Thoughts On Our Interaction With The Supernatural
The Difference Between Rationalization and Logical Entailment
The Double Standards of Mysticism
Faith Abused as a Mental Block
The Difference Between Motivation and Substantiation
Reaching for the Invisible God by Phillip Yancey contains, in the early chapters, a confession of personal, experiential reasons to doubt the involvement of a deity in our lives. These chapters are more scrupulous, well-informed and unevasive than any that I have ever read or heard from a religious person. Unfortunately the book leads to no conclusions, but instead gives what amounts to the Zen Buddhist response, “Un-ask the question.”
Other books have covered the problem of how pain could exist if there is a good and powerful God. This book addresses a similar question; care must be taken not to confuse the two. Why is it that our experiences are precisely the same as what we would expect if there were no God? He has often suspected that this is the case, and references many renowned spiritual giants as having admitted what is tantamount the same thing.(pgs. 31, 42, 87) I give him credit that he does not take an attitude of blithe, glib, hand-waving dismissal. But he does take the action of dismissal to “solve” the problem. Having admitted his own lack of observations to support the belief in an involved God, he recommends taking one’s mind off of it1 and onto God. (page 219 line 27) I wonder how he would react if someone began to wonder about Jesus and was told “Take your mind off it.” It is the opposite of resolving a problem.
I understand that Reaching for the Invisible God is not a book of apologetics, but rather falls into the genre of inspirational writing. I am writing this essay not to blame Mr. Yancey for failing to prove the involvement of a god- a goal he never set out to achieve- rather, I add a book by one of the most forthright religious speakers to a pile of evidence that a deity, as described in Scripture, is not being experienced by his own followers.
The Difference Between Rationalization and Logical Entailment
The rest of the book consists mostly of descriptions of a model of God that requires less contortion to fit with what we experience in life. This merely allows, rather than requires, the belief in God. It does not resolve the problem that will attract many readers. If we should expect no observations that require our conception of God for an explanation, what have we come up with an explanation for? In other words, is the God hypothesis an answer looking for a question?
Visualize any debate as a tennis game played with two balls at the same time. One ball is evidence in support of one player’s conclusion. It’s rare to find an explanation or description that has no contradictory evidence to account for, so the other ball is the evidence which supports the other player’s conclusion.
The two-pronged approach to persuasive writing consists of returning both of these balls. Part one is presenting evidence which, if the author’s conclusion is wrong, must be accounted for. This is the attempt to logically require belief. Part two is accounting for the evidence that runs counter to the author’s conclusion. This is necessary, but without part one, part two is rationalization.
An example: the motion picture The Truman Show explores the paranoid hypothesis that a person’s entire world might be an elaborate fake constructed to deceive that person. Truman never seemed to give this hypothesis a thought until a stage light fell out of the sky. Until such things start happening, I don’t give it much thought either. In the real world, people who believe this merely reinterpret their experiences to allow it, since the evidence does not entail it for an explanation. It is an answer looking for a question.
You can imaging endless ways to allow your experiences to accomodate outlandish possible explanations. Do other people really have minds like yours, or do they only seem to? Are you a brain in a vat being fed fake sensory experiences, as depicted in The Matrix?2
Now compare this to the practice of Mr. Yancey and others in his industry, explaining away why (past a superficial examination) the world looks like it doesn’t have deities, or why nothing happens that needs gods and goddesses for an explanation.
That is the purpose which Reaching for the Invisible God works to serve: it is a work of imagination to craft an unnecessary explanation so impervious that no possible experience could controvert it, and none is needed to support it. The very premise of the book is the absence of such first-hand experiences. Without having previously been given the expectation of a supreme being, audiences would enjoy Left Behind in the same way as The Truman Show, The Matrix or The X-files: in which characters receive the very first experiential evidence of a background context which they never previously needed.
Divine Hiddenness
The purpose of this essay is to show that it is possible to persuade a true believer of the emptiness of faith entirely on its own terms, without geology, paleontology, Big-Bang cosmology, philosophical arguments for atheism, or textual criticism. A believer’s own criteria for determining the truth value of religious truth claims can be shown to create double standards which she or he would not accept, and which she or he applies with arbitrary selectivity. Religious truth claims which survive this trial can be shown to contain no informational content. This cognitive dissonance led to my own deconversion.
Again, this is not what atheist philosophers refer to as “the problem of pain,” it is called “the problem of divine hiddenness.” The fact that Reaching for the Invisible God had to be written at all supports the hypothesis that, if any supreme being exists, it does not seem to have done anything but watch during the lifetime of anyone who can be questioned first-hand.
Clues that Something’s Fishy
So what do apologists for literal biblical inerrancy ask us to explain in their “part one”? For this they usually present evidence for creation, biblical prophecy and the historical resurrection of Jesus. Even if we generously concede that the evidence seems to point to these (which it does not), we are still being asked to reinterpret our first-hand experiences in light of evidence none of which is fresher than about two-thousand years old.
When sources of evidence contradict each other, we must decide which one to reinterpret in light of the other. Age does not immediately rule out evidence, but a basic principle by which we all live our lives is that first-hand experience is more reliable than second-hand testimony. When we do consider testimony, we see whether the explanations bear out in experience. If the testable claims of religion are entirely in the distant past and the indeterminate future, this makes it easy to believe even if it were not true. For generations to sincerely perpetuate an error, what more effective setup could there be? This is why it is important to ask of any worldview: What am I supposed to expect to experience?
Be wary of any belief arranged in such a way that, if it were not true, you would never know. How does this test apply to the belief in metaphysical naturalism? If I claim, “There is no such thing as the supernatural,” how would I know if it were false? The bible is full of examples of a world in which, if the stories were true, there clearly was interaction from a supernatural realm. Levitation of entire seas! Resurrection from the dead! Prestidigitation of loaves, fishes and wine! Walking through walls! Fire descending from heaven in answer to prayer! Prescience, extra-sensory perception and levitation! If the supernatural realm exists, the bible shows what we should expect to experience as a result. Modern life does not contain such wonders. I know the supernatural does not exist because these things seem to only happen under highly suspicious circumstances. It is interesting that the frequency and intensity of reports of truly counter-natural events in populations, seem to be in direct proportion to the ignorance and unsophistication of those populations. We find ourselves pushing back God, as an explanatory hypothesis, to whatever we still have no knowledge about- yet.
Some employ double-speak to claim that their lives do contain such events, by redefining “miracles” as the same events which would happen in a naturalistic universe: childbirth, spontaneous remission, falling in love, repentance from a wicked life, etc. Someone who witnessed miraculous events described in scripture, if such were literal and historical, would consider this weakened definition an insult to true miracles.
Another watered-down definition of “miracle” is “uncanny coincidence.” The study of statistical probability shows that we should expect to encounter uncanny coincidences all the time. We should not be surprised, or read any deep signifigance into them, since they are so commonplace. In a recent world series game, a bird flew in the way of a pitch and was hit by the ball in mid-air. The odds against this were astronomical. Why didn’t the believers in the stands leap to their feet crying, “This is a supernatural intervention”? We read a benevolent intention into coincidences because we tend to remember those few that benefited us and forget the countless ones that did not. Occam’s razor should be applied when we are tempted to create an extra unnecessary layer of causation.
The Double Standards of Mysticism
Mr. Yancey is extremely knowledgeable and sophisticated, having been exposed to a diverse number of approaches to the frustration of attempting to interact with God. Aside from personal testimonies from friends, the author mentions Soren Kierkegaard’s fideism,(54) Contact by Carl Sagan(27), the Turing Test of artificial intelligence pioneer Alan Turing(29), The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck, and The Variety of Religious Experiences by William James. I identified countless of Mr. Yancey’s statements reflecting what he seems, I think, to have learned from these sources.
As a result of setting out to craft a God-concept which fits into his experience, he approaches the functional equivalent of Deism. One of the few phenomena which Mr. Yancey has observed is mystical feelings in himself and others. This is precisely what almost all of the contradictory religions claim for support as well, and if we are going to explain their sensations as brain activity without an outside source, that is a sword that cuts both ways.
- If my subjective internal experiences are given to me by God, what are those of other religions? Just brain activity with no outside source? Or is the source satanic? Why theirs and not mine?
- If it is intrinsically virtuous to accept faith claims without question, why is it wrong for those with faith claims other than my own?
- If I should direct my attention to any evidence in support of my faith claims, why then, when I begin to doubt what I believe, should I should take my attention off of it? For how long should I give the benefit of the doubt?
- Should my first-hand experiences be reinterpreted in light of second-or-third-hand testimony? For how long?
- If forever, why am I not applying this to conspiracy theories, get-rich-quick schemes and anecdotal quack medicine?
- What makes motivational reasons a test of truth? When is it sufficient to replace substantiation reasons in support of a belief?
Faith Abused as a Mental Block
The only negative aspect to the book is the endorsement of belief “in the teeth of evidence.” Regarding his support for “paranoia in reverse,”(66) the author gives this jaw-dropper:
A skeptic will respond that I have just presented a classic rationalization: beginning with a premise, I proceed to manipulate all evidence in support of that premise. The skeptic is right. I begin with the premise of a good and loving God as the first principle of the universe; anything contradicting that experience must have another explanation.
Again:(263)
Once again, a skeptic might accuse me of flagrant rationalization, arguing backwards to make evidence fit a prior conclusion. Yes, exactly.
The skeptic objects to antagonism toward evidence because it is an outrage. The most important reason that Philip Yancey may not exempt himself from following evidence wherever it leads is that rational discourse is the only moral means of settling disputes. If A claims “God said it, I believe it, that settles it,” and B claims “Allah said something that contradicts A, I believe it, and that settles it,” then nothing is settled. Rational argumentation is precious because it’s the only real force of social cohesion. Even though our conclusions differ, the only successful alternative methods are emotional distraction, deception and coercion. If victory in a chess match means petulantly kicking over the table and demanding the prize, then in that sense faith is the victory that overcomes the world.
Further, how does playing intentional mind games on oneself advance the holy cause? Unrepentantly admitting and endorsing manipulation of evidence implies “no-contest” not only to followers of contradictory religions, but to every shade of paranormal crackpot. Without that “no contest,” it is a double standard rendering evangelism hypocritical: I’m not accountable to evidence but you are. Critical thinking is the only preventative of real paranoia and victimization of the gullible. Surely most believers in God would cringe to hear faith defined as a mental disorder: “paranoia in reverse.”(66)
This does not automatically entail naturalism. There are many religious apologists who claim to be evidentialists. They do not have to take their doctrines as presuppositions, but believe that the evidence leads to their conclusions.3
Faith as an Efficiency Tool
So what is the proper place of the will to the intellect? It ought not to be an act of the will to submit to an a priori conclusion. It ought to be an act of the will before we know the conclusion, to submit to the process of following the evidence wherever it leads, including change, no matter how disappointing.
Of course we can’t avoid a certain form of “faith.” We must constantly make choices, even when we don’t possess the information we need, and some information has resisted the discovery efforts of the greatest minds. Even taking no action is a choice, so it is inevitable that we will eventually have to do the best we can without being able to justify it. This “acting in ignorance” is a form of faith.
Whatever degree of capacity we have, is the degree to which we are responsible to hold our beliefs accountable to question. Children begin with no knowledge, and they must cope with this through faith in their parents. They are acting in spite of ignorance. As adults, we are no longer so dependent, but the limits of our knowledge require that we use experts and specialists who we accept based on evidence of their credibility. We are taking actions in spite of ignorance. The longer we live, the more we should learn, which gradually reduces this dependence as well.
This variation of “faith” is called trust. It is not a virtue. It is an efficiency tool, appropriate as a last resort, when the limits of knowledge leave no alternative. In practice, the last resort is often the only resort, but when verification becomes available, we should joyfully discard it. It is “acting in ignorance.”
In contrast, the information provided by faith, as traditionally defined by churches, is not tentative or open to revision. It is wrong to mistake either of these kinds of faith for knowledge. A claim held without being able to justify it acts as a shield against claims that can be defended.
First, this is willful resistance to learning, and personal growth. It is painful to unlearn beliefs which we cherish, either because they serve our selfishness and pride, or our emotional needs and innocent longings. Second, it is avoidance of personal responsibility. Being able to point the finger and say “he told me so” exempts a dependent person from responsibility for wrong beliefs. Third, when an efficiency tool is misused it becomes an illegitimate shortcut. The difficult effort of holding our position to revision is a moral obligation. Electing an outside source to serve these functions, even after knowledge has become available, is abdication.4
The Difference Between Description and Prescription
The author admits that the main reason he stays in the fold “is the lack of good alternatives, many of which I have tried.”(38) He states that the only alternative to transcendent centrality of human beings in the universe is nihilism.(257) This is a common unsupported assumption claimed5 by Christian authors. Those who, rejecting God, conclude that life has no meaning, believe so because they have not yet recognized this as an assumption and challenged it. Positive ways of living have often been attached to cosmological truth claims, but they are not a necessary basis for each other. I can begin to demonstrate this, for instance, by rewriting the entire bookReaching for the Invisible God to not include supernatural existence claims at all. They would turn out to have been superfluous to the moral lessons! All that it loses is comfort, which is not a test of truth value. The following are my own statements to which Mr. Yancey would probably offer support, with qualifications.
- Choosing a brave emotional attitude toward disappointment is a demonstrably desirable way to live life.
- If your problems overwhelm you, deal with them one day at a time. (81)
- It is socially productive to give trust to those who have earned it, and the benefit of the doubt when possible. (67, 68)
- Loving actions do not need loving feelings to be justified.(88)
- Acceptance of calculated risk is healthy. When faced with two equally supported alternative actions, it is wise to risk the optimistic one. (47)
- Adversity encourages growth. (54)
- Adversity sometimes strengthens relationships. (74)
Many more could follow. Although these sentences are prescriptive truth claims of useful emotional attitudes and paths of action, each can be rationally defended without asserting descriptive truth claims of eternal life, cosmic justice or a perfectly wise, powerful and loving parent. Nor do they result in descriptive claims of any kind, except to those who mistake attitudes for descriptive beliefs because they can result in the same action.6 That is the mistake a believer in a god or goddess is making when he says that it has changed him into a better person.
Death by a Thousand Provisos
Motivation to believe is not sufficient to replace substantiation for a belief. Fortunately, it is selectively applied by sane believers only to claims which are harmless and palatable. This is inconsistent, but preferable to embracing madness. This is why Mr. Yancey’s body of works taken as a whole is a refreshing antidote to the application of religious teaching in making predictive claims. Without the model of respected authorities reducing God’s involvement to a mere intangible “comforting presence,” more people will continue to withhold medical treatment from their children, handle poisonous snakes, and ruin their lives with impulsive decisions made under the unexamined “urging of God.”
People usually become apologists from an admirable desire to maintain integrity. Unlike many pulpiteers, their conscience would trouble them if they declare their doctrines unaccountable to the same standards of credibility that are applied to stage psychics. As a result, they have to write books narrowing our expectations to nothing. Without meaning to, they train us to expect as a result of the existence of the spiritual plane, precisely nothing distinguishable from an absent god- not only previous to faith, but previous to death.
Reaching for the Invisible God is required reading for those involved with rational outreach to the faith subculture. The solutions offered in this book are as follows: take your mind off it (pg 219) and excercise “paranoia in reverse” to “manipulate evidence” (pg 68) and “arguing backwards to make evidence fit a prior conclusion” with “flagrant rationalization”(pg 263). Congratulations, you have reached the invisible god! It is an example of the anemic view of their deity’s communication and nurture into which rational Christians are cornered. God is most effectively cancelled unintentionally at the hands of his own followers.
1 I have phrased it more explicitly than he did.
2We can apply Occam’s Razor to these. It states that, if two explanations are equally supported by the evidence, the simpler one is probably correct. He stated it: “Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.” If I flip a switch and the light comes on, it is perfectly sufficient to explain that it allowed electricity to flow through a circuit to the light. If I imagine that the switch sent a radio signal to outer space where a UFO sent a return signal to turn on the light, you cannot immediately prove me wrong, but there is no need to. Don’t come up with completely unnecessary explanations. Prefer explanations which have less to explain away.
3 William Lane Craig is reputed to be one of these. Strangely, in his book Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics (1994), he writes “Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter, not vice versa.” In spite of this glaring exception, he publicly endorses honest and sincere objectivity.
4 For more development on this, see the essay The Ethics of Belief by William K. Clifford, and two books, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements and The Ordeal of Change by Eric Hoffer.
5 Ravi Zacharias based an entire book on this assumption, titled “Can Man Live Without God?” In it, he ignored atheists or humanists who believe that life has meaning, and who don’t foolishly worship mankind.
6 See the chapter “Faith the Efficiency Tool”.
The Difference Between Rationalization and Logical Entailment
The Double Standards of Mysticism
Faith Abused as a Mental Block
