by Graham Veale
Such religious experiences are surprisingly common; many people claim to have discerned God’s presence in nature or music; others firmly believe that they have been aware that God has been at work in a sermon or a prayer. Some people are sure that they were unexpectedly and directly aware of God’s love, majesty or anger. 55 These were all deep, personal and momentous experiences and they function as a sign of God’s existence, just as our moral experiences guide us to believe in the value of love and life.
Intriguingly, there is a common core to many religious experiences—an awareness of something that transcends the natural world, an unexplained personal presence, and a sense that all things are somehow united. This is a good description of a theistic universe—a universe sustained by one, transcendent and personal power. There is a widespread perception that we live, move and have our being in God, and Argyle notes that such experiences are common enough to strengthen the case for God’s existence.
If theism is true then God is truly present everywhere, for the entire universe is dependent on God’s power. God keeps everything everywhere in existence from one moment to the next. If God is immanent within Creation, as Christians have always insisted, then he is continually revealing himself—just as a musician is present in her musical performances, or as an artist is revealed in her paintings. We could detect the activity of a divine agent just as we detect the presence of other agents.
However, a word of caution is in order. Perceiving God does not place us in a saving relationship with God. Genesis records that Adam and Eve had profound experiences of God; yet they rebelled against him. The devils are aware of God’s holiness, and they despair. 56 I might realise that there is a guitarist in the next classroom when I hear him rehearse; depending on how beautifully (or terribly!) he plays, this might be a deeply emotional experience. But this experience does not mean that I have a relationship with the guitarist! So John Calvin warns us:
…though experience testifies that a seed of religion is divinely sown in all, scarcely one in a hundred is found who cherishes it in his heart, and not one in whom it grows to maturity so far is it from yielding fruit in its season. Moreover, while some lose themselves in superstitious observances, and others, of set purpose, wickedly revolt from God, the result is that, in regard to the true knowledge of him, all are so degenerate, that in no part of the world can genuine godliness be found. 57 [emphasis mine]
As the Deer Pants
Now, many scientists will argue that there are scientific explanations for religious experiences—perhaps from evolutionary psychology or cognitive science. But do these accounts explain religious experience away? Remember, for one explanation to explain another away, the two must be incompatible. However, it is not at all obvious that scientific explanations of religious experience are incompatible with theism. As philosopher Michael Murray argues:
These models, if correct, show not one thing more than we have certain mental tools…which under certain conditions give rise to beliefs in the existence of entities which tend to rally religious commitments. But, pointing that out does nothing, all by itself, to tell us whether those beliefs are justified or not. After all, we have mental tools which, under certain conditions, give rise to belief in the existence of palm trees and electrons. We do not regard those belief-forming mechanisms as unreliable nor (typically) the beliefs formed as unjustified. 58
The only question that we need ask is, ‘Does the mechanism produce a true belief in the appropriate circumstances?’ God has control over the course of nature and would have the ability to prime our nervous systems to react in certain ways in certain circumstances. If God directs nature, if nature gave us faculties that prompt us to believe in God’s presence, and if God really is present, then our religious experiences are reliable. So a scientific explanation for religious experiences gives us no grounds to doubt that they tell the truth.
How do these various religious experiences provide evidence for God’s existence? A good hypothesis should lead us to expect observations that other hypotheses do not predict. Alvin Plantinga points out that:
The God of Theism would very likely desire that there be creatures who resemble him in being rational and intelligent; he would also, no doubt, desire that there be creatures who have a moral sense, and can tell right from wrong; and he would also very likely desire that there be creatures who can experience his presence and who are moved to worship by God’s greatness and goodness. 59
If there is no God, it is very surprising that conscious beings evolved in the first place, never mind conscious rational beings with religious beliefs, convictions and experiences. 60 Religious experience is neatly explained if God created human beings; if atheism is true, it is merely an odd and unexpected consequence of human evolution.
Theism also explains our spiritual desires. One example of a spiritual desire is our fierce desire for justice; another is our longing for forgiveness and mercy. 61 We cannot bear the thought of child-killers escaping without consequence. Yet if the just and the unjust are annihilated at their deaths, and if the universe is the pitiless and indifferent place that Dawkins describes, then justice is an impossibility. At the same time, we are keenly aware of the gap that exists between our behaviour and what morality demands. We sense the need for forgiveness.
There are other spiritual desires. We need providence: the reassurance that, whatever happens in an uncertain world, everything will eventually work out for the good. We yearn to know that we have eternal significance and meaning; that our lives amount to more than the few brief years that we live on earth. We want to experience awe; to feel dwarfed by experiences of majesty and wonder. We feel the call to be good; to be capable of genuine self-emptying love. Above all we ache to receive unlimited love; a love that comes without conditions and that never fails.
Interestingly, atheism does not seem able to satisfy or explain our spiritual desires. Bertrand Russell wrote:
I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is none the less true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. 62
It is true that thought and love would not lose all their value if atheism is true; but they would lose the value that we demand. On atheism love is ephemeral; it supervenes on the nervous systems of machines that have been randomly selected to pass along genetic information. Humanity will pass away as the stars die. So it is obviously true that eternal love is more valuable than a fleeting, finite human love. Our craving for meaning and significance demands more than a finite love. We need everlasting love if we are to be of eternal consequence.
It is difficult to see why natural selection would favour spiritual desires. We could probably get along better without the need for everlasting love. So why do we feel these needs? Perhaps they are the unintended side effects of human neurology. Alvin Plantinga notes how one evolutionary psychologist uses this strategy to explain our love of beautiful music—‘it just happens to tickle several important parts of the brain in a highly pleasurable way, as cheesecake tickles the palate.’ 63 Perhaps our spiritual desires could be explained in the same way; perhaps, our brains just happen to be ‘stimulated’ by them.
But we require a better explanation than ‘stuff just happens’! The spiritual desires require a satisfying explanation because they define human nature. Anyone who has felt them keenly will not be satisfied with attempts to explain them away. These desires recur in literature and mythology across different times and cultures, and depth psychologists from Freud to Adler to Becker attempted to give some account of them. They are not mere wishes: the desires for meaning, love and awe are challenging. If all our spiritual needs were met, we would undergo a painful, personal and moral transformation.
Theism satisfactorily explains our fundamental, spiritual needs; for only God can at once meet our need for awe and l
ove, for providence, meaning and justice. Only a God of unlimited power and love could measure up to our demands. If atheism is true the spiritual desires are futile, an absurd and unexpected consequence of our evolutionary history. Whereas it would be much less surprising that humans have spiritual desires if theism was true. As CS Lewis famously argued
Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for these desires exists. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire; well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. 64
So theism explains humanity’s religious desires. Even Richard Dawkins concedes the power of religious experience when he notes that ‘it is entirely plausible that the strong arms of God, even if they are purely imaginary, could console in just the same way as the real arms of a friend.’ Now the good professor does not think that this is a good reason to believe in God. After all, a terminally ill patient can be relieved by a misdiagnosis which tells them that they are on the road to recovery. False beliefs can provide comfort; that does not make them rational.
But when a bereaved parent is comforted by the strong arms of God, they are not merely being comforted by a belief. They are receiving consolation from a person. Many people have been comforted in just this way—in fact, a whole body of Christian literature is devoted to such experiences. And the experience of God is not merely a source of emotional comfort; many self-aware, intelligent and educated men and women have testified that the experience of God consoled their spiritual desires. Perhaps all these individuals have been deluded; but if so, nature has been set up to play some very cruel tricks on us.
So widespread religious experiences and human spiritual needs provide some intriguing evidence for the existence of God. But notice that we reached this conclusion as outsiders. We set our own experiences aside, and considered reports of religious experiences in a cool, detached manner. Whereas most believers are confirmed insiders—they believe on the basis of their own experience. Is this irrational?
Trinitarian Waterfalls and Other Experiences
Let’s take a concrete example. Early in his medical career, the future head of the Human Genome Project, Dr Francis Collins, was challenged by a patient to examine the case for God’s existence. Collins had been an atheist up to that point, but reckoned that a good scientist should be open to a variety of hypotheses. As he studied the evidence, he was impressed by the moral argument for God’s existence and the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection. He struggled to make up his mind—should he embrace Christianity, or remain a sceptic? A religious experience would eventually decide the issue for him:
In a muddle about all of this, on a beautiful afternoon…I went hiking in the Cascade Mountains in the northwest of the United States. It was a sunny day, the sky was perfectly blue, and I had that experience that we are occasionally given of being cleared of all of the distractions that otherwise get in the way of thinking about what really matters. I just left the car and walked up a hiking trail. I had no idea where I was, and it’s a wonder I didn’t get lost.
As I walked up that trail I turned a corner and there was a sheer cliff face in front of me, at the top of which there must have been a small trickle of moisture. As that trickle came down the cliff it froze, and glinting in the sun was this frozen waterfall that came down in three cascades. I’d never seen anything like this before. It would take anybody’s breath away, spiritual or not, to see this beauty of nature. But it caught me at a moment where I realized that this was an opportunity to ask the question that we all have to ask at some point. Do I believe in God? Am I ready to say yes to that question?
And I found that all of my resistance fell away. Not in a way that I could tell you precisely, in terms of ‘Yes, I went through this logical argument and that theorem.’ No, it just was a sense of ‘I am ready to give myself to the love that God represents and that has reached out to me. I am ready to put aside my resistance and become the believer that I think God wants me to be.’ 65
In many ways, this report is similar in form and content to many other religious experiences; this was an ‘ordinary’ theistic experience. Seemingly, Collins was overwhelmed by the sense that God was responsible for the beauty of nature. This is perfectly consistent with the Christian belief that God not only transcends the universe; God is also immanent in this universe, guiding it through his providence, and upholding its existence at every moment.
This experience was a tipping point for Collins; it was the final straw that pressed him to believe in God. The story was also the final straw for many of Collin’s academic despisers. When Collins wrote about his religious experience in his popular book The Language of God, the journal ‘Nature’ took the opportunity to praise Collins for his work in Science and the Church. Sam Harris exploded in a letter to the editors
…What does the ‘mode of thought’ displayed by Collins have in common with science? The Language of God should have sparked gasping outrage from the editors at Nature. Instead, they deemed Collins’s efforts ‘moving’ and ‘laudable’ 66
Jerry Coyne worried that Collin’s ‘superstitions’ might hinder scientific research 67. Coyne insisted that there are no ‘other ways of knowing’ than science. But, as we have already noted, there isn’t a single scientific theory that includes the proposition ‘only believe in the findings of the physical sciences.’ No scientific experiment ends with the result ‘only science provides meaningful answers.’ There is no scientific way of knowing that ‘science is the only way of knowing’.
In fact, if science is ‘the only way of knowing’ we would have to ask Harris, Coyne and Myers why they write so many books and articles. We do not interpret another person’s writing using Physics, Chemistry or Biology. We do not use mathematical models or rigorous experimentation. To interpret a writer we need imagination and intuition, empathy and experience. It is rather difficult to come up with a strict set of rules for interpretation; there is no algorithm for hermeneutics. Yet we all know that Dawkins did not write ‘The God Delusion’ to gain a Bishopric. So there is at least one way of knowing beyond the methods of science.
Science has an incredible track record for discovering the truth about the material world. But if Science answers one kind of question—questions about the nature of the physical world—remarkably well, it does not follow that it will answer every kind of question remarkably well. It certainly doesn’t follow that these are the only type of question worth asking. We are in danger of missing answers to questions about value, meaning and purpose if we restrict our evidence to the evidence provided by the physical sciences.
The Inside Story on Good and Evil
For example, most people believe that good and evil and beauty are as real as gravity and electromagnetism. We generally hold that some moral truths are not the accidental by-product of human psychology, but are real and important. Of course sceptics might attempt to explain away beliefs in such ‘metaphysical realities.’ But does anyone really believe that it isn’t genuinely, objectively evil to torture a child to death for sadistic pleasure? Does anyone really believe that every new-born child is a monstrosity? Or that the crematoria of Auschwitz were wonderful and beautiful?
Corporal Anton Schmidt was stationed in the Lithuanian town of Vilna during ‘Operation Barbarossa’—Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union. There he witnessed the Lithuanian Militia execute over 2000 Jews. The children tried to grab onto tree trunks as they were dragged away. ‘You know what I’m like, with my soft heart,’ he later wrote to his wife ‘I couldn’t think, and then helped them.’ Schmidt dedicated his life to saving as many Jews as he could. He hid survivors, and spirited them away to new homes. He forged false papers, and gave Jewish fugitives jobs in his truck repair yard. He invited the Jewish resistance to meet in his quarters. Over six months he saved dozens of lives.<
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But Schmidt does not seem to have been a natural ‘double agent.’ He took so many risks, and helped so many people, that he quickly came to the attention of the Gestapo. He was arrested in January 1942, and executed that April. ‘Please forgive me,’ he wrote to his wife and daughter ‘I acted only as a human being, and never wanted to harm anyone.’ Schmidt was not a cultured or highly educated man; he rarely read newspapers and never opened books. But he was driven by a profound motive. ‘We are all human beings’ was his constant refrain.
Compare Schmidt’s simple compassion with the maxim that motivated Joseph Stalin ‘To choose ones victims, to prepare ones plans minutely, to slake an implacable vengeance, and then to go to bed—there is nothing sweeter in the world.’ Contrast Schmidt’s actions to those of Alois Knabel, a soldier in the 8th SS Infantry Regiment. Knabel perfected the art of soothing very young children who were witnessing SS massacres. It made it easier for him to shoot them in the back of the neck 68.
It seems impossible to read these accounts and not believe that Schmidt’s actions were genuinely and objectively good, and that Knabel’s actions were genuinely and objectively evil. Any society that could ‘invent’ a list of rules that would justify Knabel and condemn Schmidt would be insane. Human life is too precious, and compassion is too delicate a commodity. We cannot understand the tragedies of the last century until we tear back our ‘emotional curtains’, and passionately engage with these stories. Some knowledge is reserved for insiders.
We can grant that some people are ‘outsiders’ to some moral feelings. They lack moral experiences like guilt or sympathy. Yet even an ‘outsider’ can be convinced that moral values are real, and are not human inventions. Sociopaths are the first to justify their actions; even if they lack moral feelings, they have clear concepts of right and wrong. They could be convinced of moral realities by the evidence from the social sciences. Although different cultures disagree about moral rules, every culture believes in moral values like compassion and honesty.