Newsweek: Is God Real?

Newsweek is taking advantage of Passover and Holy Week to feature three stories on religion in America.

The first article is called Is God Real?

To believe in any form of God requires, it is true, what Henry James called a "willing suspension of disbelief"; it is not especially rational to think, as so many Christians do, that a crucified Nazarene did what no other man had done before or since: rise from the dead and say that believing he had done so would wash you in the atoning blood of the lamb. As Harris likes to point out, people who demand evidence for everything else in their lives are somehow all too happy to accept the word of long-dead Biblical authors in a corner of a long-dead empire.

Yet it is not only Christians who know they are engaging in a leap from fact to faith. God, the great Rabbi Abraham Jacob Heschel said in 1967, "did not make it easy for us to have faith in him, to remain faithful to him. This is our tragedy: the insecurity of faith, the unbearable burden of our commitment. The facts that deny the divine are mighty, indeed; the arguments of agnosticism are eloquent, the events that defy him are spectacular ... Our faith is fragile, never immune to error, distortion or deception. There are no final proofs for the existence of God, Father and Creator of all. There are only witnesses. Supreme among them are the prophets of Israel." No final proofs—there it is, the ultimate caveat. Doubt and faith are not at war; they are parts of the same whole.

This is the substance of the article. It is decidedly anti-religion in some ways, or at least agnostic and skeptical. But it does seek a middle ground, a way through the thicket of faith versus reason. Here are the final paragraphs, which lead into the next article:

Liberty and republican values are the guardrails against extremism, either religious or secular. Religion should not dictate education or science policy, for example, but there is nothing wrong—and there is much right—with its being one voice among many in the shaping of our public lives. One cannot be for one group's right to speak out and exert influence and be against another group's right to do so. The battles must be fought on the merits, and religion should be one force on the field, not the only one.

This moderate solution pleases neither the atheists nor the fervent believers, which may recommend it even more. The more conservative faithful think centrists are squishy, and some atheists argue, as Harris puts it, that "religious moderates are themselves the bearers of a terrible dogma: they imagine that the path to peace will be paved once each of us has learned to respect the unjustified beliefs of others ... all we can say, as religious moderates, is that we don't like the personal and social costs that a full embrace of Scripture imposes on us."

Experience suggests, however, that the centrist approach tends to be the most pragmatic and is, to paraphrase Churchill on democracy, the worst possible answer, except for all the others. Atheists would expel God from the debate, but what of the rights of the religious to execute the duties of citizenship? And the most fervid believers would drive atheists from the arena in a fit of fear masquerading as scorn, but what of the rights of the atheists to play a full and unimpeded part in the story of the nation? Neither side should be frightened of debate; both have every reason, if they are as confident as they say they are, to be intellectually open to the other.

Which brings us to the exchange in the following pages. To say the least, Rick Warren did not lose his faith in the middle of the debate; nor did Sam Harris fall to his knees in a moment of sudden conversion. But they talked—civilly, coolly, even with a laugh here and there. The fact that such a conversation can take place between two men who would—and probably will—spend a lifetime opposing what the other stands for is a small ray of light in the gloom of the culture wars. In the end, Warren says that he has "thrown the dice," gambling that Jesus was not a liar, that he was what he said he was in the Gospel accounts. Harris is betting otherwise: "In the fullness of time, one side is really going to win this argument, and the other side is really going to lose." And so four centuries on, a world away from Pascal's France, two men are undertaking his old wager. Who will win? No one can say. At least not yet.

The next article, The God Debate, features Sam Harris and Rick Warren engaging in the same form of dialogue that Harris has had going on with Andrew Sullivan. It seems Harris will take on all comers, which keeps his name in the press and sells his books, and gives the religious leaders a more public forum to convey their views.

The reality is that faith, as the above article pointed out, stands against reason -- in opposition to reason, by necessity, or even by definition. Harris can debate every religious leader on the planet, and win the argument from a rational point of view, but few of the faithful will be converted to his position. Still, I admire his willingness to bang his head against the wall ad infinitum without flinching.

Here is a taste of their discussion:

JON MEACHAM: Rick, since you're the home team, we'll start with Sam. Sam, is there a God in the sense that most Americans think of him?
SAM HARRIS: There's no evidence for such a God, and it's instructive to notice that we're all atheists with respect to Zeus and the thousands of other dead gods whom now nobody worships.

Rick, what is the evidence of the existence of the God of Abraham?
RICK WARREN: I see the fingerprints of God everywhere. I see them in culture. I see them in law. I see them in literature. I see them in nature. I see them in my own life. Trying to understand where God came from is like an ant trying to understand the Internet. Even the most brilliant scientist would agree that we only know a fraction of a percent of the knowledge of the universe. HARRIS: Any scientist must concede that we don't fully understand the universe. But neither the Bible nor the Qur'an represents our best understanding of the universe. That is exquisitely clear.

WARREN: To you.

HARRIS: There is so much about us that is not in the Bible. Every specific science from cosmology to psychology to economics has surpassed and superseded what the Bible tells us is true about our world.

Christopher Churchill for Newsweek Sam Harris, author

Sam, does the Christian you address in your books have to believe that God wrote the Bible and that it is literally true?
HARRIS: Well, there's clearly a spectrum of confidence in the text. I mean, there's the "This is literally true, nothing even gets figuratively interpreted," and then there's the "This is just the best book we have, written by the smartest people who have ever lived, and it's still legitimate to organize our lives around it to the exclusion of other books." Anywhere on that spectrum I have a problem, because in my mind the Bible and the Qur'an are just books, written by human beings. There are sections of the Bible that I think are absolutely brilliant and poetically unrivaled, and there are sections of the Bible which are the sheerest barbarism, yet profess to prescribe a divinely mandated morality—where do I start? Books like Leviticus and Deuteronomy and Exodus and First and Second Kings and Second Samuel—half of the kings and prophets of Israel would be taken to The Hague and prosecuted for crimes against humanity if these events took place in our own time.

[To Warren] Is the Bible inerrant?
WARREN: I believe it's inerrant in what it claims to be. The Bible does not claim to be a scientific book in many areas.

Do you believe Creation happened in the way Genesis describes it?
WARREN: If you're asking me do I believe in evolution, the answer is no, I don't. I believe that God, at a moment, created man. I do believe Genesis is literal, but I do also know metaphorical terms are used. Did God come down and blow in man's nose? If you believe in God, you don't have a problem accepting miracles. So if God wants to do it that way, it's fine with me.

HARRIS: I'm doing my Ph.D. in neuroscience; I'm very close to the literature on evolutionary biology. And the basic point is that evolution by natural selection is random genetic mutation over millions of years in the context of environmental pressure that selects for fitness.

WARREN: Who's doing the selecting?

HARRIS: The environment. You don't have to invoke an intelligent designer to explain the complexity we see.

WARREN: Sam makes all kinds of assertions based on his presuppositions. I'm willing to admit my presuppositions: there are clues to God. I talk to God every day. He talks to me.

HARRIS: What does that actually mean?

WARREN: One of the great evidences of God is answered prayer. I have a friend, a Canadian friend, who has an immigration issue. He's an intern at this church, and so I said, "God, I need you to help me with this," as I went out for my evening walk. As I was walking I met a woman. She said, "I'm an immigration attorney; I'd be happy to take this case." Now, if that happened once in my life I'd say, "That is a coincidence." If it happened tens of thousands of times, that is not a coincidence.

Christopher Churchill for Newsweek Rick Warren, pastor

There must have been times in your ministry when you've prayed for someone to be delivered from disease who is not—say, a little girl with cancer.
WARREN: Oh, absolutely.

So, parse that. God gave you an immigration attorney, but God killed a little girl.
WARREN: Well, I do believe in the goodness of God, and I do believe that he knows better than I do. God sometimes says yes, God sometimes says no and God sometimes says wait. I've had to learn the difference between no and not yet. The issue here really does come down to surrender. A lot of atheists hide behind rationalism; when you start probing, you find their reactions are quite emotional. In fact, I've never met an atheist who wasn't angry.

HARRIS: Let me be the first.

WARREN: I think your books are quite angry.

The debate contains Harris' usual arguments, so there is nothing new there. But I think it's instructive to read Warren's responses. Through his views, we can get an insight into the role of faith in the human psyche. As much as I side with Harris' arguments (in part, but certainly not in whole, as most readers of this blog know), I do agree with Warren that Harris sometimes comes across as an angry man -- especially in his books.

In case you think that the atheists might possibly be swaying the public discourse in their favor, the final article, God’s Numbers, looks at recent Newsweek poll results that confirm little has changed in the realm of belief in this country.

Here is the breakdown:

A belief in God and an identification with an organized religion are widespread throughout the country, according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll. Nine in 10 (91 percent) of American adults say they believe in God and almost as many (87 percent) say they identify with a specific religion. Christians far outnumber members of any other faith in the country, with 82 percent of the poll’s respondents identifying themselves as such. Another 5 percent say they follow a non-Christian faith, such as Judaism or Islam. Nearly half (48 percent) of the public rejects the scientific theory of evolution; one-third (34 percent) of college graduates say they accept the Biblical account of creation as fact. Seventy-three percent of Evangelical Protestants say they believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years; 39 percent of non-Evangelical Protestants and 41 percent of Catholics agree with that view.

Although one in ten (10 percent) of Americans identify themselves as having "no religion," only six percent said they don’t believe in a God at all. Just 3 percent of the public self-identifies as atheist, suggesting that the term may carry some stigma. Still, the poll suggests that the public’s tolerance of this small minority has increased in recent years. Nearly half (47 percent) of the respondents felt the country is more accepting of atheists today that it used to be and slightly more (49 percent) reported personally knowing an atheist. Those numbers are higher among respondents under 30 years old, 62 percent of whom report knowing an atheist (compared to just 43 percent of those 50 and older). Sixty-one percent of the under-30 cohort view society as more accepting of atheists (compared to 40 percent of the Americans 50 and older).

[Emphasis added -- 34% of college grads believe in creationism?!?]

With 8 in 10 of Americans identifying as Christian, Harris and the other prominent atheists have their work cut out for them.

Harris thinks that, eventually, one side or the other is going to win the argument of reason or faith. He's betting on reason. I'm skeptical. Faith of the kind Harris opposes is part of the evolutionary matrix, something a student neurobiology should be able to grasp. No matter how far we evolve along the spiral of development, there will always be a series of troubling stages people must pass through -- the tribal, the egoic, and the mythic.

We cannot skip developmental stages. As long as there are people, there will be people who arrest at these stages and never grow beyond them. Unless Harris is willing to euthanize those people who never embrace a rational understanding of the world, at least on the spiritual developmental line, he (or his philosophical offspring) will lose the wager.

Tags: religion, culture, belief, faith, Newsweek, Sam Harris, Rick Warren, atheism, Christianity, God