The God Question
A Moral Dilemma for Dr. Laura
Not long after I set out to write this book, I received a fax from a subscriber to the magazine I publish. Skeptic, who had just finished reading the most recent issue (Vol. 5, No. 2) devoted to “The God Question.” This volume of the magazine addressed the various theological, philosophical, and scientific arguments for God’s existence, Einstein’s views on God, skeptic Martin Gardner’s belief in God, arguments for and against immortality, and the decline of atheism in America. The correspondent, however, was not writing about any specific article, but about the qualifications of one of the members of Skeptic’s board of advisors. “I would love to know what qualifies a person to be on your editorial board,” the letter began. “If he were interested would Rev. Pat Robertson qualify? I consider myself to be an atheist, a skeptic, and a semiprofessional talk show listener. In the latter capacity I have had many occasions to listen to one Dr. Laura Schlessinger, a member of your board.” The letter went on to chronicle Schlessinger’s reliance on the Bible as her authority for resolving moral dilemmas presented to her by her callers on her radio program. “I didn’t know that skeptics relied on authority to settle disagreements over morality,” the letter concluded.
This was not the first correspondence we received concerning Laura Schlessinger’s position on our board of advisors. Throughout 1996 and 1997 we were sent a couple of dozen critical letters, faxes, and e-mails, and for a couple of weeks in mid-1997, on a skeptics Internet discussion group, a debate ensued about Schlessinger’s involvement in the skeptical movement. We explained that membership or involvement in any capacity with the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine is not exclusionary. We could not care less what anyone’s religious beliefs are. In fact, at least two of our more prominent supporters—the comedian and songwriter Steve Allen and the mathematician and essayist Martin Gardner—are believers in God. Other members of the board may believe in God as well. I do not know. I have never asked.
The primary mission of the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine is the investigation of science and pseudoscience controversies, and the promotion of critical thinking. We investigate claims that are testable or examinable. If someone says she believes in God based on faith, then we do not have much to say about it. If someone says he believes in God and he can prove it through rational arguments or empirical evidence, then, like Harry Truman, we say “show me.” Some Christians claim that the Shroud of Turin proves that Jesus lived and was crucified and resurrected. But the shroud was carbon-14 dated and found to be a fourteenth-century hoax (some are now claiming that the dating process was contaminated and that the shroud may be older still, but these claims have never been corroborated in peer-reviewed journals). Some creationists claim that geology proves that the Earth was created only 10,000 years ago. But strict scientific dating techniques show that the Earth is billions of years old. Similarly, some physicists and cosmologists claim that the laws of nature, the configuration of atoms, and the structure of the universe prove it was all created by a supernatural being. But science continues to show that everything from the simplest atoms to the most complex galaxies is explicable by natural laws, historical contingencies, and rules of self-organized complexity.
If, in the process of learning how to think scientifically and critically, someone comes to the conclusion that there is no God, so be it—but it is not our goal to convert believers into nonbelievers. From considerable personal experience I can attest to the futility of trying to either prove or disprove God (see Chapter 5). In any case, the process would seem inherently impossible since, by admission of nearly all religions, belief in God rests on faith and means suspending the requirements of proof and logic. When people say they believe in God because it comforts them, because they have faith, because of personal revelation, or just because it “works” for them, I have no qualms with these reasons. But when others say they can prove God, prove that their religion is the right one, prove that we cannot be moral without God, and so forth, such claims demand a scientific and rational analysis. Of course, if the answers to these arguments are as obvious and clear-cut as both theists and atheists think, then why do such debates continue, even in the hallowed halls of theological seminaries and universities, where presumably the question of God’s existence would have been resolved by now? It has not. That fact alone tells us something about the nature of the subject. So, I would have thought that any member of the Skeptics Society would be aware that God’s existence, from a scientific and rational perspective, remains an open question—it cannot be “proved” one way or the other. But I also would have imagined that Schlessinger, who is both highly intelligent and well educated, would have been equally aware and sensitive to this issue.
For those who may still be unfamiliar with her, Laura Schlessinger, best known as “Dr. Laura,” is the star and host of the top-rated nationally syndicated radio talk show program, running neck and neck with Rush Limbaugh for the number-one spot. She is in virtually every radio market in America, has millions of listeners, receives on average upwards of 60,000 calls per day, and in 1997 her program was sold for a staggering $71 million. Her books, Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives, Ten Stupid Things Men Do to Mess Up Their Lives, How Could You Do That?, and The Ten Commandments, were all national bestsellers in both hardback and paperback. She draws huge crowds for her speaking engagements. “Dr. Laura” mugs, T-shirts, and newsletters are promoted daily through the radio program and an ever-growing mailing list of fans. She has been featured on several national newsmagazine and morning programs, and was even satirized in Playboy magazine. This is all to say that Laura Schlessinger is hugely influential. When she speaks, people listen.
We invited Laura to be on our board of advisors in 1994 when she took a skeptical stance about the recovered-memory movement and other “victimization” groups. We admired her courage to make a public statement against what in hindsight turned out to be a bad chapter in the history of psychology. At the time it was a very dangerous thing to denounce. (The “recovery” of distant memories of childhood sexual abuse usually turns out to be nothing more than the planting of “false” memories in patients by well-meaning but irresponsible therapists.) We invited Laura to speak for the Skeptics Society at Caltech. For nearly three hours (and without notes) she paced back and forth across the stage, educating and entertaining a sizeable audience. She was brilliant and funny. Most of all she was controversial. Schlessinger promotes critical thinking, independence of thought, self-reliance, and other attributes certainly admired by most free thinkers, humanists, and skeptics. Although she publicly ratcheted up the intensity of her religious convictions through 1996 and 1997 (when she converted to Judaism), and critical letters came pouring into Skeptic’s office, we continued to defend her because as a general principle we do not believe in excluding people from organizations based on their religious beliefs.
Imagine my surprise, then, when we received another fax four days later from Laura Schlessinger herself, who had just finished reading the issue of Skeptic entitled “The God Question.” The fax read:
Please remove my name from your Editorial Board list published in each of your Skeptic Magazine issues immediately. Science can only describe what; guess at why; but cannot offer ultimate meaning. When man’s limited intellect has the arrogance to pretend an ability to analyze God, it’s time for me to get off that train.
A voice-mail message followed, reinforcing the seriousness of her resignation. Amazed at this conjunction of ironic events, I called Laura at her home that same morning and spoke with her at length. She made it clear and in no uncertain terms (as Laura does with such effectiveness on her radio show) that she was “offended” by our issue and that God was off limits to human reason and inquiry. There is a God. Period. End of discussion. I pointed out that we had gone out of our way not to offend, and that, in fact, the arguments and critiques that we presented came from some of the greatest theologians and philosophers over the past two thousand years. Arrogant all, she responded. God is not open for analysis. But Which God, I inquired? There is only one God, she explained—the God of Abraham (she clarified this to mean monotheism—Christianity and Islam included—not just Judaism). But what about the Problem of Evil and the Problem of Free Will, I asked. Laura’s rapid-fire answers to these timeless problems of theology told me that this was not the first time she had spoken about them.
Our conversation wove in and out of a number of deep philosophical and moral issues—issues Laura had clearly contemplated for much of her adult life. In her twenties, she admitted, she was an atheist, not unhappy but certainly not a fulfilled individual. But now she is a theist and claims to have found not only greater happiness but also completeness as an individual. She said she can now stand on moral terra firma, the very basis of her radio success. In fact, she has essentially shifted her radio show emphasis from psychological advice to moral counseling—callers are now instructed to preface their question with “my moral dilemma is this … .” Laura then helps them resolve the dilemma, often with sage advice from the good book.
Dr. Laura believes in God. More than that, she knows God exists. Her level of doubt must be as close to zero as a belief system can get. And she is not alone. In fact, most believers in God stand very firm in the conviction of their belief. Why?
GENESIS TO REVELATION
Why people believe in God is a specific subject I address to get at a deeper one: how we believe. If this were just a generic book on the psychology of belief systems, however, there would be little concern for controversy or emotional reaction. But this book is more than that, a lot more. So my moral dilemma is this: How can we have a
dialogue about the God Question and keep our emotions in check? As I will explain in the next chapter, I am an agnostic who has no ax to grind with believers, and I hold no grudge against religion. My only beef with believers is when they claim they can use science and reason to prove God’s existence, or that theirs is the One True Belief; my only gripe with religion is when it becomes intolerant of other peoples’ beliefs, or when it becomes a tool of political oppression, ideological extremism, or the cultural suppression of diversity. I am unabashedly interested in understanding how and why any of us come to our beliefs, how and why religion evolved as the most powerful institution in human history, and how and why belief (or lack of) in God develops and shapes our thoughts and actions. One prominent scientist told me “you have a rather conciliatory attitude toward religion,” and after reading an early draft of this book noted: “You seem to be saying it is okay for people to believe in God.” Of course, whether I say it is okay for people to believe in God or not, they will believe (or not) regardless. My primary focus in addressing readers is not whether they believe or disbelieve, but how and why they have made their particular belief choice. Within the larger domain of how we believe, I am mainly interested in three things: (1) Why people believe in God; (2) the relationship of science and religion, reason and faith; and (3) how the search for the sacred came into being and how it can thrive in an age of science.
The intellectual and spiritual quest to understand the universe and our place in it is the foundation of the God Question, the various answers to which are explored in the first chapter of this book, including theist, agnostic, nontheist, and atheist, along with the differences these positions make in our thinking about the question. At the beginning of the twentieth century social scientists predicted that belief in God would decrease by the end of the century because of the secularization of society. In fact, as the second chapter shows, the opposite has occurred. Never in history have so many, and such a high percentage of the population, believed in God. Not only is God not dead, as Nietzsche proclaimed, but he has never been more alive. To find out why, the “Belief Engine” is considered in the third chapter as the mechanism by which any of us come to believe in anything, including and especially the magical thinking that leads millions of people to believe in psychics and mediums who claim that they can talk to the dead in heaven. To get at the core of the God Question and why people believe, the fourth chapter presents the results of an empirical study that asked a random sampling of the population that very question. The results were most enlightening, not only in the reasons people give for belief in God (made especially poignant when contrasted with why we think other people believe in God) but also in the quality and depth of the answers given (often in multipage, single-spaced typed letters), showing that the God Question is one of the most compelling any of us can ask ourselves.
It turns out that the number-one reason people give for why they believe in God is a variation on the classic cosmological or design argument: The good design, natural beauty, perfection, and complexity of the world or universe compels us to think that it could not have come about without an intelligent designer. In other words, people say they believe in God because the evidence of their senses tells them so. Thus, contrary to what most religions preach about the need and importance of faith, most people believe because of reason. So the fifth chapter reviews the various proofs of God, from those presented by medieval philosophers to those proffered by modern creationists, and considers what these arguments, and their employment in the service of religious belief, tell us about faith.
This relationship between science and religion, reason and faith, the subject of the sixth chapter, has once again emerged to the forefront of cultural importance due to a conjuncture of events, including the millennium that beckons us to reconsider the meaning of the past and future and the relative roles of science and religion in history; the discovery by physicists that the universe is more finely tuned and delicately balanced than we ever realized; the magnificent photographs of the universe made by the Hubble Space Telescope revealing an almost spiritual beauty of the cosmos as never seen before; and the issuance by the Pope of two statements, one acknowledging the validity of the theory of evolution and the other endorsing the successful marriage of fides et ratio, faith and reason.
Because humans are storytelling animals, a deeper aspect of the God Question involves the origins and purposes of myth and religion in human history and culture, the subject of the seventh, eighth, and ninth chapters. Why is there an eternal return of certain mythic themes in religion, such as messiah myths, flood myths, creation myths, destruction myths, redemption myths, and end of the world myths? What do these recurring themes tell us about the workings of the human mind and culture? What can we learn from these myths beyond the moral homilies offered in their narratives? What can we glean about ourselves as we gaze into these mythic mirrors of our souls?
Not only are humans storytelling animals, we are also pattern-seeking animals, and there is a tendency to find patterns even where none exists. To most of us the patterns of the universe indicate design. For countless millennia, we have taken these patterns and constructed stories about how our cosmos was designed specifically for us. For the past few centuries, however, science has presented us with a viable alternative in which we are but one among tens of millions of species, housed on but one planet among many orbiting in an ordinary solar system, itself one among possibly billions of solar systems in an ordinary galaxy, located in a cluster of galaxies not so different from billions of other galaxy clusters, themselves whirling away from one another in an expanding cosmic bubble that very possibly is only one among a near-infinite number of bubble universes. Is it really possible that this entire cosmological multiverse exists for one tiny subgroup of a single species on one planet in a lone galaxy in that solitary bubble universe? The final chapter explores the implications of this scientific worldview and what it means to fully grasp the nature of contingency—what if the universe and the world were not created for us by an intelligent designer, and instead is just one of those things that happened? Can we discover meaning in this apparently meaningless universe? Can we still find the sacred in this age of science?
To help me answer these questions a number of people have been highly influential in my thinking and writing, both directly and indirectly. The ultimate genesis of my beliefs, as it is for all of us of course, is parental, so I thank my mother, Lois, my stepfather, Dick, my late father, Richard, and my stepmother, Betty, for raising me in an atmosphere open and uncritical toward both religious and secular beliefs; I truly had a free choice in the matter, as it should be for all children. For introducing me to Christianity in my youth I thank the Oakleys: George, Marilyn, George, and Joyce (though they are not to be blamed for my subsequent fall from grace). At Glendale College Professor Richard Hardison was especially effective in helping me think clearly about philosophy and theology, particularly with regard to reason and faith; and at Pepperdine University Professor Tony Ash’s courses on Jesus the Christ and the writings of C. S. Lewis awakened me to the depth and seriousness of Christian theology and apologetics. The primary credit (or blame, depending on your perspective) for my turn toward science and secular humanism in graduate school goes to Professors Bayard Brattstrom, Meg White, and Doug Navarick at the California State University—Fullerton, whose passion for science made me realize that no religion could come close to the epic narratives told by cosmologists, evolutionary biologists, and social scientists about the origins and evolution of the cosmos, life, behavior, and civilization.
Over the past two decades countless conversations with hundreds of people have helped me sort out some answers to these deep religious and philosophical questions, but those most directly affecting the development of this book include Skeptic magazine editors and board members David Alexander, Tim Callahan, Napoleon Chagnon, Gene Friedman, Nick Gerlich, Penn Jillette, Gerald Larue, Bernard Leikind, Betty McCollister, Tom McDonough, Sara Meric, Richard Olson, Donald Prothero, Vincent Sarich, Jay Snelson, Carol Tavris, Teller, and Stuart Vyse. As always I acknowledge the support of the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine provided by Dan Kevles, Susan Davis, and Chris Harcourt at the California Institute of Technology; Larry Mantle, Ilsa Setziol, Jackie Oclaray, and Linda Othenin-Girard at KPCC 89.3 FM radio in Pasadena; Stan Hynds and Linda Urban at Vroman’s bookstore in Pasadena; as well as those who help at every level of our organization, including Jane Ahn, Jaime Botero, Jason Bowes, Jean Paul Buquet, Bonnie Callahan, Cliff Caplan, Randy Cassingham, Amanda Chesworth, Shoshana Cohen, John Coulter, Brad Davies, Clayton Drees, Janet Dreyer, Bob Friedhoffer, Jerry Friedman, Sheila Gibson, Michael Gilmore, Tyson Gilmore, Steve Harris, Andrew Harter, Laurie Johansen, Terry Kirker, Diane Knudtson, Joe Lee, Tom McIver, Dave Patton, Rouven Schaefer, Brian Siano, and Harry Ziel.
I am especially grateful for the additional input provided by my agents Katinka Matson and John Brockman, my editor John Michel and my publicist Sloane Lederer at W. H. Freeman and Company (as well as Diane Maass, Peter McGuigan, and all the folks in production at this fine publishing house); as well as Louise Ketz and Simone Cooper; and for taking the time to read individual chapters or provide valuable feedback on my thinking I thank Richard Abanes, Michele Bonnice, Richard Dawkins, Jared Diamond, Richard Elliott Friedman, Ursula Goodenough, Alex Grobman, Donald Johanson, Elizabeth Knoll, J. Gordon Melton, Massimo Pigliucci, Michael Ruse, Eugenie Scott, Nancy Segal, Frank Tipler, Bob Trivers, Edward O. Wilson, and Rabbi Edward Zerin. Bruce Mazet and Frank Miele both went above and beyond the call of duty to both critique and support my efforts to grasp the deeper meaning of the God Question; and James Randi, as always, serves as inspiration requiring perspiration to keep up with his tireless efforts to keep us on our intellectual toes.
The influence of Frank Sulloway on my thinking is immeasurable, but not his effect on this book, especially Chapter 4 and our corroboration on the study of religious attitudes, which can be measured precisely and significantly at three sigmas above the mean. I am also deeply appreciative of my Skeptics Society partner Pat Linse, not only for her brilliant artwork and design of Skeptic magazine and for preparing all of the illustrations for this book, but also for the conversations on God and religion that have kept in check my occasional paroxysms of irritations with religion.
Finally, I thank Kim for being my wife, confidante, and best friend who has refereed the countless wrestling matches that go on in my mind about the timeless questions that concern us all; and Devin (although she had no choice in the matter) for being my daughter, joy, and source of mind-cleansing play so necessary to get rid of the cognitive clutter that goes with research and writing.
When we began the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine in 1992 we adopted a quote from the seventeenth-century philosopher and religious thinker Baruch Spinoza: “I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.” When it comes to religion it is especially difficult for any of us to apply this principle consistently. But if we do, the moral dilemma of how to discuss the God Question without offense may be resolved. As my friend and colleague Stephen Jay Gould told me: “You cannot understand the human condition without understanding religion or religious arguments.”
I hope that this book in some small way adds to our understanding of the human condition.