Pros and Cons - Debbie Newman, Ben Woolgar 2014

God, existence of
Section E. Social, moral and religious

It is commonly held in educated Western culture that religious belief is irrational and unsubstantiated. But can all the great geniuses of Christianity and other religions throughout the ages have simply been mistaken, not to mention the billions of religious believers worldwide today? Some twentieth-century theologians, such as Paul Tillich, have redefined God as ’the ground of being’, in an attempt to get away from simplistic and anthropomorphic conceptions of God as a very powerful person, or even as an old man with a long beard. Does this idea of God make any sense? Can traditional conceptions of a personal, intelligent, benevolent Creator God be rejuvenated? Or is all talk of God rendered meaningless in a modern scientific world?

Pros

[1] The universe is governed by natural laws and forces that seem to be the product of an intelligent mind.That mind is God, who created the universe.This fact of the universe’s dependence on God is expressed in the Genesis myth of the Jewish and Christian traditions, and in other myths around the world.

[2] Unlike other animals, we are moral beings with consciences. This is because we were created by God, who is a moral being who set down the moral as well as the natural law.

[3] Around 40 per cent of people in Britain report having had a ’religious experience’ of some kind in which they were aware of a power greater than themselves or of a supernatural personal being. People have had such experiences throughout history of the ’numinous’, the ’sublime’ and the divine. It is arrogant to think that we can write off all these experiences as being entirely mistaken.

[4] The fact that there are saints in the world capable of supreme charity, devotion and healing (such as the late Mother Teresa of Calcutta) reveals that there is a source of ultimate love to which humans have access (God) and which can triumph over human evil and selfishness. Evil in the world is a result of human disobedience to God, as symbolised in the story of the Fall of Adam and Eve from their original state of innocence. Natural suffering, such as famine, is a sign that the world may be disobedient, but it is also free. God’s love and forgiveness could make no sense in a world without freedom for humanity and for nature.

[5] The universe, like everything else, must have a meaning, purpose and destiny. It is God who provides and guarantees that meaning and purpose to the universe and to individual people. The universe and humanity can be redeemed in the end by the love of God. There is objective meaning and redemption above individual human lives — there is a greater cosmic process of which we can have intimations through belief in God.

Cons

[1] We do not need God to explain natural laws and forces — they would simply have to exist for us to be here at all and for there to be a universe. The fact that we find laws and forces should not, therefore, be a source of surprise.The universe being a ’brute fact’ that we cannot explain is a more intellectually honest answer than inventing a supernatural Creator.

[2] Moral rules are created by human communities so that people can live harmoniously with one another. They vary from culture to culture and are merely human constructions. It is a mistake to take moral feelings — the result of the moral rules set down by a group of people — to be the result of the existence of something supernatural.

[3] Such feelings and experiences can be explained in terms of natural psychological needs and of brain processes. It is no coincidence that Christians, but not Buddhists, have religious visions of Christ or of the Virgin Mary. These experiences are the product of religious teaching and often also of sensory deprivation: use of drugs, sleep deprivation, fasting, meditation or other deliberately mind-altering practices.

[4] Human beings are so selfish and, often, evil in their dealings with nature and each other, that it is impossible to believe that a loving God exists. Why would a loving God allow the sexual abuse of children, the starvation of innocents in Africa or the Nazi Holocaust? On top of the evil perpetrated by humans there is the suffering of animals in nature and that of people in natural disasters such as famines, earthquakes and floods. The natural world as much as the human world reveals indifference and evil as much as goodness or divinity.

[5] The universe is ultimately meaningless. We have limited mental powers and there is no rational way for us to find meaning in the ’brute fact’ of the universe’s existence. Also, the strong link made by modern brain science between what used to be called the ’soul’ and the brain makes it impossible that we could exist in any form after our death.

Possible motions

This House believes that God is not dead.

This House believes that God created the world.

This House believes in God.

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