Positive Liberty

Now, we get claims all the time–as far as difficult claims go–from people asking, can we prove that God doesn’t exist? Ah, but they have the wrong picture, you see? I don’t say that any of these [supernatural] powers, including God, doesn’t exist; I make no claim. I ask them to make the claim, and they have to prove that they’re right. So they say, okay, “God exists.” I say, “Prove it.” “Ah, um, I’ll call you back.” “Hello?” And we never hear from them again.

– James Randi, paranormal investigator, in the current issue of the Skeptical Inquirer

A friend of mine, a Christian whom I greatly respect, e-mailed me about the Carnival of the Godless, wherein I invited the faithful to sit on chairs that they had never seen. I understand, I joked, that it’s more blessed that way. He replied,

Think for a moment about the Big Bang. For centuries, humankind believed in a static, eternal universe (and at part of that history, we even believed that everything revolved around our own planet; a truly ego-centrical point of view). And yes, they believed this without evidence. But there were others who also believed in another view: that the universe was expanding and the expansion must have been caused by a massive explosion outwards. They had no evidence of this explosion, they only had evidence of the expansion. (See Singh’s, “Big Bang: The Origins Of The Universe”.)

But scientists believed in the Big Bang Theory anyway. Was it misguided? In the end, no, although so many people told them not to look at the chair because it’s more blessed that way.

Yes, there are those of us who believe in blessings. No, we don’t have any evidence. But no one seems to have evidence to the negative, either. So, I, for one, will keep on looking. And like the Belgian Jesuit priest Georges Lemaitre, I will continue to believe while I seek evidence.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get ready to sit in the blessed chair. And I will choose to look.

It raises huge questions, and I thought I’d offer a reply. I’m making it public in case anyone else was put off by my wisecrack.

First, a quibble: The naive, earth-centered view of the cosmos actually did have some evidence going for it. To wit, the stars and planets all seemed to move, as did the sun and the moon. By contrast, human beings felt no sense of motion while sitting still on earth. These are slight bits of evidence, and they are certainly misleading, but they are evidence of a sort.

When heliocentrism replaced geocentrism as a description of the cosmos, it was the product of better evidence, much of which contradicted the earlier view. Observers and theorists worked out a model that seemed to explain the world around them better, and a scientific revolution was born. (A naive error, to which my friend does not subscribe, is to conclude that because science sometimes changes its mind, it must therefore be wrong in principle. He’s far too smart for this one, though, and I hope that you are too. But many creationists do fall for it.)

A similar revolution took place with the advent of the Big Bang theory, holding that the observed expansion of the universe is best explained by an initial state wherein the entire universe was contained in a tiny… something. And here is where our explanations break down, where the theorists disagree among themselves, and where scant reliable evidence exists.

The question, then, is this: Is belief in the Christian God analogous to belief in the Big Bang?

I would say no, and for three reasons.

First, Christian scripture instructs us not to put Him to the test, but to continue believing even if we have not seen. Now, to some this may be a thoroughly convincing argument; to others, it may be a mystery, albeit one they dare not question. But for a third group, the whole business of belief without evidence seems uncomfortably like cheating. Regrettably, I’m in the last of these three groups. A theory that includes the injunction to believe without evidence should be suspect from the getgo.

Second, if we admit that there is some evidence for Christianity–and I think that there is, at least for its more mundane aspects–still, we have to ask just what conclusions are justified from that evidence. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, and, if anything, the Christian faith is much more extraordinary than even the Big Bang: The latter is an extrapolation backwards from events we observe all around us; the former introduces a great many new concepts for which scripture and tradition are the only authorities. These include Heaven, Hell, the Trinity, Original Sin, and the Incarnation. It’s too much, based on far too little.

Where the Big Bang offers one idea that may be tested through further research, Christianity offers an abundance of ideas for which empirical tests are impossible and/or strongly discouraged. Could you even design an experiment that would prove the reality of the Trinity? Or that would pinpoint the source of human wickedness in the fault of a single pair of ancestors? Could you devise a method for testing the existence of Heaven–or Hell–reliably, and then teach your method to a neutral or even a hostile observer?

Third, if scientists found evidence pointing consistently toward some better explanation than the Big Bang, they would eventually abandon that theory in favor of a new one. So far as I can tell, for a Christian to apply this standard would be a violation of the First Commandment: If we believe while continuing honestly to look for more evidence, then we must face the reality that our evidence may lead us elsewhere–perhaps to another religion, or perhaps to no religion at all. I do not find this admission in most forms of Christianity; instead, I find its opposite.

I do hope not to offend anyone with this post. I know religion is among the touchiest subjects I could possibly discuss. Still, while I respect the faiths of others, I just can’t see putting religious faith in the same box as scientific theory. No matter whether one, or the other, or both are correct–they just don’t seem to go together. This is why the joke about the chair is funny at all: It juxtaposes two things that have no business being together, and it asks us to re-examine the assumptions we make about things like truth, belief, and evidence.

Incidentally, I should mention that I also know another Christian, one who once claimed to have direct evidence of the Resurrection. A proof that someone had risen from the dead would require some extraordinary evidence, and it would set some (but certainly not all) of the Christian faith on a more solidly scientific footing. After that, he would still have dozens more mysteries to explain.

In the end, I did not ask him for the evidence, and I don’t plan to. I didn’t want to start a needless argument, and I hope I’m not starting one here, either. I really do want to keep my Christian friends.

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