50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God (30 page)

People have been crediting a long list of gods for radically changing
their lives for a long, long time. It is nothing new or unique to any one
particular religion. Using these stories as justification for believing that
a god exists reveals how little some people know about rival religions
because they all make the same claims. "Scientology put me into the big
time," says film star John Travolta (Morton 2008, 101-102). Allah
changed the life of a petty criminal named Malcolm Little by turning
him into Malcolm X, the famous black rights activist. This cancelingout effect of so many people in different religions making identical
claims is only part of the problem for believers. Another weakness of
this claim is that one cannot be certain that it was a real god who caused
a person to change or merely the act of believing and participating in a
belief system that did it. There are, after all, many other things that have
the power to change lives without a god, including: training for a marathon, reading books, changing careers, moving to a new country,
joining a gym, surviving combat, battling cancer, making a new friend,
falling in love, getting married, having a baby, and so on. All of these
are examples of activities and events that can radically change a
person's life for the better and none of them require a god's help. Yes,
deciding to begin making regular visits to a church, mosque, or Hindu
temple may turn out to be the key to improving one's life but it would
not be evidence for the existence of gods.

The most likely explanation for all these stories of gay men
becoming heterosexuals and alcoholics putting down their bottles is
one that omits the gods. These people probably experienced their lifealtering shifts as a result of belief itself or from joining a network of
people who supported them rather than from the direct manipulation of
a real god. That would explain why Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jews,
animists, and other believers could all have their lives dramatically
changed within the context of their respective belief systems. Across so
many religions and so many cultures, belief, not real gods, is the one
thing that they all have in common. What is most likely occurring with
all these believers is that they were able to feed upon the inspiration and
power of their belief system to change their lives. Perhaps making
progress on the challenges before them had been hindered mostly by a
confidence problem. Perhaps these individuals had the ability to
change their lives all along but lacked sufficient belief in themselves to
pull it off. Believing in a god, real or not, however, might have been
enough to finally give them the boost needed to forge ahead with a new
life. None of this suggests that believers who make dramatic life
changes in the name of their god are mentally weak or lack courage. It
is human nature to feel empowered when part of a team.

I was a member of my high school track and field team and I
remember that running a leg on the 4 x 400-meter relay squad usually
gave me the ability to dig a little deeper in the homestretch than I was
able to do in my individual races. There was something about those
other three teammates having a stake in my performance that inspired
me to try harder. But they weren't on the track to help me when it was my turn to sprint that lap. I had to go it alone. They couldn't physically
push or pull me any faster because they existed only in my mind
during the difficult final one hundred meters. But it was enough to
somehow squeeze a little more speed out of my tired legs. Perhaps it
is this way for the believer too. Maybe their god is not really there but
belief alone, a god in the mind, is enough for the believer to dig a little
deeper and do what they feel they need to do.

It is clear that just being around supportive people and tapping into
the emotional boost that all religions are capable of providing can have
a positive influence toward achieving a goal or avoiding destructive
behavior. This certainly is a sufficient explanation and it seems far
more likely to be true than the extraordinary claim of an invisible
superbeing magically injecting willpower into people. The problem
with the idea of a god changing lives is that we cannot separate the god
from the belief. What believers say is the power of a god might only
be the power of belief influencing their actions. While no atheists can
be absolutely certain that no god is behind dramatic changes in the
lives of individuals, we all can see that many lives are changed dramatically all the time without any claim of a connection to gods. This
makes the other transformations, the ones said to be the work of gods,
less certain. Therefore it is fair to ask why, when there is a far more
simple explanation available, should we accept the most extraordinary
explanation of all?

Gorski, Eric. "Haggard Says He Is `Completely Heterosexual."' Denver
Post, December 24, 2007. http://www.denverpost.com/ci_5164921.

Morton, Andrew. Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography. New York: St.
Martin's Press, 2008.

"Stephen Bennett: The Amazing Story of Stephen Bennett." Stephen Bennett
Ministries, "Hope for Homosexuals." http://familypolicy.net/hope/?p=349.

To surrender to ignorance and call it God has
always been premature, and it remains premature
today.

-Isaac Asimov

Even noble souls can become corrupted with wrong
education.

-Plato

Science is a philosophy of discovery. Intelligent
design is a philosophy of ignorance. You cannot
build a program of discovery on the assumption
that nobody is smart enough to figure out the
answer to the problem.

-Neil deGrasse Tyson

If any positive evidence could be found of a supernatural guiding force, there would be a land rush
of scientists into it. What scientist would not want
to participate in what would be one of the greatest
discoveries of all time? Scientists are simply
saying particularly in reference to intelligent
design-that it's not science and it's garbage until
some evidence or working theory is produced.

-E. 0. Wilson

ook at a flower. Take note of the little pollen grains ready to hitch
a ride on the next visiting insect. Try to remember your junior-high
science class and marvel at how the plant uses the sun's energy to live.

Watch a bird in flight. Think about how all the bones, muscles,
tendons, and ligaments in each wing must work in harmony to keep
the bird aloft.

Think about the DNA molecule within a single cell of a dog or a
horse. This microscopic stuff contains all the information needed to
produce a complete animal.

How can life be anything other than the work of a god? After all,
the design we see in all the plants and animals means there must have
been a designer, right? How could blind chance ever produce the
amazing variety of complex plants and animals we have on Earth? Estimates of the number of species alive today range from ten million to
one hundred million. Individually or collectively, life is too complex to
have just happened all by itself, believers declare. Cells don't just fall
together to create giraffes and buffaloes. Only a god can explain life.

This is a very attractive reason to believe in gods. It must be
appealing because it's been used to justify belief for a long, long time
and it's still going strong. The complexity and apparent intelligent
design of life may be the most common reason people give when
asked why they believe a god or gods exist. It is a popular argument
from virtually every religion. I can't begin to count the number of
times a believer has said something like, "How can you doubt my
god? Just look at a leaf or a butterfly." But do leaves and butterflies
really tell us anything about the existence of gods?

Intelligent design is the idea that life's complexity is evidence of an
intelligent designer, such as a god. It has made many headlines in the
United States in recent years, primarily because of school-board battles
over teaching it in science classes. However, it hasn't made many headlines in leading science journals because it is more about religion than
science. Intelligent design is nothing new, however. It's just another
name for traditional creationism. The best argument intelligent design can make is that life is too complex to be fully explained as the result
of natural processes and therefore life must be the work of a superintelligent being. That super-intelligent being could be anything. The
vast majority of people who embrace intelligent design, however, do so
to justify their belief in a god-more specifically, their god.

Although the intelligent design debate might seem overly complicated, there is really just one aspect of this issue that one needs to
understand to recognize that intelligent design doesn't make sense and
is not a good justification for belief in a god. Proponents of intelligent
design say it in many ways but ultimately they only make one big
claim: science cannot explain everything about life, therefore a god
must have created life.

All this does is point out the obvious and then jump to an unjustified conclusion. Of course we haven't figured out all there is to know
about life. No scientist denies that. But the world's scientists are
nowhere near ready to declare that all remaining mysteries in biology
can only be explained by gods and magic. They are too busy making
new discoveries to even consider giving up. Yet, many intelligentdesign believers make the outrageous suggestion that life is too complex
for us to ever understand it fully. All intelligent-design believers are
doing is giving up on science so they can declare the game over and say
their god won. They want to end the hunt for answers prematurely
because they imagine that they already have the answer-their god.
They "know" intelligent design is real because they see design in life,
the work of a super-intelligent being, which just happens to be their particular god. But this makes no sense. Several thousand years ago, people
with this same attitude might have declared that the bizarre thumps
heard within a human chest were obviously the rattlings of a magical
soul and should never be investigated. But some people didn't give up
the scientific quest for knowledge and today we know that the beating
is not a soul knocking on the ribcage but a very important organ that
pumps blood. Any "impossible-to-solve mystery" that intelligent-design
believers cite today is very likely to end up as tomorrow's common
knowledge. This is a trend that has held up for many centuries now. Don't bet against science because you will probably lose eventually. Science has really only picked up speed in the last couple of centuries. A little
patience might be in order here before we throw in the towel and grab at
supernatural answers. In trying to understand our world we have come so
far in such a short period of time. Due primarily to the rapid rise of computing power, it is likely that science will advance faster this century than
ever before. So how can anyone suggest that science will never come up
with a natural explanation for something, for anything? Shouldn't we
work the problems a bit more before giving up? Shouldn't we have a little
more faith in the power of science and of the human mind?

Intelligent design encourages us to stop looking for answers. It
would have us steer in the opposite direction of scientific curiosity. So
what if we don't know everything there is to know about cells, genetics,
or the evolution of humans at this moment in time? We can't give up!
Who cares if we do not yet know every detail about every species? Scientists are working on thousands of challenges right now and making
progress. Some answers may elude us forever, but that's okay too. Not
knowing is never a reason to give up, declare that a god did it, and go
home. Ignorance should not be feared and it's never a good reason to fill
in the blanks with gods. Admitting ignorance and being mature enough
to live with it is far more honest and respectable than making up answers.
Ignorance should inspire us to keep striving. Ignorance should drive science, not stop it cold. Imagine where we would be now if scientists a
hundred years ago had decided that the questions before them were unanswerable and stopped trying. Where will we not be a hundred years from
now if today's scientists actually embraced this intelligent design idea
and began labeling the unknown as "explained as the work of God"?

An often-overlooked weakness of creationism or intelligent design
is that, even if it is true, it does not offer an explanation of anything.
It just says "god[s] did it." Okay, so how did your god do it? Evolution explains how life changes: genetic mutations, genetic drift, and
natural selection. Proponents of intelligent design, however, just say
"god" or "intelligent designer" and then act as if they have explained
everything. Saying a god did it may be an attempt to explain "who" but it does not explain "how." What if Charles Darwin just wrote
"nature did it" and left it at that? His book On the Origin of Species
would have been very short and not very enlightening.