Prerequisite for the Experiment of Belief: Desire

If belief is the only tool, what of those who feel they can’t believe? There are many who may read this blog and say, “That’s nice that belief is the only tool that you can use to know God, but I just can’t believe at all. I feel I’d be giving in to superstition” or “I just can’t believe in something that I can’t see and for which I find no empirical evidence.” I can empathize with this statement. I personally hope and search for empirical things and am skeptical of some claims from believers.

Something has brought you this far. Whether to get an answer for yourself about these questions, or to try to refute my words; out of curiosity, or out of trying to objectively understand a believer’s point of view, or, perhaps, because you may already agree with me, you have come and you’re willing to read. And hopefully, you’re willing to try the only tool we have for knowing: to believe.

There are many who say they would be willing to believe if there was some great and irrefutable manifestation of God’s existence, such as the earth beginning to orbit the sun in the opposite direction and us not feeling the reversal or flying off the planet—then, they say, they would believe. And that desire to have such a manifestation is understandable; nothing speaks to our intellects like direct, objective accounts, preferably measured by third-party scientists (if such neutrality existed regarding belief in God).

But the problem is that such a grandiose manifestation doesn’t create belief. If it came from God, it would produce knowledge: He could make it very obvious. However, as we’ve already discussed, there seems to be some redeeming quality about belief that God wants us to cultivate. As far as I know, all those people who have come to an undeniable knowledge of God have not done so solely, even primarily, through empirical evidences; they have done so through the tool of belief.

(I can imagine many thinkers willing to attempt to prove that turning the globe backwards couldn’t possibly be miraculous or divine, or that nothing, for that matter, could have divine origins, no matter how creative the physical manifestation is. As I said before, there are many who just don’t want to believe, and as such, there will be relatively nothing, except an actual beholding of God after death, that will seem convincing. They may say, “Well, if divine events or miracles were possible, I would not deny them, but since I know that they are not possible, there must be another explanation.” There are many who share this circular reasoning: “I don’t believe that miracles, however defined, are real, therefore your belief they are real is unfounded.” To those, I share my thoughts, and encourage them to at least be open-minded to those who feel differently.)

Even with undeniable knowledge of God, if some supernatural bizarreness were to happen, there would be plenty of scholars willing to attempt to show why it was a natural occurrence. People always seem to be able to convince themselves to believe or disbelieve evidences, depending what they want to believe—I have to recognize this statement from my standpoint as a believer. (This point in greater detail: forthcoming.) Belief on the part of scientists is akin to the belief that we are talking about: they, in order to perform an experiment, have to have some idea of what they think is going to happen. They have a belief in an idea, which they test. We also must have belief in an idea which we test, but the test we perform cannot be done with laboratory study.

This is where the necessity for the desire to believe is apparent. Without a desire to believe, we definitely won’t go on believing. This point resembles in some ways my previous point about “don’t want to believe” and “can’t believe”.

For some, asking the questions “Is God there? Does He care? What is His role in my life?” can be liberating. It can provide meaning to life and answers to deep questions of identity. It can provide peace. In a previous entry I mentioned a modified version of Pascal’s wager. Now, I understand that there are arguments all around the wager itself; we won’t justify Pascal’s logic. But the wager does illustrate a point: If God exists and can provide a happiness and joy greater than anything that we can find in this life, wouldn’t it be worth any price in this life to find out if that is true?

Though this is not the case with all who don’t believe, I have noticed that there are many who don’t believe because of what that would entail. If there is a God, the ones who know of Him historically speaking, in their various ways, say He expects righteousness, however defined. I will site a story from a Judeo-Christian text that gives an example of people who have no desire to believe because of what it entails. I recognize that there are those who disregard sacred writ, so for those people, I offer it as an illustration of the principle.

Ahaz was a king in the time of the Judeo-Christian prophet Isaiah. He didn’t really want anything to do with God and didn’t really live in the way God would expect him to, even though his kingdom was about to be attacked, and he would need all the deus ex machina he could muster. Isaiah, who is the mouthpiece for God in this record, offered Ahaz a remarkable proposition that many of us wish that we could have offered us. Isaiah said, “Ask for a sign from the Lord your God.” Basically, ask for anything as proof that He exists, and you can know that God exists and is available to help you. God is actually concerned. I think many of us would say, “Yeah! Have God do such-and-such! Then I’d believe!”

There would be many who would take that offer, but if God is interested in cultivating belief, there must be something else. In response to this question, Ahaz said, “No. I will not ask, and I will not test the Lord.” Why? Why on earth would someone turn down the opportunity like this? He had everything to gain from the experience, didn’t he? Everything except one thing: if Ahaz knew or even believed that God existed, he would have to change his behavior to the way Isaiah told him God expected him to act. This story is illustrative of people whom I have met. Sometimes we are too concerned about protecting our small piece of intellectual turf or our demands for hedonic rights or our fear of losing something that is popular, convenient, individualistic, or prestigious. Being more concerned about maintaining our status quo than learning if God (or anything) is real gets in the way of even beginning to really try experimenting. The desire needed to move forward or to have belief is gone.

That is not to say that those who prefer to never ask the question are somehow inferior people. They obviously have found something worth living for, which can be commendable. But if God does exist, passing up the offer to come to know Him, just because we’ve found something satisfactory to bide our time, would deprive ourselves of greater richness, depth, and joy in life and eventually, a knowledge that discloses meaning in life.

I repeat: we have to desire the answer to this question before we can start asking the question. I have known another great many people, perhaps more than the refusing group to which I had just referred, who felt they performed the experiment of faith and received no results. I had shared with them some ideas as to how they could go about trying and verifying, which I will include here in an upcoming post. It seemed to me that they had tried these suggestions, but without the desire to believe. Sometimes they did it because they liked me and wanted to do it to please me. Sometimes they did it just to prove me wrong. But oftentimes they did it without the desire of knowing for themselves. And without that desire, they learned nothing. Though they went through the motions, they did not want to believe, and therefore never actually performed the experiment. It would be like trying to study the stars through a telescope, by looking through the telescope, focusing it very well, but never taking the lens cap off.

I know of people who tried suggestions given to them by believers with great diligence, and were frustrated that results did not come in the way they expected. When I asked them about believing, many had never actually started that part. They never desired to believe. I would ask them, “Just think hypothetically: if God did exist, and He did let you know what you’re asking for, but as a consequence you would have to change your lifestyle, leaving friends, maybe giving up some vice, or surrendering some behavior, would you still be willing to find out?” Those who felt like they had performed the experiment and had received nothing (from my personal experience only, N=about 45) invariably said either “No” or “I’d have to think about it”, meaning they hadn’t actually had the desire to believe up to that point. I was always surprised at the honesty of their answers, because I personally would feel sheepish for doing something like this just for the means and not for the ends. The ends in this case would usually entail that we change: we would have new experiences that we need to factor in to our calculations. If we were just going to ignore the experiences, why have them in the first place?

The desire to believe can be cultivated for some by contemplating those difficult questions of “why am I here?” and “does life have meaning?” and “can these answers be found?” I leave it to the reader to figure out what questions they have, what they’d be willing to give up in response to those answers, and ask themselves if they have the desire to perform such an experiment.

Answering “Does God Exist?”: Being Teachable and Colored Thoughts

I constantly talk of the experiment of belief. Part of my intent with this blog is to provide some guidance and direction in trying this experiment of belief. But what about those who may say, “So how am I going to try this experiment if I can’t believe at all? I can’t bring myself to believe in something like that. But I want to try the experiment.” The following comments apply to this topic, but also may be applied learning anything in academia.

We have to make the distinction between the claims of “can’t believe” and “don’t want to believe”. There is a very important difference: those who “don’t want to” try the experiment will never begin because of a difference in attitude; this could be because modifying belief systems can be very difficult, and the prospect of doing so is not worth the effort for them. Those who “can’t believe” have a number of thoughts, ponderings, beliefs of their own, philosophies, etc. that make believing in God a significant challenge. Those who “don’t want to believe” something feel that never truly asking a question is somehow more liberating than knowing for themselves—perhaps an ignorance-is-bliss mentality. For those who feel that really asking the question of God is not something he/she wants to know, I don’t think many of my comments will be interesting. I cannot help someone understand something that he/she is choosing not to understand, whether it be developmental psychology, solid-state physics, political economy of women, minimalist artistic movements, or God.

A man of God, who first introduced me to this method of an experiment, said, “if [you] will [try] an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith … even if [you] can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until [you] believe in a manner that [you] can give place [in your heart/belief system] for a portion of my words.” I think that this man was partly teaching that if you can’t believe because it seems like the claim is constantly too far removed from reality then ponder on the fact that the only way to really know is to try the experiment: believe. Deep pondering, contemplative reflecting, and/or serious consideration will eventually and hopefully open one up to the option of trying an experiment, or at least open us to the recognition that since we have not tried it, we cannot determine the validity of another’s experience. However, if we are to try something this monumental, such as a change in our belief system, we have to bring ourselves to the point where we can say,

“I want to know the answer for myself, and not because others have insisted it is so. I am concerned enough about learning this thing that I am willing to sacrifice my previous opinions about the subject to know. I am willing, with all its implications, to accept knowing: being ostracized by close ones, losing status with friends, possible stereotyping, possible implications with regards to my employment … whatever the consequences of changing my belief system in an intolerant world may be. Coming to a knowledge of this is more important to me than being right up to this point: I want to know either way.”

We all should reach this point of willingness to learn about God sometime in our lives. Without having actually tried the experiment of belief, we cannot really say that we’ve tried to answer the question as it has been asked. If we don’t reach that point of being honest with ourselves, it could be that we don’t want to know the answer yet.

From personal experience, however anecdotal, I must say something that I’ve observed in my desire to know God: I have not come to know anything, to truly comprehend anything, to receive anything, or to be anything without reaching the point where I’ve said to myself, “I don’t care what the answer is, whether I’m currently right or wrong; I just need to know what it really is.” In the case of belief in God, I have had to reach the point where I’ve broken down my preconceptions of what I think God should or shouldn’t be or how He should or shouldn’t act. When I’ve reached that point, I can begin to understand. As an analogy, if God wants to paint a picture in our minds using bright oranges, reds, greens, and violets, but all we’re letting Him work with in our minds is gray (because we think that gray is the only thing He can use), the intended picture may come out sadly monochromatic; even if He does give us something of a painting, it is likely our restrictions on the answer that distort the picture.

That analogy is worth pondering and reflecting. Could God prove Himself to the individual? Yes. Then why does He leave it also to our own willingness to let Him into our belief system? Again, there must be something valuable in learning to learn, in allowing God to choose the palate, or in being willing to surrender our own hard-earned thoughts if greater insight is available. Again, there must be something valuable in learning to believe, because God is not forced to use only unquantifiable personal experiences.

We have to open up our minds to the idea that “you know what? I could be wrong on this one.” As one reader pointed out, oftentimes we reach a point where we just stop questioning. The only legitimate reason to stop questioning is if we knew something, coming from an indisputable source of truth, where all other possible options are removed, assuming that such a source were available. Otherwise, we should continue to inquire. I hope to give some insights as to how we can do this.

Analogy to Science and the Value of Belief

A quick recap:

If God exists as defined by theists, then He is fully capable of unequivocally proving His existence. Why does He not? Because there must be something in our learning to believe that is important to Him. I hope to have later posts that expound on the importance of that cultivation.

I have stated that belief is the tool by which we can start to know God and that it is the tool used by those who have claimed to have known Him. Therefore, knowing God cannot be refuted until that person uses the same tool in the way that God would have it be used. And the fact that the results may be immeasurable (like the Being that they are trying to discover) makes our scientific standardizations inadequate, no matter how rigorous we apply scientific methods. All who believe in God would claim that if He didn’t want to be measurable or known in an indisputably objective way, there would be nothing we could do to discover Him empirically or scientifically. He has the power to keep Himself known only to individuals who seek Him.

Analogous to science, an experiment can be refuted in three ways a) proving the method wrong, b) the underlying principles wrong, or c) by duplicating the method and finding definitively opposing results.

I have already suggested that the method of believing cannot be proved unsound intrinsically, because the assumptions made to make a claim that belief is automatically unsound contain either circular arguments or unfounded claims, such as, “I don’t think that beliefs are adequate proof, hence your beliefs aren’t adequate proof, therefore there is no God” or “You can’t use belief because I don’t think it’s valid.” We also recognize that even a scientist believes his/her experiments will produce results, and that belief, in its various forms will often lead to events with productive results.

I have already suggested that the underlying principles, the facts that God exists and that He can manifest Himself as He chooses, cannot be refuted by our available scientific methodology. In theory, if we found some proof, the best we knew how, that God didn’t exist, He could still exist.

So we’re left with the third: we need to duplicate the exact method. Without having tried the experiment of belief, we have no ability to refute claims on God. I recognize that there are many who have tried this experiment and have received a variety of results. There are various explanations, some of which are because this is solely an analogy. Other reasons for these differences will be given in later posts.

I recognize that there are many brilliant scholars and philosophers who have made it a point to show why God cannot exist. Scottish philosopher of the Enlightenment David Hume, for example, might say that all of this talk of the requirement of believing first is irrational. In Hume’s thought tradition anything that was not empirical was considered irrational. But the problem is that there has been few, if any, meaningful claims to know God without having first believed. Despite the powerful intellects of some of those who wish to make belief in God a logical impossibility, we cannot reason Him into or out of existence. We cannot find him through science alone, nor can we show that He does not exist with a litmus test. Believing, no matter how unappealing this is for the scientists in all of us, is a requirement that precedes knowledge. I am familiar with much of the work of these great minds. A man who claimed to have a knowledge of the existence of God, taught, “God is known only by revelation; he stands revealed or remains forever unknown. He cannot be discovered in the laboratory, or by viewing all immensity through giant telescopes, or by cataloging all the laws of nature that do or have existed.” Just as it is an experiment of belief that anyone can try, by “revelation” this man of God means that the results of the endeavor will only be manifested only to the experimenter, the individual who took the opportunity to believe.

There are many believing scholars who have tried to prove, both from science and philosophy, the existence of God. They have irrefutably, in my opinion, argued the possibility of God’s existence, they but have not proved His existence. Indeed, if God would not have it so, it would not be provable. Belief must be something He values in us. I stated in a recent comment that I feel that God can be knowable unempirically and empirically, if He so desired. I have had no experience with empirical knowledge of God, meaning I haven’t seen or touched God or another heavenly entity in some measurable way. However, just because I haven’t experienced such a thing does not make it impossible. I have to leave those things which I have not experienced as still possible. Therefore, I will focus on knowledge coming unempirically, something that may seem oxymoronic for some.

As for me, though I feel that I have received a worthwhile education, I feel that my philosophical statements may reflect my intermediacy in the field. I am not afraid to speak my mind in philosophy, but perhaps sheer epistemology is not the best use of my efforts. I am somewhat of a pragmatist and an experientialist. My points will be comparatively simple, but I will expect the reader to care about the argument enough to consider trying suggestions.

Thoughts on God and Measurability

I have posted a comment on another post in a most interesting discussion with another reader. These are some thoughts as a follow-up to the most recent post. It is fairly short. I recognize that I have a hard time restricting myself to shorter posts, because I have many thoughts that I wish to share. Enjoy.

Subjectivity and Objectivity

This post came in response to a comment, and the whole response is not here. I hope it is worth your read:

The words subjective and objective carry with them a lot of meaning. We can define the term subjective as “something that someone else experiences that I don’t” or “something that someone else experiences that I can’t” or even “something that is not real”. The last one, on the issue of God is a circular argument, which says “God is not real, so what you experience is not real, therefore there is no God.” At least in theory, God could still exist if people drew untrue conclusions from experiences and then attributed them falsely to Him. We will dismiss that circular definition. There is a considerable difference between the other two definitions. If we say that a subjective experience is something that “I don’t experience”, we could broaden that definition to events, such as going to Morocco. This is a hard-line view of subjectivity. To condemn a person’s belief that Morocco actually exists, despite the fact that one has not been there and only relies on another’s word, would be incorrect. As for the other definition, that subjectivity is due to the fact that “I can’t experience” it, I will hereafter make the case that the method that I am suggesting, the “experiment” in these posts, is in fact objective, and that it is something that everyone can experience. Indeed, I hope it is something that we all experience. Therefore, according to the last definition, it is objective. But let’s first address some of the issues of objectivity.

All believers in God argue that the Deity they revere is powerful enough to make Himself known in an impacting, objective way; there is no God too weak to manifest Himself with remarkable objectivity. So if God does exist, He has the power to make Himself known to the entire world. However, this leaves believers with a difficult question to answer: If God exists, why doesn’t He more regularly use public, objective results? Those who do not believe in God may interpret this as proof that God doesn’t exist-- He does not manifest Himself because He does not exist. But another approach would be to explore why God, if He does exist, might use personal, and thereby often called “subjective”, experiences to reveal Himself; in the terms of this experiment, it is to explore why He might give us an objective method with subjective results.

So, if God could manifest Himself unto all in an objective way, why hasn’t He? For one, having a piece of evidence that one can hold in the hand with a proof that God exists (assuming that one could have such proof) would make believing in God an issue akin to believing that the earth orbits the sun, using machines and calculations to assert our claim. We know the earth orbits the sun, and believing otherwise would be foolish, and with that comes no real growth other than another fact logged away. I don’t presume to know the mind of God; but I think His non-use of objectivity may have to do with the fact that believing and having faith are, for whatever His reasons, things that He wishes we develop. There must be something of worth that comes to the individual cultivating a belief in God that is important to Him.

The power in the experiment of belief is that it is possible for every individual and that it teaches individually—by a tutor, as it were. A tutor, in this case God, will stay at our pace as we learn, giving us what we are able to take, when we are able to take it.

Take the example of God being concerned about us behaving ethically. If we believe God is just and He is concerned that we are ethical (i.e. righteous, loving, selfless, diligent, or how ever defined), He will judge our level of ethics based on what we know, just as children are punished to levels of severity according to their incremental knowledge of right and wrong. The experiment of belief is intended to allow us to know a little bit at a time about God, His existence, and what He would like us to become. If we knew, objectively, in one shebang all of that information, we would be held responsible for behaving perfectly ethically in thought, word, and deed, for we would know without a doubt that God does exist and that such-and-such is what He expects of us.

But instead, if He allows us to know and to learn incrementally, as this experiment of belief provides, He can judge us according to what we have received up to that point. Because He is just, He would also require that we put forth effort to seek more knowledge, for otherwise we would be ignoring opportunities for learning. While God is merciful towards those with incomplete understandings of His will (which surely includes all of us, to some degree or another), at the same time, willful ignorance of what God hopes of us and of His existence will not be as protective from God’s judgment. I say this because I know of people who chose not to try this “experiment”, not because they think it won’t work, but because they don’t want the responsibility of discovering that God expects them to be more ethical or “righteous” in the terms that they see some believers define. Since all are entitled to their belief, we, as humans, are expected to allow all men to live and pay homage whatsoever they choose, may it be God, various gods, science, money, sports, or nothing at all. However, I return to my original point: if God were to manifest himself objectively, there may be many, who perhaps would not have developed the kind of ethical living (however God may define it) to correctly live as He would instruct.

That is why the “experiment” that I am outlining is intrinsically sound: if God exists and wanted to make Himself known to the masses in an objective way, He could. If God exists and does not want to make Himself known in a great objective way because there is something about personal experience that is important to Him, He will confirm such to an individual. The experiment itself is objective: you can try it. However, if we are looking for results of the experiment to be measurable and quantifiable, we may find that the results lead to something that cannot be quantified. Such it is with God: He stands immeasurable, incalculable, and unquantifiable, for our intents and purposes. Only personal experience can measure the immeasurable. And if we make the claim that these personal experiences are, as a group, completely subjective, we don’t change the claim that personal experiences are the means by which the individual can know about God according to Him.

A common reply would be, “That is all too convenient. It’s too convenient just to say, ‘God cannot be objectively measured,’ because then there is no proof or denial.” If one’s purpose for believing in God was merely to rationalize His existence, then yes, this would be an easy claim. But I assure you that believers, whose goal is to know God and search for Him, are saying, “This is all too inconvenient. It would be so much simpler if God would just make Himself manifest to everyone.” Believers are not just looking for a scapegoat for their personal experience with the Divine. The inward searching for God is a process for those who believe, requiring dedication to that experiment of belief. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the more time we spend experimenting, the more likely we are to produce confident results. That commitment is not convenient.

I recognize that the goal for some is to refute the belief systems of those who believe in God. One cannot refute them by merely dismissing their experiences because they are not experienced by another, especially when I am suggesting that there is a way that all can believe. Though not a perfect analogy, can you say to a man who loves his son, “You do not love your son,” merely because you do not yourself experience it? No, and if he did love his son, what would be the units of measurement? Again, this has a level of ineffability, but that doesn’t mean that because he cannot quantify it, it is not so, or because it’s anecdotal, it isn’t reliable. We are left to either believe or dismiss his experiences on our own rationale—or, and this is my whole point, perhaps our own experiences of giving and receiving love would help us to understand, identify with, and believe the man, despite our lack of having the exact same experience.

These thoughts are in no way refuting the importance of objectivity. Much of our advancement as a species has come through measurable, more universally accepted objective results. As far as social policy, fiscal progress, science, engineering, business and many other applications in life, the most reasonable method of finding knowledge is all objective, quantitative and qualitative. Is this to say that God can’t help us on these issues? Of course He can, and I believe He has. But since there are things that are both important and unquantifiable, the “experiment” of belief becomes the logical standpoint. Besides, all objective results, including the whole of science, get to inexplicable or subjective assumptions when you boil it down.

I give you an example: why does a computer work? Because we have engineered transistors from semiconductive material to process logical operations. Why do these semiconductors allow us to operate? Because as you apply voltage to adjacent semiconductors with different conductivities, electrons’ behavior (electric current) will change dramatically. Why will the behavior change dramatically? Because we’ve observed these changes in the past. But why does the behavior change? Well, it’s in part due to the fact that sometimes an electron acts as a particle and sometimes it acts as a wave. Why is that? We don’t know. We base our calculations of electrons on these assumptions, that it has mass and also can act as a wave, but these are our best guess as to what’s going on with an electron. We have mathematical models that help us understand the behavior, but our mathematical models cannot tell us the “essence” of quantum mechanics yet or exactly what it is. As Sir Arthur Eddington said, “Something unknown is doing we don’t know what.” Down at the very bottom of all scientific assumptions we reach a point we have to accept subjectivity, because we have nothing objective. We just have to say “We don’t know what an electron really is. We will assume such and such, because our experiences have led us to believe that.” We have no real objective data; we just have to make the best use of things we’ve experienced and keep searching for more understanding. Yet, although we cannot completely quantify, or even explain, what the essence of an electron is, we can use electrons in powerful ways because we have experimented and observed how they act. Similarly, though we may not be able to quantify God or how He reveals Himself to us, we can learn in powerful ways by experimenting, observing, and experiencing how He acts in our lives.

That lengthy exposition said, there is no room in personal experience to not be open-minded and tolerant of other belief-systems. If God does exist and does value those results of personal experience, it should be respected on all levels. Thank you for your thoughtful response, as one who values science and empiricism and recognizes the intrinsic scientific difficulty with subjectivity. I’m sorry that the analogy doesn’t hold on all levels; alas, it is only an analogy.

There will be many posts in the future about these questions, for as a believer, I have had to come to terms with many difficult questions regarding believing in God. As I had to seriously ask myself these things, I hope that my blog will evoke some thoughts as well in the readership, and, if nothing more, the acceptance of people with belief systems in God as being a viable solution for finding meaning in this life.

God’s Existence and Open-mindedness

In order to learn anything, we have to be willing to surrender what our current conceptions of that subject are, starting afresh. This process is usually easier in a school setting, where we oftentimes have little preconceived notion about the things we are learning. But in the instance that we meet someone and receive a horrible first impression, even if they really are a great person, it is a difficult change to try to see that person for who they are. It requires our willingness to realize we were wrong, or at least acknowledge the possibility of being wrong, in order to eventually be right about that person.

Based on experiences and what we have been taught, we all have preconceived notions about God’s existence. We must give everyone the benefit of the doubt: we’ve all experienced life differently, we may see things differently, and we’re doing the best we can to understand what we’ve experienced. Nevertheless, if there is a right or a wrong answer concerning God’s existence, we need to each be willing to clean our plates of all the intellectual horseradish and vinegar we’ve been eating when a right answer may require us to savor more sublime and subtle flavors. Just as it is with learning something new, we must start on a clean plate, with no residues tainting our palate.

The existence of God is either true or false. It cannot be half-true (“He sometimes exists.”) or relatively-true (“He exists for that person, but not for me.”), because His existence once, for one person, is His existence for all people. (We discard the philosophical notion that the existence of God is contingent upon the belief of man, suggested, I think, by Nietzsche. I make the argument that God is an independent entity and exists whether or not we choose to believe in Him. What we think about God doesn’t change God; it changes us.) If He exists at all—ever—His existence is real. If He has never existed, He does not exist. Since it is a yes/no question with an unambiguous answer, and He is considered to be the greatest entity in the Universe, it would seem in our best interest to find out if the answer is “yes” or “no”. If we are honest with ourselves, we will seriously ask the question.

I acknowledge that there are many who are ignorant or prone to superstition who readily look to God for hope, perhaps in part because they have very little hope in this life. Sometimes it is difficult for non-believers to accept their belief system as convincing, given their lack of intellectually sophisticated rationales for believing. Notwithstanding, of the billions that do believe in God, if just one actually finds out that the answer to this yes/no question is really “yes”—not a spiritual understanding based on superstition or gullibility, but actual knowledge from a source of truth—then God would exist for all those who haven’t found out whether or not He exists: including the educated and the successful.

But like the clean plate analogy, if what the one believer says is right, we may have a lot of our own predetermined responses to flush out in our learning process. Truly, there have been many successful and educated people that have used the one tool and found out for themselves the answer to that age-old question.

In a previous entry, I mentioned the idea that the only tool used by people who claim that God exists is belief. That is the method and the tool used by those who say they know. As we explored, there is no science or philosophy that can prove or disprove His existence. So we’re stuck with belief as the tool, and we need to continue to use it until we’ve successfully cleaned all our preconceived notions and have received definitive results.

When a scientist comes from an experiment with controversial results, the first thing other scientists and scholars want to know is: how’d he or she do it? The method must be repeatable and testable. No matter how smart we are, we cannot overturn someone else’s results unless we can perform the exact same experiment to obtain irrefutably contrasting data. Deciding not to do an experiment because one already assumes to know the answer is similar to when Einstein, arguably one of the smartest humans ever, dismissed de Broglie’s particle-wave theory without doing the experiments himself. Even though Einstein was educated, his gut-response having not performed the experiment himself led him to be incorrect.

Thus it is with God. The only way to overturn the results of one who has known God is to perform the same experiment. It is everyone’s opportunity to dismiss or perform the experiment, and those of us who have never performed it cannot discount those that have, and vice versa. To refute someone without knowing for oneself exhibits one of the symptoms of closed-mindedness: claiming to have understanding, but never trying to understand. There must always be respect from both sides.

Please entertain this thought, derived from Pascal’s famous wager. We can act as if God exists or we can act as if He doesn’t exist. If He doesn’t exist, the only thing we might lose could be a few hedonic pleasures; some argue that we wouldn’t lose anything. However, if He does exist, acting like He doesn’t exist could be a serious problem, depending on our notion of punishment from Him. But acting like He exists, when He indeed does, would be the greatest investment of our time imaginable.

It is worth our time, no matter our previous experiences, to constantly be willing to surrender our preconceived notions of God, using the tool of belief to discover whether or not He exists. Again, it is the only tool used by those who have claimed to have come to a real knowledge.

The Question of God: Theism, Agnosticism, and Atheism

I read some recent news blogs and opinion articles that present atheism as a trophy for the educated and enlightened. Some claimed “I have never met an educated believer. Has anyone ever met an educated believer?” And, in response to educated believers, “I think falling back on superstitions is a lousy way to give meaning to the world. I think ‘life has no meaning except the meaning that I give it’ is a perfectly acceptable answer.”

For the former I say this: meet me. To the latter: read on.

I offer the following thoughts as a response to those who have a different belief system than my own, asking that they consider my belief system as viable. I firmly believe that everyone makes their best judgments on these matters, given their experiences this far in their lives. I don't feel superior for having had different experiences. Having said that:

I believe in God, Lord over the whole Universe. And I know that He lives.

At this point, persons whose experiences and knowledge have led them to believe otherwise may feel that they are resisting, as Marx so called it, the “opium of the people”, and may immediately disregard further comments saying, “Ah, you can’t believe him; he is obviously flawed mentally, clinging to superstition.” It is this viewpoint that I want to address. I acknowledge that there are many apologetics to religion in general and abundant commentary on the matter. I offer this exploration as from one educated person to another, and I invite those who feel agnosticism is a solution to the question of religion to consider these thoughts.

“How do you know that God exists?” is a perfectly reasonable question, which I think should be asked by skeptics. I claim something greater than “I believe”. Even the wateriest agnostics can mumble these “I believe” words, but I claim more. I claim I know. To know something requires a source of knowledge. The scientific method, which I have used considerably, can never prove something absolutely true. It can test our hypotheses. If the hypothesis is true, it is a possible explanation, but there's no guarantee that it is the one true explanation. Alas, the scientific method can only show things are not true by eliminating poor hypotheses. And as the novice philosopher will note, you cannot prove something does not exist by showing that it is not a specific set of things. So the scientific method, as revered as it is by me, cannot be a source of finding truth. It can get us closer and closer to truth by proving things false, but it cannot get us to an absolute truth.

“Well, there is no truth. All truth is relative,” and “Science points towards the fact that God doesn’t exist,” are two common responses. The statements “there is no truth” and “all truth is relative” are absolute statements, and are therefore claiming absolute truth. Such an inherently contradictory statement would be worth re-examining and dissecting, with its epistemological and ontological implications, for those students of that thought tradition. As for the second statement, I feel that these people give science more credit than it deserves. As much as I am in awe of science, there is no experiment, no observation, no methodology, and no empirical data that can prove or deny the existence of Deity. After having used science for much of my life, I find no method or procedure that even comes close to addressing the magnitude and scope of God that can confine God into a quantifiable laboratory experiment. It could be that people that make such claim are trying to refute, perhaps, a particular individual's viewpoint as to what God is. If, for example, they believed that God was manifested in a geocentric universe, then yes, science has proved that notion of God wrong. But we must all readily acknowledge that trying to prove God through science using fallible human opinions to define His attributes is merely proving that these fallible people were wrong. There is nothing in science, in all the reading and research I have done, that even comes close to refuting the God I know—in fact, science only builds on that belief and enriches it. So we return to the question: how do I know?

The powerful scientific method, though it cannot prove us whether things are true, is not without useful analogy for understanding this question. How do I know that God exists? How do we know that nebulae exist? We have built telescopes that allow us to penetrate further into that largely unknown sky. How do we know that bacteria exist? We have built microscopes to penetrate further into that largely unknown microscopic world. Can we study the stars with a microscope? Obviously not. And only a fool would attempt to study bacteria with a telescope. It is very clear to all educated people that we need the appropriate tool for study. In matters of religion there is a tool by which we can know spiritual things.

There is a tool for us to “see.” This tool is belief. A wise man, a man who claimed to have communed with God, and as such would know how to study God, taught, “I would show unto the world that faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith.” Of all the people who have ever claimed to know that God exists, all have believed before they knew. It follows that the only tool by which we can know if God exists is, in fact, belief: the tool that He has consistently asked that we use to start our journey.

This is where people who believe in God have the advantage over those who staunchly proclaim that God can’t exist. The former learned of God, slowly and surely, by using the only tool available for such knowledge. The latter has never tried the tool, or put it to marginal, half-hearted, or sloppy use. We know that scientists spend much time looking for evidence with their tools, and that some may spend a lifetime getting closer and closer, never actually reaching their hypothesis. But do the scientists give up? No, they keep using the tool. So it is with God. The more effort we put into using the tool, the only tool given to know Him, the more, however incrementally slowly, we will begin to know.

I recognize that there are many, very many believers who are stuck in a vicious cycle of poverty and ignorance in the world. I recognize that there are many who make claims about God, seeming to be fanatical, outlandish, or superstitious. I cannot defend all people’s claims who believe in God. But I can defend the only tool they have. As there are correct ways and incorrect ways of using a scientific tool, there will likewise be many differing results for attempting to use the tool of belief in God. I cannot defend all their results. Sometimes abuse of an incorrectly-used tool trumps reality. I readily acknowledge that. But, nevertheless, no matter how these people have focused their belief, their tool, they still can experience and know something that a self-proclaimed atheist cannot know: God. Often, even an incorrect use of the tool yields more results than no use at all. The more time we spend using the tool, the more likely we will be able to understand it.

I defer to a man of God, who explained a conversation he had with a man who felt no need to use the tool of belief.

I sat on a plane next to a professed atheist who pressed his disbelief in God so urgently that I bore my testimony to him. “You are wrong,” I said, “there is a God. I know He lives!”

He protested, “You don’t know. Nobody knows that! You can’t know it!” When I would not yield, the atheist, who was an attorney, asked perhaps the ultimate question on the subject of testimony. “All right,” he said in a sneering, condescending way, “you say you know. Tell me how you know.”

When I attempted to answer, even though I held advanced academic degrees, I was helpless to communicate…When I used the words Spirit and witness, the atheist responded, “I don’t know what you are talking about.” The words prayer, discernment, and faith, were equally meaningless to him. “You see,” he said, “you don’t really know. If you did, you would be able to tell me how you know.”

I felt, perhaps, that I had borne my testimony to him unwisely and was at a loss as to what to do. Then… an idea came into my mind and I said to the atheist, “Let me ask if you know what salt tastes like.”

“Of course I do,” was his reply.

“When did you taste salt last?”

“I just had dinner on the plane.”

“You just think you know what salt tastes like,” I said.

He insisted, “I know what salt tastes like as well as I know anything.”

“If I gave you a cup of salt and a cup of sugar and let you taste them both, could you tell the salt from the sugar?”

“Now you are getting juvenile,” was his reply. “Of course I could tell the difference. I know what salt tastes like. It is an everyday experience—I know it as well as I know anything.”

“Then,” I said, “assuming that I have never tasted salt, explain to me just what it tastes like.”

After some thought, he ventured, “Well-I-uh, it is not sweet and it is not sour.”

“You’ve told me what it isn’t, not what it is.”

After several attempts, of course, he could not do it. He could not convey, in words alone, so ordinary an experience as tasting salt. I bore testimony to him once again and said, “I know there is a God. You ridiculed that testimony and said that if I did know, I would be able to tell you exactly how I know. My friend, spiritually speaking, I have tasted salt. I am no more able to convey to you in words how this knowledge has come than you are to tell me what salt tastes like. But I say to you again, there is a God! He does live! And just because you don’t know, don’t try to tell me that I don’t know, for I do!”

My experience with God is akin to that. Just in the past week I was asked to explain what that salt tasted like. I tried and failed. I have tasted that salt, but I had no way of telling them what it is that I experience when I experience God. I have studied psychology in great depth searching for anything that can resemble this experience. There are plenty of theories about the psychology of religion, even more philosophy on the matter, and none of them capture what I have “tasted”. There have been many theories, by people who have used the tool and by those who haven’t. What I have tasted is beyond the scope of mere science, in all of its powerful forms. I will continue to search for the plentiful meaning in life, given to me through science and, even more uniquely, by believing.