Topics Religion

Question If we can neither prove nor disprove the existence of a 'God', is it rational to even consider the possibility that he/she exists? Without the dedication of the few who preach from the worlds' religious houses, the notion of a 'God' surely wouldn't cross the mind of even the most imaginative of thinkers?

Accepted:
August 13, 2009

Comments

You ask two distinct questions. The first is whether it is rational to assert that God is possible, assuming that you cannot prove or disprove that God exists. The second question is whether the concept of God would occur to anyone who is not influenced by the preaching of religious teachers.

About the first question: when it comes to questions about "possibility", it always useful to distinguish various senses of this term. "Logical" possibility depends upon whether a statement involves a contradiction or not. So for example, a square circle is impossible. But a piece of gold that weights a trillion tons is not. "Epistemic" possibility is significantly weaker: it refers to whether or not a proposition is possible "as far as we know", or relative to our knowledge. It would seem that the statement "God exists" is possible on either interpretation. It does not appear that the concept of God contains any contradictions. And if you cannot disprove that God exists, as you stipulate, then God is epistemically possible for you.

About the second question: there is an increasing amount of evidence from research on the "cognitive basis of religion" that the belief in invisible, intelligent spirits is an intuitive belief that occurs to most human beings at an early age. This does not say anything, of course, about whether this belief is justified or not. For more information about these views, check out the work of thinkers such as Scott Atran, Stewart Guthrie, and Justin Barrett. A similar view was presented by David Hume in his Natural History of Religion.

None of this, of course, tells you what to believe. We do not believe in the existence of everything that is possible; nor should we believe everything that is natural or intuitive for us. You must decide whether or not to believe that God exists, by considering all the arguments and evidence available to you.

You seem to make three distinct claims:

First, that no one would believe in God without the aggressive 'preaching' of the entrenched world religions. Second, that we can neither prove no disprove the existence of God. Finally, you conclude from your first two claims that we shouldn't even consider the possibility of the existence of God.

The first claim, as Professor Collier has already noted, seems to be false. Belief in the supernatural and gods of some kind is a frequently recurring cultural pattern. Strict materialism is much rarer than religious faith. Of course, this does not establish the truth or falsity of such claims, but it at least suggests that there is some sort of pragmatic or evolutionary benefit to such beliefs.

Your second claim is certainly true in the sense that there are no arguments that widely accepted as establishing the truth or falsity of religious faith. Yet, it should be noted that lots of people do find some argument for or against religious faith to be persuasive. Such arguments need not be universally accepted to be sound. In fact, most philosophers judge some argument on some controversial topic to be sound.

Finally, if we judge that the arguments for and against religious faith are unpersuasive, it is still not clear what we should do. Immanuel Kant famously argued that we should embrace religious faith for moral reasons despite the absence of evidence for the existence of God. Blaise Pascal argued that religion offers a 'good wager' since the believer has the possibility of eternal happiness for a modest sacrifice of pleasure during this life. Alvin Plantinga claims that belief in God should be a 'basic belief' an unprovable, but proper starting point for reasoning. Probably more influentially than these arguments, William James claimed that in the absence of compelling evidence, one's beliefs concerning religion still represent a momentous forced choice that cannot really be avoided and that if one finds in him (or her) self the 'will to believe' (or disbelieve), such beliefs are perfectly reasonable to hold.

P.S. Note that Peter Smith's response is quite right that IF one is already convinced that naturalism/materialism is true (or has a very high probability of truth) and that the strictly naturalistic interpretation of the origin of belief in the supernatural he offers is therefore correct, that one should reject any urge towards believing in the supernatural. However, if one believes that issues such as naturalism/supernaturalism and theism/atheism are genuinely irresolvable (as the question seems to stipulate), his response would seem to be question begging.

P.P.S. I agree with Peter Smith that one can try to separate the question of whether we are justified/warranted in believing in theism from the question of theism's truth. So, he can attempt to avoid begging the question that way, but this strategy has its own problems. Most notably, he has to defend the dubious proposition that even if theism is true, theists would not be justified/warranted in believing in theism.

In order to see why this claim is so dubious, it is important to realize that theism's truth would have far reaching implications. If the God of classical theism exists, he isn't just one more piece of lawn furniture in the universe that someone might or might not stumble upon and become justified/warranted in believing in his existence. The God of classical theism (which is the 'God' I assume we are talking about) would also be creator of the universe, creator of humanity, lover of humanity, would desire some sort of relationship with humanity, and perhaps most importantly for our discussion, would be the ultimate source of human epistemic faculties. If this being exists, then the billions of people that find themselves believing in his existence are almost certainly justified/warranted in their belief because the classical theistic God would design humanity with a propensity to believe in God's existence. For a far more eloquent and detailed defense of the claim, "If God exists, theists are most likely justified in their belief in God," I refer anyone still following this discussion to Alvin Plantinga's Warranted Christian Belief.

So, if Smith's response is to both avoid question begging and be plausible, I think he has to give a compelling account for why we should distrust the human propensity to believe in God IF we haven't already ruled out the classic theistic hypothesis. Again, I don't doubt that the committed materialist will and (given his/her metaphysical commitments) probably should still accept the explanation offered by evolutionary naturalism... I merely doubt that someone who doesn't think the question of God's existence can be resolved can accept Smith's account without begging the question against theism, unless he can find a compelling account of why belief in God would be unjustified, even if God exists.

We seem naturally to be prone to over-interpret our environment and to see natural events as the results of intelligent agents at work. And you can see why our evolutionary history should have led to this cast of mind: it was much better for our ancestors to be too quick to diagnose potential agents around them (predators or other dangerous creatures) than to be too slow! So, we seem to be hardwired to be over-ready to see signs of agency in the world and to be susceptible to crediting supernatural explanations of natural events. And so it doesn't take much dedication on the part of those caught up with stories of the supernatural to keep them propagating. For more, much more, on these lines, see Dan Dennett's very readable Breaking the Spell.

Now, Mark Collier and Eric Silverman both gesture towards this sort of answer to the original question, but they also both remark that this doesn't settle what to believe about God. Well, yes, not settle. But still, if you do come to think that the cause of our susceptibility to beliefs in gods and demons, spirits and sprites, is a bit of quick-and-dirty cognitive apparatus that is not designed to track the truth but is designed to keep us safe even if by over-interpreting events as signs of agency, then -- to that extent -- you'll think that you shouldn't place much reliance on such intuitively appealing beliefs. Indeed, you will discount our tendency to have religious beliefs as any evidence for their truth. And the William James position doesn't then seem tenable for someone in the know: even if you still find in yourself a "will to believe", that doesn't make the beliefs reasonable (now you know what grounds the will to believe, you have no reason to think the beliefs track the truth).

P.S. I'm not sure why Eric Silverman thinks that this response begs any question. The original question posits that the proposition that God exists isn't susceptible to being settled by direct argument, by "proof or disproof". Let that be granted. Now suppose, just suppose, you do come to think the cause of our susceptibility to beliefs in gods is (to put it at its crudest) an over-active imagination for which there is a good evolutionary imagination [note, I did write "if you do come to think ..." above!]. Then, as I said, agreeing with my two co-panellists, that wouldn't settle the issue of God's existence (we still wouldn't haven't a proof or a disproof). But it would change the situation in at least this respect: you now have a good reason for discounting a tendency to find religious beliefs imaginatively compelling as any evidence for their truth. You'll have good reason to resist the "will to believe".