Reasons to Think God Exists
I’m in the midst of a massive writing project that will likely take three to four years. But I want to share a small portion of what I’ve written. And I’d like feedback.
The excerpt below is in a chapter that explores reasons to think God does or does not exist. I address the usual arguments for and against, and I offer commentary. Then I turn to my own experience and make some unconventional arguments.
Meaning, Love, and More
My earliest memories include believing God exists. My parents and everyone I knew believed in God, and in my youngest days, I never seriously doubted. In fact, I became a young evangelist, witnessing to people at school, on the street, at the beach, in bars, and door to door. It was difficult for me to understand why any serious person could not believe.
In my early twenties, however, I took a philosophy of religion class. While reading the assignments, I encountered strong arguments against God’s existence. These arguments led me to doubt I had solid grounds to believe in God. For the sake of intellectual honesty, I became an atheist/agnostic.
Two issues prompted my return to belief. First, I wanted to think my life and life in general were ultimately meaningful. I could not imagine how this could be true if there was no ground of ultimate meaning most people call “God.” This didn’t prove God’s existence, of course, and even today I’m not certain. But my quest for meaning led me back to belief.
The second issue arose from my deep intuitions about love. I thought I ought to be a loving person, and everyone ought to love. In some deep sense, love must be the answer to our important questions. These intuitions seemed to need a Source of Love beyond but including influences from my body, upbringing, social settings, and evolutionary history. I surmised, therefore, that a Lover is the impetus for my intuitions. This is no proof of God’s existence, however, and even today I’m not certain.
Based on my quest for meaning and intuitions of love, I took a risk and believed in God. I continue to risk. In the years following my stint as an atheist/agnostic, I slowly reconstructed my views about God and creation. Today, my belief does not rely upon some indubitable proof or undeniable evidence. But neither is my belief in God blind, arbitrary, or uninformed.
I have reasons to believe.
Abductive Reasoning
Many arguments for God’s existence use deductive reasoning. They start with a truth a person can allegedly know with certainty. This truth may come from a book, tradition, mystical experience, science, independent reason, or some other authority. From that absolute truth, other truths are deduced, in the sense of teasing out the absolute truth’s implications. Effective deduction has a sure foundation from which one derives certain conclusions.
I don’t find deductive reasoning helpful when pondering God’s existence. I doubt there are any error-free foundations from which we can start deducing. No book, tradition, experience, rationality, or authority is infallible. I suspect absolute truth exists, but I don’t think any human can know it absolutely.
I am attracted to inductive reasoning when considering God’s existence. And I’m attracted to its partner, abduction. Inductive reasoning draws together evidence to make a claim that’s probably but not certainly true. It reasons from specific observations to form general conclusions. This way of thinking leans upon empirical evidence, scriptures, science, reason, and various experiences to speculate that God exists. But induction never provides certainty.
Similarly, abduction surveys as much evidence as possible and explores all the arguments available, for and against. From this, it arrives at a tentative but plausible explanation. This is what scientists call “inference to the best explanation.” But the explanation is fallible and always open to change. The process is ongoing.
Abductive reasoning requires risk and curiosity. The verdict is always out, so we act in light of our best speculation. In terms of theology, this means the question of God’s existence is never fully resolved. But we can have reasons to think God is part of the best available theory for understanding life, given various arguments, experiences, reasoning, and evidence.
I don’t pretend to be bias-free or completely objective when I consider God’s existence. No one can be. My interpreting is shaped by world views, conceptual frameworks, or grand narratives. The evidence I gather, my various experiences, and my reasoning fit well or poorly into these grand frameworks. And assessing which framework might be best is an ongoing venture.
The best overall frameworks account for widest experience. They make sense rationally and their ideas fit together. The best frameworks are adequate to the facts we think we have available and can be applied to life. Believing should be humble, therefore, because we’re never certain. We employ the best overall framework, being open to reconsidering, deconstructing, and reconstructing.
Other Reasons to Speculate God Exists
Abductive reasoning functions within a flexible conceptual and experiential matrix. Consequently, it includes other reasons we might think God exists.
Take great sex as an example. In the ecstasy of intimacy and orgasm, we sometimes experience the Divine. We might even sigh, “Oh, God!” in a rapturous moment. This connection between God and sex is why some religions include sex workers at their temples, as problematic as that may be. When sex is great, Something More seems at work. Sex can be a reason to believe.
Or take the birth of a newborn. Parents can feel a unique Presence in the birthing process or when holding the infant. Grandparents may feel the same. The miracle of a mother’s womb and the creation of a tiny someone incline many to thank Someone. Experiences with infants can be another reason to believe.
Sporting events and athletic feats inspire us. The thrill of victory prompts many to thank God for, in some way, helping them. Just watch post-game interviews. More than once I’ve experienced spiritual ecstasy when the team I was on or pulling for won a championship. But the agony of defeat can also reveal the divine. Many athletes and fans feel a Comforter when they endure disappointment. They credit the Divine for sustaining them amid letdown and loss.
One of my most profound spiritual experiences came at a U2 concert. Although I’d been listening to the band since my teens, I did not see them live until my forties. When hearing music that carried me through life’s ups and downs, I experienced a Transcendent response. I went to a U2 concert and ended up worshiping Someone without an instrument! Music can point to a Musician alongside musicians.
The arts in general can woo us into states we think are sparked by Divinity. Insights from an audio interview or the prick of our conscience from a great book also seem holy. More than once I’ve sat silent in a theater after watching a film that moved me to contemplate a Mover. I felt this way after watching Schindler’s List, for instance, and Everything Everywhere All at Once. I feel it when Sam carries Frodo to Mount Doom.
As a nature photographer, I’ve had plenty of “God moments.” When composing a scene, I sometimes feel a Jolt. I felt close to the Creator while photographing a moose and her calf, a grouse and chicks, and two Gopher snakes copulating. I consider these creatures my companions, and I greet them, “Hello, friend.” This call of friendship is, as I see it, prompted by the Friend of all creation. But a photographic experience can be revelatory. (Here’s a link to some of my photos.)
Speaking of friends, my wife is my closest confidante and life partner. While our marriage has its ebbs and flows and while neither of us is perfect, I feel Another in our relationship too. My wife is not God, but I sometimes sense God profoundly when in her presence. Our enduring partnership is one reason I speculate the steadfast love of a divine Friend endures forever.
Moments in a religious worship service can transport me into communion with a holy Presence. I’ve felt Conviction when kneeling at an altar, a Glow when receiving communion, and Ecstasy when standing, arms outstretched, singing with gusto. I’ve also felt a Nudge in silent meditation, as I attend to the gentle caress of Love. However, boring worship services and long sermons make me think a devil exists!
Conclusion
I could add more reasons to believe. Each points to the fact that in various settings and circumstances, we sometimes get the impression Something More is active. This More includes but transcends natural actors, factors, and forces, but these are also at play. These reasons to believe are not proofs, but they are evidence. And they influence me to think God exists.
Comments
I like this. And actually think it was meant to be this way, or designed if you like. It’s probably what faith is all about: walking into a direction with enough information to presume it is the right one, while it cannot be proven.
For example, Jesus, after the resurrection, could have walked into a meeting of the Sanhedrin, and proven beyond the shadow of a doubt who He is. But He did not. Faith is not about being overwhelmed with evidence, leaving no room for doubt. Faith is having seen enough to follow His way.
BTW, a cell group I lead studied Greg Boyd’s “Benefit of the Doubt”. Quite useful on this topic, you may have read it.
There is a long and rich history of Protestants valuing personal experiences as strong evidence for the divine. Indeed, this is very Wesleyan of you Tom 🙂
However, interpreting experiences will always be contingent upon both one’s culture and one’s developmental history. This calls into question whether one can have principled grounds for determining whether one’s contingent interpretation really is the best explanation for the evidence. As a Pragmatist, I submit my own abductions to the “epistemic friction” generated by putting my beliefs into action in a world which is not dependent upon my mind. If my way of comporting myself does not lead to successful action, then this tells me that that comportment did not allow me to stand in those relations to my environment which I thought I stood in. Consequently, I then have good grounds for revising or even abandoning my beliefs. Not coincidentally, I am also an Anabaptist, and there is a rich history of communities of Anabaptists submitting their interpretation of scripture to the pragmatic test of acting on those interpretations and then evaluating whether doing so led to their being more Christ-like.
Of course, being a Pragmatist does not solve everything. There is still the normative problem of determining what ought to be the goal that we work towards in a particular situation. One must decide what is going to count as “success.” For me, I think Jesus call to love God and creation as Jesus loves them – with all that we are and as we love ourselves – gives us a set of norms and values that is more philosophically defensible than any alternatives. For how does one really defend the alternative claim that we ought NOT to be as loving as we can be? This love ethic is what then guides my Pragmatic evaluation of whether an action is successful. It is successful if I have been loving.
Putting this all together, then, I believe in God because doing so has so far allowed me to act more lovingly than I would have acted were I to not believe in God. And should that ever change, should I find that believing in God, or perhaps a particular characterization of God, results in my not acting as lovingly as I am capable of, then I would have good reason to not believe in (that) God. For to continue to believe would be tantamount to not being as loving as I could be, and that is less defensible.
A God that exists can only appear as a possibility for an actually existing subject that imagines an explanation for existence is required. The idea that existence would need to justify itself, to itself, is absurd. “Why” may be the most human question, but it can only ever be meaningless when applied to the total horizon of its own possibility. Thus, belief in God is entirely circular and explains nothing in actuality.
I think I really like where you’re going with this. Here’s a few thoughts/questions:
1. I had a class on logic in Bible college, and we were taught that deductive is always better than inductive. As fundie biblicists, we used cherry picked Bible verses as our definitive starting point that we then built foolproof arguments out of. If I were to read this 5 years ago, I’d be turned off by talk of experiences and try to push back to the Bible. In order to reach that kind of person, I think you’d need to show why basing belief in God in Bible verses is still not certain and basically becomes inductive reasoning as well.
2. My cynical side wonders how much of the rapture experienced in good sex or photographing nature or holding a newborn is socially conditioned. Do we assume God’s existence in those moments because he’s really real or because it’s been ingrained in us our lives to think so? I’ve been out of the fundie world a few years now, but when something bad happens, I still feel a little guilt and wonder if I have some hidden sin in my life. I don’t believe that way anymore, but I still feel it. So if an atheist holds a newborn and feels such delight that he wonders about a god, could that just be parts of his brain that haven’t fully integrated into his atheistic belief system, particularly if he grew up Christian or in a Christianized country? If there was a hypothetical human who grew up in a lab and was never exposed to religion in any form, and he turned to God in those moments, that might be better proof. But that’s near impossible, ethics aside.
3. If God’s existence is supported mostly through experiences, what do you do with someone who doesn’t have the same experiences? Let’s say you give 10 experiences that convince you there could be a God. I’ve struggled with depression for years and often don’t feel those highs as much. So let’s say I only relate to 2 of them and can’t think of any new ones of my own. Is the case for God only 1/5 as strong for me as it is for you? Is God 5 times more real to you than to me?
4. What about people who find great pleasure in enacting evil? Does their joy also indicate the existence of your God? Does it imply the existence of an evil God?
5. Similarly, what of people who worship other gods but have experiences like those you mentioned? Are we all seeking the same God(s)? Do these experiences suggest the existence of one god over another?
6. What do you do with negative examples, like prayer experiments that show no real difference between those who do and those who don’t pray? Does that count as a point against arguments for God’s existence?
Looking forward to reading more of this as it comes out! Good work as always 🙂
I think if we’re honest most of us are, at times, agnostic because we doubt, and, I for one, think doubting God’s existence can spur us on to become atheists. However, worse than that is smug certainty which I admit I have participated in. Tom, your definition of love modified to include the overall well-being of all that is has helped me. The Wesleyan Quadrilateral’s acceptance of experience is fortunate, but I knew nothing of it on Christmas Eve 1970 (actually I had no idea about scripture, experience, tradition, although as an engineer I was aware of logic and science and therefore reason) when I met love and hope on Dehesa Road in San Diego County.
Now some might discount that experience because I was drunk or because a week later I was drunk and using drugs again. However, in February of 1971 I overdosed on alcohol and opiates, but unlike several of my friends, I survived. Some may doubt that my experience of love on Xmas Eve is legitimate because I became a legalistic Christian addicted to God. Many of my Christian friends and mentors said I couldn’t trust experience but had to “trust the Word”. It took until 1980 for me to break free from all I’d been told by the church and professors.
In seminary 1976 I took a class on 13th century mystics and they gave me permission to begin the journey to 1980. From 1980 until now, when I doubt there is God, I am reminded that though drunk on Xmas Eve 1970, I became aware of love and hope that I had never experienced in the first 26 years of my life.
I take Xn, Hebrew and other holy writ seriously, one reason is because it too came from experience, however, I don’t take any of it literally and I think a good deal of all holy writ is questionable. I rely on tradition far less than scripture and scripture and reason less than experience.
I believe Scrooge said to Marley that the experience he was having could be caused by bad beef and my experience could have been because I was drunk. However, when doubt comes, and scripture doesn’t aid me, and tradition doesn’t help (which is often), and reason doesn’t seem reasonable, then the experience fifty-five years ago of love and hope and acceptance is still real and I am convinced there is God, at least until the next time I doubt. By the way my doubt brought me to process thought and open and relational theology long before I had a name for it.
I will be clean and sober for 54 years on March 28 and I thank my Higher Power, which I call God and all the people in and out of church and especially the members of 12-Step groups who have set examples and continue love me today. My experience continues to aid me on my journey of faith the God in Christ Jesus through the Spirit. ( By the way I, at times struggle with doubt about all the doctrinal stuff, but I almost neve doubt the example of Jesus except when I wonder if he helped the man fix the hole in his roof or reimbursed the owner of the herd of swine, I hope he did, but nobody I’m aware of, knows. Admittedly I could have missed something. Gary F. Campbell, a believing doubter
Thanks Tom. It’s always great to hear your thoughts. I can honestly say that music (including a similar experience at a U2 concert) has always been something that felt like it connected me to something larger. I young adulthood it proved the existence of God. Now, it serves as something like an anchor that keeps me from being completely unmoored and aimless in life. It causes my own should, internal mind, whatever, to reach out to “Him” even when wrestling with doubt. Thanks again.
Thanks for this. But I find Jack Caputo more convincing and I’d be really interested to hear your response to what I write here and his thoughts. Like you, I grew up conservative. Deconstruction and critical bible study made me agnostic. I don’t find your arguments convincing enough to push over the line as firmly as you are, into ‘I believe’. I think there are reasonable evolutionary, biological and psychological explanations for all the phenomena you mention which are *more* likely than ‘God’. I just don’t think we ‘have reasons to think God is part of the *best available theory* for understanding life, given various arguments, experiences, reasoning, and evidence’. I’m open to the idea God might be, but I don’t think it is most likely. Occam’s razor comes to mind; why add the complication of a supernatural God that we can detect with our minds and emotions at certain times to psychologically and scientifically explainable phenomena? But as mentioned, you could be right. But not most likely. It is difficult, especially if you desire a God to be true, or meaning behind the universe. I find religion or the idea of ‘God’ as human construct more convincing. I am open to the idea of a ‘real’ God whatever mystery that means, and hold the two in tension at the same time. I allow myself to lean into the ‘idea of God’ but somehow knowing it most likely is a human construct. But it might not be. A God of the maybe or perhaps, as I think Caputo says. Despite all, I think with Caputo that ‘God is a verb’… it is as we are active regarding love and social action that God IS. I’d be really interested to hear your response. Did you have a period of paradox, holding both ideas at the same time.. likely no God, but I will believe anyway or something similar? Personally, I respect your belief, and see where it originates, but I don’t think it is a reasonable induction or abduction. But it may be for you. What other evidence leads you to your induction or abduction? Thank you again.
I address Jack’s work a bit in the book I’m writing. But I plan to write a whole essay on him and radical theology for an upcoming book. And he and I have been corresponding. I’ll be eager to hear your thoughts on my essay!