Among the indictments of religious believers registered by skeptics such as the coterie of anti-theists lead by Richard Dawkins, the late Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, et al. is that belief in God is at best irrational and at worst pernicious. Theism, the believer is condescendingly assured, is all blind faith and no evidence, but should a theist try to pin down his antagonist and ask him exactly what he means by "evidence," it often turns out that the word is employed as a synonym for "proof."
Well, perhaps there's no proof that there is a personal God, but that's hardly a reason not to believe that one exists. After all, we can prove very little of what we believe about the world, yet we don't hold our beliefs less firmly for that.
The skeptic's claim that there's no evidence for God and that theistic belief is thus irrational is, ironically, the reverse of the truth. It is actually, in my view, more rational to believe that a personal transcendent creator of the universe exists than to disbelieve it. Moreover, if what I argue below is correct, the logical consequences of atheism turn out to be psychically and politically toxic.
Indeed, though it may come as a surprise to some readers, almost all the evidence that counts on one side or the other of the question of belief in God rests more comfortably on the side of the believer. This is because almost every relevant fact about the world, and every existential characteristic of the human condition, makes more sense when viewed in the light of the hypothesis of theism than it does on the assumption of atheism.
Put differently, the conclusion of theism is what philosophers call an inference to the best explanation.
I don't mean to suggest that there are no facts about the world that militate against the existence of God - there are, of course. The existence of suffering is the most troubling example. Nor do I mean to suggest that atheism can offer no account at all of the facts of human existence that I discuss in what follows. Perhaps it can. I only argue that on the assumption of atheism the facts are more difficult to explain, in some cases exceedingly so, than they are on the assumption of theism.
If that is the case, it follows that it's more reasonable to believe that the best explanation for them is the existence of a personal God.
Here are eighteen facts about the world and human experience that I will argue, over the course of the next several days, are easier to explain on the assumption that traditional Judeo-Christian theism is true than on the assumption that metaphysical naturalism (atheism) is true:- The fact that the universe had a beginning
- The fact of cosmic design
- The fact that life's origin is inexplicable on naturalism
- The fact of biological information
- The fact of human consciousness
- The joy we experience in an encounter of beauty
- The fact that we believe our reason to be reliable
- Our sense that we have free will
- Our desire for answers to life's deepest questions
- Our sense of moral obligation
- Our sense of guilt
- Our belief in human dignity
- Our belief in human worth
- Our belief that there are basic human rights
- Our desire for justice
- Our need for meaning and purpose
- Our belief that we have an enduring self
- Our desire to survive our own death