Humanism and its Objections to Religion

Conversation 18, Socrates Worldview 13/22

SOCRATES. Now then Critobulus, are you ready to defend the humanists against my concerted attack?

CRITOBULUS. Why would I do that, Socrates? You’ve labelled me as a postmodernist, to whom humanists are only marginally better than Christians.

S. I wouldn’t have put it quite that way, Critobulus, but I concede your implied point that humanists are not as different from Christians as they like to think they are. It’s a point I will pursue at some length.

ADEIMANTUS. What have you got against humanists, Socrates? Surely there are people much more deserving of your censure.

S. I criticise the humanists because they are nearest to me in their thinking and their criticism hurts me the most. The people I most respect who are non-religious, I would loosely classify as humanists. They are for the most part good-hearted people. They are the least offensive of the atheists because they try to be ethical. The people I least respect are the cynics. They are bad-hearted people whom I prefer to have nothing to do with, except perhaps to fight against, if necessary, or to pray for, since we must love our enemies.

A. You refer to cynics in the modern sense, I suppose?

S. Quite so, Adeimantus. I mean those people who imagine that everyone is motivated solely by self-interest. They have no interest in truth and believe that the end always justifies the means. I don’t mean the Cynics of ancient Greece, who were not far removed from my great ancestor in their thinking. As for the modern kind, I would rather sit down to table any day with a rampant, but sincere, atheist than a cynic. The sincere atheist is passionate about seeking the truth, as I am myself. There is always a chance you can convert an atheist, but you can never convert a convinced cynic. I have seen more than one sincere atheist ‘fall away’ and become religious.

A. What do religious people become when they fall away?

S. You might think they become atheists, and in a sense they do, but not sincere atheists, because they give up seeking the truth. No, they become cynics. I think in most such cases, they were not sincere in their religion in the first place but saw it as a means to an end that they no longer expect to achieve via the path of religion.

C. Wasn’t it G.K. Chesterton who said that when people stop believing in God, the problem isn’t that they believe nothing, but that they will believe anything?

S. You surprise me, Critobulus! I never imagined you read Chesterton. He is reputed to have said something like that.

C. I wasn’t really reading Chesterton. The quote popped up on my computer screen when I was looking for something else.

S. Well, it’s to your credit that you remembered it.

A. Now tell us, Socrates, what have you got against humanists, given they are not cynics? Is it that they do not believe in God?

S. Let me tell you plainly, Adeimantus, it’s their insufferable condescension and conceit I can’t abide. They accuse me of being irrational because I follow a religion, yet they fail to see their own irrationality. I don’t mind if someone says my beliefs are irrational, because as I’ve explained previously, nearly all our important principles or beliefs are matters of preference and therefore irrational. But I do object if someone says my overall worldview is irrational, because that implies my reasoning is also faulty, that is, they are saying I am unreasonable. Inevitably, our principles may be irrational, and at the same time our reasoning from those principles can be correct, so our overall scheme can be called rational.

C. That sounds like a philosopher talking!

S. You have to be prepared to do some work with your brain cells here, Critobulus. When we make a decision on some question, our unconscious minds decide things and we rationalise them consciously afterwards. Now, in our conscious thinking we can apply logic to what we suppose are the principles underpinning our decisions. We can examine whether our decisions are logically consistent with our principles. If they are not, then we can justly be accused of being unreasonable. What I object to is the accusation that I am incompetent in my logical reasoning.

A. Are you, in return, accusing the humanists of being unreasonable?

S. Yes, in part, Adeimantus. I think they not only fail to see that their starting principles are as irrational as anyone else’s, but also that their logical conclusions are disputable. Their wilful conceit blinds them. I will give examples as we proceed.

C. Where do you rank postmodernists in your menagerie of foes, Socrates?

S. Your postmodernists have codified modern cynicism and practise it vigorously, Critobulus. As I said, they imagine all human behaviour is motivated by self-interest, and they lust for power over the victimised minorities, or the victimised majorities for that matter. They seek to break down all existing power structures and replace them with their own. I sense you are beginning to distance yourself from your postmodernist friends, Critobulus.

C. They were not really friends, Socrates. I only associated with them because they seemed to be winning all the arguments. Now I see that they might not be entirely wholesome.

S. There is hope for you, Critobulus. I will be happy enough if we can make a humanist of you, as long as you are not conceited.

C. So, what is a humanist, then?

S. What do you say, Adeimantus?

A. I say a humanist, these days, is someone who believes that the natural world can be understood without any reference to a deity and, furthermore, that a moral code can be derived without any reference to God. The humanist espouses the equal rights and the inherent dignity of all people and advocates for the agency of the individual against overbearing institutions. In politics, humanists favour democracy, and they seek to influence people to support what they consider to be good courses of action through reasoned debate. They suppose that most people have an inherent sense of the good and that this sense can be nurtured by sound education in literature and the arts, especially the classics. For them, every question can be settled by recourse to reason and to science.

S. Well done, Adeimantus, it appears you’ve been reading the Wikipedia again! Your definition will do us nicely for the present discussion.

EUTHYDEMUS. I must admit, there is much to like about the humanist view of the world!

S. Good to hear from you, Euthydemus! I would have expected you to be appalled by the secularism of the humanists.

E. I am appalled, Socrates, but still, their hearts seem to be in the right place, even if their minds are astray.

S. You are sharper than I thought, Euthydemus! I agree with you. For those who espouse reason above all things, the humanists are surprisingly sloppy thinkers.

A. I read that Nietzsche criticised humanism as just another religion with reason and science in the role of God.

S. Yes, Adeimantus. Nietzsche might have been a crazy mixed-up kid, but he was occasionally perceptive. I suspect the late Cardinal Pell might have described humanism using the same words he used to characterise climate activism, namely ‘a low-grade pseudo religion’.

C. So, why are humanists so against religion?

S. I would hazard a guess, Critobulus, that it goes back to the tendency of humanists to champion the individual against oppressive institutions. Back in the Renaissance, when humanism really got going, the oppressive institution of the day was, I am sorry to say, the Church. Humanists got into the habit of opposing the Church and they are still at it today. Of course, the atrocities committed by present-day religious extremists reflect badly on religions generally in the uncritical mind. We must look at this point, and the problem of historical abuse in the Church, and will do so as we go on today. So, I am saying that attacking religion is a kind of automatic habit for humanists. One can only wish they would apply the same energy to speaking up against the multitude of other oppressive regimes that abound these days, and against the postmodernists who would oppress us all in our own society.

A. But how do the humanists justify their antipathy to religion?

S. We have been talking about humanism in a general way. We need to look at their arguments more specifically. There is no universally accepted humanist creed, unlike Christianity for which Nicene Creed sets out the fundamental tenets. One can find humanist creeds on the internet, and slogans like ‘Good without a God’, but there are many variants. So, in criticising humanism, one is looking at a varied and moving target. We can focus our discussion by taking the book ‘The God Argument’ by Professor A. C. Grayling as our text on humanism (Grayling 2013). His subtitle is ‘The Case against Religion and for Humanism’. The first part of the book argues against religion, while the second part advances arguments for humanism. Shall we begin by looking at the humanists’ arguments against religion?

C. Let’s get on with it, then!

S. Very well then, Critobulus. Summarising Grayling loosely, the humanists’ main objections to religion are these: (1) The philosophical proofs of the existence of God are wrong; (2) It is irrational to believe in God; (3) The concept of God is just a human invention; (4) Religions are just a grab for power. Where shall we begin?

C. How about starting with Number 1?

S. Good idea. Objections 1 and 2 are about rejecting the existence of God as a metaphysical proposition.

E. What does ‘metaphysical’ mean, Socrates?

S. These days, it means many things to many people, Euthydemus, but being a simple soul, I use it in the sense the ancients, including my ancestor, would have understood, namely: ‘“being as such” or “the first causes of things” or “things that do not change”’ (van Inwagen, Sullivan and Bernstein 2023). I use it particularly to refer to arguments about whether a thing exists and the nature of its existence. Will that do?

E. I get it.

S. Humanists like Grayling, who was a professional philosopher, think religion is what you get when you are bad at philosophy. They think the first mistake religious people make is to come to the wrong answer to the metaphysical question of whether God exists or not. These philosophers reject the existence of God, and they think that this rejection invalidates all of religion, not understanding that the human conception of God as a person encapsulates centuries of refined wisdom about human nature. This is why I accused them previously¹ of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, not that I intend to liken God to bathwater!

C. Stay calm, Socrates!

S. Thank you, Critobulus. Where was I? Yes, the philosophical arguments for the existence of God. I rather think humanists would say that the default assumption should be that there’s no God and that it’s up to those who believe in God to prove his existence. Indeed, in the Middle Ages some philosophers got the idea that they could prove the existence of God by logical arguments.

A. Didn’t Saint Paul do battle with the Greek philosophers?

S. Indeed, Adeimantus. Saint Paul had explicitly rejected philosophy as a basis for faith (The New Jerusalem Bible 1985, 1 Corrinthians 1:17-31). Nearly all believers relied on historical testimony transmitted through the Church, or on a response to inner yearnings, as their basis for faith. But with the rise of science and the apparent triumph of rationality, philosophers perceived a need to reconcile faith with rationality, and they came up with these ‘proofs’. So, Grayling’s first assault on religion is to dispose of the classical arguments for the existence of God.

C. Just to be thorough!

S. Indeed! Grayling makes the point that most people who are disposed to believe in God probably don’t need these proofs to convince them, but they take comfort from the support these arguments appear to give to their belief. I agree with him. As I have said a number of times already, the choice to believe is a preference, and therefore it precedes reason. Rationalisation comes afterwards. A supporting argument might strengthen one’s conviction, and an opposing argument might weaken one’s conviction, even to the point of leading to a change of preference. So, the arguments are not unimportant, even though they are all wrong, as Professor Grayling has done us the service of setting out clearly. But now, what are these arguments?

A. The First Cause Argument (also called the Cosmological Argument), the Ontological Argument, the Argument from Design (also called the Teleological Argument), and maybe a few others.

S. You are on fire this morning, Adeimantus! My question was intended to be rhetorical, but I thank you for your list, anyway. To give you the flavour of these argument, I will parody, if you don’t mind, the Ontological Argument.

C. I don’t mind at all Socrates.

S. Very well. Suppose I wanted to prove the existence of elephants. I could proceed like this. All mammals have noses. There must exist a mammal that has the longest nose. The elephant is the mammal that has the longest nose. Therefore, elephants must exist! Do you see the problem with this argument?

A. You have to know about elephants before you start, and you wouldn’t know about elephants if they didn’t exist, so you are assuming what you are trying to prove. Your argument is circular.

S. Yes, Adeimantus. Suppose I had never heard of elephants, but I knew of the existence of the tapir, which has quite a long nose, but not as long as an elephant. I might suppose that my argument proved the existence of tapirs. So, the outcome of my argument depends on what I already know.

C. So it seems.

S. Actually, the Ontological Argument is a little more subtle, and now the elephant analogy fails me, so I will have to talk about God. The argument continues like this. Perhaps God is only a figment of my imagination. But God is the most perfect being, and a God that exists in reality as well as in my mind would be more perfect than a God who is just in my mind, therefore God really exists. Are you convinced now?

C. How could anyone fall for such nonsense?

S. Saint Anselm of Canterbury must have perceived the truth of this argument in a blinding flash of certainty. I suspect that for the rest of his life Saint Anselm struggled in vain to recapture that sense of certainty. What about you, Euthydemus, does your faith rely on the Ontological Argument?

E. No Socrates, before today I had never heard of the Ontological Argument.

S. As I expected, Euthydemus.

C. What about the Cosmological Argument? The name is impressive.

S. The name ‘First Cause Argument’ is more indicative of what it’s about. It goes like this, quite simply: everything that exists has a cause which also exists, the universe (or cosmos) exists, therefore the universe has a cause which we call God, so God exists.

E. That works for me. What’s the problem with it?

S. Well, for a start Euthydemus, it’s not at all obvious that the entire universe can be broken down into causes and effects. It’s just a lot of stuff interacting with itself, and what we humans decide to identify as effects and what we choose to call causes is just an arbitrary call we make. But putting these qualms aside, the simple answer is that if God exists and doesn’t need a cause, why can’t the universe just exist without a cause?

E. Again, Socrates, my faith doesn’t rely on the First Cause Argument.

S. Is there any argument for God’s existence that you favour?

E. I am rather convinced by the Argument from Design. I believe the universe was designed by an intelligent being, and that being is God.

S. I myself am rather fond of the Argument from Design, since my great ancestor is the first person known to have expounded it (Xenophon 2013, Memorabilia, Book I, Chapter 4). But at the risk of unsettling your faith, Euthydemus, I have to say that I believe the design evident in the universe only proves the existence of a design process. I don’t believe it proves the existence of God. In an earlier conversation² I talked about how the scientific explanation of evolution describes a design process that can account for what we see in the world, apparently with no need for God in its operation.

A. What about the idea that evolution seems to be progressing towards perfection, or at least greater good. Doesn’t that suggest there is a moral force behind it?

S. The thought that humanity is the peak and goal of evolution just reflects our human-centric perspective, Adeimantus. That perspective is open to sudden change. Haven’t you noticed that many ‘progressives’ now ardently consider the human race to be a blot on creation? In any case, if God was behind evolution and aiming for perfection, why did He have to give us the tapeworm and the tick?

E. To remind us of our true status as created beings and to stop us from getting too big for our boots.

S. No, Euthydemus, you can argue around in circles like that forever and not prove anything. The central themes of religion are good and evil, or more objectively, truth and lies. These are concepts that emerge at the level of the mind, not in the atoms and molecules of the cosmos, where evolution operates. Does that worry you, Euthydemus?

E. Not particularly, Socrates. The foundation of my faith is more in my heart than in my head, and in any case, perhaps God is still involved in some deeper way than we can understand through science.

S. That is well said, Euthydemus. We will develop these themes later in our discussion today. And let us not be discouraged by the failure of these logical proofs. In the end, they are mostly just playing with words and are empty of real content, although fun to think about. If you’d like to read a concise and humorous exposition of these arguments, I recommend the little book by Klein and Cathcart (Klein and Cathcart 2018). But just because we can’t prove the need for a thing to exist, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. There’s no need for elephants to exist, yet they do. Now, what’s next?

A. The humanists’ second objection, that it’s irrational to believe in God.

S. This is a more serious challenge to the believer because no-one wants to be classified as irrational, I suppose.

C. You would have to be mad to want to be classified as irrational!

S. Well put, Critobulus, but the crux of that argument is not so much that belief in God is irrational as that Grayling asserts that science proves that God does not exist.

C. That’s a lot of ‘thats’!

S. Indeed it is, Critobulus. You try saying it without the ‘that’s’. But seriously, as a scientist, the assertion that science proves that God does not exist is one I must take very seriously. And because it’s the most important argument, I would like to defer it to last, if you don’t mind.

A. Very well then, the next objection is that God is just a human invention.

S. Yes. The objection is that God is just a human invention, and the objection that religion is just a grab for power, are Grayling saying: ‘Well if you’re mad enough to believe in religion, after all I’ve told you, I have to tell you that religion is not very nice.’

A. I’ve always thought the ‘human invention’ objection strange since humanists say there is no God and God must be a human invention, but they extol human invention.

S. Not just any human invention, Adeimantus. In Chapter 12 of his book, Grayling feels compelled to make the ‘harsh-sounding point’ that ‘all major religions derive ultimately from the superstitions of illiterate herdsmen living several thousands of years ago’. He obviously thinks that valuable thoughts can only arise in the minds of professors of philosophy.

C. Rather disingenuous, I would say.

S. You continue to surprise me, Critobulus!

C. Obviously, religions have primitive origins, but surely Grayling knows they have been subjected to rigorous refinement over many centuries by thinking people, a process of evolution you might say.

S. That’s the point I was leading to, Critobulus. The idea of God, or gods, must be nearly as ancient as the human race and is found among all races and cultures. Over centuries people have striven to discern what this God might be like. Many of their observations concern the relationship between this concept of God and mankind. If God does not really exist, then the concept must at least embody much wisdom about human nature. As such, it is surely worth more serious consideration by the humanists. This is another theme I intend to develop in a coming discussion.³

A. Why do you think Grayling is so harsh?

S. I suspect his nose is out of joint because God chose to reveal himself to illiterate herdsmen rather than to the ‘learned and wise’, to use Grayling’s phrase.

C. I’ve just thought of a proof of God’s nonexistence. I’ll call it Grayling’s proof.

S. Tell us how it goes, Critobulus.

C. If God existed, he would not have chosen to reveal himself to illiterate herdsmen rather than to the learned and wise, that is clearly absurd. He didn’t reveal himself to the learned and wise, therefore God does not exist!

S. I like it, Critobulus! And now to our final objection, that religion is a just a grab for power, the causes of wars and a host of other horrors.

A. I’ve heard many people express those views. What’s your answer, Socrates?

S. The first point I would make is that the major religions are not explicitly about earthly power. That was not so with the state religions of ancient times. The Roman religion was a state religion. The gods exhibited the power of the state, or the state embodied the power of the gods, whichever way you wanted to look at it. Christianity is very different. It extols meekness as a virtue. Leaders must be the servants of those they lead. Of course, the Christian God has power, but it is the power of the merciful judge and the authority of a loving father. No wonder Christianity appealed so radically to the powerless masses of Rome.

C. I though the Christian God was an Englishman.

S. I take your point, Critobulus. Powerful empires tend to think of themselves as godlike, as we were just saying about the Romans, and if they are Godlike, then God must be like them, they think.

A. What do you say, then, about all the religious wars.

S. I will say very firmly that only in rare cases were wars of religion about religion.

E. What do you mean, Socrates?

S. Wars are nearly always about competition for resources, or ascendency, or hegemony as some like to call it. Let’s take the example of Northern Ireland, which Grayling refers to (Grayling 2013, Ch. 3). That civil strife (it was not really a war) was usually characterised as a dispute between Christian denominations, Catholic versus Protestant.

E. Well, wasn’t it?

S. Not at all. It was about competition between the members of two communities for those things I just mentioned – access to the best jobs, to leadership roles in politics, for favoured positions in commerce, and so on. When there is competition like this for scarce advantages, people generally try to divide and conquer. They marginalise competing groups and put them out of the race, as it were, thus increasing the chances of themselves or members of their group winning the advantages. People will seize on any mark of difference to distinguish their group from their rivals. The difference might be race or colour, language, ethnicity, or culture. Or it might be religion.

C. But wasn’t the Reverend Ian Paisley always referring to the pope as the Antichrist? That sounds like a religious dispute.

S. I don’t recall the Catholic and Protestant spokesmen having serious discussions about the theological differences between Catholicism and Protestantism. Calling the Pope the Antichrist is just a rhetorical flourish designed to stoke the flames of antagonism between the opposing sides. If they had a serious discussion about theology, the ordinary people would soon have wondered what all the fuss was about, and might have drifted towards an undesirably peaceful outcome – undesirable for the vested interests of the leaders. Instead, they throw out a few glib misdirections to satisfy the ordinary people that they really are fighting a just religious cause, and to stop them thinking too much about the justice of the other side’s claims. And so it is with almost any other supposedly religious dispute you can think of.

A. What about the wars of the Reformation, Socrates? Were they not about more strictly religious issues?

S. It is true, Adeimantus, that there were serious religious questions at stake during the Reformation but, ultimately, the wars were about secular power. The Church (at the time it was the Catholic Church) has always got itself into strife when it dabbled in secular power. It never had a mandate to do so. Jesus said, ‘Mine is not a kingdom of this world’ (The New Jerusalem Bible 1985, John 18:36) and ‘Pay Caesar what belongs to Caesar’ (The New Jerusalem Bible 1985, Mark 12:17). But during the Dark Ages there was a vacuum in transnational power and the Church succumbed to the earthly temptation to fill the breech. Kings found themselves subject in some matters to the Church. As time went by, the rise of nationalism encouraged kings to challenge the Church. For example, the Pope had granted rule over the Americas to Spain and Portugal, which did not suit the ambitions of the English or the Dutch. These latter consequently challenged the legitimacy of the Church to rule on such matters. Their timing coincided happily with the growing demand for independence of thought in these countries. Indeed, the two trends were interdependent. So therefore, doctrines which emphasised the priestly authority of the Catholic Church were challenged, such as the Real Presence of Christ in the eucharist, the power to forgive sins, and the authority to interpret scripture. The Protestants denied the Real Presence, insisted that any person could petition God directly for forgiveness, and could interpret the scriptures for themselves. To facilitate these objectives, the Protestants translated the Bible into vernacular languages. Undoubtedly, many sincere people took these issues very seriously, even to the point of being willing to die for their convictions. But rest assured, whenever kings got involved, there was more at stake than esoteric questions of religion. Secular power was at stake.

A. What about clerical abuses of power closer to our own time, I mean things like sexual abuse, taking babies away from unwed mothers, and so on?

S. Abuses are liable to occur whenever there is an imbalance of power. If you look around, you will find that abuses of the type you mention are not confined to the Church. These days, you are more likely to hear about abuse by a schoolteacher or a swimming coach than by a priest or a nun. One thing I would like to say is that the recent negative publicity about abuse by members of the Catholic Church gives a very biased impression of the work of the Church. For every person abused, and for every perpetrator, there were hundreds, if not thousands, who were nurtured and helped by Church institutions and members of the Church. Most of those members, nuns and brothers, gave their service freely with no recompense other than their keep, which was often meagre. To condemn them all for the actions of a few is a grave injustice. And remember, the actions of the perpetrators were always contradictory to the constant teaching of the Church. They were, in a word, sinful.

C. But what about those infamous laundries?

S. Study the history, Critobulus, and don’t be misled by the hostile propaganda that is prevalent these days. It is easy to forget that only a generation or two ago society as a whole was much more rigid in relation to the observance of moral norms and much less tolerant of deviations from the norm. This was regrettable but understood as necessary to ensure social cohesion, and was also an economic necessity. Not everyone could afford another mouth to feed. The Church, to its shame, was often guilty of encouraging the rigorous enforcement of morals for morality’s sake, rather than teaching the compassion that Jesus would have mandated. But let’s be honest. When an unwed, pregnant girl was thrown out of her home, who was there to help her but orders of nuns who ran homes for them. The living conditions in those homes were usually basic because they had to get by on donations and any revenue they could raise. That’s why the orders sometimes ran operations like laundries for the girls to work in to earn their keep. Those places were no bed of roses for the nuns either, many of whom were not much older than girls themselves. They do not deserve condemnation for their selfless work.

A. What about the idea I’ve heard suggested that the founders of religions did so to give themselves power over other people?

S. I’ve heard such suggestions too, Adeimantus. The idea may be true of some tribal witchdoctors and Celtic bards, although I doubt if anyone can produce reliable evidence of any actual occurrence of that kind, but it’s nonsense to suggest that today’s major religions were founded that way. To suggest so displays a spectacular ignorance of those religions. Take the foundation of Judeo-Christianity as one example. Abraham, so the story goes, left Ur of the Chaldees to escape the tyranny of the state religion. He did not do so to set up a rival religion, but simply to be able to worship his own concept of God in his own way. I will not dignify your point with any further comment!

A. Fair enough, Socrates.

S. I have one more thing to say on the subject of religion and power. Our friend Grayling says (Grayling 2013, Ch. 14), ‘When people submit to systems, they are handing over to them (to those who devised them) the right to do their thinking and choosing for them.’ By ‘systems’ he mainly means religions. Let me tell you that the vast majority of the people I know who regularly attend the Catholic mass would be astonished by the suggestion that they have handed over their thinking to the priests, that is, given the priests the power to order them around. Nothing could be further from the truth, although I must say that in my experience it is a common misconception among people who criticise religion from the outside. The mass-goers of my acquaintance hold diverse political views, but they do mostly agree on a core set of moral values which are consistent with what the Church teaches. It is a fact that any of them could walk away from the Church at any moment if they chose to. The fact that they do not expresses an important truth, that they belong to the Church because they like its teachings and practices, not because anyone told them they have too.

C. Interesting Socrates, I had never looked at it that way.

S. Now it’s time we tackled the suggestion that it’s irrational to believe in God.

E. Are you going to say it is rational to believe in God?

S. No, but I am going to challenge the assertion that science proves that God doesn’t exist.

A. Did Grayling actually say that?

S. Yes, Adeimantus. At one point in his book (Grayling 2013, Ch. 10) Grayling says, ‘Pascal said that because the existence of a deity can be neither proved nor disproved (here he was mistaken; see above) by rational argument, one has to take the different course of considering the advantages and disadvantages of believing that there is a deity.’ Where he says ‘here he was mistaken; see above’ he is referring to Chapter 6 of his book, where he discusses the two types of proof. He mentions, ‘proof in a formal deductive system (demonstrative proof) and proof in the empirical setting (scientific proof). He describes demonstrative proof as being like a proof in mathematics, proceeding logically from accepted axioms. The attempted proofs of the existence of God we discussed earlier, the Ontological Argument and the First Cause Argument, would have been examples of demonstrative proofs if they had worked.

A. What did he say about scientific proof?

S. He said, ‘Proof in all other spheres of enquiry, and paradigmatically in science, consists in adducing evidence of the kind and in the quantity that makes it irrational, absurd, irresponsible or even a mark of insanity to reject the conclusion thus being supported.’ This is just what I called a proof by induction in our discussion of the scientific method.⁴ Essentially, you build up evidence pertaining to your hypothesis. If you do not find any evidence that contradicts your hypothesis and you find more and more evidence that agrees with your hypothesis, you become more confident that your hypothesis is true. You feel that the probability of finding evidence that will disprove your hypothesis is becoming smaller and smaller.

A. Can you give us an example of a scientific proof that something does not exist?

S. Certainly, Adeimantus. Suppose I wanted to prove that pink rhinoceros, or unicorns, don’t exist.

C. Don’t you mean ‘rhinoceroses’? You are talking like a South African.

E. Or ‘rhinoceri’?

S. I’ve nothing against Soth Africans, and we can discuss the plural of rhinoceros another time.

C. I believe white rhinoceros do exist.

S. So do I, but I’ve never seen one. I’m prepared to accept the testimony of other witnesses who say they’ve seen white rhinoceros. This is an example of anecdotal evidence. We need to upgrade anecdotal evidence to scientific evidence.

A. How do you do that?

S. By taking a systematic, that is to say, scientific approach. We need to establish that the probability of finding a pink rhinoceros is so low that it is reasonable to conclude that they don’t exist. We need to divide the world into areas and then search those areas in a systematic way. We can estimate the probability that we would have seen a pink rhinoceros in a search area if one had been there. If, after doing this carefully, we find the probability that we missed seeing a pink rhinoceros that was really there is very low, we are entitled to conclude that pink rhinoceros do not exist.

C. The same for unicorns?

S. Indeed.

A. By this method you can be confident that pink rhinoceros don’t exist now, and maybe did not exist in the past, but you haven’t proven that pink rhinoceros can’t exist.

S. Correct, Adeimantus. A demonstrative proof can prove that 2+2 can’t equal 5. It is inherent in the mathematical definitions of 2, 4, 5, and ‘plus’, that 2+2 must equal 4, not 5. But scientific proof of a question like the existence of a pink rhinoceros is based on historical empirical evidence. It says nothing about the mechanism by which a pink rhinoceros might appear, and nothing about the future. Who knows what genetic mutation lies slumbering that might throw up a pink rhinoceros, or even a unicorn?

A. That’s all very well, Socrates. We are prepared to accept that the non-existence of pink rhinoceros can be proven scientifically, by induction. But how does this apply to the existence of God who, by definition almost, cannot be seen?

S. I think Grayling would say that science does a fine job of explaining what we observe happening in the universe and that there has never been a need to invoke a deity to explain an observation. He would conclude that the probability of there being a deity is therefore so small that it would be irrational to believe in one.

A. And you don’t agree with Grayling’s conclusion?

S. I have sympathy with his reasoning, but I think there is a hole in his argument. Do you remember when I gave you a quick overview of the scientific explanation of the universe?⁵

A. Yes.

S. I aimed to show you that science can give a coherent explanation of pretty much everything that is observed about the universe without the need to invoke a deity?

E. Yes, but that doesn’t prove that a deity couldn’t still exist.

S. In science there is a general principle called Occam’s razor, which says that we should not assume something exists unless it’s necessary to match our observations. Science likes to keep things simple. Occam’s razor is not a law but has always been a good guide. So, science finds no need for God and, therefore, does not find any scientific reason to assume that God exists.

A. So, where is the hole in the argument?

S. Remember I said that the search for pink rhinoceros had to be done carefully and systematically to reduce the probability of missing one? Science has been looking for God in the wrong places, or to be more correct, has not found him in the places where it has looked. It has been like the drunk who looks for his lost car keys under the light of a streetlamp where he can see, even though he knows he lost them somewhere else in the dark. For the drunk to conclude that his keys don’t exist because he didn’t find them, that would be irrational!

A. But hasn’t science looked everywhere it can reach in the universe? Isn’t that what you implied in your survey of science?

S. ‘Everywhere it can reach’ are the right words, Adeimantus. I introduced quantum mechanics in my survey and said it does an excellent job of explaining the properties of atoms and molecules, and so it does. Quantum mechanics is necessary to properly describe tiny things like atoms, but quantum mechanics also tells us there is a threshold of space-time below which we cannot see what tiny things are doing. We can only predict the probabilities of outcomes. This is the hole into which we cannot see and where God could be operating.

E. Do you mean God is hiding in a tiny hole? I can’t accept that. For me, God is the lord of the universe!

S. I have spoken in crude terminology, Euthydemus. Although the things in the hole are tiny, the hole is enormous. It is everywhere and all the time. There’s plenty of room for God. To explain it properly, I am going to have to lead you through some long talks on quantum mechanics, space, and time, which I will do another time.⁶ Can you wait?

C. I guess we’ll have to.

E. Are you saying there might be pink rhinoceri at this scale of tiny things where science cannot look?

S. No, Euthydemus. Pink rhinoceros, or rhinoceros of any other colour for that matter, are macroscopic things, meaning big enough to see with the naked eye. Rhinoceros exist on the same scale as ourselves. Science has examined the workings of the universe on the macroscopic scale very thoroughly, and I would agree with its conclusion that God is not to be found at this scale. But I am suggesting that has not looked below the quantum threshold because it can’t, and God could be there. And being there, he would be ‘in touch’ with everything, everywhere, and at all times.

A. Crikey!

S. So, there we are. In short, I don’t find Grayling’s humanist arguments against religion convincing. Let’s sum up. The so-called classical proofs of God’s existence turn out to be without substance. They don’t prove or disprove anything, so we can set them aside. Next, Grayling asserts that science disproves the existence of God. I have hinted that Grayling has a limited view of what science says about the universe, and that the question is far from settled.

C. The science is not settled?

S. Exactly, Critobulus. In a few days from now I propose to flesh out some of the Christian concepts that science apparently disproves.⁷ That will expose the questions about what science really says, which I intend to examine ‘in depth’ in later conversations, as I said. As for the other arguments against religion - that religion is just a human invention or a grab for power - these are not philosophical arguments. They are about preferences, really. Grayling attempted to convince us that religion is not nice. I think we countered those arguments, and soon I will attempt to explain what attracts me to religion, or in other words, why I think religion is ‘nice’.⁸

C. That sounds like a heavy program for a chat over coffee.

S. No doubt, but you embarked on the journey, Critobulus, and we must see it through.

A. What have you got in store for tomorrow?

S. We’ve finished with humanism’s objections to religion. Tomorrow, if you can bear it, we will examine the humanists’ arguments for humanism to see if they can convince us.

E. I expect you to go at them savagely, Socrates. See you tomorrow.

References

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

Klein, Daniel, and Thomas Cathcart. 2018. I Think, Therefore I Draw: Understanding Philosophy through Cartoons. Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company.

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

van Inwagen, Peter, Meghan Sullivan, and Sara Bernstein. 2023. “Metaphysics.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Accessed April 8, 2024. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2023/entries/metaphysics.

Xenophon. 2013. The Complete Works of Xenophon. Delphi Classics Version 1. Hastings, East Sussex: Delphi Publishing Ltd.

1. See the conversation on Religion Generally.

2. See the conversation From the Big Bang to Humankind.

3. See the conversations on Christianity and Society.

4. See the conversation on The Scientific Method.

5. See the conversation on From the Big Bang to Humankind.

6. See the conversations on Quantum Mechanics, Space and Time and the Limits of Science.

7. See the conversation on Defence of Christianity.

8. See the conversation on Christianity.