When I was in missionary college, in England, we had an interesting experience. During a class on postmodern society, we were visited by an actual atheist, who happened to be the father of one of the students. How exciting!
Where there are normally about 20 students in class, that time it was packed, also with students from other years who were not even following the normal lectures, just for a chance to talk to such a peculiar version of the human species. Our teacher found this quite funny, because as he rightly pointed out, one could speak to scores of atheists by just walking down from college grounds to the nearest pub and just open your mouth there.
Anyway, during the class this atheist asked who knew for sure that God exist. To my shame now, I raised my hand. Why did I do that? And why was it so strange to talk to an atheist?
The Great I Am
“[God] has also set eternity in the human heart” Ecclesiastes 3:11
“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” Romans 1:20
“The fool says in his heart: there is no God.” Psalm 53:1
It is a very Biblical concept that God exists (duh!). To even question the existence of God is plain foolishness and self-deceit in the mind of the Biblical worldview. For me God was therefore the ‘ground of all being’, this whole universe doesn’t make any sense without God. If you follow the reasoning of Romans 1:20 for example (see above), then everything that we can see is direct evidence of God himself. Without God, there would be nothing.
For me it was therefore unthinkable that God did not exist. To say that the great “I am” does not exist, is like saying “I do not exist”, which is defying all logic and experience (although later I learned that eastern philosophies are actually quite good at even questioning those things). To my defense, I was of course not 100% sure that this ‘ground of all being’ was exactly the Biblical God, but I did not really want to imagine things otherwise anyway.
Wired for God
So from a Christian perspective, and as the verses above clearly demonstrate, people are ‘wired for God’. Everybody should have some level of awareness of God, unless you are truly a fool. It is even brought to a level where everybody can and will be judged for their deeds based upon this implicit knowledge of God (see Romans 1). This is one big blow against any form of agnosticism and atheism.
And historically we see a lot of religion taking place, certainly in the times of first century Roman Empire. But were people always really wired for ‘God’? Is there a “God shaped hole” in our hearts or was there something else going on? Is it true that we can never find peace for our souls, until we find it in you, o LORD?
The God Shaped Hole – Religious Perspective
Rather than people having a God shaped hole, they have a religion shaped hole it seems. Just look throughout human history… I have read there are about 4000 religions (not counting denominations!). Far from all of these religions have a creator God like the YHWH of the Bible, which Romans 1:20 is referring to. Actually, the missionaries in Thailand have a very hard time convincing the Buddhists there is a creator God at all. To say that these Buddhists ought to know that God exists is therefore quite problematic; even though your everyday Thai tends to be very superstitious, belief in very implausible myths and doesn’t have any problem with conflicting ‘theology’. Yet God is a step too far for them.
Rather, when looking at things from a secular and a slightly evolutionary perspective, the rise of religions actually makes a lot of sense. Religion can be seen as a way to answer four basic human dilemmas:
- Death. People are mortal, yet we are wired to survive. And simply because we have evolved to such a level where we can imagine life after death, we wish to live beyond that horrid boundary of death which comes way too early for our intellectual preferences. So any religion that provides an afterlife, or reincarnation, is desirable to overcome this dilemma of human death. Interestingly with cryogen technology, or uploading your mind to the web, people are trying to overcome this boundary now through secular means, which is then again believed in in an almost religious sense.
- Responsibility. We humans do not always live up to our own standards as we would like to. The human psyche is complex, and we can be moody, arrogant, violent, etcetera. It is therefore easier to have religion that can externalize these ‘sinful’ natures, instead of having to master them yourself and taking full responsibility.
- Isolation. Human beings are also very social; we are wired for deep emotional connections. No matter how introvert you are, you need human beings to thrive and survive. Religion is often an answer to this need for connection, not only within the religious community, but also as a (BFF) relationship with God himself. With God you are never alone!
- Meaning. As humans we want to be part of something bigger, work towards something that will last, that which gives our lives meaning. It is very attractive therefore to believe in something eternal (like in Ecclesiastes) since it means that your contributions will not fade away over time but are forever meaningful. We want to belong, and be part of a cosmic drama that will change the fate of the future. That does not make it true, but it does give more excitement. Religion often gives just that experience. Imagine being part of an army of God battling over the eternal fate of souls, aided by the Almighty himself, what meaning that can give to your life!
The list could probably go on and on, this is a whole field of study in and of itself. But I hope it is clear that the God shaped hole in our hearts is more a hole for basic human dilemma’s that we need to find an answer to; and the wild variety of religions prove that point precisely.
After I lost my faith, I first thought I had this God shaped hole in my heart now, and nothing could make me happy instead of finding God again. This turned out to be wrong. I need to deal with my basic human dilemma’s, and they can perfectly fill the void as well. I truly don’t feel such an ache anymore as I felt in the beginning as an ‘atheist’.
The God Shaped Hole – Philosophically
However, what about the assertion of Romans 1:20 that we can see God through His works? This was certainly a big part of my reasoning for Gods existence. How can there be something out of nothing?
Truth be told, that is a big mystery. I don’t know. I don’t consider it a weakness to not know, I just don’t know. I would rather marvel at the universe. When we look at quantum physics for example, all our intuitions turn out to be wrong. Particles are at different locations at the same time. Galaxies move away faster than the speed of light. When we look at the moment of the Big Bang and try to rewind the clock to a fraction of a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, we end up in a universe without gravity or nuclear forces. Space and time stop to make any sense. It is just beyond our intuition and imagination. How DARE I say anything about what is beyond that realm?
I find it actually quite arrogant to claim anything about what is beyond this universe, if it is not through a direct revelation from the supernatural itself. Who are we to say that we understand the invisible at all? It is only in the worldview of a recently created earth, with human beings at the masterpiece of God’s creation, where God has created humans in the image of Himself, that it makes any sense that humans would intuitively know something about God.
In a world that is billions of years old, where humans are here by chance and yet have the privilege of being alive and experiencing the universe… why would our intuitions be right about the supernatural? There is absolutely no guarantee that our brains evolved to a state where we can readily understand the supernatural, while we did evolve to a state to imagine things beyond the corner, beyond what we can see, so we could survive much better. In other words, we developed a rich imagination that allows us to connect the dots much better than any other species on earth… but it just might have some very serious side effects, like 4000 different religions.
Losing Your BFF 
November 8, 2015 at 11:49
Fascinating to read your latest article, in which you tackle yet another mystery, whether as human beings we are intrinsically spiritual beings, or just products of a long natural development process. Once again, you show thorough logical reasoning, and so I found it very interesting to see you argue that as humans we “are wired to survive” and “wired for deep emotional connections”. It makes me wonder how we got “wired” in the first place. I find it simply astounding how we could have evolved into the complex emotional, moral and spiritual beings that many (or perhaps all) of us are, without some kind of outside input. Now that would really require a leap of faith in my opinion!
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November 8, 2015 at 13:02
Hi Arend,
I don’t have many problems with emotional and moral evolution. Emotions help us to protect ourselves, to protect others, to go on when faced with challenges, etcetera. People without emotions would simply not survive, as they – for example – would not feel a need to duplicate themselves…
Morality I was not even referring to here, but this also makes sense. Just think of a selfish, murdering rapist. Is he going to be liked by others? Is he not going to be killed by another group instead before he even gets a chance to reproduce?
Being kind and loving are not just Christian/religious values, they are also pretty powerful survival strategies in fact. That does not mean they are hollow, because if we value our own existence, it is quite easy to feel empathy for other human beings as well; which can lead to kindness, love, etcetera. Love another as you love yourself…
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November 8, 2015 at 16:31
Hi EJ. Thanks for the regular blog posts. Your example on the point of moral evolution of a ‘selfish, murdering rapist’ is a very extreme one. Most people are not at that end of the spectrum, but many might be your average nice person who shares common values, but might not care about refugees or those outside their ‘tribe’. That’s something I talked about in my link on your previous post. There’s been a resurgence of neo-darwinist theories on how we’ve evolved to be moral beings (Steven Pinker for example), but to me they just aren’t convincing. It’s obvious why being a really nasty murderer isn’t going to get you far in society or in the gene pool, but less obvious why it matters if people are truly moral beings all the time in all matters. So for example, I can be quite nice most of the time I suppose. But if a neighbour really, like seriously annoys me, then I might want to neglect my moral intuitions. If I can get away with taking moral short cuts when nobody sees, I might just do that if I’m tired and having a bad day. What then? Why should it matter then if I’m loving? What happens when empathy fails?
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November 9, 2015 at 03:35
Hi Emma,
It is good to think of this topic in and of itself, and it is all very new to me as I always believed morality has to come from God so that was the end of the story. Arguments from the ‘other side’ only really stuck with me until a couple of months ago. Forgive me if I’m not quite the expert yet. Yet at the same time I did not lose faith because I wanted relative morals or something like that. First I lost faith, then I started thinking about where one gets morality from. I actually firmly believed that I could not be moral without God, but then it turned out I was actually moral without God and had to give that a place within my completely empty new worldview.
About moral shortcuts: isn’t that happening everywhere around us anyway? I don’t think evolution will provide an ultimate answer to moral shortcuts. Evolution is not sentient, it is just ruthless pragmatism. However, with humanism I do see a path out of the moral shortcuts, as one of the tenents of humanism is to live authentically, to be able to ‘own’ your choices and be transparent and honest about them. Ultimately, I think one will be far happier doing that, than chosing moral shortcuts. But that doesn’t make it an absolute, it is a path of wisdom that somebody has to purposefully choose and that society should teach a person.
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November 9, 2015 at 04:49
The following excerpt seems appropriate somehow:
“””Myths, Tolkien explains, are not fairy tales, intentional lies, or mere fabrications, but are instead powerful vehicles for revealing the world’s deepest truths. All myths, he argues, illuminate layers and dimensions of existence that are often missed by our narrow human vision. In this way, they can actually be more “real” than what we normally call reality. Tolkien posits that mythmakers exercise a God-given power, and act as “sub-creators” who share pieces of the ultimate Truth that is hidden from plain sight. All the world’s myths then serve as prisms through which we can see fragments of divine light. Stories, Tolkien argues, are sacramental.
Lewis has gone from believing that Christianity is a myth that is false like all other myths, to feeling that he must think Christianity is a true religion, wholly different from the false world of mythology. Tolkien suggests another perspective: that all myths reflect “a splintered fragment of the true light,” and that Christianity is a “true myth” that encompasses and expands on all the rest. That is, while God had formerly used the poetic images and traditions of other cultures to express himself, Christ had come in real historical time to live out a story that actually happened.”””
By God’s grace, in the coming years your “inner mystic” will overrule your rational self, and you will acknowledge that the Spirit was with you all along. If ‘above the maze’ you fit & piece together all truths you are convinced of, what are you going to end up with??
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November 11, 2015 at 02:16
This myth story sounds a lot like Plato’s cave: every myth is a shadow of one true myth, which is Jesus.
What I don’t get about the supernatural is why it should be ‘mystic’. Either we can interact with it in the natural world, or we can’t. If we can interact with it, then it is just part of reality and we can see how this supernatural is interacting with us. I am not saying there are no mysteries left for us to explore, but it seems that ‘mysticism’ is often just a fancy way of speaking about things that we do not know.
And as said, I am not above the maze, so I don’t really know what you mean. I do say that I have seen the world with both Christian and secular glasses on, and the latter make a whole lot more sense to me at the end of the day.
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November 9, 2015 at 07:43
I agree that it makes sense that there are so many religions. But I think it is too simple to say that all those 4000 religions are basically the same (just because they fulfill the same purpose and have similar characteristics) and that they are all just ‘invented’ by humanity, in different times and places. I think it would be more helpful to analyse and judge these religions (maybe after grouping them first, to make it easier) on their merits. Some are actually philosophies, some are based on a belief in several gods, some are based on worshipping powers in nature, and some (just a few) believe in one creator God. They are not all equal. I am sure you know more about this than I do. I have good grounds to believe in the monotheistic Christian religion, which makes all other religions not true (a very impopular thing to say, but inevitable if you are a Christian). At the same time, I am sure most people find their own religion/life philosophy very helpful, for the reasons you mentioned above. But that does not make them more true.
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November 11, 2015 at 02:20
Hi, just to clarify: of course the 4000 religions are not all the same, but there are commonalities in what type of questions they are trying to answer. And I am not saying that ‘all religion is false’, certainly there is a lot of philosophy or morality in there that makes a lot of sense.
Just trying to frame it in the right perspective, because I don’t think that the existence of religion points to something super-natural.
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November 10, 2015 at 21:31
Truth, outside of the scientific method, is relative, is it not? If something is repeated again and again using the same set of criteria, and it ends in the same result – we can assert that it is true. But if that is not the case, if the result differs or cannot be determined, then the truth is relative to the observer. It is at this point that atheists and those of faith (any faith) diverge. The atheist will acknowledge the unknown, and perhaps continue the searching process, the believer will ascribe the supernatural. One gains peace through attribution, one gains peace through acknowledging they just don’t know. It takes a lot of effort to recognize that we really don’t know what we really don’t know, and to be satisfied with that.
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