My Opening Statement at Skepticon II Debate, Missouri State University on the Question: Does God Exist?

“Religion must die for mankind to live.” This quote comes from Bill Maher’s concluding soliloquy to his film Religulous. I would fully agree with Maher, but not in the way he intended. In a published series of sermons entitled The Word of God and the Word of Man, 20th century theologian Karl Barth writes, “Religious arrogance permits itself simply everything . . . experience becomes its own enjoyment, its own sufficiency, its own end” (68). He goes on to write, “We long for the righteousness of God, and yet we do not let it enter our lives and our world . . . we know what the one thing needful for us really is, but we set it aside [until] better times—in the meanwhile making ourselves sick with substitutes” (299). In Barth, Maher finds an unlikely partner in the battle against religion. Barth rails against the small-minded religious pursuits of humanity while maintaining a belief in the God who is above all religion.
What we must recognize is that the failures of religion are no more a disproof of God’s existence then the failures of government officials are a disproof of the principles upon which a country like America was founded. Can we disprove the goodness of the principle simply by looking at the failures of those who represent this principle? I would strongly argue that we cannot. The failures of those in religious power including sex scandals, ignorance, and a disgusting lack of humility; the gross justification of war and violence through the invocation of the gods of religion; the deceitfulness of those who would extort money in the name of their god of religion; the apparent contradictions in the words and actions of the religious—these do not disprove the existence of God. They simply prove that humanity is bent toward destroying itself. We only need look around us to determine this.
Is theism the cause of this? Well, there is no doubt that religion has often participated in this self-destruction. However, the thesis that theism is somehow behind all the violence of this world is false and a gross generalization. If we are intellectually honest, we will realize that all of us are religious, whether or not we are theists. Religion is after all, not necessarily associated with theism, but is rather “the beliefs, attitudes, emotions, behavior, etc., constituting a man’s relationship with the powers and principles of the universe” (Funk and Wagnalls). I think of the Cult of Reason established after the dechristianization of France during the French revolution. I think of the religion of communism and a man like Joseph Stalin who was one of the bloodiest despots in modern history terrorizing and killing millions of people. Perhaps religion, in the sense of extreme ideology and a twisted, disgusting lust for power, is the cause of most of the violence in the world; but one should never make the error of equating religion and theism.
So, if we are able to move past our critiques of religion, and move past Feuerbach’s assessment that the question of God is nothing more than a question of anthropology, we just might be able to deal with some of the tough philosophical issues that get at the heart of the matter. I will briefly address two: 1) The foundation of morality, and 2) The human transcendence of biological processes.

1) Can we be good without God? Let me be clear here. This is not the same as asking if those who do not believe in God can live good moral lives—often those who do not believe put the lives of those who do to shame. But this is not a question of belief. This is a question of God’s existence. William Lane Craig writes, “If God exists, then the objectivity of moral values, moral duties, and moral accountability is secured . . . in the absence of God, that is, if God, does not exist, then morality is just a human convention, that is to say, morality is wholly subjective and non-binding. We might act in precisely the same ways that we do in fact act, but in the absence of god, such actions would no longer count as good (or evil), since if God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. Thus, we cannot truly be good without God.” We make judgments based upon right and wrong everyday. And we do this independently of whether anybody believes it to be so. This is to say that the Crusades were morally wrong, even though the Christians who carried them out thought they were doing God’s work. This is also to say that the Holocaust was morally reprehensible even though the Nazis who carried it out thought it was good. How can you say that incest or child molestation is objectively wrong? The naturalist argument does not compute. If we are just a biological organism, then morality is culturally relative and one has no more right to say a particular action is wrong than they do to say that 2+2 does not equal 5. Kai Nielsen, an atheist ethicist and extensive writer on the topic of morality, writes, “We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view, or that all really rational persons should not be individual egoists or classical amoralists. Reason doesn’t decide here. The picture I have painted for you is not a pleasant one. Reflection on it depresses me . . . Pure practical reason, even with good knowledge of the facts, will not take you to morality.”

2) In the beginning of Civilization and Its Discontents Freud recounts how his friend wrote to him stating that his previous book, The Future of an Illusion, had not appreciated the true source of religions sentiments. “This, he [said], consists in a peculiar feeling, which he himself is never without, which he finds confirmed by many others, and which he may suppose is present to millions of people. It is a feeling which he would like to call a sensation of ‘eternity,’ a feeling as of something limitless, unbounded—as it were, ‘oceanic’” (10-11). Freud, however, never reckons with this friend’s feeling. Freud simply responds that science cannot easily deal with such a feeling. And he is correct.
But this statement and this refusal to engage seems to ignore the history that tells us of how many people experienced this same feeling and longing. Our eternal, transcendent nature seems to be apparent in so many things. The artist who says that she must make art. It is simply in her. Not because she is trying to survive, not because she is trying to make a living, but simply because she can do nothing but make art. It is her eternal, transcendent nature expressing itself. Why did men and women make cave paintings that date back to almost 32,000 years ago? What is this compulsion? What about those who have chosen to die for the love of another? How is this inline with the idea that we are nothing more than a biological organism? I would argue that our makeup is inherently transcendent and eternal because we were made by and in the image of a Creator.

In conclusion, I would like to offer some reflections on faith. Maher states in his film, “the only appropriate attitude for man to have about the big questions is . . . doubt.” I would fully agree. But I would take that conclusion further by proposing that faith is the logical conclusion of doubt. And everyone has faith in something, whether it is in themselves or in a higher power. Paul Tillich defines faith as the act of being “ultimately concerned,” which means that doubt is a necessary element in it. “It is a consequence of the risk of faith” (Dynamics of Faith, 21). “A scientist who states that a scientific theory is beyond doubt would at that moment cease to be scientific” (Ibid). Tillich goes on to write, “Serious doubt is confirmation of faith. It indicates the seriousness of the concern [and] its unconditional character.” Perhaps many theists in the world could learn a thing or two about humble doubt, the realization that we will never prove the existence of God with any absolute certainty. However, I have chosen faith in God in the face of doubt because it is the only reasonable and coherent way for me to view the world.