Greentree Community Church

Controversy has always swirled around the Bible, but for thousands of years one of the least controversial verses in the Bible was its great opening line, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”  Scripture begins with God, posits God, assumes God—His self-existence, His necessity, and His power to create the universe from nothing (ex nihilo).  In more recent times however, controversy around the concept of the existence of God and His creative powers has been the topic of intense debate and public provocation.  Since the highly publicized “Scopes Monkey Trial” in 1925, science and religion have seemed locked in a fearsome duel to the death over whether the world in which we exist is better explained by natural causes or by the God of the Bible.  In light of this “battle” many have asked for proof of God.  Maybe you’ve asked someone to prove God’s existence to you or maybe you’ve been on the receiving end of that question.  Either way, what it seems that many are demanding is an empirical, no way to escape, laboratory demonstration of God’s existence that not semi-reasonable person could deny.  This is exactly the kind of proof demanded today from extremely outspoken atheists like Daniel Dennett, Victor Stenger, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins.  Dawkins argues that the claim of God’s existence is a scientific hypothesis that should be open to rational demonstration.  He and others want an airtight, empirical argument from God that convinces every person., but is this fair?  I don’t think it is.

What these skeptics are asking for is what has been termed ‘strong rationalism, meaning that no one should believe any proposition unless it can be proved rationally by loci or empirically by sense experience.  According to Tim Keller, proof, “in this view, is an argument so strong that no person whose logical faculties are operating properly would have any reason for disbelieving it.  However, ‘strong rationalism’ is impossible and cannot be defended.  It cannot abide by its own most foundational premise.  How could you empirically prove that no one should believe something without empirical proof?  Notice how W.K. Clifford’s statement betrays that belief, not science is at the core of strong rationalism:  “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient [empirical] evidence.”  This is a statement of ethics, belief, and faith, not a statement of science.  Thus, any call for ‘strong rationalism’ is by nature self-defeating.  This is why the books of the new atheism have not found kind quarters among even fellow atheist reviewers.  Marxist scholar Terry Eagleton wrote a scathing review of Dawkin’s God Delusion, attacking the naïve ideas that faith has no rational component, and that reason isn’t based on faith:

“Dawkins considers that all faith is blind faith, and that Christan and Muslim children are brought up to believe unquestioningly.  Not even the dim-witted clerics who knocked me about at grammar school taught that.  For mainstream Christianity, reason, argument and honest doubt have always played an integral role in belief…Even Richard Dawkins lives more by faith than by reason.  We hold many beliefs that have no unimpeachably rational justification, but are nonetheless reasonable to entertain.”

Historically, scientists did not always think this way.  In fact, you may be surprised to know that science once acted on core theistic beliefs, namely that this world was a product of God’s mind, that His personhood, replete with personality, thought, and love, were the basis for our trusting our basic senses and rationality, and that science was a way to investigate the mind of God.  Not surprisingly, these beliefs brought us what has been dubbed the “Scientific Revolution.”  Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Pascal, many others were Christians who brought their beliefs to bear on science. 

The best approach to take is what C.S. Reppert called “critical rationality.”  It assumes that there are arguments that many or most will find convincing but that in the end, there will always be some way to rationally avoid ANY conclusion.  On this basis, we can evaluate belief without requiring empirical, conclusive proof.  This is exactly how science works.  Even Dawkins admits that Darwinism cannot be finally proven, and that “new facts may come to light which will force our successors to abandon Darwinism or modify it beyond recognition.”  But as Tim Keller writes, “that does not mean that science cannot test theories and find some far more empirically verified if it organizes the evidence and explains the phenomena better than any conceivable alternative theory.  In exactly the same way, we can test to see if there is a God.  In other words, as a hypothesis, does naturalism or belief in God best explain that we have a universe, that regular laws operate within it, that it contains human life with consciousness and moral sense, and that we are personal in nature?  That’s the question I’ll seek to answer on this blog for the next few weeks, but we must go forward on the basis of “critical rationalism,” not self-defeating “strong rationalism.” [1]

[1] This entry closely follows the thought laid out in Tim Keller’s book, The Reason for God.