God, Atheism, and the Politics of Certitude

"I do not think there is a demonstrative proof of Christianity.... As to why God doesn't make it demonstratively clear; are we sure that He is even interested in the kind of Theism which would be a compelled logical assent to a conclusive argument?" -- C.S. Lewis

My wife recently had her first head-on collision with an atheist. While at a social event associated with her work, she met an interesting man whom we will call “Chuck”. While talking to Chuck, the conversation coincidentally turned to religion. Chuck, it turns out, is a former Catholic who is now very proud of his atheism. Recognizing my wife to be a theist, his tone instantly became accusatory: “How do you know that God exists?” he demanded. Only complete certainty would satisfy Chuck.

This is now the second time I have seen an atheist make this demand: that for the theist to be justified in their belief in God, absolute certitude is required; or, to borrow a phrase from American jurisprudence, the theist must be convinced in their belief beyond a shadow of a doubt. The atheist will accept nothing short of this absolute certitude. This demand might seem reasonable at first – after all, should not a person experience some degree of certitude before committing to such an important, life-altering belief system? However, if we consider further their demand becomes less reasonable.

First, we should consider what it means to know something. There is an entire branch of philosophy built around the theory of knowledge called epistemology (from Greek επιστημη “knowledge” + λογος). The net sum of epistemology is that it is not quite so easy to know something as you would initially believe. The seventeenth century philosopher Descartes pulled the pin out of everyone’s theory of knowledge when he set the Evil Genius loose on the world. Descartes argued that it is at least possible that each one of us is actually being actively deceived by the Evil Genius into accepting everything that we presume to know about the world, our lives, etc. How do you know with absolute certainty that you are not being deceived by Descartes’ Evil Genius right now, as you sit and read this blog? Or, to use a modern equivalent, how do you know that you are not actually the captive of nefarious machines, plugged into a Matrix to be kept alive so they can harvest your body heat for energy?  The truth is you cannot know, if knowing means absolute certitude as the atheist demands it. Beyond being certain of our present existence, the waters become very murky.

But I do not want to take us there today. I simply said all that to say the atheist is not quite on the solid ground that he presumes to stand on. Instead, he is merely playing a political game. His game is to make the Christian appear inferior to himself because the Christian presumably does not have knowledge on his side. But if absolute certitude is our standard for knowledge, enter Descartes’ Evil Genius and we all - even the atheist - become uncertain of a great many things. This should not be problematic for the Christian. Faith and belief in God are key cogs of the Christian faith; knowledge of God - in the absolute certitude sense, at least - is not. Jesus said that He is “the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live.” Paul wrote that the Christian has been saved “by grace through faith.” Once a person passes into absolute certitude regarding any given issue, belief and faith cease to exist. For example, if I am possess absolute certitude that upon buying a lottery ticket I will win $1 million – that is, that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I will win – in no meaningful way can I be said to need faith that I will win.

All this talk of faith and belief will undoubtedly make people like Chuck scour. Atheists almost invariably disdain such talk. But it is hypocritical for them to do so. The atheist uses faith and belief to make life-altering decisions every day. For example, no atheist can know with absolute certitude that at any traffic light the speeding intersecting traffic will yield to their green light – cars run red lights all the time; and yet, upon seeing their green, the atheist proceeds into the intersection with faith that the other cars will yield. Upon learning that his heart is failing, no atheist can know with absolute certitude that a transplant will save them; and yet they proceed with the operation anyway, believing (or hoping?) that it will. The decision on the part of the informed Christian to believe and have faith in God does not seem significantly different.

Having said all that, it would seem as well that we turn the tables on the atheist and ask, “How do you know that God does not exist?” If to know requires absolute certitude – the kind that they are demanding of the theist - any honest atheist would have to admit that he cannot know; unfortunately, many will not give that answer. Most would likely provide some shoddy philosophical argument constructed around evolutionary theory; however, this argument is a house of cards that easily crumbles. With regards to evolution, if all the atheist hopes for could be proven true, the only accomplishment is to eliminate a literal interpretation of the first three chapters of Genesis; it remains to be seen why a figurative interpretation would not remain tenable. Evolution in the Darwinian sense could simply be God’s generative process for creating life on Earth.

The more informed atheist might provide a philosophical argument with more merit constructed around different premises; the existence of evil, for example. But even these arguments cannot come anywhere near establishing the kind of absolute certitude that the atheist has required. Furthermore, similar arguments exist on the side of the theist. In reality both sides are on a level playing field. The guise of absolute certitude must be cast off, and we are left to evaluate the arguments and evidence for and against God on equal footing. And that, I believe, is how God intended it.

Love's Lost Meaning

 It was a Saturday morning and I had just grabbed my morning cup of coffee. I sat down at the computer to browse through new Facebook posts and I came across one from a high school friend that caught my eye. She apparently was the victim of a bad romance, and in her sorrow she quoted Paul’s famous treatise on love found in his first letter to the church at Corinth, part of which reads: “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

Paul’s description of love appears clear enough prima facie: when you love someone, you will be kind to them, practice long-suffering towards them, don’t be proud or envious or selfish, etc. But things become much less clear in practice: as my Facebook friend can attest, most people’s experiences with love do not look anything like Paul’s description. Why? Because a complex problem exists in understanding Paul’s description of love that the modern world has left us unprepared to solve. The fact of the matter is the English language is woefully inadequate to describe the full range of human emotions as it pertains to love. Think about all the different ways we use the word “love”: I love my wife, I love my daughters, I love my friends, I love my car, I love my favorite football team. But clearly I love my wife differently than I love my daughters, and my car differently than either, and my friends in yet another different way. All this equivocating between the different forms of love often leaves us horribly confused, and - like my Facebook friend – hurt and frustrated.

Greek and Latin are both much better at differentiating between the different expressions of love. Both classical languages had several different words that can be translated as “love” in English. For example, the Greek word ερος (eros) and the Latin word amor both mean love in a sexual connotation; this is largely the emotion that causes men and women to get married and promise life-long fidelity to one another. Φιλια (philia) and affectus both mean love in a friendly sense; this is the pleasant feeling experienced between friends meeting over coffee after a long time apart or between men watching football together in their man cave. And finally, αγαπη (agapé) and its Latin equivalent caritas both characterize something totally lost on many Americans today: a charitable love born out of selflessness and respect for other people.

At this point I am sure you have figured out that Paul did not use ερος or φιλια in that famous excerpt from his first letter to the church at Corinth. He used αγαπη. And when St. Jerome translated the text into Latin late in the fourth century, he used caritas, the Latin word from which we derive our English word "charity." As such, when translators in the seventeenth century translated the Bible into English and produced the King James Version, they used the word “charity.” As you can imagine, the passage loses all relevance for my love-sick Facebook friend when you substitute “charity” for “love.” Similarly, most other words in the New Testament translated into English as “love” are also αγαπη (or a form of it); for example, in Colossians 3 when Paul exhorts men to “love [their] wives”, he uses the verbal form of αγαπη. Imagine for a minute the translation of that verse reading, “Husbands, be charitable to your wives…,” and the passage bears a new significance.

In our selfish, hyper-sexed, divorce-on-demand society, we are in danger of forgetting about αγαπη. People are unequipped to build healthy relationships and understand the nuances of "love"; as a result, they are hurt and confused, and relationships fail and families are destroyed. This problem serves as a microcosm for many more like it. Without a quick about-face with regards to our educational approach to classical languages and the humanities in general, the pain and confusion will only increase.

The White Rabbit and Education in America

In the opening chapter of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Alice sees a fleeting and curious White Rabbit running by. Intrigued, she pursues White Rabbit, spending valuable resources to end up somewhere she never intended, experiencing a long series of dangerous and frustrating adventures along the way.

Education in America has become our White Rabbit. We are chasing a thing that we cannot readily identify, and we have no idea where it is taking us. As Americans, we are committed to the idea of education. We always have been. Many of our founders, including Jefferson and Franklin, understood that an educated citizen body was nothing short of essential for the survival of the republican form of government they created. Since that time, Americans have committed an ever-increasing amount of resources towards the goal of an educated citizenry. The U.S. ranks higher than all but three nations in annual expenditures per K-12 student. The proposed U.S. Department of Education budget for 2011 alone is $77.8 billion. The State of Idaho will spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 billion on public education in 2011, while states the size of California spend more in the range $60 billion a year. None of this includes what private citizens pay out of pocket for expenses like university and private school tuition, books and school supplies, homeschooling curriculum, and more. So what’s the net sum that Americans pay out for education? Trillions. For those of us that have a hard time with numbers, that is thousands of billions.

So there can be no doubt that we are chasing the idea of an educated society, and we are willing to spend exorbitant amounts of money to catch it. But what exactly is this White Rabbit that we are chasing? What is the purpose of an education? What is it that we are trying to accomplish? The original purpose of education to Jefferson, the father of the public education system, was “to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom.” The republican system cannot survive without an educated electorate. But this does not seem to be the goal anymore. President Obama recently said his goal coming into office was to drive America to the top of the pack in math and science education, and to that end he wants to add 10,000 new science, technology, engineering, and math teachers to the payrolls, all in order to compete in the global economy. While I think that sounds like a fine idea, it is far removed from Jefferson’s original intent. And while I am not exactly sure what kind of teachers could prepare someone to judge for him or herself what might secure or endanger their freedom, I would put math, science, and engineers somewhere at the bottom of the list, behind political scientists, philosophers, historians, and rhetoricians.

But those disciplines that I just mentioned are scarcely treated at all in the public schools. Most high school students get a semester or two of government. History – particularly western civilization, the kind that we might really need to know something about – is often taught by the school’s coaching staff. And philosophy? If there is an elective on the curriculum somewhere you would be lucky. Why? Because these disciplines are not considered as important in order to go out into the world and secure a job, or to “compete in the global economy,” whatever that means. You see, our goal in educating the masses seems to be slowly shifting from its western civilization roots. The Greco-Romans sought to edify the entire being through education, what the poet Juvenal describe as Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano – “We should pray for a sound mind in a sound body.” But today Americans tend to care more about producing a student who can get a good job and less about producing a functional person with a sound mind in a sound body. You can see how the philosophy of materialism would get us to this point.

To prove my point, I recently took an entry-level teacher education class at the local university. During one of our lectures, our professor did a survey of the class and asked how many people thought that the proper goal of education was to produce a quality individual – call it a “good person,” so to speak – and how many people thought it was to prepare the person for a productive career. The “productive career” crowd outnumbered the “good person” crowd by about five to one. And this was a survey of the people that will be teaching our kids in the future. Again, note materialism rearing its ugly head.

At some point along this journey, we need to stop and evaluate – What is this White Rabbit that we are chasing, and where is it taking us? Otherwise, we run the risk of falling down the rabbit hole and ending up in a strange place. Many people wonder if we are not already there.