"You're So Smart, How Can You Believe In God?"
What if neither belief nor non-belief in the divine is irrational?
When I was in college and an atheist, I was hanging out with one of my close friends who was a Christian. And I asked her, since I admired her intelligence, how she could possibly be so smart and still believe in the existence of a divine being in the sky who watched over her.
I wasn't trying to be an asshole (and thankfully, while I had accidentally insulted something foundational to who she was, she didn't take my question as malicious). I just didn't understand. Nothing about her Christian faith made any sense to me. It seemed, in a sense, anti-rational.
But I don't think it was. I don't think my own belief in God is anti-rational. But at the same time, I don't think my atheist friends are being anti-rational either. I think, ultimately, that it comes down to what we've seen. If we've had an experience (or many experiences) of felt connection with the divine being, then it's perfectly rational to believe in said divine being. Truthfully, I think it would be a little bit silly to have a soul-deep encounter with the maker of the universe and not adjust your mental model of the world to take that encounter into account.
But at the same time: if we've never had an experience of God, or if we've had spiritual experiences but we chalk them up to a quirk of human psychology or neuroscience (as Jonathan Haidt does), then it's perfectly rational to not believe in God. Truthfully, if I had never had an experiential encounter with the divine being, then I would call myself a little bit silly if I still chose to believe in Him despite a lack of direct evidence.
Let me put it another way. I think that experiencing a connection to the divine is similar to falling in love.
If you've never been in love, then the concept of love cannot be explained to you. It simply wouldn't make any sense. This is why, while I love and admire my friends and inlaws who do apologetics, I don't engage in apologetics myself. I don't think that this is a gap that can be bridged with reason, any more than I could rationally explain what it's like to be willing to die for my wife to someone who's never been in love.
When I was an atheist, it would have been impossible to argue me into a belief in God. I had to experience Him for myself.
Also: if you've never been in love, then people who talk about love probably look very strange. Imagine, for a moment, that you've never experienced the sensation of love. You see all of these otherwise-normal and sane-looking adult humans doing things like changing infants' diapers and cleaning up their vomit, or driving to see their friend who's depressed at 3am when they could be sleeping, or jumping in front of a bullet to save another human from being shot. Wouldn't all of this look insane to you?
But once you've had the experience of actually being in love, then all of these actions start to make sense. Of course parents will clean up after their newborns. Of course you'll forego sleep to be with a friend who really needs you. Of course you'll jump in front of a bullet if it means saving your partner, or your child, or your parents or your best friend. In a mental framework in which love exists, all of these actions look perfectly rational.
I'm a Christian, so I certainly don't think belief in God is irrational. But I also don't think my atheist friends are irrational. Each of us is just building our mental models based on the actual, tangible experiences we've had of the world. None of us can do any more than that.
Maybe we should all cut each other a little bit of slack.
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