In 1927 British philosopher Bertrand Russell gave a talk titled Why I Am Not a Christian in which he laid out the reasons why he was, in fact, not a Christian. The talk was subsequently published as a pamphlet and then a book and has become prescribed reading among secularists throughout the Western world. It's really quite peculiar that it achieved the popularity that it did given the fact that the reasons Russell adduces for his atheism are, for the most part, singularly unconvincing.
In any case, I thought I'd like to compose a Viewpoint post on the topic Why I Am a Christian. To be sure, these aren't the reasons why I became a Christian but rather some of the reasons why I have remained one.
First, though, let me briefly sketch some of the reasons why I remain a theist.
There are two live options in the contemporary Western world, theism and naturalism (atheism). Agnosticism is sometimes considered an option, but agnosticism is simply atheism by another name. Atheists are persons who consciously or willfully lack belief in a God, and, since agnostics lack a belief in God, agnostics are atheists, albeit of a softer variety than those who explicitly deny that God exists.
Between atheism and theism, then, which best explains the facts of our experience of the world and life? For me there's no contest. The best explanation, as I see the world, is that a personal, moral Being exists and has created the cosmos. I hold this opinion because there are numerous facts about the world and human life that seem to me far more plausible or probable on theism than on atheism. Consider the following ten examples:
1. Human rights - Why, on naturalism, should anyone think that humans have rights that others are obligated to respect? Why think that tyranny or the holocaust are evil? Why think that we have a duty to do justice to others? On a naturalistic explanation of human existence the notion of human rights is nothing more than a comforting fiction. Only theism gives us a sound basis for them as Thomas Jefferson noted in the Declaration of Independence where he affirmed that our rights come from our Creator.
2. Human equality - What, on naturalism, provides grounds for thinking that humans are in some sense equal or should be treated as such? We have no reason for cherishing the notion of gender or racial or legal equality on a naturalistic understanding of the origin of our species, but, on theism, we're all equally loved by God who requires us to value and love each other in the same way.
3. Meaning or significance - If the cosmos as a whole has no meaning what meaning can anything in it have? Is the meaning of our lives something we just make up, like children conjure an invisible friend to salve their loneliness? Human life can only mean anything if humans have a telos or purpose, and that telos can only be given to us by God. Nothing in nature can confer upon human beings significance or meaning.
4. Consciousness - How do matter and energy, mere electrochemical reactions in the brain, give rise to sensory experiences like sweetness, fragrance, pain or color? What are these sensations anyway? Where does the meaning of the sound of a siren or the flashing lights at a railroad crossing come from? What enables these physical events to be invested with a meaning and how does mere matter create their meaning? These phenomena strongly suggest that the material self is not all there is to us, but if we are possessed of immaterial minds it's difficult to see how they could be the product of a physical process like evolution. It seems more plausible to believe that such entities trace their provenience back to an original Mind.
5. Objective morality - Why think that it's wrong to just live for oneself or to adopt an attitude of might makes right? Why think that it's wrong to adopt a survival of the fittest attitude toward the poor? Why believe that it's objectively wrong to be cruel to children and animals? If we believe that these things are wrong, as I do, then we must conclude that there are objective moral rights and wrongs, but that can only be the case if there's an objective moral standard. No such standard exists in the naturalistic worldview. Only theism affords such a standard, the character of a perfectly good God.
6. Human free will - How, on naturalism, do we justify the powerful conviction that we have free will? How can mere matter, if that's all we are, be free to override or circumvent the laws of physics? We can't live consistently with the belief that we're not free, but the naturalistic worldview entails that free will is merely an illusion. A worldview with which it's so difficult to live consistently is deeply suspect.
7. Biological information - Living things are brimming over with information. Everything in an organism - DNA, proteins - is governed by information. It seems to me much more probable that libraries of information such as exist in every living cell are the result of an intelligent Mind than that they're the result of mindless, purely random, accidents in nature.
8. Cosmic fine-tuning - The universe is comprised of dozens of constants and forces whose strengths are set to exceedingly precise values. Had those strengths deviated from their actual values by unimaginably tiny amounts, in some cases by one part in 10^120 either the universe would not exist or life in it would be impossible. Thus the existence of a life-sustaining universe is extremely improbable and the existence of no universe or one that's life-prohibiting is astronomically more likely. It seems to me, then, that it's more probable that such precision is the product of intelligent, purposeful engineering than that it's the product of an incomprehensibly improbable fluke.
9. Mathematical structure of nature - The universe is not only explicable in terms of math, it appears to many scientists to actually be mathematics. It seems to me more probable that the mathematical nature of the universe is attributable to a Mind than to sheer dumb serendipity.
10. The origin of the universe - The universe evidently came from nothing, at least nothing that's allowed in a naturalist ontology. How does something come from nothing? How does something begin to exist and remain in existence uncaused? It seems more reasonable to me to think that the universe has a cause that's not part of the aggregation of contingent things that comprise it. Thus, the cause of the universe would be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, very powerful, very intelligent and possess necessary being (since were it contingent it'd be part of the universe).
In sum, theism seems to me to be a much more plausible explanation for the existential facts of life as well as for the nature of the world in which we live. Whenever I'm beset by doubts about the existence of God I reflect on the above facts and am reminded that it seems far more probable that the world and human experience are the product of a personal intelligence than that they're the product of nothingness plus chance.
But even if there is a God why think that Christianity is true? Why not just hold to a bare theism? Why embellish it with the narratives found in the New Testament gospels? I'll attempt an answer to that question tomorrow.
