Defence of Christianity

Conversation 21, Socrates Worldview 16/22

ADEIMANTUS. Socrates, now that our coffees have arrived, I would like to ask you a few questions about your belief in Christianity.

EUTHYDEMUS. And I’m puzzled about whether you believe or do not believe.

SOCRATES. What about you, Critobulus? Do you have questions too?

CRITOBULUS. You have started me thinking, Socrates, but I need to sort out my own thoughts before I can articulate any questions. I’m content to listen.

S. Fire away, Adeimantus.

A. You go first, Euthydemus.

E. Well Socrates, do you really believe in God, or do you have doubts?

S. Let me turn the question back on you, Euthydemus. Do you ever have doubts about God?

E. Never! My faith is rock-solid. I don’t allow myself to entertain doubts.

S. If you feel a doubt coming on, you dismiss it from your mind?

E. Exactly!

S. So, you admit that you do sometimes feel a doubt coming on, but you keep it down and push it away?

E. Yes.

S. Then in your case I would feel some sympathy with W. K. Clifford, to whom I was previously rather savage¹, when he said of a person like you, ‘the life of that man is one long sin against mankind.’ (Grayling 2013, Ch. 6)

E. Are you serious, Socrates? How can you say that it is a sin to dismiss doubts?

S. Do you believe, Euthydemus, that someone caught in adultery should be put to death?

E. Well, no.

S. But doesn’t the Bible prescribe that punishment for adultery? (The New Jerusalem Bible 1985, Leviticus 20:10)

E. Yes, but Jesus reinterpreted laws like that.

S. Other people, numbering in millions if not billions, have in their sacred book laws like that, and they are less inclined to overlook them. Are you saying they are wrong?

E. You are talking about Muslims. Yes, I believe they are wrong.

S. You are saying that you are right and they are wrong, that you suppress your doubts, but Muslims should entertain any doubts they may have.

E. I suppose I am saying that.

S. What evidence can you produce that you are right and the Muslims are wrong?

E. We have the Bible, the Word of God.

S. The Muslims have the Koran, which they also consider to be the Wod of God. That will not do, Euthydemus. This is the kind of question where the only evidence that will suffice is rational evidence, by which I mean scientific evidence, as we have discussed at length previously.² Can you produce scientific proof that the Bible is right and the Koran is wrong?

E. Probably not, but ….

S. No buts, Euthydemus! There are good reasons for adopting Christianity as your guide in life, just as I am sure the Muslims have good reasons for adopting Islam as their creed, but that doesn’t make either of them right or wrong. Have I not said many times that such choices are irrational? They are preferences not subject to rational proof, just as the atheists prefer not to believe in any God.

E. Here I was thinking you were on my side.

S. I have once or twice commended your understanding of the Christian faith, Euthydemus, but today I prefer Critobulus who has confessed that he needs to examine his thoughts. Doubt is among the most valuable of human feelings. It is the one thing that prevents us from causing immense harm by imposing our ideas on other people. Because of doubt, you have no right to use force to impose your beliefs. The only force you can use is the force of argument. A forced conversion is no conversion. I certainly agree with the humanists on that point. So, don’t be afraid to doubt.

A. But aren’t people looking to religion for certainty, Socrates?

S. A ‘progressive’ actress was recently reported as saying that people sought certainty from religion. A few might, but most in my experience value their religion for providing a comprehensive worldview, one that has been tested in the fires of centuries and provides a cohesive moral framework. What does appal religious people is the mishmash of competing ‘rights’ and claims we get from humanists and cynics. For religious people, the great counterweight to doubt and uncertainty is hope. They can live with doubt and uncertainty as long as they have hope, and enchantment is a great source of hope.

A. Hope and doubt are feelings. Can we return to an intellectual discussion for a minute?

S. Believing in God is more like a relationship than an intellectual exercise. The humanists don't want a relationship with God, they prefer one with themselves. They are great admirers of their own intellect.

A. Are you not an admirer of your own intellect, Socrates?

S. The humanists are proud of what they know, Adeimantus. I’m more interested in what I don't know.

E. You don’t seem very humble this morning, Socrates.

S. Our current pope, Francis, said, ‘One cannot be humble without having suffered humiliation.’ What do you think of that?

A. Have you ever been humiliated, Socrates?

S. Not publicly, Adeimantus, although on a few occasions people have attempted to humiliate me. Since I am already humble, it is difficult for anyone to bring me lower. My self-esteem does not depend much on what anyone thinks of me, so is fairly robust. But I have, once or twice, been humiliated in front of myself when I discovered that I had overrated myself. I know the feeling.

A. Here we are with feelings again! You’ve talked about belief in terms of mystery and enchantment. I wanted to ask how you, as a scientist and practising Catholic, relate to ritual, dogma, theology, and all that stuff that seems close to superstition.

S. Ritual is easy. Have I not said on more than one occasion, ‘The purpose of art is to express the inexplicable’? Someone said that. Well, the purpose of ritual is to experience the inexpressible. I said that. Religious ritual is, in a way, performance art. It follows that philosophy, rationalism, and logic have nothing to say about ritual, except as a topic for anthropology.

A. So, would you say that the Catholic mass is like a play, with all that pomp and costumery?

S. Yes, a play that always has the same cast. It is a play that is designed to sensitise us to the moment when, in the most concentrated and intense way, the mundane material world meets the transcendent spiritual world. The mass has many levels and threads of symbolism which I am not going to attempt to describe today. Like anything that is endlessly repeated, even the mass can lose meaning and become bland, and then when you least expect it, you can be drawn into that mysterious vortex and intense closeness to the spiritual.

E. Do you really believe in transubstantiation?

S. To enlighten Critobulus, transubstantiation is a philosophical description of the process by which, at the mass, the bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ. What is your view, Euthydemus?

E. I don’t believe in transubstantiation. For me, the eucharist is just a memorial service for the crucifixion of Jesus.

S. I believe the eucharist is more than that, but please allow me to defer my explanation for a moment, because like prayer and miracles it relates to the possibility of interaction between the physical and the spiritual worlds, and I want to talk about this in a minute.

A. What about Christian dogma, you know, the virgin birth, the immaculate conception, the resurrection, and all that?

S. Some articles of faith, or dogma if you like, are on the sidelines of Jesus’ mission to bring all people to holiness and thereby into the kingdom of God. I class the virgin birth and the immaculate conception in the sideline category. They pale into insignificance compared to the resurrection, which is utterly central to Christianity. Saint Paul said, ‘if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is without substance, and so is your faith’ (The New Jerusalem Bible 1985, 1 Corinthians 15:14). Any Christian who cannot accept the resurrection might as well throw away their bible and join the humanists. And any Christian who can accept the resurrection can accept the lesser articles of faith as well, since they do not conflict with the central themes of the faith. While labelling them lesser, I am not saying they are inconsequential. The doctrine of the immaculate conception, for example, is closely connected with several apparitions of Mary during the last two centuries. Whether or not you accept these apparitions as reality, you cannot deny that they have influenced a great many people.

A. I don’t deny that, Socrates, but how can you reconcile the resurrection with science?

S. Thank you for bringing us to the heart of this discussion, Adeimantus. Firstly, let me say that I accept the testimony of those witnesses, Jesus’ disciples, who experienced something truly transformative. They believed Jesus had been with them, in some way, after his death. Now, how do I reconcile that with science? The short answer is that I don’t. For a start, we don’t know precisely what science would have to explain. Was it the actual body of Jesus the disciples saw, the one he had before his death, the same arrangement of the same atoms? But even if we did know the details, I don’t think science could explain the resurrection. I would say, however, that the resurrection does not violate anything we know scientifically. How can this be? Well, there are things going on the in the physical universe that science cannot explain. Am I going paranormal? No, not at all. And I am not just talking about little gaps in scientific knowledge that I hope to hide God in. I am talking about something all-pervasive and fundamental. But let me plead for another stay of execution until we come to discuss prayer and miracles, since that will save me from going over the same territory twice.

A. Very well Socrates, but I can’t let you go without asking how you explain the problem of evil, the presence of suffering in the world.

S. Anyone who has spent more than a few years in this troublesome world will know of the unspeakable evil that people can inflict on others. And then there are natural calamities that claim people’s lives. With regard to natural calamities, I believe that God does not interfere with the running of his own laws of nature, the laws that govern the physical world, the laws that cause the sun to shine, the rain to fall, crops to grow, and also cause rocks to fall on us and rivers to rise and drown us. We all die sooner or later, and it is distressing when a loved one dies young. Only the soul can live forever, and it is the soul that matters. Let me quote from the bible: ‘But the souls of the upright are in the hands of God, no torment can touch them. To the unenlightened, they appear to die, their departure was regarded as a disaster, their leaving us like an annihilation, but they are at peace. If, as it seemed to us, they suffered punishment, their hope was rich with immortality; slight was their correction, great will their blessings be.’ (The New Jerusalem Bible 1985, Wisdom 3:1-5) This was the way Job accepted his suffering in the Bible, and such is my hope. It is best not to get wrapped around philosophical axles like the problem of evil. I take a more ‘operational’ approach – something that works in practice rather than logical niceties. I prefer to see God not as the cause of the problem of evil, but as the solution.

A. Can theology help us in such cases, Socrates?

S. Yes and no. My view of theology is that it’s like mathematics. Mathematics is a way of exploring different ways of saying the same thing about abstract structures. It is about rearranging words to give you different ways a looking at a thing. It does not discover new facts about the universe. Theology does not tell us anything new about God, but it helps us to see the many things we know about God as one coherent whole. It can help us to understand God and to reconcile apparently divergent aspects of God, but it is no substitute for the relationship, which is about heart as much as head.

C. Would you say that Christians are superstitious?

S. Some are. The significance of rituals can be lost over time, and then they descend to superstition. Take crossing yourself with holy water, for example. This ritual was commonplace where Petal grew up. In those days, houses had a holy water font beside the front door, and you blessed yourself with the holy water every time you went out.

C. Obviously a belief in the magic powers of holy water.

S. Perhaps many people thought of it that way, Critobulus, but many others would have regarded the ritual more as what we would describe these days as a call to mindfulness. In particular, they would be reminding themselves of their dependence on God, of their own lack of knowledge about what they day might hold for them, of their obligation to respond in a Christian way to whatever might come their way, or their obligation to treat whomever they might meet with charity and compassion, and so on. In this sense, it is a kind of prayer.

A. So, you have brought us to prayer, Socrates. Is now the time to discuss prayer, miracles, transubstantiation, and the resurrection in relation to science?

S. Indeed, Adeimantus, I will delay no longer. I will begin with prayer.

E. Do you pray then, Socrates?

S. All the time, Euthydemus. Show me someone who doesn’t pray.

C. Surely atheists don’t pray.

S. I think they do, Critobulus. It’s just that they pray to gods they don’t recognise. Prayer is the most natural of human activities. Of course, if there really is no spiritual world, then I might be praying to an idea of mine, to that conceptual person I call God. In that case, my prayer would be no different from meditation, or a mindfulness session, or a conversation with my imaginary friend. I might derive some benefit from doing it, but I couldn’t expect it to change anything except my own attitude. In fact, I do hope prayer is effective, that God hears and answers in whatever way he thinks best.

C. I have heard humanists say that prayer is just a lazy way of dealing with your problems, and you should be using your skills and energy instead.

S. Let me quote Saint Paul from memory. He said, ‘There is no need to worry; but if there is anything you need, pray for it, asking God for it with prayer and thanksgiving, and that peace of God, which is so much greater than we can understand, will guard your hearts and your thoughts, in Christ Jesus.’ (The New Jerusalem Bible 1985, Philippians 4:6-9) Now, nobody could accuse Saint Paul with being lazy. He devoted all his energy and his considerable talents to spreading the gospel. So did Jesus himself, who spent much time in prayer. Saint Paul is saying, ‘do everything you can, and then pray for what it is beyond your powers to do’. He says this because there are always things that are beyond our powers and, if we expect prayer to be heard, then we should pray for them.

A. Socrates, you are still avoiding the issue of what physics has to say about prayer.

S. Well, there is so much I could say about prayer and about the other topics we have raised. The common factor about prayer, miracles, the transubstantiation, and the resurrection is that in these phenomena the physical world, which our material bodies inhabit, must interact with the spiritual world. Now, what I have been calling the spiritual world could be an extension of the physical world into a domain where we cannot enter. We are used to the idea that science applies to the whole of the physical world, but as I said yesterday and repeated a few minutes ago, there is a domain where science cannot go, and that is the quantum world. Every physicist should know this, but few are prepared to concede it. Quantum mechanics, the sub-discipline of physics we must use when describing things and events at the atomic and subatomic scale, only tells us about the probability that certain observable events will occur. Quantum mechanics cannot tell us with certainty what will occur, because there are processes going on at a smaller scale that we can never see. I mean never in principle. That world is forever beyond our reach.

A. But can processes going on at such a tiny scale have any influence on the world we live in?

S. Perhaps they could, but we will never be able to say how. There are some things we do know. We know that every part of space is connected to every other part, not by ‘telephone wires’ and signals that travel along them at some speed, by instantaneously, as if everything was at the same place. And it’s quite feasible that the world of three dimensions we inhabit is an illusion and that there are only really two dimensions. Furthermore, the linear flow of time may be an illusion as well.

A. It sounds like you are grasping for a way out, Socrates.

S. As I said, with your permission, I will spend two or three of our future conversations fleshing out these ideas, Adeimantus. It’s not that I am looking for a way out, but that the world we think we know is not as it seems, and this gives the possibility for things that science cannot deal with to happen.

A. Do you mean that there are events in the macroscopic world that violate the laws of science?

S. No, I didn’t mean to give that impression, Adeimantus. Suppose something miraculous happens. Let me give an imaginary example. I am staggering, famished with starvation, through a forest when an egg falls at my feet. I eat it and have just enough strength to make my way to civilization. If I examined CCTV footage of the falling egg, I would see nothing that violated the laws of physics. It just happened that the bird was shuffling around its nest and happened to dislodge the egg just as I was passing. It appears to me as a miracle because it’s an uncommon event which occurred just when I needed it. It is the coincidence of the egg falling and my need that is so improbable as to appear miraculous. Now, how can I prove that God did not hear my prayer for help and arrange for the egg to fall?

C. It would have been a proper miracle if a three-course dinner had appeared before you.

S. True, Critobulus, but perhaps God knows that a three-course meal would have been too much for my weakened stomach.

A. Stick to the point, Socrates!

S. I jest, Adeimantus. Of course, the molecules in the egg are vibrating and it is not impossible, although it is fantastically improbable, that they could have for one instant all moved in the same direction and caused the egg to topple. If I were indeed starving, I would be unwise to stand around waiting for that to happen. But with divine intervention, who knows? The more delicately the egg was poised at the edge of the nest, the fewer molecules would need to move in unison to topple it, and the less improbable that outcome would be. So apparently miraculous behaviour is more likely where an instability exists. Perhaps a much more unstable state is in the brain of the bird. Just a few neurons need to fire to make the leg of the bird twitch and dislodge the teetering egg. Maybe God works on brains.

A. So you can only have little miracles, not big ones?

S. If you were praying for it not to rain at three o’clock in the afternoon in the monsoon season on the day of your daughter’s wedding, Adeimantus, you might be asking a lot of God. Firstly, you would have to suppose that he listens to you, and also that he rates your need higher than the needs of those who are relying on the rain. But also, you would be asking for God to arrange the movements of a colossal number of molecules of air and water in the special way you require.

A. Do you think I would be asking too much of God.

S. As Saint Paul said, ask for whatever you need. Atmospheric instability could work in your favour. It has been said that because of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which I will elaborate on in our forthcoming discussion of quantum mechanics, the monsoon atmosphere could be so unstable that the beating of a butterfly’s wings could start a hurricane. God would just have to arrange for the butterfly not to fly on the day of your daughter’s wedding.

A. As it happens, Socrates, I don’t have a daughter.

S. Neither do I, Adeimantus. But do you see my point? Miracles are not impossible, although they may be improbable. They don’t have to break the laws of physics. Science cannot prove or disprove the occurrence of a miracle. We only call it a miracle because, from our perspective, it is highly improbable.

A. I recall you said that science formulates it laws from the observation of highly repeatable processes.³ Since miracles are supposed to be singular events, not repeatable, perhaps science doesn’t apply to them. Does that give you a way out?

S. I don’t think so, Adeimantus. If we a had a recording of a purported miracle and analysed it at the molecular level, I think we would find that the molecules always obeyed the laws of physics in a repeatable way. But because there are so many molecules doing so many things, the number of possible sequences of molecular events is colossal. Any one sequence is highly improbable. Most of the sequences give ordinary outcomes, from our perspective. We only notice an improbable outcome and call it a miracle if it happens to deliver us something we wanted at the time.

A. And are you content with that view of miracles?

S. Of course, Grayling would answer that such conjunctions of microscopic events are so highly improbable that it is irrational to believe we could experience them in our lifetime, or in the lifetime of the universe for that matter.

A. What do you say?

S. The problem as I see it, Adeimantus, is that for a miracle to be an answer to prayer we need the highly improbable conjunction to happen ‘on demand’, so to speak. Something or someone, let us call it God, would have to contrive a whole series of unlikely microscopic events to bring about the miracle at the macroscopic level. We are used to thinking about God as being ‘supernatural’, that is, above everything and looking down, seeing it all. We think of God as the director of a play, looking down on we actors on the stage. But what if God is not above the large, but in the small? What if God is in the fabric of the universe, below even the level of atoms and molecules?

A. But if God is in the fabric, how does he know about a pair of trousers made of the fabric?

S. You have hit the nail on the head as usual, Adeimantus. How can a God working at the quantum level know about things that are aggregates of microscopic things working together, and which are only ‘things’ at the conceptual level in someone’s consciousness?

A. Do you have an answer?

S. I confess I do not. If I could answer that question, I would know everything. But what our future discussions will show is that the universe is a far stranger place than we all thought, and how it is impossible for us humans to know what the universe is really like. The mental model of the universe in which something like God seems so unlikely, so irrational, is an illusion. There seems to be no room for God in our customary scientific model of the universe, but actually there is plenty of room for some kind of mind that we might call God. Contrary to what Grayling says, science does not prove that God does not exist.

A. And there might be a way for God to hear and answer prayers?

S. Remember that we use our brains in prayer, and most of the things we pray for ultimately concern the actions of people, which are influenced through their brains. Maybe God finds it easy to hear prayers and answer miracles that way.

C. So are you saying that God violates our free will by manipulating our thoughts through quantum mechanics?

S. Ah ha! Got me, Critobulus. That’s a philosophical rabbit hole I’m not venturing down today. I have said all I intend to say about prayer and miracles over this cup of coffee.

A. You have given hints, Socrates, but no mechanism.

S. I thought I made it clear, Adeimantus, that it is possible that there could be a mechanism for the hearing of prayers and the performance of miracles, but if there is, then it is forever beyond our reach to know what it is. I am sorry if I’m sending you away a sadder and a wiser man.

A. Alright then, what about the transubstantiation of the bread and wine in the eucharist?

S. Transubstantiation is an old idea based on a strand of philosophy popularised by Aristotle. The idea is that the form, or shape, or structure of an object remains unchanged while the stuff it’s made from, its essence or substance, changes. So, in the case of the eucharist, transubstantiation means that the form of the bread and wine remain that of bread and wine, but the substance it’s made of changes to the body and blood of Christ. Under this concept, the appearance of the ‘hosts’ remain that of bread and wine, but the material changes. The concepts of form and substance have no basis in science. Science tells us that the appearance of an object depends on both its shape and the material it is made of. For example, an object appears red because the atoms it’s made of selectively reflect red light. The holy wine in the eucharist, I have noticed, continues to smell like wine. This is because it gives off volatile molecular compounds that come from fermented grape juice, and it continues to be made of fermented grape juice even after the consecration.

A. So, there is no change of substance, no transubstantiation?

S. Of course, the simple solution to this dilemma is to say that nothing happens. An atheist would say that the only change, if any, is in the minds of the participants. They would say that the bread and wine are merely symbols of Christ. Some Christian denominations would agree with them. But that’s not what the Catholic Church has maintained from the very beginning. When he instituted the eucharist at the Last Supper, Jesus did not say, ‘This represents my body’, or ‘This symbolises my blood’. He said, ‘This is my body’, and the apostles always understood that he really meant to be with them in this fashion. Millions of people since then have experienced the mystery, the enchantment if you like, of the presence of Jesus in the eucharist.

A. But that does not make it true. How can you, as a physicist, explain the ‘real presence’?

S. No physicist can offer a scientific explanation of the ‘real presence’. The Catholic Church teaches that Christ is present ‘whole and entire’ in the bread and the wine (Catechism of the Catholic Church n.d., para. 1377). So, if we have a consecrated wafer of bread, it has the whole of Jesus in it, not just his left foot. And if the wafer of consecrated bread is broken in two, Christ is present ‘whole and entire’ in each of the two halves, not just his little toe. What physical system does this remind you of, Adeimantus?

A. A hologram.

S. Explain for Critobulus and Euthydemus what a hologram is.

A. It is a photographic image, actually of an interference pattern, made by reflecting laser light from the object being photographed. When you look at hologram, you see a three-dimensional image of the object. As you move your head around, you can see different aspects of the object, as if it were a real object.

S. What happens to the image if I cut the hologram in half and look at the image in one half?

A. You still see the whole image, only at a lower resolution. It looks fuzzier.

S. So, in the view of the Catholic Church, the consecrated host is like a hologram in the sense that Jesus is present entirely in every bit of it, just as each bit of a hologram contains the entire image.

C. Does Jesus get fuzzier when the wafer is broken into bits?

S. My studies of Catholic doctrine have not uncovered anything on that question, Critobulus. The hologram is only an analogy which we mustn’t push too far. However, physicists have developed mathematical formulations that map the entire three-dimensional universe onto a two-dimensional surface, on which every segment contains the whole universe. They call this, by analogy, a hologram (Musser 2022). Under this mapping, every point in the universe is adjacent to every other point in the universe, even the most distant. And as I mentioned earlier, this is what quantum mechanics tells us, that the universe at the quantum level is non-local, every point is connected in some way to every other point.

A. So Jesus is a quantum hologram. Where does that leave transubstantiation?

S. I am saying that the physical universe is strange enough that the real presence of Christ, in some way, in the eucharist cannot be ruled out. It is the ‘real presence’ that the Church teaches. The word ‘transubstantiation’ was the best available description. Again, it was not meant to be pushed too far. The Church says, ‘The signs of bread and wine become, in a way surpassing understanding, the Body and Blood of Christ’ (Catechism of the Catholic Church n.d., para. 1333). ‘Surpassing understanding’ is a good way of saying that it’s beyond the reach of science in principle. That doesn’t mean it can’t happen.

E. I read somewhere that our bodies contain atoms that were once in the body of Julius Caesar.

S. I read the same in reference to Isaac Newton. I think what you are hinting at, Euthydemus, is that the wheat that the eucharistic wafer is made from could contain atoms that were once in the body of Jesus, but I don’t see the relevance of your point. For one thing, all atoms of say, carbon, are identical and there is no way of telling one that might have been in the body of Jesus from any other carbon atom. Secondly, atoms come into and go out of our bodies during our lives, so there more atoms that have been in us than are needed to make up our body at any one time. Thirdly, how can the whole of Jesus body be present in every eucharistic host at the same time. No, if the ‘real presence’ is real, as I and many others believe it is, it’s at a deeper level of the physical world than atoms.

C. Nice try, Euthydemus.

S. One thing I will say for you, Euthydemus. Just as I told you that, because of doubt, you have no right to force your beliefs on others, so I apply the same rule to myself. I believe in the real presence of Jesus at the eucharist because it fits with the whole story of Jesus’ mission in the world, and because there is no way of proving that it doesn’t happen, but I do not attempt to force anyone else to believe it.

A. You sympathise with Pascal. It might be true, and you like it, so you believe it?

S. Yes, I think Grayling was far too dismissive of Pascal (Grayling 2013, Ch. 10), but then, I don’t think Grayling was up on his physics.

A. Well then, Socrates, what do you, as a physicist, have to say about the resurrection.

S. Much the same, Adeimantus. Shall we talk about the resurrection of Jesus, since if God can raise him up, he can raise anyone up? Jesus’ disciples were convinced they had seen him in the flesh, although his resurrected body seemed different from a normal body in that it was freed from the usual constraints of space and time – some kind of projection, perhaps, from another place. As before, the simplest explanation is that the disciples saw an illusion, or were deluded, but it is hard to understand how they could have maintained the illusion and convinced so many others if they had not experienced something truly unusual. I prefer to believe the Church’s version. Let’s be clear that the Church regards the appearance of Jesus as something extraordinary. Appearances of dead people are not everyday occurrences. The Church does not believe in ghosts. In fact, what it says is that the resurrection and subsequent appearance are examples of miracles. We discussed miracles earlier, and that is all I propose to say on the subject of the resurrection.

A. Where does all this leave us on the question of whether it is rational to believe in God?

S. Let us review what rational and reasonable mean. We talked about that in one of our early discussions.⁴ Grayling’s definition of rationality is, I think, compatible with ours. In Chapter 5 of his book he says, ‘… the only propositions we are entitled to accept as premises for actions and further thought are those that it is rational to accept because they have passed the test of reason or observation or both.’ Do we agree with that?

A. Yes, but it’s a tough test. I’m not sure many people can live up to that standard all the time, even humanists.

S. I think Grayling’s ‘test of reason’ is a red herring. A proposition tested by reason, if it is about some aspect of the real world we live in, must have its basis in something that is tested by observation. So a basic proposition must, ultimately, be tested by observation. We could say it must be proven scientifically. Agree?

A. Yes.

S. Now, is there any scientific evidence for the existence of God?

A. I don’t think so.

S. I agree. Is there any scientific evidence that God does not exist?

A. I think you quoted Grayling saying that science proves that God doesn’t exist.

S. Yes, he said that science has found no need for a deity to explain what happens in the world and it is now fantastically improbable that something will be observed that requires the existence of a deity, so fantastically improbable that you would be irrational to believe in the deity.

A. But you found a loophole with your God in the fabric.

S. Call it a loophole if you like. I pointed out that there is a scale of space-time which science cannot penetrate, in principle. God could be in there and could influence everything, allowing him to bring about events at the macroscopic level that would otherwise be so improbable as to be classed as miracles.

A. And are you saying it’s rational to believe in that kind of God?

S. I’m saying it’s possible that God could exist and do the things he needs to do without breaking the laws of science, his own laws if you like. So, I’m not irrational in the sense of believing in something which is scientifically proven not to exist, but I do believe in something which is scientifically possible, but for which there is no scientific evidence. In that sense, I admit to being irrational.

A. So, you are irrational?

S. Irrational, but not mad.

A. Where does this put you relative to the humanists?

S. I admit that my irrational preference to believe in the kind of God I have described is just that, a preference. I could just as legitimately have chosen not to believe in any kind of God, and that is what the humanists do. That is their preference. I choose to base my ethics or morality, call it what you like, on Christian values, attributed to God. Humanists make up their own ethical maxims. As I have said before and will say again, their maxims are no more tested by observation than mine. They are just preferences and therefore, irrational. Humanists are also irrational, but in most cases, not mad.

C. So, we’re all irrational?

S. Quite so, Critobulus, in our choice of basic precepts. Have I convinced you, Adeimantus?

A. No, but I concede you’ve left yourself a way out with your quantum world and kept your Christian story tenuously in the realm of reason. But why would I choose to believe in Christianity in preference to secular humanism?

S. I think you are setting up a false choice, Adeimantus. I don’t have to give away any of science if I want to be a Christian. With science, we started with colliding balls and got to the conscious human. With religion, we started with the conscious human and got to God. I believe I’ve shown that, provided neither your science nor your religion makes unwarranted, and I would say unnecessary, claims, then they can coexist happily. If you want to liken the arguments I’ve given about miracles and so on, to bathwater, then I prefer my bathwater with the baby in it. Secular humanists want to throw out the bathwater, and the baby goes with it.

C. What is the baby?

S. The baby is what I’ve called enchantment, mystery if you like. It’s a matter of preference. People like me prefer to embrace mystery; your humanists prefer to avoid it as much as possible. Also with the baby is the possibility of a shared morality, one which appeals to me, and which makes possible a free and peaceful society. That’s something I would like to talk about tomorrow.

References

n.d. Catechism of the Catholic Church. 2nd Ed.

Grayling, A. C. 2013. The God Argument: The Case against Religion and for Humanism. Bloomsbury.

Musser, George. 2022. "Black Hole Mysteries Solved - Paradox Resolved." Scientific American 29-31.

1985. The New Jerusalem Bible. London: Darton, Longman, & Todd.

1. See the conversation on Objections to Humanism.

2. See the conversation Rational and Reasonable.

3. See the conversation on The Scientific Method.

4. See the conversation Rational and Reasonable.