So, as a Christian conversant with atheists, I have more than once asked something along the lines of “What would convince you that there is a God?” The responses are telling in that the general answers are along the lines of “If God were not God, I would believe in God.” This is not verbatim, but it is the root meaning: The materialist says, “Let me put God under a microscope, and I will believe.” Another says, “Let God perform at my beck and call, and I will believe.” Or perhaps there is the admission, “I don’t know, but really, it is up to God to do the convincing.” This last statement perhaps says more than the speaker means.
The issue, as it seems to me, is down to the fundamental, that is, the starting point. What is God? Here we meet a snag, for most atheists do not reject God by reason but by precept. I do not mean this as an insult. I admit that my belief in God is just as fundamental: I do not believe primarily by argument but by outlook; I have put on different spectacles, and it is the Christian spectacles that allow me to see. Even if I were to reject Christianity, I would not begin to balance the glasses of atheism upon my nose, for they are not a pair of glasses but a set of blinders.
Let me make the case for comparing atheism to blinders. Blinders may indeed be the right answer, but we should be assured that blinders are blinders. I reject Hinduism because it is not blind enough, that is, it is not clear; it has no focus. Hinduism, at bottom, has no bottom; It is closer to a shared aesthetic among a group of religions than a religion itself. Atheism seems to fall into the other extreme. Where Hinduism accepts nearly everything, atheism rejects the universally human experience of spiritual wonder; atheism tells you not to see when you do. So, any well attested miracle is explained by the easy fall back positions first of conspiracy, and then misunderstanding, and then hallucination, and round back again to conspiracy until the apologist grows tired of running around in circles.
Let’s look at the atheist answers I gave up top: Those who wish to put God under the microscope, that is, those who wish to have some measurable amount of God, either in liters or pounds, betray the fact that this is all their blinders let them see, material. Those who want God to perform for them are likewise blind, at least to the irony of their demand, that they have reversed the spelling and expect God to obey them like a well trained dog. They are blind to the law and the prophets; they are “a wicked and adulterous generation” that “seeketh after a sign.” No sign shall be given to them but one, and they have rejected it.
Finally, I have heard atheists admit that they do not know what would convince them. Which is true. Blinders blind. From the standpoint of atheism, you cannot see God. Yet, from the standpoint of Christianity, you cannot not see God. It all comes back down to what God is. If we are to answer whether or not God exists, then we need be able to express what we mean when we say God. From the blinders of atheism, independent of whether or not atheism is true, there is by definition no God, and therefore no definition of God. If we were to imagine a colorblind society, though we use the very word “color” in describing them, would it be very surprising to find that they had no word for color, no words for red or green or blue or purple?
So, let me invert the question, as that may provide a new level of clarity: What would it take to dissuade me from my belief. Well, obviously, as a Christian, the Resurrection either happened or it didn’t. If it did not, then the Bible itself tells me I shouldn’t believe. But I want to go a step further: What would it take to dissuade me from a generalized theism and into some form of atheism?
The answer comes down to meaning, and therefore to faith. I want to get away from the admittedly individualized argument of experience. Though I believe I have experienced the presence of God, the atheist may be right in saying that I should be blind, that such experiences should be discarded as phantasies and dreams. It comes down then to meaning, to whether or not anything has any value. To paraphrase Andrew Klavan, “Whether feeding a beggar is better than torturing a child.” If there is no good and evil, then there is no God, but if you say there is a good, if you praise charity and condemn cruelty, then you declare that there is a God; you at least admit to a gradation of the grey world you inhabit.
“If nothing was worth living for it followed, didn’t it, that there was nothing worth dying for either.”
~Clive Barker
It comes down still to meaning; What do we mean by God? Well, there are only mystical answers to that question, which is precisely what atheism refuses to accept, and if I answer that God is good, I will be misunderstood. Good is mystical, it is irrational, it cannot be measured, though it may be measured out as justice. Irrational may be the wrong word; good is pre-rational. It is among those things which must be accepted before one reasons if your reasoning is to be sane.
So, what would convince the atheist, or the theist? I wish there was a neutral set of spectacles we might all put on and have some common foundation to work from, but every world view is a world view, that is, in being one it is not another. There is no neutral ground. In the end, I think the atheist is right at least in this, it is up to God to convince him. If only he were willing to be convinced.
Tale Told 