Conversions from atheism are often gradual and complex, no doubt. For many converts the road is slow and tedious, tiring and trying. But in the end unbelievers who find God can enjoy an inner peace that comes from a clear conscience in knowing they held to truth and followed the arguments faithfully.

Of course not all converts from atheism become Christian or even religious. Some converts only reach a deistic belief in God (an areligious position that God is “impersonal”) but the leap is still monumental; and it opens new, unforeseen horizons.

The factors that lead to faith are often diverse. It is clear that every former atheist has walked a unique path to God. Cardinal Ratzinger was once asked how many ways there are to God. He replied:

“As many ways as there are people. For even within the same faith each man’s way is an entirely personal one.”

Of course, the pope-to-be was not endorsing the view that “all religions are equal” but rather that there always seems to be a unique combination of factors—or steps—that move each convert towards belief in God. It also seems that some of these factors are more prominent across the board than others.

Here are eight common factors that lead atheists to change their minds about God:

1. Good literature and reasonable writing.

Reasonable atheists eventually become theists because they are reasonable; and furthermore, because they are honest. They are willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads; and in many cases the evidence comes to the atheist most coherently and well-presented through the writings of believers in God.

Author Karen Edmisten admits on her blog:

“I once thought I’d be a lifelong atheist. Then I became desperately unhappy, read up on philosophy and various religions (while assiduously avoiding Christianity), and waited for something to make sense. I was initially  appalled when Christianity began to look  like the sensible thing, surprised when I wanted to be baptized, and stunned that I ended up a Catholic.”

Dr. Holly Ordway, author of Not God’s Type: An Atheist Academic Lays Down Her Arms, describes the consequences of reading great, intelligent Christian writers:

“I found that my favorite authors were men and women of deep Christian faith. C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien above all; and then the poets: Gerard Manley Hopkins, George Herbert, John Donne, and others. Their work was unsettling to my atheist convictions…”

Dr. Ordway mentions the eminent 20th century Oxford thinker, C.S. Lewis. Lewis is a prime example of a reasonable but unbelieving thinker who was willing to read from all angles and perspectives. As a result of his open inquiry, he became a believer in Christ and one of modern Christianity’s greatest apologists.

G.K. Chesterton and George MacDonald were two of the most influential writers to effect Lewis’ conversion. He writes in his autobiography, Surprised By Joy:

“In reading Chesterton, as in reading MacDonald, I did not know what I was letting myself in for… A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.”

Author Dale Ahlquist writes matter-of-factly that “C.S. Lewis was an atheist until he read Chesterton’s book, The Everlasting Man, but he wasn’t afterwards…”

Ironically, it was C.S. Lewis’ influential defenses of Christianity that would eventually prompt countless conversions to Christianity—and his influence continues today unhindered. Among the Lewis-led converts from atheism is former feminist and professor of philosophy, Lorraine Murray, who recalls:

“In college I turned my back on Catholicism, my childhood faith, and became a radical, gender-bending feminist and a passionate atheist …. Reading Lewis, I found something that I must have been quietly hungering for all along, which was a reasoned approach to my childhood beliefs, which had centered almost entirely on emotion. As I turned the pages of this book, I could no longer ignore the Truth, nor turn my back on the Way and the Life. Little by little, and inch by inch, I found my way back to Jesus Christ and returned to the Catholic Church.”

For an in-depth account of Murray’s conversion, see her book: Confessions Of An Ex-Feminist.

2. "Experimentation" with prayer and the word of God.

The Word of God is living. It has power beyond human comprehension because it is “God-breathed.” God speaks to man in many ways; but especially through prayer and the reading of the inspired Scriptures. When curiosity (or even interest) of non-believers leads to experimentation with prayer or reading the Bible the results can be shocking, as many converts attest.

One former atheist who was profoundly affected by prayer and the Scriptures is author Devin Rose. On his blog, he describes the role that God’s Word played in his gradual conversion process from atheism to Christianity:

“I began praying, saying, “God, you know I do not believe in you, but I am in trouble and need help. If you are real, help me.” I started reading the Bible to learn about what Christianity said…”

Once Rose began to read the Scriptures and talk to God, even as a skeptic, he found himself overwhelmed by something very real:

“Still, I persevered. I kept reading the Bible, asking my roommate questions about what I was reading, and praying. Then, slowly, and amazingly, my faith grew and it eventually threatened to whelm my many doubts and unbelief.”

And the rest was history for the now rising Catholic apologist and author of The Protestant’s Dilemma.

Similarly, renowned sci-fi author John C. Wright distinctly recalls a prayer he said as an adamant atheist:

“I prayed. ‘Dear God, I know… that you do not exist. Nonetheless, as a scholar, I am forced to entertain the hypothetical possibility that I am mistaken. So just in case I am mistaken, please reveal yourself to me in some fashion that will prove your case. If you do not answer, I can safely assume that either you do not care whether I believe in you, or that you have no power to produce evidence to persuade me…If you do not exist, this prayer is merely words in the air, and I lose nothing but a bit of my dignity. Thanking you in advance for your kind cooperation in this matter, John Wright.'”

Wright soon received the answer (and effect) he did not expect:

“Something from beyond the reach of time and space, more fundamental than reality, reached across the universe and broke into my soul and changed me…I was altered down to the root of my being…It was like falling in love.”

Wright was welcomed into the Catholic Church at Easter in 2008.

3. Historical study of the Gospels.

Lee Strobel, the former legal editor of the Chicago Tribune and author of the influential work, The Case For Christ, is a prime example of what happens when an honest atheist sets out to establish once and for all whether the claims of the Gospels are reliable or not.

Strobel writes at the end of his investigation in The Case For Christ:

“I’ll admit it:I was ambushed by the amount and quality of the evidence that Jesus is the unique Son of God… I shook my head in amazement. I had seen defendants carted off to the death chamber on much less convincing proof! The cumulative facts and data pointed unmistakably towards a conclusion that I wasn’t entirely comfortable in reaching.” (p. 264)

Modern historical scholars like Craig Blomberg and N.T. Wright have advanced the area of historical theology and the study of the claims of the Gospels to exciting new heights. The results of such ground-breaking studies are one of the greatest threats to modern day atheism.

Referring specifically to the historical evidence for the resurrection of Christ in the Gospels (discussed below), former atheist and freelancer, Philip Vander Elst, writes:

“The more I thought about all these points, the more convinced I became that the internal evidence for the reliability of the Gospels and the New Testament as a whole was overwhelming."

4. Honest philosophical reasoning.

Philosophy means “love of truth.” Philosophy is meant to lead one to truth; and it certainly will, if the philosopher is willing to honestly consider the arguments from both sides and follow the best arguments wherever they may lead.

Psychologist Dr. Kevin Vost recalls his discovery of the arguments of St. Thomas Aquinas:

“Pope Leo XIII had written in the 1879 encyclical Aeterni Patris that for scientific types who follow only reason, after the grace of God, nothing is as likely to win them back to the faith as the wisdom of St. Thomas, and this was the case for me. He showed me how true Christian faith complements and perfects reason; it doesn’t contradict or belittle it. He solved all the logical dilemmas.”

Philosopher Dr. Ed Feser, in his article, The Road From Atheism, recounts the shocking effectof opening himself to the arguments for the existence of God:

“As I taught and thought about the arguments for God’s existence, and in particular the cosmological argument, I went from thinking “These arguments are no good” to thinking “These arguments are a little better than they are given credit for” and then to “These arguments are actually kind of interesting.”  Eventually it hit me: “Oh my goodness, these arguments are right after all!”

Feser concludes:

“Speaking for myself, anyway, I can say this much.  When I was an undergrad I came across the saying that learning a little philosophy leads you away from God, but learning a lot of philosophy leads you back.  As a young man who had learned a little philosophy, I scoffed.  But in later years and at least in my own case, I would come to see that it’s true.”

Two fantastic books from Edward Feser include The Last Superstition: A Refutation Of The New Atheism and Aquinas. Also recommended is Kevin Vost’s From Atheism to Catholicism: How Scientists and Philosophers Led Me to the Truth.

5. Reasonable believers.

It has been the obnoxious position of some (not all) atheists that in order to believe in God, one must have a significant lack of intelligence and/or reason. Most atheists believe that modern science has ruled out the possibility of the existence of God. For this reason, they tag believers with a lack of up-to-date knowledge and critical thinking skills. (Of course, the question of the existence of a God who is outside of the physical universe is fundamentally aphilosophical question—not a scientific question.)

Intelligent and reasonable believers in God, who can engage atheistic arguments with clarity and logic, become a great challenge to atheists who hold this shallow attitude towards the existence of God.

Theists especially make a statement when they are experts in any field of science. To list just a few examples: Galileo and Kepler (astronomy), Pascal (hydrostatics), Boyle (chemistry), Newton (calculus), Linnaeus (systematic biology), Faraday (electromagnetics), Cuvier (comparative anatomy), Kelvin (thermodynamics), Lister (antiseptic surgery), and Mendel (genetics).

An honest atheist might presume, upon encountering Christians (for example) who have reasonable explanations for their supernatural beliefs, that the existence of God is at least plausible. This encounter might then mark the beginning of the non-believer’s openness towards God as a reality.

Consider the notable conversion of former atheist blogger, Jennifer Fulwiler. Her journey from atheism to agnosticism and—eventually—to Catholicism, was slow and gradual with many different points of impact. But encountering intelligent believers in God was a key chink in her atheist armor.

In this video interview with Brandon Vogt, Jen explains how encountering intelligent, reasonable theists (especially her husband) impacted her in the journey towards her eventual conversion.

For the full account of Jen’s conversion process, get her must-read book, Something Other Than God. Her blog is conversiondiary.com.

And then there’s Leah Libresco—another atheist blogger turned Catholic. Leah recalls the challenging impact of reasonable Christians in her academic circle:

“I was in a philosophical debating group, so the strongest pitch I saw was probably the way my Catholic friends rooted their moral, philosophical, or aesthetic arguments in their theology. We covered a huge spread of topics so I got so see a lot of long and winding paths into the consequences of belief.”

Recalling her first encounter with this group of intelligent Christians, she writes on her blog:

“When I went to college…I met smart Christians for the first time, and it was a real shock.”

That initial “shock” stirred her curiosity and propelled her in the direction of Christianity. Leah is now an active Catholic.

Finally, there’s Edith Stein, a brilliant 20th century philosopher. As an atheist, Edith was shocked when she discovered the writings of Catholic philosopher, Max Scheler. As one account of her conversion recounts:

“Edith was enthralled by Scheler’s eloquence in expounding and defending Catholic spiritual ideals. Listening to his lectures on the phenomenology of religion, she became disposed to take religious ideas and attitudes seriously for the first time since her adolescence, when she had lost her faith and and given up prayer.”

Edith Stein would eventually convert to Catholicism and die a martyr. She is now known as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.

6. Modern advances and limitations in science.

Antony Flew was one of the world’s most famous atheists of the 20th century. He debated William Lane Craig and others on the existence of God. But eventually his recognition of the profound order and complexity of the universe, and its apparent fine-tuning, was a decisive reason for the renowned atheist to change his mind about God’s existence.

In a fascinating interview with Dr. Ben Wiker, Flew explains:

“There were two factors in particular that were decisive. One was my growing empathy with the insight of Einstein and other noted scientists that there had to be an Intelligence behind the integrated complexity of the physical Universe.”

He concluded that it was reasonable to believe that the organization of space, time, matter and energy throughout the universe is far from random.

As Dr. Peter Kreeft has pointed out, no person would see a hut on a beach and conclude that it must have randomly assembled itself by some random natural process, void of an intelligent designer. Its order necessitates a designer. Thus if this “beach hut analogy” is true, how much more should we believe in an Intelligent Designer behind the vastly more complex and ordered universe and the precise physical laws that govern it (click here for William Lane Craig’s argument for the fine-tuning of the universe).

Flew continues in his exposition on why he changed his mind about God:

“The second was my own insight that the integrated complexity of life itself—which is far more complex than the physical Universe—can only be explained in terms of an Intelligent Source. I believe that the origin of life and reproduction simply cannot be explained from a biological standpoint . . . The difference between life and non-life, it became apparent to me, was ontological and not chemical. The best confirmation of this radical gulf is Richard Dawkins’ comical effort to argue in The God Delusion that the origin of life can be attributed to a “lucky chance.” If that’s the best argument you have, then the game is over. No, I did not hear a Voice. It was the evidence itself that led me to this conclusion.”

Parents often describe their experience of procreation as “a miracle,” regardless of their religious background or philosophical worldview. Intuitively, they seem to accept that there is something deeply mysterious and transcendent at work in the bringing forth (and sustenance) of new human life. Flew also was able to realize (after a lifetime of study and reflection) that there could be no merely natural explanation for life in the universe.

For a more in-depth account of Flew’s change of mind on God’s existence, read There Is A God: How The World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind.

7. Evidence for the Resurrection.

Thanks to the phenomenal work of leading New Testament scholars, including Gary Habermas, William Lane Craig, and N.T. Wright, the case for Christ’s resurrection has become more airtight than ever.

Modern historical studies have left little doubt about what the best explanation is for the alleged postmortem appearances of the risen Jesus, the conversions of Paul and James, and the empty tomb: Jesus really was raised from the dead. Even most of today’s critical New Testament scholars accept these basic facts as historically certain (the appearances, conversions, empty tomb, etc); but they are left limping with second-rate alternative explanations in a last ditch effort to refute the true resurrection of Christ and “signature of God”, as scholar Richard Swinburne has tagged it.

The case for the resurrection of Jesus had a significant impact on the former atheist, now Christian apologist, Alister McGrath. He recalls in one of his articles:

“My early concern was to get straight what Christians believed, and why they believed it. How does the Resurrection fit into the web of Christian beliefs? How does it fit into the overall scheme of the Christian faith? After several years of wrestling with these issues, I came down firmly on the side of Christian orthodoxy. I became, and remain, a dedicated and convinced defender of traditional Christian theology. Having persuaded myself of its merits, I was more than happy to try to persuade others as well.”

For more on McGrath’s journey see his book, Surprised By Meaning.

8. Beauty.

The great theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar, wrote:

“Beauty is the word that shall be our first. Beauty is the last thing which the thinking intellect dares to approach, since only it dances as an uncontained splendour around the double constellation of the true and the good and their inseparable relation to one another.”

Father von Balthasar held strong to the notion that to lead non-believers to belief in God we must begin with the beautiful.

Dr. Peter Kreeft calls this the Argument from Aesthetic Experience. The Boston College philosopher testifies that he knows of several former atheists who came to a belief in God based on this argument (for more from Dr. Kreeft, see his Twenty Arguments For The Existence Of God).

In classic Kreeftian fashion, he puts forward the argument in the following way:

“There is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Therefore there must be a God.

You either see this one or you don’t.”

The presence of our enhanced human consciousness not only differentiates humans from animals, it also aids in making the case for the existence of God. That’s because through our human consciousness we desire five transcendental experiences, none of which are necessary for survival. These five transcendental desires are our yearning for: (1) perfect knowledge/truth, (2) perfect love, (3) perfect justice/goodness, (4) perfect beauty, and (5) perfect home/being.

Most interestingly, any earthly satisfaction of these five inner desires leaves us feeling frustrated and wanting more. That’s because what we desire is a perfect experience of each of these five transcendental desires. But, since perfect knowledge/truth, perfect love, perfect justice/goodness, perfect beauty, and perfect home/being don’t exist here on earth, why do we seek them? It makes no sense for us to seek that which is unattainable. We only seek that which is attainable, if not here then in the hereafter.

What we seek is something transcendental, something beyond our world and beyond our earthly experience. What we seek is God, who is the Perfect Knowledge/Truth, Perfect Love, Perfect Justice/Goodness, Perfect Beauty, and Perfect Home/Being. For as St. Augustine of Hippo wrote nearly 1,600 years ago, “Thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”

Priest, philosopher, and theologian Fr. Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D., has written several books about how our ultimately unfulfilled yearning for these five transcendental experiences provides evidence of the existence of God. Let’s take a closer look at each of these five transcendental desires found within the human condition and how they reveal God's existence.

(1) Desire for Perfect Knowledge/Truth

Even in young children, we find a desire for perfect knowledge when they ask “Why is that?” and when given an answer they then ask the next question, “Well, why is that?” It seems this questioning would go on forever, at least until an adult brings it to an end! This process reveals that children (indeed, all of us) recognize the inadequacy of a partial answer, and that true satisfaction will occur only when a complete and perfect understanding has been achieved.

Humans do not seek just practical knowledge (e.g., “How do I get the food I need to survive?”). Rather, we want to know just for the sake of knowing, and we have an innate desire for a full and complete explanation. This is evident in the ongoing work of science in seeking a more complete understanding of our world. We know we have not yet reached a perfect understanding of our world, so we research and seek more knowledge, more truth.

Interestingly, we know our knowledge is not complete. If we did not know it was incomplete, we would not keep asking additional questions. It is our awareness that there is more to be known at the very moment when something is known which drives us to additional questioning. We have an awareness of the more.

The issue then arises: Why do we continue asking questions every time something is understood, as if we intuitively know that our current knowledge is limited and does not meet our desire to know all that is to be known? How can we be aware of something beyond everything we currently understand? Why do we have an awareness that what we now know is only a partially complete answer?

This intuitive awareness that there is more to be known than what we now know seems to defy a naturalistic explanation. All our knowledge is incomplete and we know it. But why are we aware that there is more to be known beyond what we currently know?

It seems the best explanation is that our conscious desire for perfect knowledge and complete truth has been written in our human nature by God, who is the Perfect Knowledge and Perfect Truth that we seek. This awareness of the more reveals the presence of God to human consciousness and grounds the belief in human transcendentality (the presence of our soul).

(2) Desire for Perfect Love

We humans also have a desire for perfect and unconditional love. However, this desire can mislead us into expecting perfect love from another human being. When the relationship does not fulfill our desire for perfect love, this expectation leads to frustration and quite possibly to a decline in the relationship. For example, as the imperfections in the love of our beloved manifest themselves (e.g., our spouse is not perfectly understanding, kind, forgiving, self-giving, and concerned for me and all my interests), we at first become irritated. This irritation often leads to frustration, which in turn becomes dashed expectations. These dashed expectations may become either quiet hurt or overt demands, both aimed at extracting a more perfect love from our beloved. When this perfect love does not happen, thoughts of terminating the relationship may arise.

Why do we fall prey to such an obvious error? Because our desire is for love to be perfect and unconditional, but the reality is otherwise. We humans just cannot satisfy each other’s desire for perfect and unconditional love, no matter how hard we try. Thus, our dissatisfaction and frustration arise out of a conscious desire for a perfect love, a love that cannot be experienced in our relationships with others here on earth.

But what is the origin of our deep desire and yearning for perfect love? Why would we have this desire for perfect love, especially as it just leaves us feeling dissatisfied and frustrated when we cannot find it with another person? Why do we have an awareness of and desire for a type of love that we have neither known nor will experience from another human being?

It seems we are searching for perfect love in all the wrong places. Our desire for perfect and unconditional love can only be met by the Perfect Love (God). Again, we find that God has implanted in each of us a conscious desire for a perfect love that only God can fulfill.

(3) Desire for Perfect Justice/Goodness

In addition, we have a conscious desire for perfect justice and goodness. For example, even in young children an imperfect expression of justice from their parents will elicit the immediate response, “That’s not fair!” Adults do the same thing. We feel the same outrage toward groups, social structures, and even God when we perceive that we have not been treated fairly. We truly expect that perfect justice ought to happen, and when it doesn’t we feel a profound and deep outrage. We expect more justice and goodness than our finite world can deliver, and this causes outrage and cynicism when it does not come to pass.

Once more, what could be the source of our desire for perfect justice and goodness, especially when it seems well beyond the actual justice and goodness we can possibly experience? Given that our desire for perfect justice/goodness cannot be found in an imperfect world, it seems that its origin is from perfect Justice/Goodness itself. For this reason, philosophers have associated this notion of perfect Justice/Goodness with the presence of God to human consciousness.

(4) Desire for Perfect Beauty

Once in a great while, we think we have found perfect beauty. This might occur while looking at a scene of wonderful natural beauty: a magnificent red sunset over the water or majestic snowcapped mountains against a horizon of blue sky. Yet, even then, we get bored and strive for an even more perfect manifestation of natural beauty--a little better sunset, another vantage point of the mountains that’s a little more perfect.

As with the other transcendentals, we seem to have an innate awareness of what is most beautiful. This incites us to desire a perfectly beautiful ideal, which leads to both positive and negative results. The positive result is the continuous human striving for artistic, musical, and literary perfection. This striving has left a magnificent cultural legacy of architecture, art, music, drama, etc. However, the negative effect is that we grow bored or frustrated with any imperfect manifestation of beauty. For example, a flowering garden can achieve a certain degree of beauty. But our continued desire to improve it only makes us feel dissatisfied when we cannot perfect it indefinitely.

As with the other transcendentals, we are innately aware of and attracted to perfect beauty itself. But where does our conscious sense of perfect beauty (which does not even exist in our world) come from? Since it seems that the notion of perfect Beauty cannot be obtained from a world of imperfect beauty, we are led to the realization that its’ origin arises out of perfect Beauty itself. For this reason, philosophers have associated this notion of perfect beauty with the presence of perfect Beauty (i.e., God) to human consciousness.

(5) Desire for Perfect Home/Being

The fifth transcendental is our desire to be at perfect harmony and peace in our being and in our world. When our desire for perfect home is even partially fulfilled, theologians, saints, and mystics throughout the ages have referred to this as joy, love, awe, unity, holiness, and/or peace. Again, we need to ask what gives rise to our desire for perfect harmony and our yearning to feel comfortably at home in our world? Once more, the origin of this awareness seems to be traceable to the perfect Home itself. For this reason, philosophers and theologians have associated our desire for a perfect home with the presence of God to human consciousness.

In summary, we find evidence of God’s existence in our desire for these five transcendental experiences. Our yearning for “more” leave us with an emptiness that only God can fill. For as C.S. Lewis stated in Mere Christianity, “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food... If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

God is perfect and wants us to be one with Him. Thus, our inner craving for perfection must come from and is directed towards God alone. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church (#27) states, “The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for.”

“Christ prophesied the whole of Gothic architecture in that hour when nervous and respectable people (such people as now object to barrel organs) objected to the shouting of the gutter-snipes of Jerusalem. He said, 'If these were silent, the very stones would cry out.' Under the impulse of His spirit arose like a clamorous chorus the facades of the mediaeval cathedrals, thronged with shouting faces and open mouths. The prophecy has fulfilled itself: the very stones cry out.”  - G.K. Chesterton

 
We lost something important when our Western culture ‘outgrew’ its infatuation with obscenely large cathedrals, ornate basilicas, dark stone chapels, stretching towers, and lonely crypts. We lost something important – a unique human experience – when religious people began their relationship with the plaster-church over the ‘old-school’ church.

We lost our awareness of the power of Place, specifically, its power to shut us up. Have you ever seen a group of tourists walk into a basilica? They respect the great artistic achievements of the Old Church without respect for the Old Church. They walk in through the creaking, wooden side-door; they are talking about their diet plans, and the relative evils of cholesterol. Through the door now, (they smell the incense), into the foyer, (they feel the cool of the stone ease away the heat of the day from their skin), and past the first arch. Wait for it, wait for it…now.

Their words die on their lips. Mouths open loosely, and necks crane instinctively upwards. Their group loosens, they begin to wander away from each other, one towards the candles, another towards Our Lady of Sorrows, and another towards the altar, each waltzing in small circles as they try to take everything in. How many times I’ve seen this, and how many more times I’ve performed this little unconscious ritual; this silent transformation; this unrequested dance.

The beauty of a basilica is that men do not visit it, it visits men. The beauty of it, yes, but also the rudeness of that dark, stone temple, for it is a hand clamped over the modern mouth, a sturdy grasp guiding one through side-chapels.

It demands that you center yourself. Here are the pews on either side, the symmetrical side-chapels, everything mirrored and proportional, even the interlacing tessellations of granite that spread out from a single star on the floor. Stand on the star. Then look straight ahead. There are two things that everything else seems to reflect from. Two things in this building that form and beauty and structure emanate from. One is you, in the center of the church, having wandered there almost by by necessity, by the strange force of the symmetry all around you. The other is the tabernacle. Of the two, choose now whom you will serve.

Every cathedral makes this bold, arrogant challenge to the visiting man. The sheer size, scope, and intricacy of these temples speaks of the total, radical commitment men gave to God; to build him a dwelling place, even if they were not to see it complete; to serve him. These living stones are their pronounced fiat; their yes; their choice. What is yours? For when Catholic or atheist leaves, the tabernacle remains. The Body of Christ will stay – the red candle still burn – and the basilica will circle and reflect around it, like ripples in a pool, emanating from the drop of some inexplicable and sublime stone.

What does a plaster-church say? “I will not be here long.”

What does a cathedral say? “You cannot deny me. For I’ve outlasted your forefathers, and I’ll outlast you.”

The cathedral speaks of the endurance of Catholicism. This is not to deny the beauty of a simple church, of the awesome fact that the universal quality of Catholicism means that Catholics can celebrate mass in their living rooms, shelters, canoes, and battle-fields. This is simply to lament that the age of the Cathedral is done, the age where one was silenced, for perhaps the briefest of moments in a life filled with noise, and brought to worship.

Perhaps the tourists would never acknowledge that they perform an act of worship, walking into a basilica. But what else are we to call it, when we all shut up, slow ourselves and walk small-stepped in awe, reduced to whispers and peace?

The Catholic Church holds that worship is not something we do. No, worship is a gift we receive. I hold that the cathedrals, basilicas, and lasting chapels of the Church are awesome conveyors of that gift, rudely thrusting worship into the hearts of all who enter them.

But perhaps there is one place left where one can experience this bit of humanity. I speak, of course, of the library, where my writings are written. It would not be unwise for the seeking, modern man, to stand in some old, dusky library, close his eyes amidst the books that surround him, and think of how such a little peace would be magnified, if he were surrounded by saints, angels, pilgrims, prayers, cool stone, and holy incense.

A man in a library - if he is a man at all – is humbled by the mass of human knowledge, wisdom, and understanding that surrounds him.

A man in a cathedral is humbled because he, as a member of the human race, has performed the incredible and audacious act of surrounding the unsurroundable God with stone.

A lot has been said about the “problem of pain.” Why, if God is both loving and all-powerful, is there still suffering in the world? The question is a challenge for Christians, as for all theists.Christians have some sense of why a loving God would permit suffering. It's easy enough to see that love is a good (the highest good, even), and that love requires free will. And it's just a small step from there to see how that free will could be used in some dastardly ways. Likewise, it's clear enough that a loving God might permit His creatures to suffer, in certain cases, for their (our) own good.

This answer to the problem of pain is sensible, but not satisfying. There's no shaking that there's still something out of whack, something not quite right about this world. Christianity hasn't been shy about this point. The whole doctrine of the Fall is that things aren't how they ought to be, and how we're the ones who screwed them up. You can read that story in Genesis, or watch it on the nightly news.

And there's no shaking the sense that we don't have a full explanation. But again, Christianity acknowledges this from the outset: when Job complains about his problem to God, he's not given an answer; rather, he's basically told that there are things going on that he can't begin to comprehend. In the Cross, we get a fuller picture: God doesn't just acknowledge suffering, He takes it on, and we're given a tiny glimpse into the mysterious relationship between love, vulnerability, and pain. But there's still so much that we don't understand. And the Christian answer seems to be: that's the way it's going to be, this side of heaven. The answer is unsatisfying, but it seems to me that it's meant to be. This ground is well-tread, and others have addressed the problem of pain much more eloquently and exhaustively.

But today I want to look at another problem that doesn't get much attention: the “problem of beauty.” It's a problem, not for believers, but for non-believers: if there isn't a God, how can we account for all of the joy and beauty in the world? More specifically, how can we account for all the joy and beauty that doesn't have any evolutionary benefit? I really like the description of the problem given by Joanna Newsom, in a discussion about an album that she wrote shortly after the death of her best friend:

“The thing that I was experiencing and dwelling on the entire time is that there are so many things that are not OK and that will never be OK again,” says Newsom. “But there’s also so many things that are OK and good that sometimes it makes you crumple over with being alive. We are allowed such an insane depth of beauty and enjoyment in this lifetime.
 
It’s what my dad talks about sometimes. He says the only way that he knows there’s a God is that there’s so much gratuitous joy in this life. And that’s his only proof. There’s so many joys that do not assist in the propagation of the race or self-preservation. There’s no point whatsoever. They are so excessively, mind-bogglingly joy-producing that they distract from the very functions that are supposed to promote human life. They can leave you stupefied, monastic, not productive in any way, shape or form.
 
Those joys are there and they are unflagging and they are ever-growing. And still there are these things that you will never be able to feel OK about–unbearably awful, sad, ugly, unfair things.”

This captures the problem so well, because it anticipates the easy answer: that joy and our love of beauty is some sort of evolutionary benefit bequeathed to us by natural selection.

That answer might sound good at first, but there's no real evidence for it. Moreover, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. After all, we're moved to awe at the grandeur of the heavens: how does that aid the survival or propagation of our species? Often, as Newsom points out, the sensation of beauty draws us away from working and reproducing, leaving us “stupefied, monastic, not productive in any way, shape or form.” Without God, it's hard to give a good account of why we experience this kind of joy at beauty.

At first, it seems like we're dealing with two equal-and-opposite problems: believers struggle to account for all of the bad bits of life, and non-believers struggle to account for all of the good bits. Both of us are placing our trust somewhere. The Christian trusts in the goodness of God and the promise that someday, all of this will be clear; the atheist trusts in the idea that science will somehow solve the problem of beauty, and that someday, all of this will be clear. But these two problems aren't really equal. I think that we can see this inequality in a few ways.

First, they're not equal in size and scope: despite all of the awful bits, life is beautiful. Indeed, one of the very reasons many of the awful bits (like death) are so awful are because they deprive us of life. Thomas Hobbes famously claimed that the life of man in “the state of nature” was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” But if life is really as awful as all that, why complain that it's short? It's like the Woody Allen line that “Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering – and it’s all over much too soon.” The very fact that we lament the fleetingness of life (our own and others) points to a recognition that life is beautiful. Evil is noticeable precisely because it sticks out: it sharply contrasts with the beautiful background of life that we so often overlook or take for granted.

Second, evil is metaphysically dependent upon good. This is a concept that deserves more attention than I can give it here, and I hope to return to it soon. But I think that I can give at least a sense of what I mean by using a couple of analogies.

We often speak of light and darkness in a dualistic way, as if they're equal and opposite. But they're not: light actually exists in a way that darkness doesn't. In a world without darkness, we could still analyze light and its wavelike and particle-like properties. In a world without light, the very term darkness would be meaningless. We can only understand what darkness is by reference to light, but we can understand light without reference to darkness. The same holds true for  heat and cold. Heat actually exists: it's molecular energy. Cold is just the relative or absolute absence of heat. It's why we can talk about absolute zero: it's an absolute absence of heat. But there's not some maximum temperature where all of the “cold particles” are wiped out.

Something similar holds in discussing good and evil. Much of our concept of evil is tied up in the idea of “something that shouldn't have happened.” But for that concept to make any sense, you have to have at least an inkling of an idea of should, even if only an intuitive one. Evil is a perversion or an absence of good.

One of the clearest ways that we explore this is to understand why intentional evils are done. Invariably - as in, without a single exception - evil acts are done in the pursuit of some real or perceived good. We're always chasing after the good: after pleasure, honor, love, etc. (That doesn't excuse evil actions, obviously: you can't justify torturing the cat for pleasure simply because you did it for pleasure.) This shows that every evil act pays homage, no matter how unwittingly, to good. That's why you can't understand evil without understanding good. But none of this is true in reverse. We don't do good things because we're seeking evil, and we don't need a concept of evil to understand why something is good.

Third, there's a difference in explanatory power. Here, I want to conclude by refocusing on the two specific problems, the problem of pain and the problem of beauty, because it's here that we see the final inequality. The Christian explanation for pain leaves us unsatisfied, and I think that's an appropriate response. For starters, it's not a thorough explanation, nor a specific one: it doesn't explain why this evil thing happened to that person. But despite this, it offers a colorable explanation of the problem. It's clear that there's no logical incompatibility between permitting evil and being good, and this corresponds to our experience of life. We live in societies built on the idea of freedom-expansion, even if that entails the annoyance of people misusing that freedom for stupid or evil ends.

The atheist explanation of the problem of beauty is similarly unsatisfying. But here's the rub: unlike the Christian account of pain, the atheist account of beauty doesn't even advance any colorable explanation. The generally proffered solution, natural selection, just doesn't work here. Nor does it correspond with our experience of life: we don't see a clear correlation (at least, not a positive one) between “I cry at museums” and “I am adept at surviving and mating.”

At the end of a court case, even a well-argued one, there are often questions left lingering: if X is at fault, how do we explain this or that piece of evidence? On the other hand, if X isn't at fault, what about all of these other pieces of evidence? And if God is in the dock, so to speak, these are some of the critical arguments we should expect to see brought up - both in regards to his existence, and his goodness. That's why I think it's important to hold the problem of beauty up, side-by-side, with the problem of pain, weighing them, as if in a balance.

I think Joanna Newsom and her dad are right. While the argument from beauty isn't the only proof for the existence of God, I think it's conceptually sound, and hard to answer. The universe is full of endless delights, joys that we have no right to by nature, and which are presented before us everyday, all the same.
 
 
(Image credit: Unsplash)

Recently, for my Mom’s 60^th birthday, I put together a tribute video complete with creased photographs, old music, and clips of my brothers recounting a favorite memory of her—mostly revolving around her cooking or buying the four of us food.

As part of the tribute, I asked my Dad to summarize their forty years of marriage together in a minute-long clip—a Herculean task that he met with such calmness and profundity that I knew instantly it would be the grand finale. I also knew this important clip needed an equally important song in the background. But which one?

I finally decided on Johnny Cash’s cover of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” from American IV, the last album released before his death in 2003—just four months after his wife June Carter’s death.
 

 
When we debuted the video, I fully expected there to not be a dry eye in the room—and sure enough, there wasn’t.

But what I didn’t expect was that every time I returned to the song, I felt that same ineffable emotion welling up inside of me. For a man who prides himself on a certain flinty philosophical temperament, this song had become a rare piece of emotional kryptonite. By the second verse—sometimes even before the first word—I was tearing up. Even trying (and failing) to explain why it moved me so much primed the waterworks.

Throughout his career, Cash cranked out some truly powerful songs about murder, prison, and despair, the kind of songs that made him so beloved among both believers and non-believers. (One of my favorite scenes in Walk the Line shows a record company executive chastising Cash: “Your fans are gospel folk, Johnny. They're Christians, and they don't wanna hear you singing to a bunch of murderers and rapists, tryin' to cheer 'em up.” The man in black responds without missing a beat: “Then they ain't Christians.”) And with Rick Rubin at the boards, standing at death’s door, his voice never sounded so wise, clear, and urgent. I never walked away from a track like “Hurt” (a cover of Nine Inch Nails) unscathed.

But this song was something else entirely—it was devastating.

My wife asked me if I thought about my parents’ marriage when I heard the song, and I admitted that I did. But I confessed that I also thought about seeing her for the first time in English class in college; about finally meeting our first baby face to face any day now; about the 70-year old Cash singing to the love of his life love June Carter just months before they both passed on; about my 90-year-old grandma visiting her catatonic husband day in and day out for over a decade in the nursing home. I thought about all of these at once, but not really any of them.

I realized that it wasn’t any one particular example of love that came to mind, but agape love itself—a love that was bigger than any one person’s love for something or someone, yet still animating each and every of its instantiations. Cash’s words and voice were so devoid of pretense, so filled with self-giving; this song was bigger than me and my thoughts, bigger than that man and his music. It was beautiful.

There is a kind of supra-rational argument to be made for God through this kind of musical experience. I would use Peter Kreeft’s same formulation for the argument from Aesthetic Experience to articulate the argument from Johnny Cash:

a)    There is the music of Johnny Cash.
b)    Therefore, there must be a God.

Here at Strange Notions we’ve seen many compelling arguments for God’s existence: arguments from first cause, cosmology, morality, contemporary physics, even evolutionary history. Seen in this context, the argument from beauty seems to lose quite a bit of its power. After all, it’s not a formal argument, and more of an appeal to personal experience. But isn’t personal experience just that—personal? How could anyone formulate an objective proof based on a poetic “deepity” experienced subjectively?

In the end, I agree that this “argument" should only be seen in light of other, more objective intellectual arguments for God’s existence—after all, we have reason, and should exercise our reason fully—but neither should it be dismissed as inadmissible evidence. Given that we are all persons living in and coping with the world, a life-changing experience is not exactly data we can turn our nose up at when it comes to the most important of questions. In fact, for many lives, it is often the case that a personal experience seems to tip the scales of belief and unbelief.

It’s worth nothing that part of Christian apologist and philosopher William Lane Craig’s debate routine is to follow up formal arguments for God’s existence with an informal argument from personal experience.
 

“This isn’t really an argument for God’s existence; rather it’s the claim that you can know God exists wholly apart from arguments, by personally experiencing him...In the experiential context of seeing and feeling and hearing things, I naturally form the belief that there are certain physical objects which I am sensing. Thus, my basic beliefs are not arbitrary, but appropriately grounded in experience. There may be no way to prove such beliefs, and yet it’s perfectly rational to hold them. Such beliefs are thus not merely basic, but properly basic. In the same way, belief in God is for those who seek Him a properly basic belief grounded in their experience of God.”

 
The atheist might instantly retort: one man’s Bach is another man’s din; one man’s beauty is another man’s bedlam; and one man’s personal experience of God is another man’s delusion!

But then, the argument isn’t about aesthetics and the objectivity of taste but the universality of beauty in human life, a phenomenon which atheist Christopher Hitchens described as well as anyone:
 

“The sense that there's something beyond the material—or, if not beyond it, not entirely consistent materially with it, is I think a very important matter. What you could call the numinous, or the transcendent, or at its best I suppose the ecstatic...We know what we mean by it when we think about certain kinds of music perhaps; certainly the relationship, or the coincidence but sometimes very powerful, between music and love...”

 
In the end, the argument from Johnny Cash is not about this one song about love—it could be any song, about anything. It could be a painting, a person, a place, or even a childhood memory like the one described by C.S. Lewis in Surprised by Joy: “Once in those early days my brother brought into the nursery the lid of a biscuit tin which he had covered with moss and garnished with twigs and flowers so as to make it a garden or a toy forest. This was the first beauty I ever knew...As long as I live my imagination of Paradise will retain something of my brother’s toy garden.”

Beauty, wherever it appears to you, is yours for the taking—and it tends to speak for itself. It opens us to paradise like a flower opens to the sun. Some of us say that this glimpse of heaven is false; that just as “love” is nothing more than a chemical cocktail concocted by the brain, the “mystical” experience of beauty—regardless of how overwhelming and significant it may seem from any particular subject’s vantage point—is reducible to electrochemical signals in that brain. We stand stalwart, refusing to give an inch to the immaterial, and we protest too much. These towering waves of beauty continually assail us throughout our lives, seizing and saturating our cool objectification and pointing beyond themselves and our sight.

Because beauty, others say, is a way...
 
 
(Image credit: New York Times)

A while back I mentioned to an atheist acquaintance that I'd cried at Mass that morning. I explained that it was one of those times when I felt overwhelmed with the presence of God; I was so perfectly at peace, so surrounded by love, that I couldn't help but be moved to tears.

"Maybe it was the music," he responded. He went on to offer an erudite analysis of how music is known to produce certain positive sensations in the brain, noting that religious leaders from time immemorial have used the evolved human response to the stimulus of music to delude the faithful into believing that they've experience the divine.

I had to smile at his suggestion, because I actually agreed with part of his argument.

I never had a "religious experience" before my conversion from atheism to Christianity, and couldn't even imagine what that might be like. Would harp-playing angels appear in front of you? Would you hear a booming voice fill the room? I had no idea.

There had been a handful of moments in my life, however, when I experienced something that was unlike anything else I'd ever felt. On a few rare occasions I felt overcome with an odd sensation, an ecstatic elation on top of inner stillness that was so powerful that it made me feel as if I'd slipped into some other dimension. It was a moment of feeling compelled to relax, to let go, to just trust (trust in what or whom I didn't know, but that was definitely an overriding feeling when I had those experiences). Those moments were...well, if I hadn't been so certain that nothing existed beyond the material world, I might have said "spiritual." And they always occurred when I was listening to music.

It seemed illogical, really, that a mere arrangement of certain sounds in a certain order could transport me, for however brief a moment, into such a sublime state. I was aware of all the natural explanations for music's impact on the human brain; yet when I'd read about how the cochlea transmits information along the auditory nerve as neural discharges into the auditory cortex in the temporal lobe, I'd think, "Uhh, yeah, that's true…but I feel like there's something more going on as well."

One of the many things that rang true when I began studying Catholic theology was the emphasis on art—music, in particular—as a reflection of God. I came to see art as a sort of "secret handshake" of beings with souls: We share 96% of our DNA with chimps, but chimps don't write symphonies. Dogs don't rap. Dolphins can be trained to reproduce musical rhythms, but they don't sing songs. Only the creature made in the image and likeness of God can speak the secret language of music.

In other words, I realized that all those experiences I'd had while listening to music were so tremendous because they were experiences of my soul having a brush with its Creator. Or, in Pope Benedict's words:

"The encounter with the beautiful can become the wound of the arrow that strikes the heart and in this way opens our eyes, so that later, from this experience, we take the criteria for judgment and can correctly evaluate the arguments. For me an unforgettable experience was the Bach concert that Leonard Bernstein conducted in Munich after the sudden death of Karl Richter. I was sitting next to the Lutheran Bishop Hanselmann. When the last note of one of the great Thomas-Kantor-Cantatas triumphantly faded away, we looked at each other spontaneously and right then we said:
 
"Anyone who has heard this, knows that the faith is true."
 
The music had such an extraordinary force of reality that we realized, no longer by deduction, but by the impact on our hearts, that it could not have originated from nothingness, but could only have come to be through the power of the Truth that became real in the composer's inspiration."

Christianity doesn't deny that beautiful music can move us to feel something; in fact, it acknowledges it, and then takes it a step farther by articulating exactly what it is we're feeling. And that's why I smiled when I heard my atheist friend's comment. It is actually because I am a Christian that I take that moment at Mass when I became filled with so much love and hope that I felt like I could explode with joy, and I say: Yes, maybe it was the music.
 
 
Originally posted at the National Catholic Register. Used with author's permission.
(Image credit: VK.com)