Realism and the Spiritual Life

Note: The following is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, Visions of Reality: New Perspectives on Politics, Economics, and Philosophy

Realism, although tacitly accepted by nearly everyone, has never been all that popular as an explicit philosophy. Among academic intellectuals, it is often dismissed as naive or superficial, as if only a child could believe anything so simple. Among more sophisticated thinkers, realism is regarded with even more suspicion. The conviction that the external world exists on its own plane of reality, whether we acknowledge it or not, many philosophers have found disturbing. They find the notion vulgar and even shocking. Realism, above all else, insists upon the existence of an external world. But what if this external world is made up of nothing else besides matter? What if spirit lives trapped in an absurd bag of fetid protoplasm? What hope is there for human mind in a world dominated by gross matter?

In the nineteenth century, fear of materialism turned most of the philosophers in the English speaking world into idealists. Idealism, as a coherent philosophical movement, sought to refute the existence of matter. That was Berkeley’s principle aim in devising his ingenious slanders against common sense. Materialism was seen as a great menace to religion and society. It had to be demolished at all costs, even if it meant embracing palpable absurdities.

In the end, Berkeley’s attempt to derail materialism proved a collosal failure. The dominance of idealism in the nineteenth century led to a reaction in the twentieth, so that nowadays quite a few philosophers, especially those of a scientific bent, have succumbed to the horrors of materialism. To be sure, not all of them are very happy about it. They have become materialists, not because they like it, but because they believe the pressure of scientific evidence gives them no choice.

Now realism prides itself on accepting evidence. The fact that we may dislike the sort of world indicated by the relevant evidence is of little significance to the realist. Honesty demands that we face up to the facts like men. Refusing to believe the truth will not make it go away. If materialism happened to be true, then the intrepid realist would have no choice but to accept it as such.

Fear of realism’s alleged materialistic implications has caused many intellectuals and philosophers to regard it with a cold eye. Surely there is more to the world then what a realist philosophy, with its astringent epistemology and general skepticism toward “subjective” evidence, would give us! What good can come of a philosophy that looks askance at any speculation that trespasses beyond the narrow bounds of common sense? A poor sort of diet for the spirit, is this realist philosophy, offering so little in the way of genuine spiritual sustenance for the wary human soul, lost in this dark wood, with so little hope of finding a way out!

There are those who, confronting the loneliness and terror of the human condition, would like to temporarily push aside all notions of cognitive integrity and believe whatever comforting illusions happened to float within their ken; in other words, they wish to take an epistemological holiday so that they can believe anything they like, regardless of how absurd or childish. The “Heaven's Gate” cult, to take but one example, embraced their meretricious illusions with a tenacity of faith and a childlike joy that would have been touching had it not been a precursor to mass death. The arrival of Hale-Bopp, they wrote on their website prior to wayward plunge into self-slaughter, “is joyously very significant to us at ‘Heaven's Gate.’ The joy is that our Older Member in the Evolutionary Level Above Human has made it clear to us that Hale-Bopp's approach is the ‘marker’ we’ve been waiting for—the time for the arrival of the spacecraft from the Level Above Human to take us home to ‘Their World’—in the literal Heavens.”

The “Heaven’s Gate” cult stands as a warning of what can happen when we cut ourselves loose from the moorings of reality. The whole point of realism is to keep us within the bounds of sanity, our two feet doggedly planted on philosophical terra firma. It comes down to an issue of cognitive responsibility. Either we accept the way things are, or we don’t. But if we choose to ignore the truth, what is to prevent us from flying headlong into all manner of absurdities, some of them patently dangerous? Reality, however uninspiring it may turn to be, at least is something that can be relied upon, a worthy object of faith. Whereas illusions are mere will of the wisps, phantoms of the mind which can lead to nothing solid and true.

The question, then, confronting those who follow the realist standard is the following: Given the cognitive constraints of a realist philosophy, what hope can there be for a genuine spiritual life?

The first difficulty that confronts us at the commencement of our inquiries involves the accusation that realism logically implies materialism. Before we can go any further, the materialism bogeyman must be laid completely to rest.

In several of the essays in this book, I have insisted that realism entails epistemological dualism, which is the theory that all knowledge is mediated through ideas or representations or essences—call them what you will. In positing this dualism, we do not, as anti-dualists keep insisting, completely separate the mind and its ideas from nature; we merely distinguish them, noting the importance differences between the idea and its object. Although this may strike some as a merely technical matter, let me insist on its critical importance. As we shall see throughout the course of this essay, epistemological dualism has profound implications for the spiritual life.

The first of these implications will clear up once and for all the issue of the alleged materialist entailments of the realist philosophy. The philosopher Arthur Lovejoy has argued quite persuasively that epistemological dualism entails psychophysical dualism. “The two dualisms [i.e., epistemological and psychophysical dualism], though distinct in their origins and capable of defense on separate grounds, … appear interrelated,” wrote Lovejoy. “If (a) the argument for epistemological dualism is cogent, and if (b) no place among physical objects can be found for perceptual and other data as epistemological dualism conceives them, then, on these grounds alone, psychophysical dualism (with respect to content) would be established.” [The Revolt Against Dualism, 40] To translate this into layman’s terms, what Lovejoy is saying comes down to this: if our ideas, our perceptions, our intuitions are distinct from physical objects; and if no physical objects can exist within or “inside” our minds, but only representations or symbols of these physical objects; then this means the mental and physical realms are distinct. They interact only in the sense they are influenced by one another. But they don’t intermingle or exchange places. Ideas don’t exist as physical objects, nor do physical objects exist as ideas.

If this seems like mere common sense—well, that’s precisely what it is. Why so many philosophers regard psycho-physical dualism with blistering disdain is anyone’s guess. [see Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained, 33] If good sense prevailed among the denizens of philosophy, dualism would be seen, not as some hoary superstition or metaphysical incubus, but as (again quoting Lovejoy) the “normal and inevitable outcome of men’s effort rationally to adjust their native realistic faith to familiar facts of experience and elementary postulates of reflection.” [42] Good sense, alas, has never been very popular among philosophers. If philosophers had been more intent at getting to the bottom of things rather than furthering their own dubious agendas, they might have understood the contradiction between realism, with its dualistic entailments, on the one side, and materialism, with its monistic entailments, on the other. Realism accepts the existence of matter, as do all practical men of affairs. But it doesn’t believe only in matter. It believes in spirit as well, as part of the duality of existence. And it is perfectly open to believing in other modes of existence, as many as can be discovered by the human mind. Realism’s commitment to dualism, then, is open-ended. It does not contend that there are but two principle modes of existence. There may be, for all we know, hundreds of such modes. Reality is not one massive homogeneous blob. Philosophers obsessed with reducing all of existence to just one thing are reductionists in the very worst sense of the word.

So materialism is not something realists need to be worried about. There is nothing in realism that necessitates the adoption of materialism. Quite the contrary, realism, if properly understood, entails a dualism that is logically incompatible with the sort of unadulterated materialism preached by those who believe every aspect of the world, including the human mind, can be explained on mechanical principles. “It can indeed be upsetting to think of ourselves as glorified gears and springs,” admits the evolutionary psychologist Stephen Pinker. [The Blank Slate, 10] Yes, it can be upsetting—if for no other reason than it isn’t true. Oh, sure, some people (e.g., particularly stupid or unimaginiative people) can sometimes act like mechanical devices, which is to say, they can become so predictable as to become annoying, such as drunk returning to his bottle. But comparing their minds to machines is to indulge in literary license. It is a metaphor—and not a particularly apt one at that. To seriously believe that the mind can be explained on materialist principles, that every aspect of the mind, including the highest flights of intuition and creativity, can be reduced to the operation of mechanical laws within the realm of matter, is to demonstrate a complete lack of judgment on the issue. While it is true that the mind has a basis in matter and that its ability to function is strongly dependent on the integrity of the physical brain, this does not mean that the activities of the mind, its thinking, willing, and innovative problem-solving, can be explained mechanically, in terms of the laws of matter. To even suggest such a thing demonstrates a complete lack of appreciation for the complexity of human thought and the creative originality of the mind.

If anyone should entertain doubts about the issue, just consider the ultimate outcome of any belief that thinking and knowing are in any sense reducible to the laws of physics or chemistry. If it were true, this would mean that anyone who could attain complete and perfect knowledge of how the mind is determined by the body would ipso facto be able to predict, by deductive methods alone, [Popper, The Open Universe. 68] the thoughts and behavior of any human being that came within his ken, including, strangely enough, the thoughts and behaviors of his own self. The idea, however, of predicting one’s own behavior is absurd, because the predictions themselves would undoubtedly influence the individual’s decisions. For this reason, if for no other, all such materialist theories of the mind are absurd. Mind is something fundamentally different from matter. The very phrase materialist theory of mind is a contradiction in terms. The mind cannot possibly be materialistic, any more than matter can be spiritual. Mind and matter constitute different modes of existence. This doesn’t mean that they exist in completely separate realms of reality. No, not at all. Obviously, they can and do interact and influence each other. But neither can be solely reduced to the other.

The logic of realism inevitably leads us to a dualism. But it is not just an issue of logic. The evidence also strongly supports a dualist conclusion. As is well known, matter is fundamentally mechanical in its operations. Mechanical explanations can yield important and useful insights about the material world. This is not the case with the mind. Cognitive science has discovered that even the simplest cognitive acts are so immensely complicated that attempts to explain them on mechanical principles appear doomed from the start. “Phenomena that were once not even perceived as problems at all have come to be regarded as central, extremely difficult questions in cognitive neuroscience,” admits the authors of The Way We Think, Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner. “What could be more simpler than recognizing that a tree is a tree? Yet when we look at works in cognitive neuroscience, we find this recognition problem listed under 'conceptual categorization,’ already regarded as a higher-order problem, beyond the already difficult feat of ‘perceptual categorization.’” [7] If something as simple as recognizing a tree should prove so immensely difficult to cognitive science, what is to be said of issues relating to qualitative judgments and the highest flights of artistic creativity? Most human beings can distinguish hallucinations from normal perception, although both can appear very lifelike. How on earth do they do this? We don’t know, they just can. Human beings can also identify people by face or voice. Such recognitions involve a qualitative judgment that cannot be explained mechanically, because it does not occur mechanically. It is part of native genius of the human mind. Even more inexplicable is the creativity of a Da Vinci or a Mozart, a Michelangelo or a Beethoven. Does any mechanistic materialist really believe that the Sistine Chapel or the Eroica Symphony can be explained on materialist grounds?

When pressed, the physicalists retreat into a position Karl Popper described as “promissory materialism,” which accepts the untenability of materialism at the present time, but believes that materialism will eventually be victorious. Progress in brain research will cause us to talk less and less about mere experiences, and more and more about brain processes, until mental terms go out of fashion and everything will be described solely in the terms of physiology.

Promissory materialism, as Popper noted, is a “historical prophecy about the future results of brain research and their impact.” Popper regarded the theory as “baseless,” and argued that the thesis of promissory materialism was no more rational than the thesis that one day cats or elephants could be abolished by everyone refusing to talk about them. [The Self and the Brain, 97] But it is worse than that. At bottom, what the materialists are really contending for is the irrelevance of consciousness. For that is the ultimate thrust of their metaphysical program: to do away with the concept of consciousness, so that they can proceed with their project to prove that everything that exists can be explained on mechanical grounds. But consciousness most clearly and obviously does exist! How can any realist, committed to accepting the truth as the human mind discovers it, deny so obvious a truth as the reality of consciousness?

So the charge that realism is somehow incipiently materialistic can safely be laid to rest. Realism is fundamentally dualistic. The realist philosophy stands or falls on the premise that an external, material world exists independently of anyone perceiving it. Yet this premise itself assumes (1) the reality of a material world that exists whether anyone perceives it or not and (2) the reality of a mind capable of perceiving that material world. If only the material world existed, there would be no point in saying that it can exist whether a mind perceived it or not. And if only the mind existed, nothing could ever exist independent of the mind, in its own plane of reality. Realism therefore must be dualistic. On any other basis it makes no sense.

The refutation of materialism does not, by itself, secure the possibility of a genuine spiritual life. Even under a dualistic philosophy, a spiritual life may prove impossible. The body may so completely dominate and brutalize the spirit as to leave no room within man’s soul for anything other than material interests. We know from experience that matter tends to lord it over the mind. Spirit often seems overburdened and distracted by the insatiable desires and petty anxieties of the body. The degraded position of spirit within the human organism has led many thoughtful individuals to question the value and purpose of life. “Everything in life proclaims that earthly happiness is destined to be frustrated, or recognized as an illusion,” testified the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. “We feel pain, but not painlessness; care, but not freedom from care; fear, but not safety and security. We feel the desire as we feel hunger and thirst; but as soon as it has been satisfied, it is like the mouthful of food which has been taken, and which ceases to exist for our feelings the moment it is swallowed. We painfully feel the loss of pleasures and enjoyments, as soon as they fail to appear; but when pains cease even after being present for a long time, their absence is not directly felt, but at most they are thought of intentionally by means of reflection. For only pain and want can be felt positively; and therefore they proclaim themselves; well-being, on the contrary, is merely negative.” [The World as Will and Representation, Vol II, 573, 575] “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” testified Solomon, the troubled sage-king of the Old Testament. “Therefore I hate life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous onto me, for it all is vanity and vexation of the spirit.” [Ecclesiastes 1:2, 2:17] And finally we have the testimony of the great poet of naturalism, Lucretius:

Finally, what’s this wanton lust for life
To make us tremble in dangers and in doubt?
All men must die, and no man can escape.
We turn and turn in the same atmosphere
In which no new delight is ever shaped
To grace our living; what we do not have
Seems better than everything else in the world.
But should we get it, we want something else.
Our gaping thirst for life is never quenched.

The conception of the world developed by modern science only provides more grist for the pessimist mill. Human life, according to the theory of evolution, can trace its roots all the way back to the great primordial ooze out of which all life originally developed. Once bacteria and other protoplasmic organisms bubbled forth from the evolutionary stew, they began competing against each other for the resources necessary to sustain themselves and their progeny. Those organisms that, because of the quality of their DNA, were best fit to survive the darwinian death match out of which life evolves, pass their genes to further generations. Through a process of mutation and natural selection, more complex organisms develop, until at last, at the end of the long evolutionary chain, human beings emerge.

If this account of the origin of human life is correct, then the human being is a product of evolution. Everything he is, from the color of his eyes to the desires of his heart, stems from an adaption forged in the darwinian furnace. Human beings are largely the products of natural selection. We are the way we are because it helped us survive and pass on our genes.

The picture of human existence that emerges from assuming that human nature is a mere adaption choosen by natural selection entirely justifies the view that life is essentially a vain and hopeless enterprise. For what is the purpose of the great darwinian farce of evolution? There is no purpose. According to the darwinian vision, more or less accepted by modern science, life essentially consists of a battle between organisms to see whose genes will be passed on to the next generation and whose won’t. The organism who passes on the most genes “wins,” although to speak of winners and losers in such a context is to emit senseless patter. Under such a regimen, happiness becomes little more than the carrot at the end of stick; pain the whip against the back; and Nature the stern slavemaster, dangling the carrot and cracking the whip without so much as a jot of concern about the ultimate welfare of the poor bedeviled organism. “Breed, multiply, pass on your genes!” cries dame Nature, and cracks her whip. Such a life would constitute little more than an endless striving after vain goals. Any happiness that might visit the sentient creature would be fleeting and, ultimately, illusory.

In such a world, there would be little hope for the development of the spiritual life. Man’s life would be at the mercy of pointless genetic imperatives. Spirit would be an imprisoned spectator of man’s futile effort to pass on his DNA. All of life would be a vain endeavor, without rhyme or reason.

The conviction that realism is incompatible with a spiritual life ultimately stems from the fear that the darwinian-materialist view of the world, advanced by modern science, might turn out to be true. In that case, the realist would be duty bound to accept darwinism as the truth. Yet here we must proceed very cautiously. It would be foolhardly to assume that merely because the scientific establishment is behind a given belief, that the belief must be regarded as true. Before coming to a decision, we must examine all the relevant evidence. The fact that this or that group of scholars have a certain conception of the world means little to the realist if that conception does not accord with the facts of reality.

So what does the evidence tell us about the world? Is it a world “red in tooth and claw,” where protoplasmic machines governed by senseless strips of genetic code compete in a Hobbesian war of all against all? Or is there more to existence than the pointless gyrations of dice and billiard balls?

The most important question of philosophy involves the relation of man and his spirit to the universe. In other words, it involves the question of whether God exists. Not everyone, of course, will agree that the question of man’s relation to the universe is one and the same with the question of God’s existence; yet a little reflection on the matter will demonstrate that it is so. The assertion of God’s existence is tantamount to declaring that the universe has some overriding purpose to it, that it is not merely a senseless conglomoration of sub-atomic principles. If the universe does have a purpose, this fact will obviously have immense ramifications for man’s relation with the universe. If, on the other hand, the universe has no overriding purpose; if the only teleological realities that exist in the world are those that have arisen in conscious beings; then man’s relation to the universe takes on another aspect altogether.

I have introduced this subject on a very high level of abstraction. To get a better grasp at what precisely is at stake, it would help to reduce the vast subject to something more in keeping with the limitations of the human mind. Cognitive science has discovered that one the most important principles governing human knowledge is the necessity to achieve human scale; which is to say, to reduce the subject at hand to something more familiar, more easily apprehended by a human brain. [The Way We Think, 312] To achieve human scale, the mind conceives its objects through a veil of poetry, in thoughts thickly draped in the furnishings of metaphor and analogy. How else could spirit grasp the attributes of matter? Just as I rely on translations to read Dostoevsky, so the mind relies on cognitive translation to understand the external world.

Let’s assume for the nonce that God does in fact exist. How would the mind go about symbolizing a reality as complex as the deity? Few things can be imagined so far out of scale with the human mind than God. Is it any wonder, then, that man’s theological conceptions appear so fantastic? Attempts to describe God nearly always lead to strange paradoxes and befuddling obscurities. Perhaps if we had a greater appreciation of the poetical element that all such descriptions must perforce contain, then we could avoid some of the worst absurdities. The recognition that our ideas can never be identical with their object and that the mind is not a mirror counsels us to avoid the fallacy of misplaced literalism. Our ideas of God can never be identical with God himself.

In conceiving of God, we naturally draw heavily on anthropocentric concepts. In order to understand God, we make Him like ourselves. We ascribe to Him thoughts and feelings that we imagine we would have if we were in His place. While such humanizing of the deity is inevitable, given the nature and limitations of the human mind, we would do well not to take such antropocentric descriptions too literally.

As realists in search for God, we start with the idea of purpose. According to the best cosmological evidence available from modern science, the universe initially was without protoplasmic life. Following the big bang some 15,000 million years ago, only hydrogen and helium existed. Other elements were created by the first stars, but they were trapped at the center of stars burning at temperatures in excess of 10 million degrees. Only after the first supernovas were these other elements—many of them, such as carbon, essential for the development of living, purposive creatures—spewed out into the universe, where, by some sort of inexplicable, miraculous commingling, they fortuitously evolved into life forms. The early millenia of the universe were, according to an atheistical cosmology, utterly destitute of life; in other words, if we assume that God does not exist, the early universe becomes a place entirely devoid of teleological significance: a lifeless, meaningless chaos of swirling stars. Billions and billions of stars—and nothing else! A universe utterly destitute of purpose.

What does it mean to describe the universe as destitute of purpose? A universe without purpose is a universe where nothing can happen as result of anyone’s desire or intention. How then does anything happen at all? How could such a universe breed galaxies, solar systems, planets and, ultimately, life? One possible answer would be through natural law: a purposeless universe comes into existence by following the laws of nature. Is this possible? Perhaps; but even if it did happen this way, it still leaves open the question of how these laws of nature came about in the first place. Some cosmologists contend that the laws of nature as we know them did not exist prior to the big bang. Indeed, as far as we can tell, neither time nor space existed prior to the big bang, so that, in a certain sense, the very phrase prior to the big bang, is a contradiction in terms. There can be no prior to the big bang because time ceases to exist when you go back that far. And if time and space did not exist prior to the big bang, then surely laws of nature did not exist either.

So then, if we take purpose out of the equation, how do we account for the universe? We have found that the universe could not have orginated through the laws of nature, because the laws of nature only come to play after the universe has commenced. Apparently, there is only one way to account for the universe if we exclude purpose: it must have come about by chance. The universe as we know it is a mere accident.

Is this a plausible view? Let us examine some of the evidence compiled by modern science and see whether we can determine how plausible this atheist view really is.

The development of life depends on the values of certain fundamental constants, such as the gravitational and electromagnetic force. If any of these constants had been just a little different, the universe would have remained inhospitable to life for the duration of its existence. To give but one example, consider the physical nature of water. Unlike other molecules, water, when in its solid form, floats. Had it been otherwise, the oceans would have frozen from the bottom up and the earth would be covered with ice. There are hundreds of fortuitous coincidences like this, starting from the big bang all the way to the development of intelligent lifeforms. To create life out of a universe which, at the beginning, consisted only of hydrogen and helium, requires an enormous amount of grossly improbable accidents. In fact, no less an authority than the astronomer and mathematician Fred Hoyle considers the universe grossly improbable. “The current scenario of the origin of life,” Hoyle wrote, “is about as likely as a tornado passing through a junkyard beside Boeing airplane company accidentally producing a 747 airplane.” Scientists have estimated that there is much less than one chance in a hundred thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion that there exists even one planet capable of producing life anywhere in the universe.

Faced with such immense improbabilities, the belief in a random universe, destitute of God and purpose, would appear to be unwarranted. Yet we must consider some of the additional arguments made for the atheist position. The most plausbile case for an utterly senseless, random universe assumes the existence of alternating universes. What if the universe, at a certain point, stops expanding and collapses back upon itself? This notion, known as the “big crunch,” if possible, could help explain how a random universe could produce life. Let us imagine that every big crunch is followed by a big bang. If this were to go on forever, there would be no reason why, out of an infinite number of chances, a universe capable of producing life would not at some point spring into existen ce. In fact, given an infinite number of chances, an infinite number of life-supporting universes would be spewed into existence. Yet, strange to say, the infinity of life-creating universes would be very much smaller than the infinity of life-destitute universe. How one infinity could be larger than another appears, on the face of it, absurd. But this is not the only absurdity the atheist position must reckon with when assuming a string of infinite random universes. Although we imagine them, in terms of human thought, as a string of universes, one happening after another, in reality it wouldn’t be that way. Since neither time nor space exists either “after” the big crunch or “prior” to the big bang, none of these universes could be described as existing in a temporal or spatial relationship to any other universe. What sort of relations would in fact exist between these universes would be difficult to say. We are trying to think of something that is well beyond the scope of human thought. To be sure, this does not mean that an infinite “string” of universes is impossible. Just because we cannot conceive of such a thing does not mean that it cannot be true. We must be very careful not to assume that reality exists for the convenience of our intellect.

Even if it were possible, the notion of an infinite number of random universes does not appear as plausible as a universe created because of some of intention or purpose. The current scientific evidence suggests that some sort of teleological force or principle existed “prior” to the emergence of protoplasmic life here on earth. What this intention or purpose might be is hard to say? To assume it must be God—whether the God of the Bible or any other sort of divine entity—would be utterly gratuitous without further evidence. David Hume, in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, penned one of most blistering critiques of the argument from design. Hume begins by accepting the argument’s basic premise. Fine, he says; let us suppose the universe is the product of intention or design. What else can we deduce from that? His answer: nothing. Knowing that the universe was designed tells us nothing about the designer. It could have been created by an infant god; or a god in his dotage; or a whole boardroom of gods. It could have been created by a good god or an evil god. [76-79] How are we to tell, one way or the other?

Suppose we seek to deduce the nature of God from the nature of the universe? Well then, in that case, we run right smack into the problem of evil. If God mirrors the nature of the universe, then this would mean that God would have to mirror the evil in the universe. A god that is even partly evil can hardly be equated with the God of the Bible—or with the God of any other religion, for that matter. Nor is it clear what role such a god could possibly have in the development of a spiritual life.

Evidence of some sort of vague and inexplicable purpose behind the universe would not necessarily warrant theism. More evidence is required before we can make any kind of rational determination on the question of God’s existence. But what sort of evidence should we be looking for?

Let us remove one common misconception from the start. This question cannot be settled ostensively. You cannot prove the existence of God by pointing at Him and saying, “There He is.” It would be unreasonable to demand such evidence. God is not a material object that can be pointed and gaped at. If we mean to search for evidence of God, we must look for evidence relevant to the type of entity or phenomenon that God is alleged to be.

Although there exists no general agreement on the finer points of God’s nature, nearly all theists agree that God is a bodiless entity of some sort. Hence the futility of trying to establish the existence of God by pointing at Him. Less agreement exists on God’s role in the universe. In broad terms, we can distinguish three basic views: (1) the view that, following the creation, God has withdrawn from the world and plays no role at all in our lives; (2) the view that, while much of the universe proceeds without the direct meddling of God, nevertheless traces of his influence can be spotted in our lives; and (3) the view that God is directly responsible for everything. If we expect to find evidence for the existence of God, we must assume that the first and third views are wrong. If God has withdrawn from the world, he cannot have any influence on our lives and his existence becomes utterly irrelevant. If God is directly responsible for everything that happens, then it doesn’t make any sense to look for evidence for God, because everything constitutes evidence of God’s existence. Yet paradoxically, if everything is evidence for God’s existence, then nothing is evidence for God. For if God is directly responsible for everything and if everything that happens is a direct cause of God’s will, how could we ever attain rational knowledge of this fact? Keep in mind that any evidence for God must always be indirect, because God cannot be pointed at and proven ostensively. Indirect evidence requires counterfactuals: that is, we must be able to imagine what the facts would be like if the object of our inquiry did not exist, so that we can compare our counterfacutal supposition with what we actually find in the real world. Evidence for God can only exist if we can distinguish between those things in the world that might have been brought about by the direct influence of God from those things that are due largely to the mechanism of nature.

If you believe that everything is directly caused by God, in a sense you have assumed the very point at issue. It is comparable to an atheist assuming that anything that happens, no matter how strange or contrary to the conception of modern science, must be the result of entirely natural processes. Once the individual decides that either everything must be caused by God or must be caused by nature, they have once and for all shut up their minds to the evidence. They are both operating on little more than blind faith.

A rational person tries to establish his beliefs on the basis, not of blind faith, but of the evidence. At the same time, we must avoid assuming that the evidence will always provide clear and unambivalent answers to our questions. It would be presumptious of us to expect that the world exists solely for our own epistemological convenience. One of the great difficulties in dealing with the whole issue of God’s existence involves the unrealistic expectations that the partisans of each position bring to the debate. There is a tendency to demand utterly convincing evidence, as if the question can be settled in so summarily a fashion. The theist insists that the atheist make a slam-dunk case for atheism and the random universe hypothesis; if the atheist cannot make such a case, the theist assumes that he has won the debate. And likewise, the atheist demands indubitable evidence from the theist. When no such evidence is produced, the atheist regards his case as proven beyond all doubt. As a matter of fact, neither side can prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. The evidence, as we shall see, is not so clear-cut. To make any kind of determination on the issue involves choosing the least implausible view.

Many people experience a sort of aversion or resentment to admitting that we can never know for certain whether God exists, and that the question must be settled through a kind of probabalistic reasoning. Yet many of the most important questions we face in life must be settled in a very similar fashion. In the modern world, everyone, as they enter adulthood, is faced with choosing their vocation in life. Does anyone know for certain what choice will bring them the most happiness and success? No, no one knows that for certain. Some people may think they know for certain; but that’s an illusion. There are too many unknown variables involved in the question to justify certain knowledge. A person may know with certainty what they want to do with their lives; what they can never be certain of is whether they will succeed at it.

Deciding whether God exists is in some respects very similar to choosing a vocation in life, except that instead of choosing a career, you are making a decision as to the ultimate destiny of your life. If God exists, then universe is more than just an accident. If so, existence may have some ulterior purpose that very much has to do with how we conduct our lives. It suddenly becomes very important that we somehow acquire at least a rough idea of what this ulterior purpose might be and what it portends, not only for our lives here on earth, but also for whatever may confront us when we have shuffled off this mortal coil. If, on the other hand, God doesn’t exist and the universe is nothing more than a cosmological fluke, then all we have is our measely little lives and what we make of them. A very different course of action is suggested on such a supposition. Instead of living to please or obey God, we live to please ourselves. Why should we do anything else? The blind forces that rule the universe will one day very soon snuff us out. Therefore we have no choice but to make the best of it while we can.

For many people, the whole question of God’s existence ultimately reduces itself to the opposing moral visions outlined above. How many people have become atheists for no other reason than that they wish to do as they please? And how many people oppose atheism largely because of their fear of this sort of reckless antinomianism? The question of God’s existence, however, must ultimately be settled on factual rather than moral grounds. If God exists, then it is up to us to acknowledge His existence and act accordingly. Likewise, if God does not exist, that, too, must be acknowledged and acted upon.
But what if the evidence is too weak on both sides, so that at the end of the day we must conclude that we can never know whether God exists? Shouldn’t we then simply admit that we don’t know?

Unfortunately, this is not a viable option. The question is just far too important, for too momentous for us to retreat behind a facade of agnosticism. You can no more evade making a decision on God’s existence than you can evade making a decision about your life’s vocation. Since the question of God’s existence is so inextricably bound with the question What shall we do with our lives? it cannot be evaded. If that seems unfair, well, that’s just too bad. The world is not created for our personal convenience. There is no such thing as cognitive entitlement. We cannot assume that the great questions of life must be easy. We find, as a matter of fact, that some of them are extremely difficult. Our only choice is to make the best of it: to examine the evidence, weigh the probabilities, and make a decision. Any attempt to evade the question of God’s existence is merely to accept the default choice—which in this case happens to be atheism.

A decision, then, has to be made, one way or the other. Can we find any credible evidence of God’s hand in the lives of human beings? If we can find such evidence, then we at least be justified in assuming that God might exist. If we can’t find any such evidence, than the God hypothesis becomes much less credible.

[End of excerpt. The entire essay will appear in the forthcoming book, Visions of Reality.]