually end up in absurdity. Yet, one of those reasons must be correct, unless, of course, it is a reason that humans never thought of. This series of articles will only be a token discussion of what deserves much more thought. My point is not to sow doubt among those with certainty about their world view, but to address the question with such honesty that confidence in that world view would be enhanced. If you are brave of heart, join me on this incredible journey.

I will draw a lot from Thomas Aquinas because I am presently studing his Summa Theologcia and he has a lot to say about this topic. He is considered by many as the greatest Christian theologian, or one of the greatest. He, like me, is an unabashedly lover of reason, and the fields of science, and philosophy. However, as you will see, I don’t agree with all his views, especially applying his perspective of the thirteenth century to modern times.

Prolog

I will say many things here that I expect no one in this present culture will agree with, especially religious people. That is expected. Conformity to the culture, including the Christian culture is not my highest aspiration. I have no qualms with those who disagree with me because I honestly respect them. My disagreements are not personal. These questions are hard. As Thomas Aquinas said, “We must love them both, those whose opinions we share and those whose opinions we reject, for both have labored in the search for truth, and both have helped us in finding it.” Additionally, I do not boast of certainty in my own views.

We are now living in an age where many people avoid expressing controversial opinions with the fear that the objector of those opinions will reply with personal attacks, and their worry is justified. Besides, postmodernism teaches that all opinions are the same anyway, which I strongly reject. I don’t fear people who disagree with me, but I do fear those who make this personal because it has happened to me so often, their points are always the same; my relationship with God is inferior to their own. Why? Because I engage reason. I’ve heard these words so often that I feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, the words memorized and branded in my brain like a trademark. Religion is a highly competitive sport which I have no desire to participate in. Postmodernism has delivered us into an age of unreason, which the religious community has adopted as much as the secular. As I’ve said before, “reason” is now the foulest word you can mumble in a church or Christian small group and this is a new development, over the past half century. So, if anyone feels compelled to confront me, not to try and better understand what I’m writing, but to point out my personal inferiority, please don’t. That hurts. If you foolishly believe that you can convert me to your views that reason is of the flesh and not of God, or that there are no absolute truths, good luck with that. If I were the last person on earth who still believed in reason and searchable truths, and even if my beliefs were punishable by torture or capital punishment, it would not weaken my certainty in those two convictions. Of course, I always welcome honest questions, but I want the freedom to write with candor without fear of retribution. Thank you for understanding. And bless the vast majority, Christian, atheist, agnostics, who tolerate my thoughts with respect and love, despite your disagreement.

If I bring anything to the table that is unique, it is not my lofty thoughts but my deep commitment to honesty. I’ve spent more than thirty years in serious study for this cause.

The George Costanza Effect – The Problem of a Fragile Faith

If the Seinfeld character, George Costanza, (known for being a habitual liar) is in a bar and meets a pretty lady, and he tells her that he is an architect, highly educated in an Ivy League school, wealthy, previous dating a famous supermodel, and if this new girl likes him, he will always be insecure in her love because it was based on a false pretense. It is the same way with religious faith. If it is based on inferior reasoning, then many people of faith will have a fragile conviction. I’ve watched many deeply committed pastors, Christian writers, and others who abruptly left Christianity, often overnight. I’m sure it happens in all religions. Due to social pressures, or that reason is of the devil, they may have never spoken of those doubts outside their heads, but they were still there. Their Christian friends say, “Nobody saw this coming.” With this article I want to confront those insecurities head on, deconstructing many of the cultural beliefs. This journey is not for the fainthearted and some will prefer to avoid this challenge. Who has the greatest faith, those who never entertain an opposing thought or belief, or he/she who embraces even the strongest arguments against their own ideas, carefully considering them, and still believes? In my opinion, it is the latter. I listen to a lot of lectures and podcasts, most of them by atheists, some, by my faith’s greatest challengers. This has left my convictions stronger, not weaker.

The Default Position

If there was a default position to why and how we exist, it would be agnosticism. I disagree with my philosophical friend, Aquinas, who said the default position was theism. However, I give Aquinas grace here, because he was living in a different time, the thirteenth century. They had much less information then about the cosmos than we do now, including plausible exceptions to theism. He also lived in a homogenous culture deep within Catholic Italy, where Christian theism wasn’t only in the air, but was the air.

I know many people who say that they are agnostic because they simply don’t know with any certainty which answer is true. I respect them because their observation is honest. Both the atheist and religious must conclude that the mortal human does not have the intellectual capacity to find certainty about the big questions of life, yet they claim certainty. The religious person usually defaulting to a subjective truth, “I know God is there because he told me so, I’ve experienced him, or I can feel him.”

For the Christian (and I know the Christian faith the best, but you can extrapolate to other faiths) I want to make two points. First, even the Bible agrees that our minds are limited in their abilities to find answers with certainty and that our emotions (the place of “subjective truth,” where we feel or experience God) is hopelessly untrustworthy. Jeremiah exposes the dishonesty of our own hearts (“hearts” translated from Hebrew and then Greek word, psyches). Our emotions are profoundly dishonest and are influenced by factors that have nothing to do with our process for finding truth.

The heart is hopelessly dark and deceitful,
    a puzzle that no one can figure out.
But I, God, search the heart
    and examine the mind.
I get to the heart of the human.
    I get to the root of things.
I treat them as they really are,
    not as they pretend to be.

Jeremiah 17:9-10 The Message

Modern research into neuropsychology agrees with this verse in Jeremiah, the extent that self-deception is present in our intrinsic, subjective knowledge is massive. It makes no difference if we label that intrinsic realm as “spiritual.” Therefore, the argument that I know God exist because I feel him or have experienced him does not hold water with those who are rational and familiar with what we know about human behavior.

Keeping this in mind, aspirations for certainty must be tempered with this reality, yet we must not resort to nihilism but be willing to accept answers with high probability as our absolutes, but with humility. Those who claim certainty as a mark of great faith, overlooks the objective proof of the limits of the human mind, and what the Bible itself says about our ability to know.

Many people in our present culture, including religious people, have adopted the postmodernist viewpoint because it seems to decrease this tension in knowing because it claims there are no truths, or you have the freedom to create your own truth without the need for evidence. This is an aberration in the history of humanity and will eventually be a disaster for the Christian and the atheist alike because it is inconsistent with reality, where absolute truth abounds, but it is very seductive.

Another tenet of Christianity is that it is the default position and people only don’t accept it because of ignorance or immorality. This is based on the Bible verse Romans 1:20 and Aquinas, in his Summa Theologica, gives homage to this same verse as he developed his own opinion that theism is the default position.

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. Romans 1:20 NIV

In high school, when I first became a Christian out of agnosticism, I carried my skepticism with me into Christianity. I had always been a skeptic; it is my nature. The evangelical leader, whom I was enthralled with, assured me that God’s existence was so obvious, that only immorality or stupidity causes someone to doubt it. For example, he said, “Those atheists who believe in evolution don’t do it because of the evidence, there’s no evidence for evolution, but because they want to have sex with their girlfriends (which was one of the greatest sins in our world) and to do so without guilt, they made up atheistic evolution so there is no god to answer to.”

What that leader said about the evidence for evolution was a factual lie. However, that attitude set us up to not only distrust anyone who was not a Christian, but to see them as immoral . . . or stupid. We even thought we were smarter than the scientists who had spent decades in study and research. After leaving that world, I found agnostics and atheists make the best friends because they have an honest pursuit of truth and are more clear-eyed about morality and don’t partake in competitive religion, claiming who is the most righteous.

That passage in Romans was written circa. 57 AD, likely by Paul or his colleagues. It had to be written within the framework of the current knowledge of that time. During the first century (and for many centuries more) the cosmos was very small and quite simple. The earth was seen as the center of the cosmos, the moon, sun, and stars all floating in concentric spheres within the earth’s atmosphere. Virtually all the complex methods and laws of biology were unknown. No cells, no germs, no understanding. Thinking these things were magical (supernatural) was clearly the default position throughout the world, atheism a stretch. By the twenty-first century we know so much more about the size and mysteries of the universe, and many theories, such as the big bang, evolution, are plausible (if you are intellectually honest about this) explanations for how the cosmos exist in its present forms. So now, an atheistic view is plausible and is not the result of stupidity or immorality. I respect them as Aquinas has challenged us to do.

I will make one more point and that is most religious people, and even atheists, hold their views for the wrong reason. It is because of social conformity. If you were born in Mumbai, India, you would be Hindu. If you were born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, you would be a Muslim, if born in Brigham City, Utah, with Morman parents, you would likely be a Mormon, and if your parents were professors of Anthropology at Harvard, an atheist. Now, in the end, if anyone of those were the correct answer, it would not matter how you came to believe it, you are still better off. But such an assumption is dangerous. I am not talking about the danger of burning a trillion, trillion years in hell for missing the mark, but life works better when your views are congruent with the way the cosmos really is.

There will be two objections to this point. The first is from the postmodernist will say that “the wrong reason” is not relevant because there are no wrong reasons as there are no true answers to this question of existence and meaning. This violates classical logic because atheism and theism can’t both be true, nor can Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism all be equally true. People think I object to Richard Rohr and Rob Bell blending Christianity and Buddhism because I’m a Christian dogmatist. I am not. It is because such popular notions violate the laws of logic, two opposites both being true. You cannot believe in a cosmos that has no personal god, where reality itself is an illusion, and simultaneously believe in a cosmos that was created by a personal God and reality is real. Buddhists meditate to escape the illusion. Christians should meditate to understand God and how to navigate the reality, but often use Buddhistic meditation which should be absurd for them in the same way that real Christian meditation should be an absurdity for the Buddhist.

“Subjective Truth”

The Christian will also object to this idea of the believing for the wrong reason because they heavily rely on subjective truth. I will define subjective truth as a belief that has no objective evidence. Their subjective truth in this case is the assurance that they believe in the Christian viewpoint because it is supernatural. God called them and they, by a moral act, accepted that calling. They may even reason that God put them in a Christian family, within a Christian culture, to assure this calling. That is a big leap and built, like a house of cards, completely on the heart’s subjective understanding, the same heart that God said via Jeremiah is the most deceitful thing within creation.

In part II, I will further my deconstruction of our common beliefs, and later, start to look honestly at the evidence that supports the main worldviews. I will do this honestly and will share a simple framework of why I came back into Christianity from atheism. I may spend more time discussing the issue or subjective truth, which is the cornerstone of most religious beliefs.

Mike