"5 Reasons: Why I Still Believe in God" - DAY 40

Day 40 – the argument defined

If there isn't a natural explanation and there doesn't seem to be the potential for finding one, then I believe it's appropriate to look at a supernatural explanation.  –WALTER L. BRADLEY

Let me start by making three statements:

1. Atheists believe that the natural world is all there is, that there is no such reality that can be described as supernatural.

2. Many human beings believe that a supernatural reality exists.

3. Belief in the supernatural could not be present in the human mind unless it was planted there by a supernatural source.

You will see I am right if you take the first two facts above and try to explain them from the atheistic viewpoint. Atheists believe that men and women are 100% natural creatures, as completely surrounded by nature as the blind man and cave fish were by darkness. If so, you would expect men and women, like the blind man and the fish, to be unaware of anything else. You certainly would not expect them to acknowledge anything beyond nature, anymore than you would expect the blind man or the cave fish to acknowledge light. You would not expect humans, if as immersed in nature as ocean-bottom plants are in water, to ever conceive of a supernatural world “above.”

But what you have throughout history are men and women doing just that. On the earliest pottery pieces unearthed, on the most primitive cave drawings deciphered, and within the most ancient tombs explored, you find evidence of a belief in, almost an obsession with, the supernatural, one that has continued unabated to the present. What you have in history are people, supposedly engulfed in nothing but nature, believing that something more than nature exists.

As with the blind man, cave fish, and ocean plants, such a leap of awareness could never have occurred without outside help. Something or someone had to tell humans of a supernatural realm; if not, we would never have fathomed it possible. The question is: who or what brought it to our attention? Atheists would say that the voice directing man to begin to look outside nature came from nature itself. But if nature is all there is, as atheists are so apt to remind us, does it make sense that nature would tell us that something else exists?  

Then who told us? As long as my mind is allowed to reflect on it, I cannot come up with any other candidate than something beyond nature. It must have been something supernatural that gave to men and women this odd sense that nature is not the end. It must have come from beyond nature, this novel idea put into our collective consciousness that another realm exists. It must have been something or someone separate from nature that planted this seed within us and started us on our individual quests to nourish and harvest it. It must be that same supernatural voice that entices men and women today to seek God until they find Him.

This, my third argument for God's existence, is what I refer to as the Argument from Supernatural Belief. Stated simply, it claims that belief in the supernatural could never have happened without outside help, unless a supernatural source intervened to make us aware of its existence.¹

Daily Quotation

Quoted in Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith, 108.

¹One of the objections to this argument goes like this:

If humanity’s awareness of the supernatural implies that the supernatural is real, then our childhood beliefs in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, ghosts and goblins, and the like would imply that they are real, too. And since we all know that they aren’t, the Argument from Supernatural Belief does not pass the test. If you cannot apply it across the board, you should not use it to defend the existence of God.

The atheist continues by posing to us a question: 

Do we, as adults, really believe in Santa Claus, ghosts and goblins, and the Tooth Fairy? Of course, not! We line up at Christmas to see him, not because we believe but rather because our children and grandchildren do. We place a tooth under the pillow at bedtime only because our child has faith in her. And we speak of ghosts and goblins around the campfire to scare the uninformed. We, the informed, realize that no such beings exist. Can’t the same be said for belief in God? Isn’t God a concept that with time and knowledge we will likewise outgrow? All we need is to be properly educated, and our belief in God will fade as quickly as a real Santa does in a young, maturing mind.

This argument, in essence, claims that God is a product of our imagination. What it fails to ask (because it has no good answer) is this: where did our imagination come from? If it came from nature (this is what atheists would tell us), then nature is allowing us to believe in imaginary beings. And if nature is this much a liar when we are young, why should we believe it years later when it tells us that our imaginations are false? Now, as then, it could be deceiving us, and it would be impossible for us to know. The atheist may claim that he knows, but in making this claim he may be falling right into nature’s trap. He may be making a wrong guess. He may be playing the role of nature’s fool. Thus, when the atheist argues that all of our imagination—including our belief in God—is false, he finds himself placing his trust in the same nature that in his childhood led him astray. 

The theist sees it all differently. He knows there is a difference between believing in the supernatural in general and believing in the specific imaginary creatures alluded to above. Belief in the supernatural in general, as we shall see in this argument, could not have come from nature. If specific parts of that belief—imaginary beings like Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and those ghosts—are later found to be false, supernatural belief in general does not end. Curiously, humanity as a whole has never abandoned the conviction that something other than nature is “out there.” Neither should you. And there is no reason to believe nature if it tells you any differently.