Reasonable Doubts

Man’s search for meaning

If you Google “proofs for the existence of God” you will get 4,070,000 responses.  Some of those responses claim to have absolute proof of God’s existence while others proceed to dismantle those proofs and offer their own disproofs.   Weaving your way through these discussions can be complex and frustrating.  Can we prove the existence of God, or not?

Historically religious thinkers have come up with numerous logical proofs for the existence of God.  The Ontological Argument, The Teleological Argument, and the Epistemological Argument have all graced the pages of many a medieval philosophy text.   Then modern and contemporary philosophy came on the scene and thinkers like Kant, Russell, and Hume challenged these proofs.

Personally, I think the question is moot.  Even if one or more of these arguments work –we are really only proving the existence of an infinite principle, not the personal God of religion.  I think the question needs to be reframed.  Instead of asking “can we prove the existence of God”, we should ask the more potent question, “why should we prove the existence of God?”.  I think if we could answer that, we could get at the root of something much more profound and existential.

The effort to prove the existence of God has a long history.  The medievals developed philosophical proofs for the existence of God in order to demonstrate that religion is not contrary to reason.  These proofs inspired extensive literature over the centuries and contemporary thinkers still grapple with them today.  Why has mankind struggled with such intensity for so long to prove the existence of God? 

The question reminds me of an article from the New York Times entitled, “Suffering Evil, and the Existence of God” (Nov. 4, 2007).  The article discusses the books of two thinkers, Bart D. Ehrman, a professor of religious studies who lost his faith, and Antony Flew, a professor of philosophy and outspoken atheist who later found God.  Ehrman lost his faith to the question that so many others have fallen victim to – why do the righteous suffer?  Ehrman could not reconcile his religious beliefs with the suffering he witnessed so often in life.  Flew, on the other hand, had been a fervent disbeliever until he came upon a philosophical quandary.   If man and the universe are simply the results of unconscious chemical, biological, and other natural forces, how can we account for this world of purpose and meaning?  “How can a universe of mindless matter produce beings with intrinsic ends… .”  The question turned Flew around and he adopted the position of belief in a God (albeit not the God of any particular religion).

I think the position of both of these thinkers point to the reason humans struggle so intensely to know if God exists: man yearns for meaning.  Flew’s contribution is clear.  God’s existence accounts for the meaning and purpose we all sense in our lives.  It explains how humans can create works of art, compose music, and write literature.  It explains the depth of human emotions like love, joy, and even sorrow.  A Godless world perceives man exclusively as a natural being, like the animals and plants; a world with God entails a much more profound and meaningful role for mankind.  Choosing to believe or not to believe in God  is not only a matter of how we perceive God; it a question of how we perceive ourselves.

Ironically, Ehrman also demonstrates the importance of a world with God; humans seek meaning in their suffering.  Suffering will always be inexplicable.  But you can look at it in one of two ways.  You can surrender to its inexplicably, or you can perceive your suffering as having intrinsic meaning.  When you surrender, you perceive yourself as a victim of blind fate; when you perceive your suffering as having meaning (and hence coming from God), you can address it and respond to it.  You are no longer a passive victim of nature, you are an active being that can overcome nature.  Once again, how you perceive suffering and God is affected by how you perceive yourself.

The psychologist Viktor Frankl wrote, “Our main motivation in living is our will to find meaning in life.”  Man is a purposeful being.  He seeks meaning.  And more importantly perhaps, he senses meaning.  We find it in the recent explosion of yoga classes,  meditation circles, and prayer groups.  We encounter it in classical music, Renaissance art, and modern literature.  Humans are about more than their physical dimension as atheists  would have it; they yearn for more.  And this heightened sense of purpose  points to an origin beyond nature.  It points to a conscious purposeful Being who gives man his sense of meaning.  This century-old struggle for the search for God is but one example of man’s search for meaning;  And the  very fact of the search points to God’s existence.