Almost all of us, believer and non-believer alike, have encountered some presentation of God that we find difficult to swallow. Maybe it’s something about what we think God has done, what we assume He must be like based on X, or maybe it’s the age-old question of how to reconcile the problem of evil with the existence of God that makes us question the possibility that He exists. Whatever the hangup has been, you are not alone. However, assessing the truthfulness of something based on its personal likability is a logically-flawed and potentially dangerous road.

Often times, we stop examining the possible truth and validity of something at the point we decide we don’t like it, in this case, the possibility that God exists. Instead of shaping what we believe based on a thorough examination of the truth claims surrounding God, using faith, evidence, reason, and authority, we cease to consider whether He exists simply because we don’t like what we think we know about Him.

Generally speaking, our objections about God fall into two categories: those that pertain to His nature (or at least how we perceive it), and supposed proofs that we feel negate the possibility of His existence. The second group, proofs, is not what is under the microscope, here. (And, just for the record, actually proving that God does not exist is impossible.) What I want us to examine are the areas in which we have let personal objections about God hinder us from pursuing the possibility that He exists.

Even when something other than God is in question, we often fall prey to this logical fallacy. As well-informed and unbiased as we would like to think we are, we often don’t believe in the ideas, truth claims, and bits of reality that we find unlikable, unfathomable, or disagreeable, without deep consideration for whether those things are real or true or not.

In our age of reason, we are still creatures driven by feeling, emotion, and intuition.

In the last year and a half, we’ve seen this phenomenon acutely displayed on a large scale in the political world. If you’ve been paying even a small amount of attention to politics in the U.S. recently, you’ve probably heard the terms “fake news” and “alternative facts” thrown around. These terms denote competing truth claims that simply can’t all be true. Certainly, “fake news” has been demonstrated to be a real issue with serious consequences; however, it’s clear some individuals want to decide which bits of information are presented to the public based on how likable or advantageous that information might be, not by how true or accurate that information is.

In these instances, we seem to be somewhat aware that the likability of truth doesn’t change its reality. However, outside of this arena, we, as people, are plagued with this fallacy of thought in everyday life. God, as a being to be believed in, is perhaps more affected by this issue than anything else. Let me show you what I mean with an illustration:

Let’s say you find it unfair that the nature of gravity dictates that objects in space are constantly being pulled toward some large mass, like the earth or sun, against their will. You may choose to say, “I just can’t accept gravity. It’s so selfish. It’s always trying to pull things toward itself.” Be that as it may, if you then walked outside and decided you wanted to fly, upon jumping into the air, you would quickly discover that the reality of gravity exists, regardless of your dislike for it, as you’re pulled back to the ground.

Basically, external realities are not negated by our lack of belief in them, nor are they created by our belief in them, for that matter.* And, disliking the nature of something, real or perceived, isn’t good enough reason to not believe in it. And not believing in real things does have real consequences.

*Note: The realities that we create for ourselves psychologically by our beliefs and perceptions is another important subject, and one well-worth discussing, but a subject for a later time.

Now, to be clear, gravity is not an entirely tangible thing. It is much like the wind in that while we cannot see the wind itself, we see the effect of it all around us. God is observable in a potentially similar way, but I do not expect the non-believer to hold that God’s existence is as observable in nature as the wind. The believer may look at a mountain range and say, “How can you look at that beauty and not believe in God?” The non-believer may say, “I just see the result of colliding tectonic plates.”

In comparison to the example of gravity, in a similar, yet more abstract way, we often express these same kinds of objections against God in almost mantra-like form. I don’t know how many times in conversation I’ve heard someone say something along the lines of, “I just can’t believe in a God who would _____,” or “I just don’t think that God would care about _____,” or “Because of _____, I just can’t believe in God.” In these instances, the objections are about the perceived nature of God, not about whether He actually exists. However, a personal hangup with His nature often hinders us from considering the possibility that He actually exists.

The funny thing about these statements, too, is that they subtly indicate a poorly examined bias that almost all of us carry in some form or another, believer and non-believer alike: we think we can, with complete validity and authority, know with certainty something about God based on subjective belief and intuition. This is indicated by some form of the phrase, “I just think,” or “I just feel,” or “I just believe.” Doesn’t sound familiar? Walk into any college classroom in America and ask students what they think about God. You’ll be inundated with responses that repeat the phrase, “I just, I just, I just.”

In our age of rationalism, naturalism, materialism, and empiricism, we still fall prey to accepting much of what we believe to be true about existence based on intuition, totally in contrast to the god of science that we have erected because of our love of testability and tangibility. To clarify, I am not saying that nothing can be intuitively known. I do think intuition can have a valuable role in what we know and understand; I do want to highlight, though, the inconsistency and even hypocrisy of how we often think when shifting gears from one subject matter to another.

Ultimately, our objections about what we don’t like, understand, or want to believe about God often act as our biggest obstructions to believing in Him and accepting even the possibility that He exists.

Those objections, whatever they may be, shouldn’t keep us from considering the possibility of whatever thing is in question, but they do. When we allow our perception this place of influence and authority, our ability to understand becomes the standard by which some truth claim must be measured in order for it to be true; in other words, rather than appealing to a standard with greater potential for credibility than ourselves, in order for something to be true or real to us, it must be personally palatable or understandable.

If we were to look at this logical fallacy in terms of an equation, it might look like this:

truth claim + our dislike = rejection of claim (without necessity and/or deep assessment)

Using another example, if you or I don’t understand conceptually how quantum mechanics work, the unpredictable nature of quantum mechanics (as mind-boggling as it is) does not cease to exist because of our lack of understanding, and we would be silly to think that it would. But, as was said before, this is often how we treat the possibility of God’s existence: if we dislike something we think we know about Him, we stop considering whether He actually exists—not because of some proof—but because of personal dislike or lack of understanding.

Put simply, God’s existence is not contingent upon human belief. If we are to seriously consider the idea that He might exist, we have to actually examine the truth claims surrounding Him—really pursue knowing Him—not merely reduce Him to a device of human invention (as posited by the sociological reductionist view of religion that we, in the Western, post-Enlightenment world, so readily and uncritically accept).

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Conclusion

This issue of belief and what constitutes good reason to believe in God is altogether complex. So, rather than trying to deal exhaustively with this concept in a single piece of writing or provide a cure-all remedy to the deep and prevalent logical fallacy we’ve examined, my intention is to cause us to ask more questions. And, ask ourselves specifically where this flaw has been given a place of influence in our lives. Then, uproot those affected areas.

At this point you might be asking, “What does constitute good reason to believe, then? We’ve examined a major part of what shouldn’t keep me from believing, so what’s on the opposite side of the coin? Why should I believe?” Well, even for matters of God and the supernatural, a combination of faith, evidence, reason, and authority must all be considered. It is a common misconception by both believers and non-believers that evidence somehow nullifies faith (or that evidence is simply absent in matters of faith). Plain and simple, faith is not an evidence-less thing. For the believer, the presence of evidence does not make faith less faithful. And for the non-believer, you may be surprised by the body of evidence in support of the existence of God. (For a couple of good introductory resources on the matter, check out the short list below.) But, to be clear, while faith is supplemented by evidence, it certainly does not stand alone on it.

Among faith, evidence, reason, and authority, perhaps the least discussed of these four is authority. In essence, it is a standard of some kind that has greater credibility to inform and influence in a subject area than one’s self. In follow-up entries, I want to explore together this notion of authority, the issue of competing religious claims, the importance of testimony and personal experience in encountering God and the supernatural, and examine the synthesis of faith, evidence, reason, and authority that does constitute good reason to believe.

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1 Rota, Michael. TAKING PASCALS WAGER: Faith, Evidence and the Abundant Life. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press,   2016.

2 Strobel, Lee. The Case for Christ. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2016.