Belief in God – Part 3

In summary, we can use our reason to know the following:

1. There must be one God because there had to be an Ultimate Cause outside the material universe that causes everything else.
2. God must be a spirit because He exists outside the material universe.
3. God must be infinite because He creates something (spirit, matter) out of absolutely nothing.

So how does this affect us?

The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo

Faith, Reason, and God

As we have seen, we can use our reason to know each person is a union of both spirit and matter and that each of us has a spiritual soul. We can also use our reason to know only an infinite spirit God has the power to create spirit and matter from nothing. Therefore, there must be one infinite spirit God- our Creator- because our spiritual souls (as well as the material universe) are proof of His existence.

Because the human soul is a spirit- and spirit is immortal- we know there is more to existence than just matter and the human soul will continue to exist after death. This fact, I think, should motivate us to use our reason to ask the bigger questions about life and to seek the truth about what happens to our souls after we die.

To deny spirit is to reject reason; but to believe in spirit is to embrace reason and, ultimately, belief in God who Christians believe is the ultimate truth we all seek.

The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for. 1

Faith in God- though itself reasonable- does not require reason. However, as Catholics, we believe faith without reason is a blind faith that can inhibit reason and thus lead to serious error.

Faith without reason withers into myth or superstition. Deprived of reason, faith is left with only feelings and experience. It loses its universality. 2

For Catholics, then, belief in God is more than a feeling. It is (in cooperation with divine grace) a rational human response.

What moves us to believe is not the fact that revealed truths appear as true and intelligible in the light of our natural reason: we believe “because of the authority of God himself who reveals them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived.” So that “the submission of our faith might nevertheless be in accordance with reason, God willed that external proofs of his Revelation should be joined to the internal helps of the Holy Spirit.” Thus the miracles of Christ and the saints, prophecies, the Church’s growth and holiness, and her fruitfulness and stability “are the most certain signs of divine Revelation, adapted to the intelligence of all”; they are “motives of credibility (motiva credibilitatis) which show that the assent of faith is “by no means a blind impulse of the mind.” 3

Galileo Galilei Showing the Doge of Venice How to Use the Telescope by Giuseppe Bertini

Refuting the New Atheists

Atheists are on the attack. Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great have become best-sellers. Sometimes called the “New Atheists,”  these authors claim that belief in God is irrational and that religion is destructive. 

How do we answer the New Atheists? We should note that the New Atheists are saying nothing new. They are simply rewarming the same objections that have been raised, and answered, for centuries. Many excellent books answer the particular claims of the New Atheists in detail. But in general, we can answer atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens by showing how they misuse science and misrepresent Christianity.

Are Science and Religion at War?

The New Atheists promote the idea that religion and science are at war. They claim faith and reason are fundamentally incompatible. That would certainly surprise leading scientists throughout history- including Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Boyle, Newton, Pascal, Harvey, Faraday, Joule, Kelvin, Pasteur, Maxwell, Planck, and Mendel- all of whom were Christian.

The New Atheists depict Christians as ignorant, superstitious, and opposed to scientific inquiry. But it was Christianity that invented modern science and Christians who produced many of science’s greatest achievements. Modern science took root and flourished in a Christian culture that believed the order and rationality of the physical universe reflected the order and rationality of God. Christianity is not opposed to science, nor is faith opposed to reason. They work hand in hand.

Both atheists and believers see that the universe is orderly and rational. Both conduct scientific inquiry based on this truth. But while atheists take the order and rationality of the universe for granted, believers pursue the question of why the universe is this way. They conclude that the truths of the material world are not the product of chance, but of God who is the ultimate truth. 

Sir Issac Newton (1643 – 1727), one of the greatest scientists in history, saw his discoveries as revealing God’s intelligent design: “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.”

Isaac Newton

Limitations of the New Atheists' World View

In place of God and religion, the New Atheists champion materialism, evolution, and science. But materialism, evolution, and science have considerable limitations. (For more about materialism, see my previous apologetics post Spirit, Matter, and the Spiritiuality of the Human Soul).

Charles Darwin

Limitations of Evolution

As a scientific theory, evolution by natural selection has been extremely successful in explaining the genetic similarities between all living things. It can also account for the amazing diversity both within species and between species. 

But evolution doesn’t explain everything about life. It cannot, for example, explain the origin of life. Evolution can explain how living things transform, but it tells us nothing new about how life started in the first place. Evolution cannot explain human consciousness, our ability to perceive and understand the world around us. Nor can evolution explain human morality, our moral obligation to do what’s right even when it’s against our self-interest. Evolution is limited to biological changes, leaving untouched the more interesting questions about the origins of life, consciousness, and morality. 

Furthermore, nothing in evolution is incompatible with belief in God. Evolution could have been the mode by which God executed His design. He could have created directly or indirectly, instantly or slowly. He could have produced species by an external command or given them an interior power to change. Either way, God is still the ultimate cause.    

“If evolution simply means that a positive thing called an ape turned very slowly into a positive thing called a man, then it is stingless for the most orthodox; for a personal God might just as well do things slowly as quickly, especially if, like the Christian God, he were outside time. 

– G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy 

G.K. Chesterton

Limitations of Science

Science is the study and explanation of the physical world, based on observation and experimentation. Scientific discoveries and achievements have been astonishing. 

But the tremendous success of science shouldn’t blind us to its limitations. By its nature, science only studies the observable universe. Science cannot study non-physical realities. Science has nothing to say about immaterial ideas (how long is the idea of justice? how much does it weigh?) or spiritual realities like angels, grace, or God. Science can’t disprove spiritual or immaterial things because science only studies physical things. We cannot see God with either an electron microscope or the Hubble telescope. A good scientist knows what things are outside his field of study. 

Science itself depends on non-scientific truths. Science cannot tell us why the universe is rational and accessible to the human mind. Science cannot tell us why the universe is consistent and obeys fixed laws. Only philosophy and theology can give us these answers. And yet the truth that the universe is rational and orderly is the foundation of all science. True science must avoid materialism, which destroys the possibility of reason and thus, science. The great power of scientific tools to discover truth shouldn’t dazzle us into thinking they are the only tools to discover truth. 4

The Hubble telescope

Conclusion

Man’s belief in God is a rational response to the question of human existence. The more we learn about the material universe and our own existence the more we see God must exist.

For Catholics, to deny God’s existence is to deny reason. In fact, based on the evidence, it is atheism- not Christianity- that seems to require the greatest leap of faith, and we must ask ourselves: what is the real motivation of an atheist who denies the existence of God?

If I were discussing belief in God with a skeptic or an unbeliever then I would ask him or her the following two questions. First, would a belief in God require you to change the way you are currently living your life? And second, is your disbelief in God the result of honest, reasonable inquiry and a quest for truth; or is your disbelief in God simply based on your own self-interest?

Let me be clear: no one can or should be compelled- through faith or reason or anything else- to believe in God. I only hope I have at least shown that belief in God is reasonable and the Catholic faith is not contrary to reason.

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1 Catechism of the Catholic Church (Città del Vaticano, Libreria Editrice Vatican, 1994)
2 John E. Fagan, “Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason)”. from The Teachings of Pope John Paul II: Summaries of Papal Documents (New York: Scepter Publishers, 2005)
3 Catechism of the Catholic Church (Città del Vaticano, Libreria Editrice Vatican, 1994)