NOTE: Today we kick off an occasional series of exchanges between Catholic theologian Dr. Michael Augros, author of Who Designed the Designer?: A Rediscovered Path to God's Existence (Ignatius Press, 2015), and various email interlocutors. We'll start with the first email question today and Friday we'll share Dr. Augros' response. Enjoy!
 

 
Hello Dr. Augros,

I am a devout Catholic who recently purchased your book, Who Designed the Designer? I just finished the first chapter but hesitate to read further without first obtaining clarification regarding the first step in your proof. Granted, I am no philosopher, but I perceive potential issues already in the first chapter that I was hoping you would be able to clear up to allow me to read further.

I see problems with your first premise as it applies to infinite regression of causes. Your first proof states:

"If there were caused causes, with no first cause, they would constitute a middle with nothing before it.
 
But it is impossible for there to be a middle with nothing before it.
Therefore, there cannot be caused causes with no first cause."

It seems to me you could just take that proof and substitute the words "cause before each cause" for the words "first cause" and still have a valid proof for an infinite regression of causes without the need for an absolute first cause.

It would thus read as follows:

"If there were caused causes, with no cause before each cause, they would constitute a middle with nothing before it.
 
But it is impossible to have a middle with nothing before it. Therefore, there cannot be caused causes with no cause before each cause."

I am really hoping I am missing something here.

Likewise, when you discuss Aristotle's view that even an infinity of causes requires a first cause, it seems to me that it all comes down to how you word the proof and how you define the terms, otherwise we run into the same problem Zeno ran into. You say that even an infinite set is definite and must therefore include a maximum "effect maker" and that maximum producer of effects cannot, by necessity, be preceded by a greater effect producer. The problem I see is there will never be a maximum effect maker with an infinite series of causes, insofar as the cause immediately preceding any other cause will necessarily include all the other cause's effects plus at least one, namely the other cause. If we consider that this "definite set" is open-ended with an infinite chain of causes, I don't think you can really define "maximum" in the way you do, since by necessity, the maximum will never end in a "definite set" which is open-ended, which is part of the definition of infinity. Please clarify this issue for me.

I am also having problems understanding how the first cause necessarily needs to still exist with us today. To tweak your train analogy, if the engine, which you designate the first cause, spontaneously exploded and the explosion pushed all the connected boxcars on a frictionless railroad track indefinitely, we would still have the same chain of causes and effects but with an initial mover that no longer exists. I don't really follow your logic that the first cause must, by necessity, still be with us today.

I understand you must be busy and I am not even a student of yours, but any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Sincerely,
Mark D.

In a recent post here, I asked, “Do You Need God to Know That Abortion is Wrong?” I was prompted by two things: on the one hand, a series of articles defending the idea that we can be moral without God; and on the other, articles like this one, suggesting that opposition to abortion can only be “because God.” Those two positions don't work together. As I explained in the post,

The pro-life argument is simple: (1) human beings are alive from the moment of fertilization, and (2) it is morally wrong (and ought to be illegal) to intentionally kill innocent human beings. The first point is a scientific one. The second is a moral and legal one, one that science can’t answer. You don’t find human rights under a microscope, and there’s no experiment capable of proving that murder is wrong.

Since the scientific point is clear-cut and settled (it's inescapable that unique human beings are created at the moment of fertilization), everything turns on point (2). But the intentional killing of innocent human beings is what the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe calls the “hard core” of the definition of murder. So to frame the question slightly differently, to say that abortion is okay, you have to say that (a) murder is at least sometimes okay, and that (b) abortion falls within this class of exceptions.

This has sparked a lively debate, as well as a rebuttal from Steven Dillon. I want to address the kind of arguments being raised generally first, and then look at what makes Steven's position frightening.

I. Do we need to believe in God to know that all murder is wrong?

Broadly speaking, there are four major types of responses to this question:

1. Only Theists Can be Anti-Murder: If you argue that abortion is wrong because unborn children have souls, or if you argue that abortion is okay (at least up to a certain point) because they don't, you're making arguments that are inaccessible to atheists. In either case, you're acting as if opposition to murder can only be predicated on the presence of the human soul. If killing someone is only wrong if we're sure they have a soul, why aren't atheists pro-murder?
2. Murder isn't Always Wrong: If you argue that abortion is okay because killing one life can sometimes save two, or because our being pro-abortion is necessary for us to justify euthanasia and organ harvesting, then we've got a slightly different issue. In these case, you don't believe that murder is always wrong. You might have personally-convincing reasons for your views, like utilitarianism or a rejection of impaired human life, but at least own your own convictions. If you don't – if you insist on paying lip service to being uniformly opposed to murder, while holding to these positions – your advocacy will necessarily be incoherent, because you're arguing for two irreconcilable positions.
3. It's Okay to Kill Fetuses: If you argue that abortion is okay because unborn children don't meet the requirements to be protected human life, you're not showing that unborn children aren't scientifically and materially human beings. Instead, you're either saying that they're not really humans, for some immaterial and non-scientific reason (like the first group), or that they are a group of humans that it's okay to intentionally kill (like the second). Here, the clearest way forward would be for you to spell out your presumptions and beliefs: e.g., “I think that murder is only wrong when your victim can feel pain at the time of death.”
4. Abortion is Always Wrong: this fourth group includes those, including both religious pro-lifers and nonreligious pro-lifers like Secular Alliance for Life, who treat the prohibition against murder as absolute. This opposition (most clearly in the case of secular pro-lifers) is not based upon their recognition of a human soul. If you reject the existence of the soul and reject all forms of murder, this is the only camp to which you can rationally adhere.

All of Steven's arguments seem to fall within the first category. He doesn't dispute the biological evidence. Instead, he assumes (but stops short of acknowledging) that abortion is wrong only if the fetus has a human soul. If he's right, and you don't believe that anyone has a human soul, then you've got a problem rationally holding to the prohibition against murder.

II. Do We Need Metaphysics to Settle the Abortion Debate?

In his response, Steven takes issue with my twofold formulation. Specifically, he accuses me of conflating terms, between biological humans in (1) and metaphysical humans in (2). I'm actually doing no such thing: I mean human in the same sense in both (1) and (2), and reject the whole idea of humans who are biological-but-not-metaphysical (or vice versa). It's immoral, and ought to be illegal, to murder those that we recognize, scientifically, as human beings. Furthermore, any sort of metaphysical definition of “human” that fails to capture the entire set of all humans is a bad definition.

If Steven wants to hold that you need metaphysics to know that killing innocent human beings is wrong, or if he wants to carve out an exception to the prohibition against murder for those that (according to a metaphysics of his own making) he considers biologically-but-not-metaphysically human, he's free to make those arguments. But recognize that in each of these cases, he's the one shifting the conversation into metaphysics, and the one creating two classes of human beings.

I mention all of this for a simple reason. The rest of this article will be getting into specific metaphysical questions involving the soul. It would be easy, especially for an atheist or someone who thinks that only the natural sciences produce factual knowledge, to write off this whole inquiry as bunk. I certainly understand. But if you're going to do that, recognize that what you're rejecting is not my original argument, but Steven's attempt to carve out a metaphysical exception to the prohibition against murder.

With that in mind, let's dive into the metaphysics directly.

III. Is the Fetus Metaphysically Human?

This is the meat of Steven's argument. He asks, but doesn't answer, an important question: “What gets aborted?” To the extent that he gives any sort of answer, it's by negation. He denies that the fetus is human or even an animal. Based on his trifold distinction, the answer to his questions seems to be that fetuses are now a type of plant, but (likely, for obvious reasons) he doesn't spell out this conclusion.

He is led to this conclusion by two arguments, one good and one bad. The good argument is that there is a threefold distinction between plants (which have metabolism), animals (which can sense), and humans (who can reason). The bad argument is in how he understands this distinction. When Aristotle first proposed this distinction (In Book II, Chapter III of De Anima), he was looking at types of things. That is, a plant is the type of creature that can metabolize, an animal is the type of creature that can move and sense, and humans are the type of creature that can reason. In each case, the higher creatures also have the powers of the lower ones. By this standard, you're a human even when you're not reasoning, even when you're incapable of reasoning, as long as you're the type of creature that's capable of reasoning (which, of course, you are).

When Steven applies this distinction, in contrast, he's looking at whether you can currently employ these powers. That is, an animal is only an animal if it can sense right now. By this definition, you can't let sleeping dogs lie. Having fallen asleep (temporarily losing control over their powers of sensation), they cease to be animals, and thus cease to be dogs. You, too, lose your humanity every night when you fall asleep, by this analysis. You also cease to be a human if you fall into a coma (either permanently or temporarily), enter a sensory deprivation chamber, or get so drunk that your reason is completely impaired. If you go blind or become infertile, you similarly become less human, because you're less capable of employing your sensory or reproductive powers.

It takes very little to see the problems with such a position. After all, if someone slips Rohypnol into your drink and you pass out, are you still a human being with rights that should be protected? If Steven is right that human rights turn on whether you can currently reason or sense, the answer would seem to be no.

IV. What Is the Soul?

This, I think, suffices to answer his arguments, but there's an additional point worth clearing up. We often think of the soul as a sort of “ghost in the machine,” but that's not a good understanding of the soul. The Latin term for soul is “anima,” because it's the immaterial animating principle of the body. This can be shown easily enough, quite apart from Scripture or even philosophy. Simply envision two identical twins, one of whom suddenly dies. On the level of the matter, they are still identical. The same particles are swirling around, as before, and the dead twin has the same body that existed while he was alive, moments ago.

So whatever distinguishes them, whatever separates living things from dead ones, can't be a material difference... even though we can observe its effects on a material level. This principle of animation, separating the living from the dead, is what we call the anima or the soul. It's the organizational principle of the body, the body's “form.” And this is true whether we're talking about humans, or (to use Kreeft's example) cows, or ferns.

In contrast, Steven's inquiry imagines that you can have an animated human being, growing and developing in the womb of her mother, and that at some point, a soul suddenly enters her body. Not so. If you've got a living human, you've got an ensouled human. So the whole thrust of Steven's investigation is founded upon misunderstanding the soul.

So if the question of abortion boils down to a philosophical inquiry into whether or not the fetus has a human soul, very well: he does. But this still leaves me with my original question: does the question of abortion, or murder more broadly, boil down to whether or not the victim is ensouled? If so, where does that leave atheists?
 
 
(Image credit: India Times)

This is part one of a two-part series, adapted from Stephen Bullivant's new book, The Trinity: How Not to Be a Heretic (Paulist Press, 2015).

A Parable

Here’s a cheerful thought: imagine that the only food you have ever eaten has been bought from a McDonald’s. All your knowledge of eating and drinking, and all your taste experiences have come from Big Macs, McNuggets, McFlurries, and those little carrot sticks you can get with Happy Meals. Every word or concept you have to think, talk, or dream about food is patterned on fries, McShakes, and those strangely alluring oblong apple pies that come in a cardboard sleeve. “Happy are they...” (Psalm 1:1).

Now suppose that, one day, you are whisked away to the restaurant of one of the world’s greatest chefs: Heston Blumenthal, for example. In dish after dish you are introduced to flavors you had never dreamt were possible. Beetroot jelly, bacon-and-egg ice cream, salmon in liquorice, snail porridge...nothing in your previous culinary life could have prepared you for this. You are overwhelmed by these strange, astounding new experiences, like nothing you have ever tasted before. More to the point, they are like nothing you could ever even have imagined tasting.

The meal is wonderful, almost too wonderful in fact. Your senses have been overloaded. You are spent from striving to keep up, from trying to make the most of each new surprise. The coffee at the end of the meal therefore comes as a blessed relief. Chef Blumenthal makes excellent coffee, but so too do McDonald’s. Finally: something you can get your head, and taste buds, around without feeling exhausted.

But here comes Heston, suddenly appearing before you, dressed all in white: “Did you enjoy it? I put a lot of effort into these dishes, and it’s important for me to know how people find them. What was it like?”

***************

The meal was truly amazing, perhaps the peak experience of your life so far. Naturally, you want to tell him what it meant to you (and later, you’ll want to tell everyone you know just how great it was too). However, when you start working out how to put it into words, you realize you’re in trouble. After all, all your ways for thinking and speaking about food come from your experience of the McDonald’s menu.

One thing you could do, of course, is attempt to describe the meal in the terms with which you are familiar. You might say, “That bacon-and-egg ice cream was like a cross between the greatest ever Egg McMuffin and the most perfect McFlurry known to man.” Or you could say the snail porridge was as though “someone had distilled the tastiness of a trillion McChicken Sandwiches into every bite.” Or perhaps you would compare the liquorice salmon to “all the wonderfulness of a Filet-O-Fish sandwich, times infinity, and to the infinite power.”

It strikes you, however, that perhaps Heston may not take kindly to such a compliment. Even expressed in these superlative-laden terms (“the most perfect,” “infinite”), you are still comparing his Michelin-starred cuisine with everyday fast food. You are saying, in fact, that the difference between them is only one of degree. His food and McDonald’s food are effectively in the same league: it is just that Heston’s food is a million (or an infinite number of) places higher up. No matter how delicious McDonald’s food is, Heston might still consider having his food described in terms of it—even in such maxed-up terms—false and insulting. But what else can you do?

Well, you could try changing tack entirely. Rather than likening Heston’s meal to McDonald’s food, why not do the opposite? For instance, you could answer him by saying “That meal was nothing at all like a Supersized Extra Value McNugget Meal,” or “Your snail porridge was the perfect negation of the entire McDonald’s menu.” In stark contrast to your first attempt at describing the meal, this drives a clean wedge between it and your previous food experiences: the two are in no way alike. You don’t have the words or concepts accurately to describe the meal. And yet you still want to say something true about it. So the best you can hope for is to say what it is not.

However, once again, it occurs to you that this might not go down so well either, and understandably so. He has slaved away in a hot kitchen for hours on end, lovingly crafting a mind-bending array of delights, and all just for you...and the best you can do is say “well, it wasn’t like a McBacon Roll.” Seriously?

Now you really are in trouble. Heston Blumenthal stands before you expectantly, puzzled by the pause. You have no words to describe what you have just experienced. You could barely take it all in while you were eating it; you haven’t a hope of talking about it meaningfully and satisfactorily now. And then, suddenly, you realize that that might be the answer.

“Mr Blumenthal... I... I... I’m lost for words.” An awe-filled, reverential silence replaces the awkward one of seconds before. Heston smiles.

You say it best when you say nothing at all.

More Than Words

This parable tells us much—though not quite all—of what we need to know about talking, and not talking, about God.

The basic problem is this. The great bulk of our words, and thus our means of thinking and imagining things, are patterned on everyday, mundane, physical objects-in-space. As such, we find it reasonably easy to describe stuff in straightforward, literal terms. (“The black laptop I am typing on is sitting on a desk. To the left of it are a red pen, an open Bible, and a yellow USB stick,” and so on). However, as soon as we try to talk about more abstract things like ideas, concepts, feelings, or emotions, we swiftly begin to struggle. How often, for example, have we answered a question about how we feel about someone or something with “I’m not quite sure,” “I can’t quite explain it,” or “I find it difficult to put into words”? Certainly, I should find it impossible to fully describe what my wife and children mean to me in literal, direct words. Although I am, undoubtedly, the world expert on my own feelings about my own family (as you are about yours), I simply don’t have the right words to come close to communicating them.

What we often do instead is use figurative, metaphorical, poetic language to give some inkling of what it is we’re trying to talk about.

"Love is like a butterfly,
as soft and gentle as a sigh;
The multicolored moods of love,
are like its satin wings."

Fellow Dolly fans will agree that this does capture something of what love is, or can be, like: beautiful, fragile, and fluttery (although these are all still metaphors, of course). Nevertheless, “love is like a butterfly” is very far from being a direct description. Even as a simile (“x is like y”) the comparison breaks down very quickly: love is not, for example, what the Very Hungry Caterpillar turns into. Note also that this doesn’t just apply to feelings or emotions. The best science writing is full of metaphors and figurative images—unobserved cats in boxes, flies buzzing around cathedrals, computers made from meat, and so on—precisely because we find plain speaking and thinking such hard work.

If this is the case with things like food and feelings and atoms, what hope have we of saying something adequate about the “King of kings and Lord of lords” (Revelation 19:16)? If we struggle when talking about creatures and created things, how dare we speak of the “Creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible,” himself?

“God is above whatsoever we may say or think of him”

Maybe there isn’t any problem here. After all, scripture is the word of God, written in human words. And it uses them to tell us about God all the time. Here are just three examples, out of thousands and thousands:

"God is love." (1 John 4:8)

"Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty! Who was and is and is to come!" (Revelation 4:8)

"Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond all measure." (Psalm 147:5)

Even more to the point, God appears to be perfectly happy using human words to describe himself:

"For I the Lord do not change." (Malachi 3:6)

"I the Lord your God am a jealous God." (Exodus 20:5)

"No one is good but God alone." (Luke 18:19)

The problem is that our understandings of words like “love” or “almighty,” or “great” are again patterned on our earthly, creaturely experiences. We might have a rough idea of what it means to have a “great cat,” to eat a “great hotdog,” or to be a “great football player” (although there’s still huge scope for disagreement as to what counts as true greatness in any of these areas). Yet surely, whatever it means for a cat, hotdog, footballer, or any other created thing to be “great,” that must fall insultingly short of what it means for “the Lord your God” to be so too. So while we can be sure that God is great, with our finite created minds, and limited earthly experience, we can have little conception of just how God is great, or just how great God is. “God is above whatsoever we may say or think of Him,” as St. Thomas Aquinas once put it.

The danger comes if we forget this. If we imagine that God is great, or loving, or powerful, or jealous in pretty much the same way that, say, a human being might be those things. By doing this, we end up creating a God, or rather an idol or “so-called god” (1 Corinthians 8:5) in our own image. We put ourselves on a pedestal, supposing that God is just like us, but a bit better. Nor can we avoid this by saying that, unlike us, God is super- or omni- or perfectly or infinitely loving or powerful or whatever. This is, remember, exactly what we tried to do in the parable earlier, describing Heston’s food as being like McDonald’s, but infinitely or perfectly or supremely more so. We risk ending up with a God who differs from us mere creatures—“all are from dust, and all turn to dust again” (Ecclesiastes 3:20)—only by degree. It is as though we could simply take the goodness of Creation (Genesis 1:31), and by turning it up to eleven, somehow reach up to the goodness of the Creator himself. Of course, we cannot do that, and scripture itself warns us against thinking we can:

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:8-9)

"You say it best, when you say nothing at all"?

Since our thoughts and words are doomed to fail us, the highest, most fulsome praise we can give will always fall insultingly short of “the Most High” (Psalm 91:1). Can we then say nothing that is true or accurate about him?

Again, as we learned in our parable, there is something we can say. If all our words and concepts aren’t up to the job of describing God, let us just be honest about it. Why not just go through the dictionary saying what God isn’t? We can start with “God is not aa (a type of Hawaiian lava)” and end up with “God is not zymurgy (the study or practice of fermentation).” And if we get bored a few weeks in, we can even amuse ourselves by doing it Wayne’s World style for a couple of days: “God is a nonagon (a nine-sided shape)... not!”

On one level, this might seem like an improvement. For again, quoting St Thomas, “What God is not is clearer to us than what he is.” We’ve guarded ourselves against describing God in terms that are beneath him: well done us. Yet, on another level, all this feels very unsatisfactory. All we’ve done is given a long litany of God’s non-attributes. Talk about damning with faint praise. Is this really the best we can do?

Perhaps Alison Krauss—or for those of you with poor taste in music, Ronan Keating—was right all along. Maybe we do say it best when we say nothing at all. Rather than “heap up empty phrases” (Matthew 6:7), or tediously list what God isn’t, why don’t we just shut up?

“Be still, and know that I am God!” (Psalm 46:10)

 
 

 
 
(Image credit: Occupy Corporatism)

NOTE: Today we wrap up our six-part series by Karlo Broussard on a metaphysical proof for God's existence. You can reach reach of the prior posts below:

• Part 1 - Why Must There Be at Least One Unconditioned Reality?
• Part 2 - The Absolute Simplicity of Unconditioned Reality
• Part 3 - The Absolute Uniqueness of Unconditioned Reality
• Part 4 - The Key Divine Attributes of the Absolutely Unique and Simple Unconditioned Reality
• Part 5 - Key Attributes: Perfection and the Three Omnis
• Part 6 - Important Features of the Metaphysical Proof

 
The current post is the final installment of a six part series on a metaphysical demonstration for God’s existence from the notion of ontological conditions.   Although I completed the demonstration itself in the fifth installment, I wanted to highlight a few reasons why this sort of metaphysical demonstration is so important with an eye on some common objections from atheists.

First, this sort of approach to God’s existence is important in the modern debate between atheism and theism because for such an approach the temporal duration of the universe – whether it had a beginning or not – is irrelevant.

Upon hearing this metaphysical demonstration many will think that the series of conditioned realities spoken of in the first post is a temporal series that extends back into the past; therefore this approach is often perceived as an argument for the universe having a beginning and the Creator being the cause of that beginning. Such a perception inevitably gives rise to the whole debate about whether or not we can know that the universe had a beginning. But this is not what the argument of this series consists of.

Recall that the series of conditioned realities spoken of in the first installment did not extend back in time (e.g., I needed my father to come into existence, my father needed his father, etc.) but it extended downwards so to speak to the most fundamental levels of physical reality. This is what philosophers call an essentially ordered series (or a hierarchical series) versus an accidentally ordered series (or temporal series).

The accidentally ordered series is exemplified with the series of dependence involving me, my father, his father, and so on. The idea is that although I needed my father to come into existence, I do not need my father to exist in order for me to exist right here and right now. In other words, my father’s existence is accidental and not essential for me to exist right here and right now.

But, in an essentially ordered series, the existing conditions that a conditioned reality (e.g., the cat) is dependent on are essential for its very existence right here and right now. It is essential to the cat’s existence that the cells, the molecules, the atoms, the protons, the quarks, etc. exist right here and right now. This is the sort of series that the demonstration involves.

As such, an eternal universe (a universe without beginning and without end) would still need God as the ground of its eternal existence – eternally fulfilling the conditions necessary for its existence. God would still be needed to answer the question, “Why does the universe exists at all (even if eternal) rather than not?” So, if at some time in the future scientists discover some piece of data that begins to alter the common view of an absolute beginning of time and physical reality, there is no need for the theist to fret for he or she remains standing on solid ground with this sort of metaphysical demonstration.

The second reason why this demonstration is important is because it adequately responds to the misconception that our assertion that God is unconditioned is an arbitrary exception. Recall how we began in the first installment trying to account for the existence of the cat and such an endeavor led us to a series of conditioned realities that needed other conditioned realties to exist. We then arrived at an unconditioned reality, namely God, that stopped the series. Now, many think this is an arbitrary exception to the series of conditioned realities.

But our conclusion that God is unconditioned reality is not arbitrary at all. The reality that we arrive at in order to explain the existence of the cat here and now is unconditioned by logical necessity. As we demonstrated in the first installment of the demonstration, to postulate that there is no unconditioned reality (Hypothesis ~UR) in trying to explain the cat’s existence is to end up with an intrinsic contradiction – namely the denial of the cat’s existence when the cat in fact exists. Since hypothesis ~UR is false, then hypothesis UR, namely that there is an unconditioned reality grounding the existence of the cat, must be true.

The third point of importance follows from the second. Our claim that the series cannot regress ad infinitum is not one of probability but one of logical necessity. For example, some theists who argue for God’s existence using the Kalam cosmological argument stop the infinite regress of causes in a causal series by appealing to Ockham’s razor. It is argued that we need not posit anymore causes once we arrive at the transcendent cause of the universe because Ockham’s Razor states we should not multiply causes beyond necessity. In other words, we arrived at an explanation for the universe and there is really no need to explain the explanation.

But in the metaphysical demonstration as presented in this series, we’re not saying that the series cannot regress ad infinitum because of Ockham’s Razor but because of the very nature of the sufficient condition that we arrive at as the explanation for the cat existing right here and right now. The nature of this condition is that it is unconditioned; thus the series of conditions cannot regress any further.

The fourth reason for the importance of this approach to God’s existence is basically the same as the third but stated in a different way. We can see how the question, “Who created God?” is an incoherent question. If God by his very nature is unconditioned reality, then the question, “Who created God?” is tantamount to asking, “What is the condition for the unconditioned reality?” This is akin to asking, “Who is the bachelor’s wife?” Obviously this is an incoherent question if one understands that a bachelor has no wife. Similarly, to ask, “Who created God?” or “What is God’s condition?” is seen as incoherent if one understands that God, by definition, has no conditions. Therefore, the question, “Who created God?” is a moot point.

Finally, the fifth reason why this type of metaphysical argument is so important in the modern debate is because it escapes the common objection from the fallacy of composition. The fallacy of composition arises when one infers that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole. For example, it is fallacious to reason that because each Lego brick weighs 1.64 grams the whole wall of bricks weighs 1.64 grams.

Some atheists perceive this fallacy in the present argument. They will argue that even though each individual thing within the universe might need conditions fulfilled in order to exist it does not follow that the universe as a whole needs conditions fulfilled in order to exist. Therefore, it’s fallacious to argue that the universe as a whole is a conditioned reality that needs God to fulfill its conditions.

Now, besides the fact that this argument does not hold water because the conditionality of each thing in the universe is not quantitative in nature but qualitative (and thus the universe as a whole would be a conditioned reality needing conditions fulfilled in order to exist), the argument does not work against the metaphysical approach of this series because the demonstration never argues for God from the universe as a whole needing its conditions fulfilled. It starts with one thing in the universe, namely a cat, and then reasons to the one unconditioned reality as the ground of its existence.

It is true that in the end we must conclude that the universe as a whole finds its existence grounded in the one unconditioned reality but it is a consequence of the argument and not a part of it. At least for this argument, belief that the universe as whole finds its existence grounded in the one unconditioned reality presupposes that the one unconditioned reality exist. The reasoning is as follows: 1) Because there is only one unconditioned reality in all of reality, everything else in existence besides the one unconditioned reality (the universe and the whole of the created order) is a conditioned reality; 2) Every conditioned reality has its existence grounded in the one unconditioned reality. 3) Therefore, the universe as a whole (and the whole of created order) has its existence grounded in the one unconditioned reality. Since the universe’s existential dependence on God is a consequence of the argument and not a part it, this type of metaphysical demonstration escapes the fallacy of composition.

So, in conclusion, with the metaphysical demonstration and its importance in the modern dialogue on God’s existence now in place, I believe we can conclude that the acceptance of God’s existence stands on the firm foundation of reason. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states in paragraph 156, “faith is by no means a blind impulse of the mind.” The acceptance of God’s existence does not require that one leave his or her reason at the door. Furthermore, this type of metaphysical argument for God’s existence (and many others like it) shows how the perception that theism is intellectually shallow and naïve is simply a myth. Atheism by no means has the intellectual high ground. It is theism that does so since it is theism that gives a sufficient answer to the most fundamental question, “Why does something exist at all rather than not?” That answer, as demonstrated in this series of posts, is God.
 
 
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One of the classical demonstrations of God’s existence is the so-called argument from desire. It can be stated in a very succinct manner as follows. Every innate or natural desire corresponds to some objective state of affairs that fulfills it. Now we all have an innate or natural desire for ultimate fulfillment, ultimate joy, which nothing in this world can possibly satisfy. Therefore there must exist objectively a supernatural condition that grounds perfect fulfillment and happiness, which people generally refer to as “God.”

I have found in my work as an apologist and evangelist that this demonstration, even more than the cosmological arguments, tends to be dismissed out of hand by skeptics. They observe, mockingly, that wishing something doesn’t make it so, and they are eager to specify that remark with examples: I may want to have a billion dollars, but the wish doesn’t make the money appear; I wish I could fly, but my desire doesn’t prove that I have wings, etc. This rather cavalier rejection of a venerable demonstration is a consequence, I believe, of the pervasive influence of Ludwig Feuerbach and Sigmund Freud, both of whom opined that religion amounts to a pathetic project of wish-fulfillment. Since we want perfect justice and wisdom so badly, and since the world cannot possibly provide those goods, we invent a fantasy world in which they obtain. Both Feuerbach and Freud accordingly felt that it was high time that the human race shake off these infantile illusions and come to grips with reality as it is. In Feuerbach’s famous phrase: “The no to God is the yes to man.” The same idea is contained implicitly in the aphorism of Feuerbach’s best-known disciple, Karl Marx: “Religion is the opiate of the masses.”

In the wake of this criticism, can the argument from desire still stand? I think it can, but we have to probe a bit behind its deceptively simple surface if we are to grasp its cogency. The first premise of the demonstration hinges on a distinction between natural or innate desires and desires of a more artificial or contrived variety. Examples of the first type include the desire for food, for sex, for companionship, for beauty, and for knowledge; while examples of second type include the longing for a fashionable suit of clothes, for a fast car, for Shangri-La, or to fly through the air like a bird. Precisely because desires of the second category are externally motivated or psychologically contrived, they don’t prove anything regarding the objective existence of their objects: some of them exist and some of them don’t. But desires of the first type do indeed correspond to, and infallibly indicate, the existence of the states of affairs that will fulfill them: hunger points to the objective existence of food, thirst to the objective existence of drink, sexual longing to the objective existence of the sexual act, etc. And this is much more than a set of correspondences that simply happen to be the case; the correlation is born of the real participation of the desire in its object. The phenomenon of hunger is unthinkable apart from food, since the stomach is “built” for food; the phenomenon of sexual desire is unthinkable apart from the reality of sex, since the dynamics of that desire are ordered toward the sexual act. By its very structure, the mind already participates in truth.

So what kind of desire is the desire for perfect fulfillment? Since it cannot be met by any value within the world, it must be a longing for truth, goodness, beauty, and being in their properly unconditioned form. But the unconditioned, by definition, must transcend any limit that we might set to it. It cannot, therefore, be merely subjective, for such a characterization would render it not truly unconditioned. And this gives the lie to any attempt—Feuerbachian, Freudian, Marxist or otherwise—to write off the object of this desire as a wish-fulfilling fantasy, as a projection of subjectivity. In a word, the longing for God participates in God, much as hunger participates in food. And thus, precisely in the measure that the desire under consideration is an innate and natural desire, it does indeed prove the existence of its proper object.

One of the best proponents of this argument in the last century was C.S. Lewis. In point of fact, Lewis made it the cornerstone of his religious philosophy and the still-point around which much of his fiction turned. What particularly intrigued Lewis was the sweetly awful quality of this desire for something that can never find its fulfillment in any worldly reality, a desire that, at the same time, frustrates and fascinates us. This unique ache of the soul he called “joy.” In the Narnia stories, Aslan the lion stands for the object of this desire for the unconditioned. When the good mare Hwin confronts the lion for the first time, she says, “Please, you are so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I would sooner be eaten by you than fed by anyone else.” To understand the meaning of that utterance is to grasp the point of the argument from desire.
 
 
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Many consider the argument for God from contingency to be one of the strongest. The basic form is simple:

1. If something exists, there must exist what it takes for that thing to exist.
2. The universe—the collection of beings in space and time—exists.
3. Therefore, there must exist what it takes for the universe to exist.
4. What it takes for the universe to exist cannot exist within the universe or be bounded by space and time.
5. Therefore, what it takes for the universe to exist must transcend both space and time.

Suppose you deny the first premise. Then if X exists, there need not exist what it takes for X to exist. But "what it takes for X to exist" means the immediate condition(s) for X's existence. You mean that X exists only if Y. Without Y, there can be no X. So the denial of premise 1 amounts to this: X exists; X can only exist if Y exists; and Y does not exist. This is absurd. So there must exist what it takes for the universe to exist. But what does it take?

We spoke of the universe as "the collection of beings in space and time." Consider one such being: yourself. You exist, and you are, in part at least, material. This means that you are a finite, limited and changing being, you know that right now, as you read this book, you are dependent for your existence on beings outside you. Not your parents or grandparents. They may no longer be alive, but you exist now. And right now you depend on many things in order to exist—for example, on the air you breathe. To be dependent in this way is to be contingent. You exist if something else right now exists.

But not everything can be like this. For then everything would need to be given being, but there would be nothing capable of giving it. There would not exist what it takes for anything to exist. So there must be something that does not exist conditionally; something which does not exist only if something else exists; something which exists in itself. What it takes for this thing to exist could only be this thing itself. Unlike changing material reality, there would be no distance, so to speak, between what this thing is and that it is. Obviously the collection of beings changing in space and time cannot be such a thing. Therefore, what it takes for the universe to exist cannot be identical with the universe itself or with a part of the universe.

Question: But why should we call this cause "God"? Maybe there is something unknown that grounds the universe of change we live in.

Reply: True. And this "unknown" is God. What we humans know directly is this sensible changing world. We also know that there must exist whatever it takes for something to exist. Therefore, we know that neither this changing universe as a whole nor any part of it can be itself what it takes for the universe to exist. But we have now such direct knowledge of the cause of changing things. We know that there must exist a cause; we know that this cause cannot be finite or material—that it must transcend such limitations. But what this ultimate cause is in itself remains, so far, a mystery.

There is more to be said by reason; and there is very much more God has made known about himself through revelation. But the proofs have given us some real knowledge as well: knowledge that the universe is created; knowledge that right now it is kept in being by a cause unbounded by any material limit, that transcends the kind of being we humans directly know. And that is surely knowledge worth having. We might figure out that someone's death was murder and no accident, without figuring out exactly who did it and why, and this might leave us frustrated and unsatisfied. But at least we would know what path of questioning to pursue; at least we would know that someone did it.

So it is with the proofs. They let us know that at every moment the being of the universe is the creative act of a Giver—a Giver transcending all material and spiritual limitations. Beyond that, they do not tell us much about what or who this Giver is—but they point in a very definite direction. We know that this Ultimate Reality—the Giver of being—cannot be material. And we know the gift which is given includes personal being: intelligence, will and spirit. The infinite transcendent cause of these things cannot be less than they are, but must be infinitely more. How and in what way we do not know. To some extent this Giver must always remain unknown to human reason. We should never expect otherwise. But reason can at least let us know that "someone did it." And that is of great value.

 
 
Excerpted from “Handbook of Catholic Apologetics", copyright 1994, Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, published 2009 Ignatius Press, used with permission of the publisher. Text reproduced from PeterKreeft.com.

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Most Catholics and atheists agree that if God does not exist, then the material world must be a closed system. If there is no God, the world is self-creating and self-reliant. If there is no God, then there cannot be interruptions in nature. The material world works according to the laws of physics, and even if there are mysteries that cannot presently be explained, they will be one day. In fact, if there is no God, then the physical world must work according to the laws of nature and nothing else.

If however, it can be shown that there is a force which interrupts and alters the ordinary working of nature, and if that force operates in an intelligible and rational way, then there must be an intelligent being that religious people have always identified as God.

This intelligible and rational interruption in the laws of nature is what we call a “miracle.”

The interruption is intelligible and rational if it has a reason and an understandable purpose. An interruption which is purely random or arbitrary would not indicate a super-physical intelligence.

All that to say this: if there are miracles, then there is a God. The problem with many miracles is that they might be attributed to natural causes or to natural causes which we do not yet understand. This is where the Easter miracles comes in. Firstly, if one miracle can be shown to have happened, then the case is proven. One miracle breaks the whole idea that the world is self-contained, self-creating, and self-reliant, and the one miracle which atheists should most seriously consider is the miracle of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The eighteenth century skeptic David Hume argued that when weighing up the evidence for a miracle one had to consider which was more probable–that a person would lie or that a given miracle would take place. So he writes in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding:

"The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention), 'That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish….’

When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion."

In other words, if someone believes a miracle has taken place he is either lying himself or has been lied to. If the claimed miracle is greater than the possibility of a person being deceived or deceiving, then that claimed miracle must be rejected. Hume’s argument seems watertight because it is based on the assumption that the physical world is watertight. His conclusion rests on his first premise that the physical world is a closed system. What Hume is really saying is that miracles are impossible because miracles are impossible.

But the definition of a miracle is that it is an interruption in what was expected to be a closed system. That’s why it’s a miracle.

By its very definition a miracle breaks into the closed system, and to deny a miracle by simply presuming it can’t happen is to skirt the argument. Hume uses the example of a dead man rising again because he knows this is the central miracle. If this miracle, then any miracle. And if any miracle, then the system is not closed. And if the system is not closed, then there is a being greater than the system and that being we recognize as God.

Hume’s argument against miracles has been a cornerstone of the atheist position on miracles but it is rarely examined closely. Hume does not discuss evidence for such a miracle. He simply places the possible miracle over against the testimony of a person who claims the miracle. What he avoids in the Easter miracle is that it is not one man claiming a miracle, but many, and that their testimony is backed up by evidence that cannot be plausibly interpreted in any other way.

When the evidence is examined, Hume’s reductionist argument—that we must believe the theory that is most likely to be true—actually helps prove the resurrection. This is because all the alternatives to the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead are more incredible than the miracle.

It therefore all stands or falls on the miracle of the resurrection. St. Paul, a skeptic turned believer, addresses this very question his first letter to the Corinthians.

"Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved…Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve.

 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also…

And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised…and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile." 

Put very simply, if Christ is not raised from the dead, then the whole Christian religion is vain. It’s all or nothing, and the all or nothing depends on the evidence for Easter.

Did the first century Jewish preacher Jesus of Nazareth rise from the dead or not? If he did, then miracles are possible and God exists.

This proof for God is in some ways like the argument from religious experience and in other ways like the argument from desire. It argues that:

1. Belief in God—that Being to whom reverence and worship are properly due—is common to almost all people of every era.
2. Either the vast majority of people have been wrong about this most profound element of their lives or they have not.
3. It is most plausible to believe that they have not.
4. Therefore it is most plausible to believe that God exists.

Everyone admits that religious belief is widespread throughout human history. But the question arises: Does this undisputed fact amount to evidence in favor of the truth of religious claims? Even a skeptic will admit that the testimony we have is deeply impressive: the vast majority of humans have believed in an ultimate Being to whom the proper response could only be reverence and worship. No one disputes the reality of our feelings of reverence, attitudes of worship, acts of adoration. But if God does not exist, then these things have never once—never once—had a real object. Is it really plausible to believe that?

The capacity for reverence and worship certainly seems to belong to us by nature. And it is hard to believe that this natural capacity can never, in the nature of things, be fulfilled, especially when so many testify that it has been. True enough, it is conceivable that this side of our nature is doomed to frustration; it is thinkable that those millions upon millions who claim to have found the Holy One who is worthy of reverence and worship were deluded. But is it likely?

It seems far more likely that those who refuse to believe are the ones suffering from deprivation and delusion—like the tone-deaf person who denies the existence of music, or the frightened tenant who tells herself she doesn't hear cries of terror and distress coming from the street below and, when her children awaken to the sounds and ask her, "Why is that lady screaming, Mommy?" tells them, "Nobody's screaming: it's just the wind, that's all. Go back to sleep."

Question 1: But the majority is not infallible. Most people were wrong about the movements of the sun and earth. So why not about the existence of God?

Reply: If people were wrong about the theory of heliocentrism, they still experienced the sun and earth and motion. They were simply mistaken in thinking that the motion they perceived was the sun's. But if God does not exist, what is it that believers have been experiencing? The level of illusion goes far beyond any other example of collective error. It really amounts to collective psychosis.

For believing in God is like having a relationship with a person. If God never existed, neither did this relationship. You were responding with reverence and love to no one; and no one was there to receive and answer your response. It's as if you believe yourself happily married when in fact you live alone in a dingy apartment.

Now we grant that such mass delusion is conceivable, but what is the likely story? If there were no other bits of experience which, taken together with our perceptions of the sun and earth, make it most likely that the earth goes round the sun, it would be foolish to interpret our experience that way. How much more so here, where what we experience is a relationship involving reverence and worship and, sometimes, love. It is most reasonable to believe that God really is there, given such widespread belief in him—unless atheists can come up with a very persuasive explanation for religious belief, one that takes full account of the experience of believers and shows that their experience is best explained as delusion and not insight. But atheists have never done so.

Question 2: But isn't there a very plausible psychological account of religious belief? Many nonbelievers hold that belief in God is the result of childhood fears; that God is in fact a projection of our human fathers: someone "up there" who can protect us from natural forces we consider hostile.

Reply A: This is not really a naturalistic explanation of religious belief. It is no more than a statement, dressed in psychological jargon, that religious belief is false. You begin from the assumption that God does not exist. Then you figure that since the closest earthly symbol for the Creator is a father, God must be a cosmic projection of our human fathers. But apart from the assumption of atheism, there is no compelling evidence at all that God is a mere projection.

In fact, the argument begs the question. We seek psychological explanation only for ideas we already know (or presume) to be false, not those we think to be true. We ask, "Why do you think black dogs are out to kill you? Were you frightened by one when you were small?" But we never ask, "Why do you think black dogs aren't out to kill you? Did you have a nice black puppy once?"

Reply B: Though there must be something of God that is reflected in human fathers (otherwise our symbolism for him would be inexplicable), Christians realize that the symbolism is ultimately inadequate. And if the Ultimate Being is mysterious in a way that transcends all symbolism, how can he be a mere projection of what the symbol represents? The truth seems to be—and if God exists, the truth is—the other way around: our earthly fathers are pale projections of the Heavenly Father. It should be noted that several writers (e.g., Paul Vitz) have analyzed atheism as itself a psychic pathology: an alienation from the human father that results in rejection of God.

Adapted from "20 Arguments For God’s Existence".
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NOTE: Today we share a guest post from one of our non-theist commenters, Paul Rimmer.
 

 
Does the world need another article on how to define atheism? Does Strange Notions? These questions had to open the article, in part because there have already been several different Strange Notions articles on how to define atheists, including the most recent article about self-identified atheists who believe in God.

Yet here I am, talking about how to define the terms “atheist”, “theist”, and “agnostic”, in an article that may look at the end like a religiously oriented Cosmopolitan quiz. I write this article anyway, because I believe that there is a good reason for so many articles on this topic.

I don’t think the lines that divide Catholics and atheists are the same lines for every Catholic and every atheist, because Catholicism and atheism are very diverse perspectives, and because it’s not all about belief. If you disagree, if you think the dividing line is all about belief, then read only the next section of this article ("If It’s All About Belief..."). Please skip the rest of the article.

If, however, you agree with me that there are more dimensions to the dividing lines between Catholicism and atheism, you are encouraged read the entire article. You are also encouraged to leave comments. I promise to read them and to adjust my views based on reasonable and convincing argument. As far as this article is concerned, charity is for people, not for ideas. Don’t insult my parentage, but please be as harsh as you will to my ideas. If my ideas are any good, they will stand the heat.

Why should you listen to me? After all, I’m a scientist and not a theologian. I suspect, though, that scientists, rather than theologians, would succeed with this sort of task. A large part of science is categorizing things. The judgment of the reader will determine whether this scientist is any good at categorizing people.

For the purposes of this article, there will be only one deity to consider: The Christian God as described by the Nicene Creed. This is admittedly a vast over-simplification. I will offer some concluding remarks about how the labels introduced here can be broadened in order to account for alternative religions and belief-systems, such as Islam or Buddhism.

If It’s All About Belief...

 
If you think that atheism vs. theism is completely and simply about belief, I won’t fight you on that. Such a fight would likely fail to advance the discussion, even if I were to successfully convince you that there are more dimensions to the question of God’s existence than simply believing or not. What I will do is provide what I think to be the best ways to define atheism, theism, and agnosticism, if the discussion is all about belief. This system has the advantage of being accepted by most atheists and several theists.

In this system, there are two dimensions regarding belief. First is the presence of the belief itself. If I ask you whether you believe that God exists, do you say “yes” or “no”? If you say “yes” then you are a theist. If you say “no” then you are an atheist. That’s it. If you can’t say either “yes” or “no”, then you can come up with a new colorful term for your position, such as igtheist.

The second dimension is the level of confidence in that belief. If you are certain that your belief is correct, then you are a gnostic. If you are uncertain about whether your belief is correct, then you are an agnostic. Thus there are four options:

1. Gnostic Theist: You believe that God exists and are certain in your belief.
2. Agnostic Theist: You believe that God exists but are uncertain in your belief.
3. Agnostic Atheist: You believe that God does not exist but are uncertain in your belief.
4. Gnostic Atheist: You believe that God does not exist and are certain in your belief.

If you think that the only or at least the key division between theism and atheism is along the lines of belief, then this is the system for you. Even if you agree with me that there are more (and maybe more important) dimensions to the issue, you should still find out where you fit in this system, because one of the big advantages of labels is convenience, and as I said, most atheists and several theists know and use this convention for applying the labels atheist, theist, and agnostic.

But Maybe It's Not All About Belief

 
I am going to propose to you now that belief isn’t the only issue, and, even more, that it isn’t the most important. Certainly belief is one important dividing issue between atheists and theists, and it may be the most obvious, but as I listen to various atheists and theists talk about their beliefs, I see signs of other dimensions, other divisions between atheists and theists, and also interesting similarities between the two groups. Most theists I know and count as friends would have more in common with Richard Dawkins than with Bill O’Reilly on the question of truth (see this video, for example). The important dimensions to the question of God’s existence are three, as I count them:

1. Do you believe that God exists?
This is an obvious point of division.

2. Do you want God to exist?
In other words, would you prefer to live in a world where there was an all-powerful, fatherly God who loves us unconditionally and who sent his son to die for us? Do you want to live in a world where you may be held accountable, even eternally accountable, for your beliefs and actions?

3. Do you live as though God existed?
The knowledge that God loves and cares for you, and wants you to enjoy his presence for all eternity, and expects you to live a life in obedience to his authority will entail a way of life that is noticeably and radically distinct from the way many people in the world, including many people who would be theists under the beliefs-only definition, presently live their lives. Now, maybe a die-hard atheist will live a life consistent with the existence of the Christian God. Why not? Maybe she lives this life because of a self-consistent ethics that has nothing to do with God. It just so happens to involve actions that are more-or-less aligned to actions performed by practicing theists. That’s all that’s required. I will say that most atheists I know live lives that closely approximate the ideal Christian life.

These three dimensions leave us eight options, for which I apply various labels already in existence, although I may be using these terms in a manner that somewhat departs from convention. Where possible, I will also provide the name of a prominent philosopher or theologian who seems to fit the particular label. This is the Cosmo Quiz portion of the article, and when you the reader disagree with my assessment, either of the terms used or philosophers assigned, please let me know in the comments.

Satisfied Theist: This is someone who believes that God exists, wishes that God existed, and lives as though God exists. This is the simple Catholic life, portrayed well by many common parishioners and by the present Pope Francis.

Apatheist: Someone who believes that God exists and wishes that God existed, but doesn’t live as though God exists—what the Catechism of the Catholic Church labels “practical atheists” (CCC 2128). These are people for whom religion has no real affect on their public life or on their activity outside of maybe some ritual observance. God is like a sports mascot and religion their sports team. I won’t dare to name anyone who fits this label, although I imagine many Christians do. This is, however, the ideal form of religion as envisioned by Daniel Dennett.

Reluctant Theist: This is someone who believes God exists and lives as though God exists, but she wishes God didn’t exist. Maybe she wishes God were different. She may struggle with divine hiddenness and the problem of evil, not as evidence against God’s existence but as strong arguments against God’s goodness and loving-kindness. A good and loving God would not allow for childhood leukemia and would reveal Himself to those whom He loves, like any kind father. I would tentatively assign Oscar Wilde this label.

Agnostic: Someone who wants God to exist and lives as though God exists, but doesn’t think God exists. People who don’t think God exists may want God to exist and live pretty-much the same way whether God exists or not. Massimo Pigliucci seems to be an agnostic in this sense.

Misotheist: This rare position includes someone who believes God exists but wishes He didn’t, and who doesn’t live as though God existed. This is someone who is opposed to God. The easiest example would be Lucifer. An example closer to home would be Arthur Schopenhauer.

Pessimist: Someone who doesn’t believe in God and doesn’t live as though God existed, but wishes He did. The pessimist tends to live out in the bitter cold winds of truth instead of the enclosed and suffocating warmth provided by pious illusion. I would think Bertrand Russell to be a pessimist in this sense.

Atheist: Someone who lives as though God exists, although she doesn’t believe in God and hopes that she’s right. Many people who hold this view can seem God-intoxicated, and anti-theistic, opposed not to God but to theism itself, because theism supports an immoral God. This apparent obsession is often, as I discern, a result of strong moral intuition. It is in fact the atheist’s right moral sense that leads her to deny God’s existence. Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins are prime examples of atheists.

Nihilist: This person doesn’t believe in God, doesn’t want God, and doesn’t live like God exists. In my opinion, this is at its very heart a hopeless position, but maybe I lack the imagination to see how it would work out. My strong opinion may be due to the fact that I have no friends and know of no philosophers who actually hold to this position. Nietzsche is thought to deserve this label, although I suspect this is a misunderstanding of his philosophy. The closest actual example might be Ayn Rand, a hopeless philosopher if ever there was one.

I speculate that the former way of labeling positions on God, based only on belief, seems a very Protestant way of doing things. Protestants traditionally emphasize faith alone above the other cardinal virtues of hope and love. Giving a place for hope and love seems to be a more universal, or Catholic, approach to the question of theism and atheism. Also, no one is bound to use my terms, although I think that the traditional usage of most of these labels is at least reasonably well approximated by my new descriptions

As promised, I will now show by a single example how these labels can be generalized in order to encapsulate other religions, or at least other theistic religions. Someone might, for example, be a theist with respect to the Christian God, but a nihilist with respect to the Muslim God. She would, in other words, derive her hope and purpose of life from her Christian beliefs, and derive no hope or guidance from Islamic beliefs, except where the two beliefs overlap.

A strong note of warning: Whatever system of labels you accept, respect what other people want to be called. If someone wants to be called an atheist or an agnostic, or doesn’t want labels altogether, respect their choice and abide by it, at least when talking to them.

I will end this article by emphasizing the great overlap between many theists and many atheists, and it is on the most important of all the virtues, that of love. I was a member of the Christian Graduate Student Alliance at Ohio State University, and was also closely involved with the Secular Student Alliance there, a group of atheists and agnostics that had among their number not a few who denied the historicity of Jesus. The Secular Student Alliance at OSU became involved with a Lutheran Church on a trip to New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and worked alongside Christians of various denominations to provide relief to fellow humans. This is in my mind a rich picture of the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus said that his true disciples would be known by their love. How interesting, how strangely beautiful, that maybe some of Christ’s truest disciples alive today are not convinced that he even existed.
 
 
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In Augustine's Confessions, the first Western autobiography ever written, we discover the probing journey of a brilliant man, traveling through a maze of philosophies before emerging into the light of Christianity. The destination brought him to tears for though he sensed Christianity to be true, it was the last place he expected to turn.

Years later, when Oxford professor C.S. Lewis embarked on his own pursuit of truth, he too ended up at Christianity, converting with great hesitancy: "I gave in, and admitted that God was God ... perhaps that night the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England."

And then there was Jennifer Fulwiler. When Jennifer stood in a Catholic Church on Easter 2007, preparing to become Catholic, there was hardly a more unlikely convert. Born and raised in a skeptical home, which valued Carl Sagan more than Jesus, Jennifer developed an ardent atheism. She rejected God and joyously mocked religion.

But then she met Joe. Joe was brilliant. He had multiple degrees from Ivy League institutions and was rapidly climbing the corporate ladder. Yet, strangely, he identified as a Christian. "How could such a smart man believe something so ridiculous?" Jennifer wondered.

That led her to rigorously examine the claims of Christianity, if only to prove them wrong. She gorged on books. She frequented online comment boxes and discussion boards. She even started a blog which invited Christians to counter her atheism. This painstaking research, combined with difficult questions about meaning, death, and existence, slowly led Jennifer to believe that God existed, and even more that Jesus was God in the flesh. Though obviously troubling, she could have accepted this "mere Christianity" and moved on. But after exploring many Protestant churches, she distressingly realized that the evidence was pushing her toward a far more unsettling destination: the Catholic Church.

Like Augustine and Lewis before her, Jennifer recounts her compelling journey of conversion through a colorful and stirring memoir, Something Other Than God: How I Passionately Sought Happiness and Accidentally Found It (Ignatius Press). The book's deep soul, humor, and addictive readability help explain why Dean Koontz admitted to enjoying the entire book in just one sitting.

I recently sat down with Jennifer to discuss how she moved from atheism to Catholicism, what books influenced her journey, and why she describes her conversion as "a discovery of a long lost home."

Watch or download our interview below:

Video

Watch the video here (10 minutes)
 

Audio

[audio:https://strangenotions.com/wp-content/uploads/Jen-Fulwiler-Interview-SN.mp3]
Download the interview here (10 minutes)
 

Topics Discussed:

1:14 - Were you really an atheist growing up?
2:57 - What was one of the first chinks in your atheist armor?
4:41 - Can you describe your first attempts at prayer?
6:51 - What suggestions would you have for an unconvinced atheist?
 
 
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