Can Wanting to Believe Make Us Believers?
The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless.
This is the 12th
and last in a series of interviews about religion that I am conducting
for The Stone. The interviewee for this installment is Daniel Garber, a
professor of philosophy at Princeton University, specializing in
philosophy and science in the period of Galileo and Newton. In a week or
two, I’ll conclude with a wrap-up column on the series.
Gary Gutting:
In the 17th century most philosophers were religious believers, whereas
today most seem to be atheists. What explains this reversal?
I’m already convinced that I should want to believe. But there is a step from there to actual belief, and that’s a step I cannot personally negotiate.
Daniel Garber:
I think that it is fair to say that in the 17th century most people,
not just philosophers, were believers and that it was simply taken for
granted that people of ordinary intelligence would believe in God, in
just the way that people today take it for granted that people of
ordinary intelligence have faith in the authority of science. Many
important scientists and mathematicians in the period were also
believers, including Bacon, Descartes, Boyle, Pascal and Newton. Not
that there weren’t atheists in the period, but atheism was something
that in many circles needed a special explanation in a way in which
belief didn’t.
In many circumstances,
atheism was considered so obviously contrary to evident reason that
there had to be a special explanation for why atheists denied what was
so obvious to most of their contemporaries, in much the way that today
we might wonder about those who deny science. What changed? I hesitate
even to speculate. There was the Enlightenment, the Industrial
Revolution, political revolutions, Darwinism, the wars of the
20th century, a lot. As a result science and religious faith have, in a
way, exchanged places, and a general and widespread faith in science has
replaced the earlier general and widespread faith in God. But even so,
God is not dead among the philosophers. There is still a very
significant community of believers among philosophers. I’m personally
not one of them, I should say, and I would doubt that they constitute a
majority. But even so, I think they cannot be ignored.
G.G.:
What you’ve described could be taken as a social and cultural change
that says nothing about the truth of religious claims. Contemporary
atheists often say that the development of science since the
17th century has undermined the intellectual basis of theism. What do
you think?
D.G.: Unlike some, I would hesitate to say that modern science has refuted
religion in any strong sense. Religion and theology are complicated and
subtle; they cannot easily be refuted. In the past religion has
confronted a variety of scientific challenges, from the rediscovery of
ancient scientific systems like Aristotle’s in the 12th and 13th
centuries, to Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton in the 16th and
17th centuries, to Darwin in the 19th and beyond. These discoveries
have forced religion to adapt in various ways, but those contemporary
advocates of religion who are, in my opinion, the most sophisticated
don’t feel that they have to oppose science in order to keep their
faith.
For some this
adaptability is a sign that religion is empty, on the assumption that to
be meaningful religion must be falsifiable. But I don’t agree.
Philosophers of science have rightly rejected naïve falsificationism,
and it shouldn’t be accepted in the philosophy of religion. Again, I am
not a believer. But even so, I don’t underestimate how difficult it is
to refute theism.
G.G.:
“Naïve falsification” is the idea that a theory should be rejected as
soon as one of its implications is shown to be false. In fact scientists
rightly allow revising a theory to avoid falsifications, but only if
the revised theory eventually makes new predictions that might be
falsified. What science doesn’t allow is continual revision to avoid any
and every refutation. But isn’t that just what religious believers do,
resulting in what the 20th-century English philosopher Anthony Flew
called religion’s “death by a thousand qualifications”? Is there any
evidence that believers would accept as refuting their position?
D.G.:
I’m not a believer, so I’m not in a position to say. First of all, it’s
worth noting that some of the biggest empirical challenges don’t come
from science but from common features of life. Perhaps the hardest case
for believers is the Problem of Evil: The question of how a benevolent
God could allow the existence of evil in the world, both natural evils
like devastating earthquakes and human evils like the Holocaust, has
always been a great challenge to faith in God. There is, of course, a
long history of responses to that problem that goes back to Job. While
nonbelievers (like me) consider this a major problem, believers have,
for the most part, figured out how to accommodate themselves to it.
But science offers
challenges as well. For some who believe in the literal truth of the
Bible, for example, discovering that the Bible contains claims that are
literally false would have to lead to a crisis of faith, or, perhaps
more likely, to a rejection of scientific claims. But for more
sophisticated believers I suspect that the claims of religion are more
like broad structural principles that can be reinterpreted as we learn
more about the world. In physics, one might be reluctant to give up
broad structural ideas like the existence of general conservation
principles, even when some localized experimental evidence may seem to
go against them. In that circumstance one might choose to keep the broad
and well-entrenched principles and figure out how to reinterpret them
so as to fit with experience. I think that some believers may consider
the existence of God in something of the same way. But, again, I don’t
say any of this with a lot of confidence since I am not a member of the
community of believers.
G.G.:
What do you see as the current status of traditional metaphysical
arguments for God’s existence? Are they of merely historical interest?
D.G.:
Good question. It is, in fact, a good question why they were so
widespread in the history of philosophy. Not every theist — then or now —
would necessarily think that arguments for the existence of God are
necessary, or even possible. And if belief in God were generally taken
for granted, as it was in the 17th century, then trying to prove the
existence of God would seem to be an unnecessary exercise. But at
various times and places in that century there were genuine anxieties
about the existence of these mythical atheists, and perhaps we should
understand the arguments in that context.
Marin Mersenne,
Descartes’s close friend and sponsor, and an important mathematician and
scientific thinker in his own right, claimed that there were over
50,000 atheists living in Paris in 1623. In his massive commentary on
Genesis, where he advanced that claim, he offered 35 arguments for the
existence of God. For Mersenne and his contemporaries, the idea of the
atheist was terrifying. Many thought that, without the threat of divine
punishment, there was no reason for people to act morally. Establishing
the rationality of belief in God had high stakes for them.
Today, those who don’t
believe, philosophers and others, don’t seem to pay much attention to
the contemporary literature on proofs for the existence of God. Proofs
for the existence of God have become something of an empty intellectual
enterprise, I’m afraid.
G.G.:
So are you saying that the philosophical books are closed on the
traditional theistic arguments? Have atheistic philosophers decisively
shown that the arguments fail, or have they merely ceased thinking
seriously about them?
Proofs for the existence of God have become something of an empty intellectual enterprise.
D.G.:
Certainly there are serious philosophers who would deny that the
arguments for the existence of God have been decisively refuted. But
even so, my impression is that proofs for the existence of God have
ceased to be a matter of serious discussion outside of the domain of
professional philosophy of religion. And even there, my sense is that
the discussions are largely a matter of academic interest: The real
passion has gone out of the question.
G.G.:
I wonder if the lack of passion reflects the fact that centuries of
discussion have not yielded any decisive conclusion about whether the
arguments work. That, I think, would support an agnostic rather than an
atheistic conclusion. On the other hand, many contemporary atheists
reject theism on the grounds that there is simply no serious case that
has been made for God’s existence. As an historian of philosophy (and an
atheist), what’s your view on this issue?
D.G.:
Centuries of discussion have certainly not led to a consensus about the
arguments. But we cannot forget that at some times in the past, there
was a general consensus that God exists, and, perhaps, a general (though
not universal) consensus that some of the arguments, for example the
argument from a first cause, are correct. The question is really why
arguments that were once convincing have lost their power, something
that is true of many arguments from the history of philosophy.
I think, though, that
the lack of passion reflects more than anything else the cultural change
that has made faith and religion less central to our lives, since at
least the Enlightenment. This has left the concern to prove the
existence of God to people of faith who are concerned with the
intellectual grounds of faith, that is, largely philosophers who are
believers, philosophers of religion and theologians. You are right to
say that many contemporary atheists reject theism because they see no
convincing reason to believe. While I am by no means dismissive of
religion, that’s where I would place myself.
G.G.:
In your essay in Louise Antony’s collection “Philosophers Without
Gods,” you say, “Much as I try, much as I may want to, I cannot be a
believer.” Why can’t you — and why would you want to?
D.G.:
I can’t believe because I’m not convinced that it is true that God
exists. It is as simple as that. Belief is not voluntary, and there are
no (rational) considerations that move me to believe that God exists. In
all honesty, I will admit that I don’t have a definitive argument that
God doesn’t exist either. Which is to say that I refuse to make
the judgment that some make that it is positively irrational to believe
in God in an objective sense. But without convincing affirmative
reasons to believe, I’m stuck. If others find reasons that convince
them, I’m willing to discuss them and consider them. Who knows? There
might be a convincing argument out there, or at least one that convinces
me.
On the other hand, it is easy say why I might want
to believe. I see people around me — often very smart and thoughtful
people — who get great comfort from believing that God exists. Why
wouldn’t I want to be like them? It’s just that I can’t.
G.G.:
Wanting to believe in God suggests Pascal’s wager argument, which
remains for many the most appealing case for religious belief. What do
you think about it?
D.G.:
Formally, the argument has many well-known flaws, though it also has
its friends. Even knowing the flaws, I do find myself somewhat moved by
it. The reason is that at the core of the argument there are some very
compelling intuitions. Basically, the argument turns on the idea that if
there is a God, and we believe in him, we then have a shot at eternal
happiness. If God doesn’t exist, then we are stuck in this very finite
and imperfect life, whether we believe in him or not. So, it would seem,
for all sorts of reasons, we should want to believe in him. The problem
(perhaps insuperable) is taking these plausible considerations and
turning them into a genuine argument.
But the real worry
about the argument comes at a later moment, I think. It is important to
remember that Pascal’s wager it isn’t an argument for the truth of the
proposition that God exists, but an argument for why we should want
to believe that God exists: It only tells us that it is to our
advantage to believe, and in this way makes us want to believe, but it
doesn’t give us any reasons to think that God actually exists. In a way, I’m already convinced that I should want
to believe. But there is a step from there to actual belief, and that’s
a step I cannot personally negotiate. Pascal tells us, roughly, that we
should adopt the life of the believer and eventually the belief will
come. And maybe it will. But that seems too much like self-deception to
me.
G.G.:
You seem to be ignoring what is often taken as the heart of Pascal’s
argument: a cost-benefit calculation that you should believe in God
because the likely benefits of belief are greater than the likely
benefits of nonbelief. Put that way, the argument seems morally dubious,
leading to William James’s comment that God would likely exclude from
heaven precisely the sorts of people who believe because of such an
argument. Is this a misreading of Pascal?
D.G.:
That objection doesn’t really move me. Pascal’s wager is certainly a
cost-benefit argument. But, as I noted earlier, the important thing is
what happens afterward. If behaving like a believer transforms you and
causes the scales to fall from your eyes, and allows you to appreciate
the existence of God in a way that you couldn’t before, when you
resisted belief, then why should God complain? In any case, we are not
in a very good position to figure out what God might judge on such an
issue — if, indeed, there is a God. But what worries me more than what
God might think is the possibility that I may corrupt my soul by
deceiving myself into believing something, just because I want it to be
true. For a philosopher, that’s a kind of damnation in this life.
Gary Gutting is a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, and an editor of Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
He is the author of, most recently, “Thinking the Impossible: French
Philosophy since 1960,” and writes regularly for The Stone.
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