"Do You Believe in God?"

[CrisisPapers]

| Ernest Partridge |

According to a recent Newsweek Poll, 91% replied to this question in the affirmative.

But did any of the thousand individuals polled pause to ask: "Just what do you mean by 'God'?"

To the approximately half of Americans who believe in the God of the Old Testament who created the world in six days, who wrestled with Jacob, who spoke to Moses in the burning bush, who stopped the sun in the sky to assist Joshua's destruction of Jericho, and who ordered the genocidal obliteration of entire cities, the answer to the title question is a clear and unambiguous "yes." However, as I will discuss shortly, those who additionally describe their God with "Omnis" (omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent and omnipresent), may have a problem.

Given the extraordinary political influence of fundamentalist, literal Bible-believing, science-rejecting Christians, some of whom seek to replace the Constitution with a Bible-based theocracy, it might well be worth our while to explore just what it might mean for someone of those 91% percent to affirm a belief in God.

For many significant individuals in history along with many thoughtful individuals today, no simple answer can be given to the question, "Do You Believe in God?"

For Aristotle, "God" is the Prime Mover: the ultimate unmoved source of all motion, which is to say, all activity. Aristotle's God is "pure act:" nothing "happens" to God, but God acts, eventually, on all things. While this God is said by Aristotle to "think" (but thinking only of the object worthy of God's thought, namely itself), "He" is in no other sense a "person."

To Baruch Spinoza, the 17th Century Dutch-Jewish philosopher, God is the totality of rational possibility, which means, identical with all of nature (pantheism). This is a concept of God totally alien to the Abrahamic religions - Judiasm, Christianity and Islam - a God that is not personal, conscious, or benevolent. Some called Spinoza, "God Intoxicated." Others called him "that hideous atheist." Which was he? That depends upon what you mean by "God."

Finally, what is one to make of Einstein's "God." While totally rejecting the personal God of the Bible and conventional religion, Einstein affirmed that his religion:

... consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.

Aristotle, Spinoza and Einstein all claimed to believe in God. What say you?

These concepts of God, among many others, point to a fundamental rift in Western religions and in Christianity in particular. In historical Christianity, there are, in a sense, two competing and mutually exclusive Deities: the Absolute God of the philosophers and theologians, and the personal "Heavenly Father" of the ordinary churchgoer. The former derives from ancient metaphysics (primarily Greek), and the other from the tribal religion of the early Hebrews evolving into the religion of the Jews of Roman Palestine, among them Jesus of Nazareth.

Simply put, most Christians fail to consider seriously the implications of omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence and omnibenevolence. When one does, what results is a credo such as the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1647:

There is but one only living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure sprit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute... Nothing is to him contingent or uncertain.

Early Christian theologians such as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas took these "Omnis" very seriously.

For both Augustine and Aquinas, God exists "outside" of time and space (i.e., He is "supernatural"), encompassing both completely. This means not only that is God everywhere at once (omnipresent), He is also "everywhen." All worldly time - past, present and future - is of a single "eternal present" to the omniscient mind of God. To employ an imperfect analogy, God is like the Pythagorean Theorem: "outside" of any particular time or place, but equally true at all times and in all places. (As St. Augustine was fully aware, God's "eternal present" raises enormous problems regarding human free will and moral responsibility, which we will bypass here).

Qua "infinite in being and perfection," God is immutable. Because nothing changes Him, nothing affects Him. He is, in philosophical jargon, "Pure Act," which means that, being immutable, He does not respond. Accordingly, one does not bargain with or beseech God. Prayers and rituals are in vain, if they are expected to "persuade" or in any way initiate a response from the Almighty.

The "immensity" and "incomprehensibility" of this infinite God is fully required if He is to "fit" the cosmology presented to us by modern science: a universe about fourteen billion years old, comprised of billions of galaxies, each containing billions of stars. And of course, many if not most scientific cosmologists see no need to make such a "fit." The vastness and mystery of the physical universe itself suffices.

Unfortunately, this conception of God also puts Him out of reach of ordinary worship, for not even the extraordinary mind of an Einstein can relate personally to this "immense" Deity, any more than one can relate personally to the entire universe and the physical laws that it embodies.

Needless to say, the "Heavenly Father" of the ordinary churchgoer is quite different. That Deity is a personal Being. It is written that He is loving, compassionate, jealous, wrathful and vengeful. He responds to prayer, blesses the virtuous and faithful, and condemns the sinners, perchance to eternal torment. His wrath, Rev. Falwell tells us, was manifest on September 11, 2001:

... when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped make this happen'.

The personal, loving nature of this transcendent "parent" is testified to in "faith-promoting stories" told in most Theistic religions.

Pat Robertson, who assures us that he routinely converses with God, has often told how, in answer to his prayer, the Lord diverted a hurricane that was headed straight toward Robertson's headquarters and university. However, he never explains why those who were hit by the diverted hurricane deserved their misfortune.

At our household, we are visited each month by "home teachers" from our local church (which we never attend), who almost always read us such stories. Thus we have heard of numerous prayers that have been answered by "our Heavenly Father." In one story, a desperate mother was at a total loss at how to build a kite for her child. After a prayer, the Lord supplied the answer. Another faithful soul was reminded of the combination of a lock, and yet another, after a prayer, was able to restart a stalled car. We also heard a story of how a prayerful child was shown in a dream where to find a lost puppy. And many more. (Really! I'm not making this up!).

We listen to these stories patiently and without critical comment, for we see no reason to offend our visitors. They are kind and worthy people, and we value their friendship.

But on reflection, we find such stories to be outlandish, to say the least of it. Even sacrilegious. For in these stories, the Lord God Almighty, creator and ruler of the vast universe, is reduced to the status of a cosmic Google and "Mr. Fixit." And a very selective one at that. For, while we are asked to believe that all these prayers were duly answered, at the same time millions died in abject poverty and of horrible diseases, their faithful prayers unanswered.

Granted, these stories are naive and childlike in the extreme. Even so, for the vast majority of adherents of the Abrahamic religions, God (or Yahweh, or Allah) is an exalted person who converses with His prophets, answers prayers, suspends physical laws to performs miracles, and manifests thereby His wrath, His love, and His compassion.

Notwithstanding the theologian's insistence, as stated in the Westminster Confession, that God is immutable and "without body parts or passions."

So which is it? A personal "Heavenly Father" who is actively engaged with the world, thus perpetually changing with the onset of events and in response to the prayers of the faithful? Or is He the perfect, immutable, infinite being of the theologians? Upon careful reflection neither alternative might be particularly attractive to those desperate to find and believe in an object of worship.

David Hume, in his "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion," clearly recognized this dilemma. On the one hand, conceive of God as an exalted person, and the Divine is reduced to human dimensions, with unsettling possibilities:

This world, for aught (one) knows, is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior standard, and was only the first rude essay of some infant deity who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance; it is the work of some dependent inferior deity, and is the object of derision to his superiors; it is the production of old age and dotage in some superannuated deity.... From the moment the attributes of the Deity are supposed finite, all these have place.

On the other hand:

I ask the theist, if he does not allow, that there is a great and immeasurable, because incomprehensible, difference between the human and the divine mind: the more pious he is, the more readily will he assent to the affirmative, and the more he will be disposed to magnify the difference.

And with that "magnification," the Deity recedes from our comprehension and from our personal involvement. This Deity, remember, is "incomprehensible." He acts, but never responds. The timeless Creator and sustainer of everything, He is not "personally" involved in particular with anything or anyone. But how can one worship that which one cannot comprehend? How can one have a personal connection with an infinite being that is "without body parts or passions"?

At this point, reasoned contemplation ends, and faith takes over - a faith wherein, as Kierkegaard said, we must "tear out the eyes of our reason" and believe because it is absurd.

And here too is the great divide: the atheist and agnostic insist that where reason and evidence end, so too must belief. To the believer (the vast majority of Americans), faith - "the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen" (Hebrews, II-1) - suffices as justification for belief: belief that the Bible (or the Torah, or the Qu'ran) is the Word of God, belief in the divine mission of Jesus (or of Moses, or of Mohammed), belief that God (or Yahweh, or Allah) is the foundation of moral law.

Is morality possible apart from a personal God - a moral law-giver who is in addition a cosmic Santa Claus who knows when each of us is sleeping and awake, and if we've been bad or good? I believe that a morality apart from God is possible, as exemplified in the lives of many saintly and heroic atheists and agnostics. And this is fortunate, for a secular morality, belonging exclusively to no particular religion, offers itself as a neutral arbiter among all religions. This, presumably, is what the founders of our republic had in mind, when they wrote and ratified the First Amendment to our Constitution.

The question of the possibility of morality without religion is too large and complicated to deal with in this brief space. Perhaps I might take it up in another essay. (In the meantime, see my "A Progressive Ethical Theory" and "One Nation, Under God, Divisible").

And so, having offended some ninety percent of those who might read this, perhaps I'd better stop here.

-- EP

[havocmom]

1. Better question to put to people: Does God believe in YOU?

I would like that on a bumper sticker.

[Dhalgren]

2. Very interesting essay. Thanks for posting.

these are the kinds of questions and the areas of thought that are, to me, the most interesting when dealing with Deity. The various religions of the "Book" hold little interest to me (apart from how they are wreaking havoc throughout the world). There is a distinct difference between the discussion of the various mythologies and the discussion of the idea of Deity.

Again, very good post.

[sinkingfeeling]

3. David Hume! His dialogues was my awakening to the absurdity of the traditional

'Heavenly Father'.

[Warpy]

4. I'm struck by the difference in language among

the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1647, Hume, and Falwell.

Falwell is clearly speaking to children who are none too bright. The others speak to adults.

[geardaddy]

5. Excellent post.

This sounds like a sermon that the old minister at our Congregationalist church would give.

Thank you for your enlightening words.

[Sander]

6. Another Answer

If I believe there is a God in the world, I must intellectually assign to Him what role I believe He has had in the creation of the universe, in the creation of life, and the mind of man.

What distinguishes me from the atheist is that I believe the universe is so beautiful and complex that it could not be just a random ordering of elementary particles. Yes, I do understand that chaos theory demonstrates that even truly chaotic events often result in beautiful patterns (see Mandelbrot set fractals at http://complexity.orcon.net.nz/mandelbrot.html.) However, I choose to see in these patterns the hand of God - not mere coincidence.

So I see the beauty of the heavens as proof of God’s existence. I see the exquisite perfection of the rose, the serene beauty of the sun rising to warm the meadow on a Spring morning, the pattern of waves as they wash up on the sand of an empty beach, the music of a child’s laughter, and the complexities of the mind of man as further proof that God exists.

Notice, I need none of the trappings of traditional religiosity to be confident in this belief. I do not need to attend synagogue or church. I do not need to recite traditional doxologies. I believe. Period.

I believe that God gave each of us a mind to use. God gave us the ability to feel emotions, to think rationally, to appreciate beauty, and to solve problems.

God also gave us the ability to empathize. It is a human characteristic that we have the ability to empathize, to reflect, in our own minds, the feelings of others. We see others suffering, we suffer with them. We truly, “feel their pain.” This is the real basis for human morality. We empathize and take responsibility to help relieve the suffering of others - if we have the strength and resources to do so. We need no external biblical “moral code.” We all are blessed with an internal moral code to treat each other responsibly, to help relieve suffering, and to deal honestly with each other. Morality doesn’t need religiosity. It is a natural human characteristic.

So what good is prayer? Prayer, in my view, is my way of listening to and understanding the will of God as it affects me, personally. In my view, it does no good to pray for others - only for the understanding of how and if I can help them. It does not take a miracle to suddenly give me that insight. The miracle is already there - in my own brain and in how I use it. After all, in my view, God gave me this brain and my mind to use. That is the miracle. So by praying, I ask for understanding and then give that problem to my unconscious mind - my right brain. As I go about my business during the day, and as I sleep at night, my right brain is continuing to work on the problem. If and when it comes to a solution, it passes that solution over to my conscious mind - to my left brain.

So finally having the solution, I have a choice, via free will, to implement that solution or not. I can choose to ignore it, if I want. Or, I can act on that knowledge to affect a solution. But from where did that knowledge arise? From the synapses in my right brain? Yes, but are not those synapses and the way they work, a gift from God?

[AnnieBW]

7. Which God?

Specify, please. I believe in several of them. ;)

[struggle4progress]

8. Figuring out what people actually believe is not easy, and their answers ...

... to silly poll questions typically doesn't shed much light on the matter. So I regard with skepticism your claims about most Christians or the vast majority of adherents of the Abrahamic religions.

Is it really true, for example, that half of Americans .. believe .. God .. stopped the sun in the sky to assist Joshua's destruction of Jericho? I admit I have met some people who say they believe this, and I suppose there could be a substantial number of such people -- but surely your numerical assertion half requires some supporting evidence.

You speak of science-rejecting Christians, and of course there are some. But if they were even close to half the population in number, one should expect large numbers of people to avoid (say) doctors and hospitals, perhaps in favor of faith healers. By any account familiar to me, however, people typically avoid modern medical care only insofar as they are unable to afford it.

There are certainly a few lunatics around who want a theocracy. Had this ever been the common view of religious people in America, then we would certainly have a theocracy now: instead we have a secular state because, even when almost every single American called himself/herself a Christian, Americans supported a secular society.

You want to ask people who answer the question Do you believe in God? affirmatively exactly what they mean by God. But perhaps it would be more to the point to ask what they mean by believe. American society is curiously fixated on the importance of opinion: people who won't lift a finger to help a particular cause often readily say that they believe in that cause; people are eager to express their belief in the innocence or guilt of a person when a criminal case garners media attention; people will say they believe in evolution, or will say they don't believe in it; in short, many Americans define themselves by their opinions (rather than, say, by their concrete actions, or by their ability to withhold judgment when uninformed; or by their ability to hold an idea indefinitely, as a more or less useful scientific hypothesis, without either rejecting it completely or accepting it unquestioningly.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. I think the "appriximately half of Americans" refers to the 48% who answered

"God created humans pretty much in the present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so" to the question "Which one of the following statements come closest to your views about the origin and development of human beings?" - see question 12 in the poll.

They aren't rejecting all science; but they are rejecting the basics of archaeology, palaeontology, and a significant part of physics - radioisotope dating. Note there was an 'intelligent design' alternative - "Humans developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process" - which another 30% took. Only 13% think that 'God' had no part in the development of humans.

[struggle4progress]

10. Since we Americans are abysmally educated, the real question

still might be what to make of people's responses to silly poll questions.

I provide a link to the Baylor Religion Survey below, according to which a clear majority of Americans identify themselves as "Bible-believing" Christians. But what this actually means in anybody's guess, because most of us don't have a clue what's in the Bible:

~snip~ Fewer than half of us can identify Genesis as the first book of the Bible, and only one third know that Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount. ~snip~

Approximately 75 percent of adults, according to polls cited by Prothero, mistakenly believe the Bible teaches that "God helps those who help themselves." More than 10 percent think that Noah's wife was Joan of Arc. Only half can name even one of the four Gospels, and -- a finding that will surprise many -- evangelical Christians are only slightly more knowledgeable than their non-evangelical counterparts. ~snip~

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/01/AR2007030102073.html

And it's not just the Bible we're fuzzy about:

~snip~ About 11 percent of young citizens of the U.S. couldn't even locate the U.S. on a map. The Pacific Ocean's location was a mystery to 29 percent; Japan, to 58 percent; France, to 65 percent; and the United Kingdom, to 69 percent. ~snip~
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/11/1120_021120_GeoRoperSurvey.html

~snip~ "A slightly higher proportion of American adults qualify as scientifically literate than European or Japanese adults, but the truth is that no major industrial nation in the world today has a sufficient number of scientifically literate adults," he said. "We should take no pride in a finding that 70 percent of Americans cannot read and understand the science section of the New York Times."

Approximately 28 percent of American adults currently qualify as scientifically literate, an increase from around 10 percent in the late 1980s and early 1990s, according to Miller's research. ~snip~

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070218134322.htm

~snip~ While crucial social, economic, and health issues now facing the public are being profoundly influenced by new scientific research, a startling number of Americans cannot answer even basic scientific questions:

More than half of all American adults (53%) do not know that the Earth goes around the Sun once a year.
Nearly half (48%) do not have a sense of what percentage of the Earth's surface is covered by water.
And 42% can't answer correctly when asked if the earliest humans lived at the same time as dinosaurs.
Nearly 1 in 5 people (19%) couldn't answer any of these questions correctly. Even college graduates did not fare well, just over a third (35%) were able to respond correctly to all three questions. ~snip~

http://www.calacademy.org/geninfo/newsroom/releases/2001/survey_results0401.html

~snip~ Over the past 20 years, the percentage of U.S. adults accepting the idea of evolution has declined from 45% to 40% and the percentage of adults overtly rejecting evolution declined from 48% to 39%. The percentage of adults who were not sure about evolution increased from 7% in 1985 to 21% in 2005 ~snip~

A dichotomous true-false question format tends to exaggerate the strength of both positions ~snip~ Treating the "probably" and "not sure" categories as varying degrees of uncertainty, ~55% of American adults have held a tentative view about evolution for the last decade.

~snip~ genetic literacy has a moderate positive relationship to the acceptance of evolution in both the United States and the nine European countries ~snip~

~snip~ only a third of American adults agree that more than half of human genes are identical to those of mice and only 38% of adults recognize that humans have more than half of their genes in common with chimpanzees. In other studies (1, 14, 15), fewer than half of American adults can provide a minimal definition of DNA. Thus, it is not surprising that nearly half of the respondents in 2005 were not sure about the proportion of human genes that overlap with mice or chimpanzees ~snip~

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/313/5788/765

There seems to be an upsurge in odd beliefs:

~snip~ A panel of researchers expressed concern that people are giving increasing credence to pseudoscience such as the visits of space aliens, lucky numbers and horoscopes. ~snip~

http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/07/02/18/100wir_a6science001.cfm

~snip~ Evangelicals are the least attracted to paranormal beliefs of all religious groupings. ~snip~ Belief in the paranormal declines with increasing church attendance

download pdf: http://www.baylor.edu/pr/news.php?action=story&story=41678

And the fact that Americans know surprisingly little about science may not mean they reject science:

~snip~ More than half of Americans (52%) don't believe the U.S. is performing well in science and math education compared to other nations, but they know science is very important (85%), according to a recent poll commissioned by Research!America. Most (87%) rate being a scientist as one of the most prestigious careers, yet 75% can’t name a living scientist. Sixty-four percent don’t think average Americans are knowledgeable about science, and 76% think it is very important that young people are encouraged to pursue scientific careers, and that more opportunities for these careers are created. ~snip~

http://www.researchamerica.org/media/releases/2.1.2007.bts.html

So it's not at all clear to me that if someone chooses, in response to a poll question, the option ""God created humans pretty much in the present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so" that they are consciously and deliberately rejecting the basics of archaeology, palaeontology, and a significant part of physics - radioisotope dating in favor of some Biblical literalism that would imply they believed something like the sun stood still for Joshua. It seems at least plausible that a certain number of the responses are coming from people who simply haven't a clue, either what the modern scientific view is or who Joshua supposedly was.