Is there a Higher Power?

Throughout history, religion has been a very influential force upon human society, for better or worse. Most people throughout the world have some degree of religious faith, but there is also a significant and growing number of nonreligious people throughout the world. In recent years, several influential secular minded public figures, most notably Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris, have argued that religious faith is unjustified, outdated, and harmful to individuals and to society as a whole. The main argument among these secular minded individuals is that faith is simply the act of believing in something despite the lack of evidence or even in the face of counterevidence, and that this often leads people to commit acts that are harmful to themselves and to others, such as acts of murder, war, and terrorism.

The arguments against religious faith that the aforementioned writers have provided make sense. But these writers go further than this to vehemently argue that belief in God is wholly unjustified. Now, the word “God” is quite ambiguous so it is a good idea to clarify the different possible meanings of this word and from here we can try to judge whether it makes sense to believe in this concept.

Perhaps the most common conception of God is that of an all powerful, all knowing, eternal being that created the universe and is in some ways humanlike in that he is thought of to at times have emotions and preferences. Those who believe in such a being usually do so on the basis of faith. Now, there are two problems with this. First is that there is no reliable evidence that such a being exists. If people will believe in this anthropomorphic God without evidence, then they can in theory believe anything else without evidence, provided that they are told this from an early age, such as that blowing one’s self up in order to kill innocent people will bring them paradise. The other problem is that those who believe this way often have a tendency to think of the events that they experience in daily life as being due to supernatural forces, such as the will of God, or perhaps other forces such as prayer. If such people were paying closer attention to what they see and hear and if they were thinking more logically about their experiences, they would be more inclined to attribute events to the workings of nature that can best be understood as being controlled by the laws of physics. It is quite true this the tendency to ignore empirical evidence and instead to blindly follow faith does often lead to unnecessary suffering and death.

So the belief in an all powerful and humanlike God is unjustified and seems to often lead people to be out of touch with the reality of nature. But, as stated above, there are other conceptions of God besides this. In order for one to be justified in using the word “God”, they probably need to be talking about an all powerful being. But they need not be talking about any kind of humanlike being. So another conception of God is an all powerful being that created the universe but does not have humanlike emotions and does not demand obedience to arbitrarily chosen laws for fear of punishment. It is not necessary to believe in this God for one’s salvation and it is not necessary to worship this God either. Such a being would be the explanation for why the universe is the way that it is and not different. Belief in this conception of God is reasonable because this is, in fact, the best ultimate explanation for why the laws of nature exist as they do. There are those who will hear this and respond that the big bang is the ultimate explanation for the universe being the way that it is. The problem with this is that it is not an adequate ultimate explanation because it leaves open the question of what caused the big bang. The only ultimate explanation for the universe that adequately answers the question is one that concludes that the cause and effect chain must have started somewhere, and we can call this God.

One might point out that this is a supernatural explanation, and that the argument against the humanlike God above used this as a reason to not believe in that conception of God. This is true, but if one is searching for an explanation for nature itself, then by definition, there can be no natural explanation. The only possible explanation is supernatural. This conception of God is the simplest possible explanation for the universe and therefore it is reasonable to believe this.

The belief that one can come to believe in a higher power through reason as opposed to religious faith is called Deism. This is one of the main themes of the forthcoming book Seeking a More Enlightened Worldview, which this website was created to promote. We need your support to get this book to publication. But giving your support is easy – all you need to do is let your voice be heard. You can email the author at brandon@enlightenedworldview.com or you can visit the forum and discuss many important and fascinating issues with the author and with other visitors to this website.