Ross Douthat Makes The Case For Finding Faith

Is the evidence for God’s existence weak? Well, a new book by New York Times columnist Ross Douthat argues otherwise. In Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious, Douthat maintains not only that everyone should take God seriously, but that doing so is more rational than the alternative.

Marshalling insights from science and philosophy, to Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) and psychedelic trips, to mystical encounters and the collective wisdom of human cultures past and present — including the converging testimony of major world religions — Douthat lucidly reasons that theism rather than atheism has “the better case by far for being true.”

To begin, he considers various lines of evidence from modern science, including the so-called “anthropic coincidences” discovered by contemporary physics. These coincidences show that, despite enormously improbable odds, the fundamental forces of the universe fall within the vanishingly narrow range necessary for life. To appreciate just how slim this range is, Douthat cites physicist Stephen M. Barr, who gives the following example:

“The cosmological constant, which governs the speed at which our universe expands, sits in a range that has roughly 1 in 10 to the 120th power chance of occurring randomly. That range is essential to prevent both a flying apart and a swift collapse [of the universe], both of which would have doomed the development of anything like life.” Alternatively, the nuclear force, which binds protons and neutrons inside atoms, is so delicately balanced that if it were “just fractionally stronger — a ‘fraction’ that can be represented by the equivalent of moving less than one inch on a ruler the size of the universe itself — it would have eliminated all of the hydrogen atoms in the very earliest phase of the universe; no hydrogen, no water; no water, no us.”

While these and other “anthropic coincides” multiply exponentially the unimaginable improbability of life in our universe, atheists sometimes concede these dizzying odds but retort that, for all we know there are an infinite number of universes — or a “multiverse” — the vast majority of which are cold, dark and dead, and that we simply happen to have won the cosmic lottery. After all, if every conceivable universe exists, is it really surprising that one of them — ours — contains the requisite conditions for life?

Whatever one thinks of this possibility, it is worth noting that it constitutes not merely a theory, but a theory which cannot in principle be tested, since we have no way of accessing these “possible” universes. Furthermore, instead of eliminating theoretical entities and simplifying our explanation of things as scientific advancement typically does, the multiverse hypothesis increases them dramatically (infinitely, in fact).

As Douthat wryly remarks:

“…To avoid the mind-preceding-matter immaterialism [i.e. theism] suggested by the universe’s apparent fine-tuning…it [the multiverse hypothesis] posits an infinite system that by definition cannot ever be studied from within our material existence. Far from imitating the original discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo, whose clarifying specificity swept away a whole edifice of hypotheticals, the multiverse conceit bears a closer resemblance to the various attempts to save the older Ptolemaic system—by adding cycles within cycles, wheels within wheels, or in this case universes upon universes.”

However, even if the multiverse theory were correct, there are other independent scientific and philosophical reasons Douthat highlights for taking theism seriously. Take, for example, the nature of consciousness.

When I look at the color red, there is both my conscious experience of what it is like to perceive that color and its corresponding neural activity. But note that while I experience redness, neither my eyes nor the neurons in my brain become red. Thus, my first-person experience of redness is qualitatively unique from and unaccounted for by the scientific description of what is going on within either my eyeballs or my synapses. In other words, our conscious experiences of the world — the sounds, tastes, smells, thoughts, and emotions we have — elude scientific description, which is why consciousness itself has become known as the “hard problem.”

As Douthat explains, “The problem, the hard problem, is that there is no measurable material correspondence between these physical states and our experiences and thoughts, no sense in which knowing more and more about the molecules or electric impulses tells you more, or really anything at all, about what it’s like to be David Bentley Hart [i.e., what it is like to have first-person experiences].”

As a result, many philosophers and neuroscientists are moving toward a “mind first” view of reality, also known as “panpsychism,” which suggests that mentality is more fundamental than matter. But while such a view harmonizes with theism, it is incongruent with atheism.

Furthermore, a particularly interesting section of the book surveys mystical experiences, which Douthat divides into four categories. The first two categories, he says, tend to emerge from spiritual techniques, including prayer and meditation, of religious traditions in both the East and West as well as from psychedelics. These involve feeling “one with the universe” and having an acute sense of the soul’s immortality. Crucially, he comments, such experiences tend to be “essentially self-revelatory rather than an opening to God or to the gods.”

The third and fourth categories, however, are different. The third entails an engagement with the Divine. In such cases, “the person having the experience is left with no doubt that Something is looking at them or pressing into and through them.” Often overwhelming and ineffable, here is one such account from the book:

It just came into me with a roar, and clamped onto me, like a thousand volts, or like one of those machines they use to start someone’s heart on the operating table. It clamped onto both sides of my face, and over my thyroid, and gripped my arms down into my hands that were still hovering at my waist and vibrating…In my whole life, I had only had encounters with other people, and suddenly, it was as if I were alone with God, or his Spirit, and frankly, I had no idea how to respond. I remember the name Lazarus flashing into my mind, and the incredible thought: This is a power that could raise the dead.

Interestingly, encounters of this sort often involve the Divine taking a form that the person is most familiar with — i.e. Jesus in the case of a Christian, Buddha in the case of a Buddhist, Krishna in the case of a Hindu, etc. In this way, God, who defies our conceptual categories, “accommodates” the cultural conditioning of the person involved.

The final type of spiritual encounter Douthat catalogues are those experiences that have “apparent effects in material reality, whether miraculous, uncanny, or simply really, really weird.” This includes inexplicable healings, exorcisms, hauntings, poltergeists, and other mysterious happenings (and yes, he does address UFO phenomena). While many will find this category hardest to accept, profoundly conditioned as we are by a framework that says if something cannot be verified by science its claim to truth is questionable at best, Douthat nevertheless offers both fascinating and perplexing illustrations that at the very least provide grounds for wonder for all but the most committed skeptics.

But after examining this and other evidence for theism, including the overlapping insights of major world religions, Douthat turns to an obvious question: If God exists, how do we know which religion — if any — is true? While making no apologies for being a professing Catholic and in the final chapter of the book he winsomely explains his reasons for taking Catholicism seriously, he stresses that truth is not all or nothing. In fact, the great world religions possess deep essential elements of the truth (even if, as he sees it, Catholicism represents the fullest expression of that truth).

Thus, the worry is not that one might investigate the wrong religion, but that one might not investigate any religion at all. “The theme of this book.” he stresses, “is encouragement: to urge people toward religion generally, to suggest that it’s better to start somewhere even if it isn’t the place I would start, out of a trust that God’s providence will ultimately reward all sorts of efforts and enfold all manner of sincere beliefs.”

In this way, the book proposes an ecumenical — catholic, even — defense of faith. If the arguments here are right, then wherever one begins, leading a religious life will yield a far more meaningful human existence.

David Weinberger is a freelance writer and book reviewer on topics related to philosophy, culture, history and economics. Follow him on Twitter @DWeinberger03. Email him at [email protected].