Why Believe in God?

I think about God. Why to believe, whether to believe. But the question, why believe in God, can take two forms. The first, of course, is why believe there really is a God? Here we debate reasons and arguments for and against the existence of a supreme deity. The second, more personal, is why should I believe in God? Or even, do I want to believe in God? Here we examine ourselves, discern our deepest feelings. They're related, sure. If there is really a God, then I should really believe in God. I dwelt for decades on reasons and arguments defending and attacking the claim that God exists. I now shift to belief. This is not my world, and I am uneasy entering it. Why believe in God? I'm Robert Lawrence Kuhn, and Closer to Truth is my journey to find out. I remain ambivalent with reasons and arguments for and against the existence of God. So here's my problem. I'm told that to know whether there is a God, I must first believe in God. But wouldn't that push me onto a circular path of self-deception? Asking myself, why should I believe in God, throws me off balance, out of my comfort zone of reasons and arguments. I don't enjoy the vertigo. I go to London to meet Sarah Coakley, professor of divinity at Cambridge. Sarah is a sophisticated, systematic theologian and a perceptive Anglican priest. How will she take to me, a struggling scientist, amateur theologian, and ambivalent believer? Sarah, I will admit to you two things. One, I would like to believe in God, and two, I really don't. Why should I believe in God? My answer to that would be very different depending on what's motivating you. In other words, is it because you feel uneasy about an option that you've never really considered? Is it because you feel drawn out of yourself towards some questions that you have evaded all your life? Is it because, completely hypothetically, there's some suffering in your life that you feel... Sounds like I should lie down on a couch. Well, I'm very reluctant, as a theologian and as a priest, to answer that question as if it were on some kind of flat plane. There's no personal interest involved. Let me answer that question. I would love to believe in God because that would give meaning to the universe and my life. It would give at least the only possible hope of a life after death. So I have every reason to want to believe in God and would like to believe in God, but that's exactly why I am concerned because I have the desire that the end product of that would be generated by my desire rather than by reality. And the last thing I want to do is fool myself. Absolutely. So what are the conditions under which you could conceive of being drawn to believe in a way that you weren't duping yourself? I don't know. And I have said that I think if God exists, it's up to God to figure out how I can believe. That's why I'm coming to you. You're closer than I am. Well, perhaps you shouldn't presume that. That's not a presumption I would make, actually. I'm very serious about that. But the reason I press you on what do you seek, that's a very old question asked to monks when they come to the monastery, quid petis. What do you seek? Because I think that is the core question that should be at the center when people say, why do you believe in God? But that's idiosyncratic. That's just about me. It shouldn't be about me. I want it to be about reality. I want it independent of me. Now, why is reality and you somehow separable? I mean, why do you think that's a problem? Reality would be reality if I existed or I did not. That is true. But why do you think that reflecting on your own spiritual state and your own desires is somehow... Because I think that would affect my analysis of the problem or my desire to want God to exist. I do want God to exist. All right, so you think that, say, in science, you can investigate matters in science, not bringing any of your desires or interests into the matter. Certainly, there is personal involvement in anything in science. But what you'd have at the end of the day in science is that you have objective reality that is pretty much agreed to across cultures, which you do not find in religion. That is perfectly true. But you see, the reason I'm asking you this is not to trick you. The thing I'm most interested in in relation to arguments for God's existence, which I don't in any way sneer at, by the way. It's been very popular in the last generation of theology to think that arguments for God's existence are a waste of time and that we can withdraw into our kind of sectarian realms of religious practice and not bother with people who don't believe. This seems to me a tragic intellectual mistake. But arguments as such, they would not engage you unless your will were somehow turned towards the reality that might lie behind them. And that's why I've been pressing this what do you seek question. So what you're saying is that if there's some predisposition, some will to believe that the arguments for God would be received in a different way. Exactly. That's what scares me. That's exactly what scares me. That's what I don't want. So you think that that would necessarily be a matter of self-duping. I would worry about that. Right. But what are the conditions under which that worry might be relieved? I'm still pressing you on this. I don't know. Let's say that God is reaching out to you in some way to work on this niggle that you have that you would like to believe in God. And let's say that there are some arenas of your life which have a sort of element of vulnerability in them, of love, of desire, of pain where God could get in. Under what conditions do you think that might lead to something? I have all of those as does everyone. And if I would begin to believe in God through any one of those windows, it would make me nervous. I just don't want to be in a position of fooling myself or arrogating to myself some relationship with the spiritual realities when such is not the case. You seem to be operating with an extraordinarily individualistic notion of the intellectual life in which you and you alone are responsible for everything you do and think. So that's one problem I may have. Yes, and this strikes me as not really true to any of our intellectual endeavors. It seems to me that the reason you haven't got very far in what you say is a desire to believe in God is that you have this rather strange, abstract, arid vision of a sort of space in which you would be completely uncontaminated by any previous authoritative... No, I am contaminated, and every contamination I've had pushed me in the opposite direction. Away from religion, because religion has been responsible for such negative... For a lot of reasons. I'm not one to say because religion has had so many negatives in terms of wars and persecutions that I reject the fundamentals of religion. I'm not of that kind. So your quest for the deep reality of life, which seems to animate these programs, seems to me to have some spiritual dimension to it. I mean, it may not find its place in any particular practice of religion at the moment, but it clearly is an itch. You wouldn't be making all these programs if you didn't find this an ultimately fascinating question. And it's not only to find an answer, but it's just to deal with the questions themselves. Exactly. Because if you deal with the questions themselves, I feel that is enormous progress. So I would want to say, over against a huge number of moves in recent philosophy of religion and theology against arguments for God's existence, that I would be very happy to lay out a range of arguments why it seems to me very rational to believe in God, including profoundly experiential reasons, which I suspect that you share a little bit more than you're owning up to at the moment. I just have that little feeling as a priest. And then I would say, let's look at these arguments. And then I would ask you the big existential question, which is, where are true joys to be found? Which is to circle back to that question, what are you seeking? Because if these arguments simply add up to a range of quite arid, abstract, propositional possibilities, then they're not grabbing you existentially in the way that they would if you were actually prepared to put your life on the line in terms of practices. Because I, as a priest, I, as a believer, find that it is in silent waiting on God that ultimate, transcendent reality impinges on me. And every time I do that, I think of it as a kind of rehearsal for the moment when I finally have to give over control, which will be the moment when I die. And as a priest, I think rehearsing for death is actually one of the most important things we do as humans, because once we're no longer afraid of death, then we're no longer afraid of life. And you strike me as a person who's very interested in controlling what you believe in for fear that you might fall victim to some kind of Kantian heteronomy, where you would no longer be in charge, the captain of your own soul. But when you come to think of it, there's going to come a day when you're lying in bed about to die, and that possibility will no longer be a fantasy that you can maintain. So perhaps what's a little bit different about the way I approach arguments for the existence of God is to think about the context of desire, transformative practices, and ultimate longing, which ultimately, I think, can't be fully taken account of in terms of totting up the relative value of arguments. I appreciate Sarah's concern for me, though I admit a sense of discomfort, feeling the force of her penetrating insights. Rehearsing for death. Hmm, I do fear death. Sarah sees that. I shudder at the finality of utter non-existence. I'd wish to be no longer afraid. But before I give in to easy answers, I seek out the other side. And in London, who more appropriate to grill me, this time from an atheistic perspective, than Anthony Grayley, the provocative philosopher and political partisan. Anthony, I'm sure, shall have no interest in my eternal soul, only in saving me from the earthly hell of irrationality, self-delusion, and false hope. Anthony, I would be less than candid if I didn't tell you that there have been times in my life where I believed in God, and other times when I was certainly skeptical, but never, never an atheist. You've said that whether it is rational or not to believe in God is not a gradient, which is the way I feel my life has been. You said it's all or nothing. So, how do you evaluate me? I have a suspicion, which is that people who say they're struggling with belief in God sort of do. And what they're doing is they're looking for justifications. In those kinds of cases, I'm a little inclined to say to people, don't use the word God, use the word Fred, and then see if it's just as convincing. It's like Fred created the universe, or Fred does this. And it forces people actually to think about that justification and to step aside a little bit from the non-rational, not necessarily irrational, but non-rational reasons why they might feel impelled to want to believe. Define the difference between non-rational and irrational. Well, irrational is, as it were, consciously in the face of the evidence and in the face of reason. Non-rational just includes that, of course, but it also includes all the emotional wellsprings that we might have for thinking and believing a certain way. Sometimes to step aside from what their emotional inclinations are and to try to search around the reasons why they have them. Insecurity, failure, uncertainty, the fact that we know so little, we occupy such a small patch of light in a great darkness of ignorance. These are all motivations that people want to have closure. People have a narrative impulse. They want the story to be neat. They want to have a beginning, a middle, and an end and, you know, have a purpose attached to it. This is why the mindset of science is so different from the mindset of a religious commitment. And a religious commitment thinks that it has a set of answers which are deeply satisfying and provide a structure. Scientific mindset is very, very happy. Indeed, it's excited, it delights in the fact that we don't know the answers. Many people tell me that it is hopeless for me to try to find out whether or not God exists by relying on analytical, rational techniques. I must have an emotional, religious experience. Now, I've never had one. I don't particularly want one. And if I had one, I wouldn't believe it. The case that's sometimes put by people that you can only really understand what it is to believe by committing yourself to believe. And this is because, in a way, you've already convinced yourself. It's just exactly from that positioning of yourself, taking that orientation towards the world and seeing it as if it were a universe that had a conscious, benevolent mind in control of it with a purpose and view that is particular to you. Once you've stepped aside from that and you've looked at the universe in a slightly different way, you can have a very opposite feeling that there is something just unimaginably crazy or pointless about taking the religious view. Well, you know, I walk with you down that path, but at the end, I don't come to the same end you do. I've often said facetiously that I agree with every atheistic argument except their conclusion. Well, our culture, of course, is one in which we allow our children to believe in the Tooth Fairy and in Father Christmas and in God or gods. And then at a certain age, the Tooth Fairy and Father Christmas tend to vanish from the scene. But society as a whole massively reinforces the religious aspect. And so that stone stays in the shoe. You know, it's always there. There could be something about our nature, you have to assume, that is receptive to that. Well, I think you're absolutely right that there is something about us that does incline us towards it. And it is an evolutionary thing, I think, quite clearly. It is the evolutionary advantage of credulity, especially when young. When we are kids, we had better believe what our adults in the environment say because our survival depends on it. And indeed, the whole learning process, you know, children soak up information about the world, is premised on their readiness, their receptivity. And that means that they are receptive to the stories, the legends, and the religions also. Somebody once put it by saying, a splinter in the mind which you can never quite draw out. And there are circumstances where they might start sprouting leaves. A stone in my shoe, a splinter in my mind. Yes, Anthony, you get my anxiety. Anthony's rationality provides balance, as if a reality-cooled gyroscope. So where am I? After Sarah's theistic dissection of my vulnerable psyche and after Anthony's atheistic massage of my emotional wellsprings, perhaps I should immerse myself in something fresh. I seek for a moment a believer who is rooted in science, a scientist who is not a pure physicalist, but who also does not subscribe to traditional religion. Still in London, I meet Imperial College physicist, Christopher Ishing. Chris, you're a physicist, a believer. I'd like to understand why. I often get undergraduate students, actually, coming to my office and asking me, how can you, as a professor of theoretical physics, believe in God? But it's a curious thing, believe. What's that really supposed to mean? Many people interpret this as you believe in some dogmatic proclamation of a particular religion. That's always seemed to me very strange. How do you know it's true? I am a Christian, at least I think I am. I'm not sure everybody would. Each week we say the creed. But if you say you believe in one God, maker of heaven and earth, you don't know that, do you? You weren't there. So by its very nature, that's not really a belief in a scientific sense. I think it's important to realize that. Otherwise, it sounds ridiculous. I mean, some people, of course, do take it literally. That is just speculation. Incidentally, I also believe I could be wrong. If I do believe in a God, I accept that I might be completely wrong. So I'm not dogmatic about these things. Well, you said that you didn't trust experience. You thought a lot, but I think a lot, too. Well, I have more trust in my experience. I was baptized on my 40th birthday, and not by accident. It took me a long time to be able to join a Christian church. And I only did it through the work of Carl Jung, actually. If I hadn't read intensely what Jung wrote about these sorts of things, I never could have done it. So for me, it was really a question of what were actually quite deep mystical experiences that I had since I was about 13. Which had nothing to do with religion per se. They're more about nature and music and so on. And through the work of Jung, I managed to integrate these and be able to say to myself, okay, look, I could join a Christian church, so I'm not just alone. I think without being impolite to the deity, if it exists. But nonetheless, I think I'm not sure everybody in my church would actually think I was a Christian if they knew what I actually believed. I've been involved over the years quite a bit with formal science and religion interactions sometimes with theologians at quite a high level. But always seemed to me this was the wrong thing to be talking about, was not actually science and religion. The real problem for Christianity is the problem of evil. Problem of suffering. Which has nothing to do with science per se. Unfortunately, I have a neurological disease that's led me to hospital quite a few number of times. And neurological wards are interesting places. Well, interesting. You see suffering there at a very profound level. One outcome of all of this is I felt at the very heart of reality, there's something that's profound about the nature of suffering. And the Christian religion is rather unique in this because supposedly Christ was crucified on the cross. So God experienced suffering in God's self. So really, for me, Christianity is not about my scientific beliefs, but about my only personal encounter with suffering. To Chris, a first-class physicist, there is room in reality for planes of existence beyond the physical, for mystical experiences beyond the mundane. But why the long leap from Carl Jung to the Christian church? He says it's about his personal suffering. I respect personal suffering. But is it thick enough to spawn a worldview? I, too, feel a need, though my reaction, I make sure, is not to join a religion, but to hurry to a skeptic. I go to Los Angeles to visit the publisher of Skeptic magazine, Michael Schirmer. Michael, we're friends, and so I will, and it's private, so I'll admit to you that I would like to believe in God. Now, do you feel sorry for me? I don't, no, because most of us would like to believe in God. I actually think that there's a deeply evolved propensity to believe in something ultimate force that explains everything. So on the Believing Brain, I talk about patternicity, the tendency to find meaningful patterns in random noise. We just connect the dots to explain things. And agenicity, the tendency to impute into those patterns some hidden agent, an invisible force that's running the show. I think God is the ultimate pattern and the ultimate agent. Now, the monotheistic God that most people believe in today, that's fairly new on the scene in terms of the long history. But I don't feel bad for anybody that believes that. But you don't want me to live in error my whole life. I would think you would be interested in your friend to see what's true. Right. As your friend, I would say, I'd prefer you didn't believe in something that probably isn't true. I think the more rational scientific worldview, at the very least, should lead us to be agnostic in the sense of you can't know. There's no experiment we're going to run. And surely by now, you've interviewed everybody on the planet that's thought about these things in a deep way. There is no ultimate answer. I would be shocked and amazed if it turned out there was a God. I'm 57 years old, thought about this my whole life, and I would be amazed. You once believed in God, right? Yeah, I did. I was a born-again evangelical Christian. I really believed. And when you do believe, the worldview becomes very internally consistent and externally coherent. It all makes sense. Nothing happens without a reason. And in a sense, that's comforting because uncertainty is a little anxiety-producing, right? The arguments that get me more than anything else are anthropological and psychological, sociological. All these different religions and all these different people believe in different gods, different aspects. They can't all be right. What are the chances that, you know, you got it right and everybody else got it wrong? I mean, if we were Indian, you know, we wouldn't be talking about the Christian God. There could be a whole other way of supernatural kinds of things. Do you reject all of that? I do. I'm a materialist. Oh, is there anything beyond the physical world as we know it? Okay, so the problem with postulating that there might be a supernatural is no different than saying there might be a paranormal. I claim there's no such thing as a paranormal or supernatural. It's just the normal, the natural, and the stuff we can't explain yet. And the moment you say, well, okay, you have the X, the unexplained, what is that? Okay, so I'm going to postulate this paranormal or supernatural explanation. Oh, quantum consciousness. What if that was right? That's not paranormal anymore. That's not just subsumed under neuroscience and physics, right? That's the fate of all these claims. They either disappear because we're not interested in them anymore, or they become part of science. And I would expand that all the way out to God. That the moment you say, well, okay, God is not part of our universe. Okay, then how do we know about him? Well, occasionally he pokes his hand in to stir the particles. Then we should see it. Really? So how do you measure that? Well, it's a miracle. Okay, but what's the evidence for the miracle? You know, at some point we have to talk about it in a way that is concrete. We can test it. And the moment we're on that level, then we're doing science, and then it's not supernatural anymore. But the fundamental question is, is there anything that exists, God, extraterrestrial civilization, anything that is beyond the physical as we know it or can conceive it today? Well, I would have to honestly answer, I don't know, and neither do you. And nobody does. It isn't possible to know. I don't have to construct a whole non-religious belief. We just say, I don't know, and leave it at that. It's okay to say that. To Michael, conflicting religions undermine all religions. And when human minds seek patterns and agents, we build false beliefs in things supernatural. To me, here's what's sure. Humans have a natural cognitive capacity to infer the existence of God. But this neither affirms nor denies the actual existence of such a supreme being. I appreciate being probed and prodded by theists, by atheists. Each genuinely wants the best for me. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, Anthony. I think there may be something beyond the physical. But I, like Chris, could be wrong. And even though I resist Michael's conclusion rejecting God's existence, he always makes sense. What's for me and God? Right now, to remain where I am, a state of passionate befuddlement, with little hope and no confidence that I will soon see the light. I hope the passion remains. For me, that's Closer to Truth. For complete interviews and for further information, please visit closertotruth.com.