God: The Failed Hypothesis (31 page)

The hiddenness problem relates most directly to the scientific arguments I have presented. If a theist attempts to refute my conclusions by claiming that God intentionally hides himself from us, then that God cannot be the personal, perfect loving God of liberal Christianity. However, there is another brand of Christian God.

The Hideous Hidden God of Evangelical Christianity

The believing theologians at the Boulder conference were all Christians, and they provided a variety of responses. Jeff Cook, a young graduate student at the University of Colorado, presented a solution to the hiddenness problem that left the more evangelically inclined Christians at the conference shaking their heads vertically, while the rest of us shook our heads horizontally.

Cook gave some personal history of how being born again turned his life around. His wife, sitting in the audience, was given the chance to affirm their joint transforming experience.

Cook called his solution to the problem of divine hiddenness the “Ecclesiastic solution.” Let me use his own words, as presented in the conference handouts: “Christianity shows that one of God’s chief desires is to create a community of individuals that are devoted to the good of one another, with God himself as the chief participant. This community has many preconditions and needs, and it may be the case that God’s universal self-disclosure would be less effective at creating and establishing the Kingdom of God than a policy of selective self-disclosure
¹³
.” In other words, God does not wish to spend eternity with all human souls, but only the chosen few who, by blind faith in the absence of all evidence, accept a Jewish carpenter who may or may not have lived two thousand years ago as their personal savior. Of course, this is hardly a new idea but was essentially the teaching of John Calvin (d. 1564).

To Christians of this persuasion, Mahatma Gandhi is burning in hell, along with the six million Jews killed by Hitler and the billions of others who have died without accepting Jesus.

Those Catholics and evangelical Christians who hold this view clearly do not believe in a perfectly loving God. Their God dooms everyone else but them to eternal fire. Muslims, too, insist that theirs is the only way to salvation. And while the range of belief in modern Judaism is enormous, including many Jews who are atheists but still practice their religion out of respect for their heritage, a few extreme Jews still regard themselves as the chosen people of God. If anyone promoted such views in any area outside a religious context, he would be taken in for psychiatric evaluation.

Philosopher Evan Fales has given another explanation for the hiddenness of God: “Some apologists tell us that God remains hidden from us so as not to coerce our worship. But God is not hiding out of solicitude for our freedom. We have not forgotten Job: therefore we understand that God is hiding out of cowardice.

God is in hiding because He has too much to hide. We do not seek burning bushes or a pillar of smoke. No—we wish to see God. Can God stand before us? Can God see the face of suffering humanity—and live
¹⁴
?”

The existence of the Catholic, evangelical, extreme Muslim, extreme Judaic God who hides himself from all but a selected elite cannot be totally ruled out. All I can say is that we have not one iota of evidence that he exists and, if he does exist, I personally want nothing to do with him. This is a possible god, but a hideous one.

Notes

¹
Nicholas Everitt,
The Non-Existence of God
(London, New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 236.

²
Paul Bloom,
Descartes’ Baby: How the Science of Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human
(New York: Basic Books, 2004).

³
Victor J. Stenger,
Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003), chap. 11.

⁴
Pope John Paul II, Address to the Academy of Sciences, October 28, 1986,
L’Osservatore Romano,
English ed., November 24, 1986, p. 22.

⁵
Dalai Lama,
The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality
(New York: Random House, 2005).

⁶
Howard van Till, in Phillip E. Johnson and Howard van Till, “God and Evolution: An Exchange,”
First Things
34 (1993): 32-41.

⁷
Ibid.

⁸
John L. Schellenberg,
Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993).

⁹
Ibid., “The Problem of Hiddenness and the Problem of Evil,”

fnPresented to the Conference on “The Hiddenness of God,” Theology Forum, University of Colorado at Boulder, October 21-23, 2004.

¹⁰
Theodore M. Drange,
Nonbelief and Evil: Two Arguments for the Nonexistence of God
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998), p. 23.

¹¹
Schellenberg,
Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason,
p. 1.

¹²
J. J. Mackie, “Evil and Omnipotence,”
Mind
64 (1955): 200-12; Keith Parsons,
God and the Burden of Proof: Platinga, Swinburne, and the Analytical Defense of Theism
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1989); Drange,
Nonbelief and Evil.

¹³
Jeff Cook, “The Problem of Divine Hiddenness,” Presented to the Conference on “The Hiddenness of God,” Theology Forum, University of Colorado at Boulder, October 21-23, 2004.

¹⁴
Evan Fales, “Despair, Optimism, and Rebellion,”
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/evan_fales/despair.html
(accessed July 6, 2005).

Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of
thy vanity: for that
is
thy portion in
this
life, and in thy labor which thou takest under the sun. Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do
it
with thy might; for
there is
no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave whither thou goest.

—Ecclesiastes 9: 9-10 (King James Version)

Is Religion Useful?

A
rchaeology testifies that religion was a major component of human life for thousands of years before civilization began. And, of course, civilization did not put an end to religion but molded it into more sophisticated forms. The God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam arose in parallel with the city-state and may have been created to justify the relation of an all-powerful king to his subjects.

Voltaire (d. 1778) said, “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him
¹
.” Of course, the French philosopher and satirist was being his usual cynical self, but a common view is that religion is a necessary component of human life. The reason most frequently given is that, without religion, everyone would behave immorally and society would be wracked by wars and all kinds of other evils. However, despite the widespread influence of religion, some humans continue to behave immorally and some morally, with no particular correlation to faith being evident.

And, society continues to be wracked by wars and all kinds of other evils. If we need yet one more example of a failed model, this is it.

Yet most people believe, and libraries are full theories as to why they do despite all the evidence to the contrary
²
. Justin L. Barrett asks directly,
Why Would Anyone Believe in God?
and credits such belief to the types of mental tools we all carry around in our brains
³
. We hear other speculations that religious belief is built into our brains, with a special “God module
⁴
” perhaps codified by a “God gene
⁵
“—all the result of natural selection.

Psychologist Paul Bloom refers to recent research by himself and others indicating that the human brain has evolved two separate “programs” for analyzing the data from the senses
⁶
. One program deals with physical objects and the other with social relationships. Bloom suggests that this has led to a natural, built-in tendency to separate the world of matter from the world of mind and to believe in the survival of personality after death. As anthropologist Pascal Boyer has suggested, this also leads to a strong tendency to see purpose and design even when they are not there
⁷
. Anthropologist Stewart Guthrie calls this hypersensitivity to signs of agency, seeing intention where there is only accident or artifice, the clothes have no emperor
⁸
. Columnist Nicholas Kristof of the
New York Times
finds this a “cosmic joke,” that “humans have gradually evolved to leave many of us doubting evolution
⁹
.”

If religion is a naturally evolved trait, then we have yet another argument against the existence of God. As always, the apologist can counter with the claim that God could still be behind it all. However, he can provide no evidence to support that hypothesis or any reason for introducing it. Once again, God is simply not needed any more than Bigfoot, the Abominable Snowman, and the Loch Ness Monster.

The issue of a God module in the brain remains controversial, and we will have to wait and see. The timescale would seem too short for biological evolution of such a major nature. On the other hand, the timescale is long enough for cultural evolution.

We can still consider the implications of the proposition that religion had survival value, whether or not this resulted in the humans evolving some genetic propensity for religion that became built into their genes. Religion may be a cultural idea that evolved by natural selection because it provided a survival benefit, sort of the way the idea of traffic lights evolved.

The Negative Impact of Religion on Society

In chapter 7, we saw how our notions of morals and values may have evolved naturally, their precursors being seen in animal behavior. There I argued that we possess innate concepts of what is good and what is bad that do not derive from a divine source and are, indeed, contradicted by the scriptures that are supposed to have a divine source.

We saw that the empirical evidence does not support the widespread assertion that religion is especially beneficial to society as a whole. Of course, it has always proved extremely beneficial to those in power—helping them to retain that power—from prehistoric times to the latest presidential election.

But it is not clear how society is any better off than it would have been had the idea of gods and spirits never evolved.

Morality and religion may have evolved together. We can easily imagine, and history seems to confirm, that religion was the means by which good behavior—”good” usually being defined by whomever was in power at the time—was enforced.

Even in modern times we see the remnants of this unholy alliance, with world leaders asserting divine authority for their actions and people still falling for it. By claiming divine authority, politicians are able to promote policies of dubious value that the public might otherwise find unacceptable. Journalist Chris Mooney has provided many disgraceful recent examples of this in his book
The Republican War on Science
¹⁰
.

In February 2003 President of the United States George W. Bush told Australian Prime Minister John Howard that liberating the people of Iraq would not be a gift provided by the United States but, rather, “God’s gift to every human being in the world
¹¹
.” In November 2004 Bush was reelected by a majority that included many who sincerely believed the president was carrying out God’s work.

Theists in the United States continue to insist, contrary to the historical facts, that God is the foundation of our political system and that we and our political leaders must all abide by their particular interpretations of God’s will. As Father Frank Pavone of the antiabortion organization Priests for Life told the 2000 Republican National Convention, “The Church does not dictate the policies of the nation. The Church proclaims the truth of God to which all these [public] policies must conform
¹²
.”

A far more powerful figure who holds this view and applies it with a vengeance in his decisions is US Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. He quotes St. Paul:

Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.

Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: for he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake. (Romans 13:1-5, King lames Version)

Scalia has declared, “Government—however you want to limit that concept—derives its moral authority from God
¹³
.” He and Father Pavone apparently would have the United States abandon the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” Although American Christians have been led to believe that the “Creator” mentioned here is their God, Thomas Jefferson, who wrote these words, was not a Christian but a deist. But my point here is that Scalia and Pavone reject the authority of the governed in favor of the authority of God, as they interpret his authority for us, of course.