Reasonable Faith: Open-Minded Answers to the Toughest 273 Questions on Christian Faith

By Americo Tulipano

Christians and non-Christians alike are troubled by powerful questions:      Why do innocent people suffer?     Why isn't spiritual truth objectively provable?     How can evolution be reconciled with belief in God?     What is a soul?     What is moral truth?     How much hard history do the gospels contain?          What did Jesus mean when he spoke of perfection?     What is evil? Clear, concise answers to these and 265 other questions are offered in Reasonable Faith. Backed by many years of inquiry and research, this book takes on questions that have been avoided or given terse treatment by other "Christian answer" books. In the process of facing such questions, this work provides an honest and reasonable basis for compassionate Christian faith.                                                                      "Like a breath of fresh air…wonderful."                                                                        —Dr. Francis Collins                                                                        Director of the National Institute of Health                                                                        Author of The Language of God                                                                     "A masterpiece."                                                                        —Brother Aelred Reid, Benedictine Monk                                                                        St. John's Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota                                                                      "Beautifully written and diligently researched."                                                                        —Reverend Richard A. Santella                                                                        Retired United Methodist Minister                                                                      "Wonderful."                                                                        —Joan Roughgarden                                                                        Professor of biology, Stanford University                                                                        Author of Evolution and Christian Faith

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9781644629901

Book preview

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Critical Praise for Reasonable Faith

Like a breath of fresh air… A wonderful contribution to Christian apologetics… This thoughtful presentation of answers to the most commonly asked questions about the rationality of Christian faith will be a valuable resource to seekers.

—Dr. Francis Collins

Director of the National Institute of Health

Author of The Language of God

A masterpiece of Christian apologetics. I heartily recommend Americo Tulipano’s book to any nonbeliever who wants to understand Christian faith and to any Christian who yearns for a more reasonable and peaceful form of faith.

—Brother Aelred Reid, Benedictine monk

St. John’s Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota

Wonderful…a Christian perspective on the natural processes through which God’s hand continually creates living nature.

—Joan Roughgarden

Professor of biology, Stanford University

Author of Evolution and Christian Faith

A pleasure to read… This book is a great aid for anyone who is open to a rational, honest, heartfelt search of faith and the meaning of our very existence.

—Reverend Richard Rhodes

Pastor of Campus Development

Grace Chapel, Lexington, Massachusetts

Beautifully written and diligently researched…Tulipano takes a courageous stand against cultural forces that seek to degrade all sacred traditions and beliefs.

—Rev. Richard A Santella

Retired United Methodist Minister

Member of the Wyoming Conference U.M.C.

Copyright © 2019 Americo Tulipano

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2019

ISBN 978-1-64462-989-5 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64462-990-1 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

title

To Gabriel Luke, beloved son.

May these pages guide you home.

Acknowledgments

A long overdue thank-you to my wife, Laine, for her steadfast support throughout this seemingly endless project.

I am also indebted to the individuals who read drafts or significant portions of my manuscript over the past two decades: Sergio Solano, Francis Maloney, Helen Hoffmann, the late Brother Aelred (Joe) Reid, the late Reverend Richard A. Santella, Dr. Francis Collins, Dr. Joan Roughgarden, Kayla Furbish, Reverend Richard Rhodes, and Lisa Tulipano. Their thoughtful readings and constructive feedback made this book far better than it would have been otherwise.

I am deeply grateful.

In the end, Pensador said, everyone will rot into nothingness. No hope or love will survive. The cosmos and life are ultimately meaningless. So as far as personal happiness is concerned, the only thing that really matters is whatever pleasure you can grab in this life, because there’s nothing else.

Felipe’s lips formed a pensive frown. Every thinking person is free to pursue whatever course they deem true.

Every thinking person is compelled to face the facts, Pensador said. And the facts prove that life is intrinsically meaningless.

I think you’re stuck in a narrow strait of facts, Felipe said.

Something between a laugh and a grunt cracked from Pensador’s throat. "Am I supposed to accept love and spirit as forms of evidence? How can you believe such absurdities?"

Felipe placed his pen on the desk and considered these questions. Pensador assumed the medico had nothing to say, so he turned to leave. But Felipe’s refined Spanish dialect caught Pensador just as he pushed open the cabin’s screen door. "My friend, were those rhetorical questions, or do you really want an answer?"

—The Atheist and the Christian

Introduction

The Reason For This Book

If you step outdoors on a clear night and look up at the sky, almost every speck of light that you’ll see is a star in our galaxy, the Milky Way. Beyond that celestial cluster are countless other galaxies (which your naked eye cannot see), along with all of the astronomical phenomena that make up our cosmos. As you gaze up at that tableau, you might be moved to wonder: is all of this meaningless?

It’s an audacious question, but some atheists think they know the answer with scientific certainty. They claim that the cosmos is just a pointless mass of energy that came out of nothing for no purpose at all. If they are right, the cosmos is intrinsically meaningless—and our lives are equally meaningless. As the old axiom tells us, A stream in nature cannot rise above its source.¹ So if the cosmos (the material source of our existence) is devoid of all purpose, then we are the accidental by-products of an accidental by-product, which means that we have no inherent dignity. We have only artificial, wishful dignity—the kind that dangles off fickle human moods. You may recite poetry, solve quadratic equations, and weep at Disney movies, but if the cosmos is bereft of intrinsic meaning, you are bereft of intrinsic meaning too.

Yet here is a curious fact: no one can prove that the universe is or isn’t meaningless. Honest science—unadulterated by any assumptions—leaves the question unresolved.

So the issue comes down to that human blend of facts, logic, insight, intuition, and ethical perception that shapes each individual’s outlook on life. That’s true for all of us, including hard-core atheists.² This book picks up where that point leaves off.

Backstory

During my teenage years, I became doubtful of spiritual truth. As skepticism squeezed my thoughts ever tighter, life’s meaningful aura grew ever dimmer. My readings on evolution did nothing to rekindle that nimbus. Darwinism underscores an obvious fact: organisms die when they fail to measure up to nature’s demands. Homo sapiens are not exempt from this grim gauntlet. (Of course, we humans don’t usually drop dead after failing to achieve a goal. But depending on the gravity of our failure, we may wish we were dead.) As a newly minted adult, my incipient belief in a meaningless cosmos took me by one hand, and my awareness of the world’s cold judgments took me by the other hand, and together they ushered me to a dark night of the soul.³ Regrettably, the darkness lasted not just one night but six long years.

I want to make it clear that I wasn’t searching for a cause bigger than me. Many groups and pursuits dwarf my little life. Instead, I hungered for something more meaningful and honorable than intellectual vanity. But the dominant beliefs of today’s intelligentsia leave no room for intrinsic spiritual meaning. To put it bluntly, they leave no room for God. As the attentive recipient of a contemporary Western education, I was well versed in the denials of atheism, materialism, and postmodernism (these and other terms are defined in the glossary at the end of this book). My mind was stocked with hard facts and seemingly logical negations, all of which were confined to a pointless cosmos enveloped by infinite nothingness.

Such was my existential outlook.

Then on an especially bleak evening when I was twenty-three years old, I picked up a book that enlightened people are supposed to ignore: the New Testament. That night, I learned eleven things about Jesus of Nazareth that caught me by surprise. Ten of those eleven insights (which are listed in chapter 4 of this book) have nothing to do with supernatural events. But they gave me a fresh appreciation of Jesus’s spirit and wisdom.

That experience turned me into a nascent Christian and sharpened my hunger for greater understanding.

Over the ensuing years, I devoured dozens of Christian answer books and pamphlets. But the more I read, the more bewildered I became. Almost all those catechisms were written for the proverbial choir. That is, they contained very few pensive or well-researched answers. Even authors who claimed to deal with the toughest questions about Christian faith often gave wincingly shallow responses, or they simply side-stepped scriptural verses that cried out for clarification. With only erratic exceptions, those books failed to offer thought-provoking insights or greater understanding.⁴ Although my Christian flame didn’t fade into darkness, it was barely flickering. It sputtered on, with an occasional glimmer of warmth, for years.

At the age of forty, in response to a feisty challenge from my older brother (who, depending on his mood, is either an atheist or an agnostic), I resolved to clarify the reasoning behind my Christian beliefs. This project gradually took on a life of its own. It turned into a twenty-three-year sojourn that guided me through reams of evidence, reasoning, and counter-reasoning. During this quest, I read the works of (or spoke directly with) thinkers who didn’t burrow into an intellectual bunker at the first sign of trouble. Right or wrong, they sought to be honest about their thoughts, beliefs, and possible contradictions.

My ever-expanding reading list eventually contained more books than all my college syllabi (undergraduate and graduate) combined. As I absorbed this trove of information, I didn’t always find the answers that I wanted to find, so my provisional beliefs gradually changed. But my core conviction in the meaning of Christ did not change. In fact, I gained a deeper appreciation of the reasons why science and rationality are not inimical to Jesus’s Gospel. The purpose of this book is to explain those reasons as clearly—but also as concisely—as possible.

The Layout

Each chapter of this book is divided into short question/response (Q/R) segments. Follow-up questions unfold in logical sequence. The questions are not easy-to-hit soft balls. In many cases, they were voiced by atheists from a pointedly adversarial position. I tried to keep each response down to one page or less. However, some Q/R segments are followed by short essays (under the heading Going a Bit Further), which provide additional detail. This format allows the reader to go directly to a specific question or area of concern. The table of contents, as well as the subject index at the end of the book, should make this location process as convenient as possible.

Who Is a Christian?

This book is not tied to any sect, and I have no desire to dig another foxhole on the cratered denominational landscape. The word open-minded (featured in the subtitle) is an adjective that describes an intellectual ideal, not a sectarian label. By my reckoning, a Christian is anyone who believes that Jesus lived a profoundly ethical life and that his death on the cross is spiritually redemptive. (The reason why Jesus’s crucifixion is redemptive is discussed in chapter 10.) That definition embraces the souls of Roman Catholicism, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and nearly all branches of Protestantism.

Some may regard my definition as too narrow because it excludes people who think that Jesus was nothing more than a charismatic teacher of ethics. If such people believe that Christ’s life and death were not redemptive in any way, I don’t understand why they would want to identify as Christians. Would they call themselves Franklinites just because they agree with a lot of Ben Franklin’s sayings?

On the other hand, some devout Christians convinced themselves (or allowed themselves to be persuaded) that it was okay for them to wage religious war—an act that violates Jesus’s moral-ethical precepts. If you honestly face the gist of his teachings, it’s hard to imagine a more brazen act of hypocrisy than killing in the name of Christ.

People who have done such things may still be roughly construed as Christians by my definition, but they represent the worst possible kind of Christian: one who lethally betrays the very ethos he claims to honor.

An Open Mind

Many people think an open mind is just a play-pen for wishy-washy beliefs. But my convictions are far from whimsical. Yet I know that I still have a lot to learn, so I try to listen to different views. And if there’s one thing a closed mind cannot do, it is listen.

But closed minds are pretty good at flinging ridicule, and ridicule can be devastatingly persuasive. That’s a lesson we learn in the schoolyard. Aside from its painful sting, a scornful insult makes onlookers laugh and inflates the scorner with a sense of superiority. In this book, I specify the reasons why I think some beliefs are mistaken, and I use the word arrogant to describe hypocritical attitudes (Christian and atheist alike). But I do not hurl the mud of mockery. Some atheists abide by this same code. In my experience, such individuals don’t presume to be superior to all people who hold religious beliefs. I have no quarrel with atheists of this kind. I disagree with their conclusions, but the personal respect is mutual.

One other thing an open mind doesn’t do is assume that a particular worldview is unquestionably right. People who refuse to concede that their personal beliefs might be wrong are staking a claim to absolute correctness. It is heady stuff to believe that one’s own philosophy (or theology) is indisputably correct. But I’m not a member of that club. On questions about intrinsic meaning, ethics, freedom, evil, justice, beauty, infinity, eternity and God, I proceed in a spirit of gentle faith, not ironclad certainty.

Searching for Truth

My research for this book enhanced my respect for science (i.e., the empirical methods that cleave objective fact from falsehood). It also burned away the dross that often clings to scripture, revealing a less ostentatious but far sturdier foundation beneath. My readings and reflections also fostered a deeper valuation of unselfish love, conscience, and wisdom. Here is a thumbnail sketch of that trio…

Unselfish love is not driven by material or egoistic desires but by a willingness to express goodness to others (it should be noted that the word goodness derives from the Old English word Godnes).⁵ Such love is not merely an emotion but an attitude which orients a person’s whole outlook on life. As such, unselfish love opens our minds to truths that cannot be appreciated in purely objective terms.

Conscience develops out of one’s capacity for unselfish love, and it enables us to discern—however imprecisely—moral right and wrong. One’s conscience is concerned with fairness or justice, not just for oneself or one’s own tribe (no matter how you define tribe) but for all people. The principle that guides a healthy conscience is perhaps best summed up in this well-known verse: Treat others as you want others to treat you.⁶

Wisdom is a form of intelligence that isn’t limited to pure logic or hard facts. Sensitized by love and guided by conscience, wisdom enables us to evaluate life’s deeper truths without snubbing their spiritual implications or forfeiting their intellectual integrity. Perhaps the first lesson of wisdom is this: some of life’s most powerful truths cannot be fully understood in purely objective or scientific terms. Many people intuitively grasp that principle even though they may have never put it into words. Perhaps the second legacy of wisdom is an attitude of sincere and abiding humility.

Those three interlacing lights are not in conflict with science, for (unlike science) they are not confined to the objective sphere. Some thinkers assert that only objectively verifiable facts are intrinsically true; every other form of truth is just a weak-minded whim or an emotion-infused mirage. Thus, any reliance on unselfish love, conscience, and wisdom (as discerners of genuine truth) is considered irrational. But I believe it is a mistake to diminish the truth-revealing potential of that triad. Love, conscience, and wisdom aren’t just chunks of evolutionary baggage clinging to our intellects by a few stubborn neural cords. Indeed, that three-sided inner beacon may very well guide us away from the cruelest form of ignorance.

So it should come as no surprise that the lenses of love, conscience, and wisdom bring scriptural imperatives into sharper focus. The ongoing debate about the Bible (especially the gospels) is framed by two entrenched convictions: one side holds that every verse of scripture is perfect or inerrant; the opposing side holds that all scripture is unreliable. The people at each pole believe that they are absolutely correct. But I believe the truth resides somewhere in between those terminal points and that the lights of love, conscience, and wisdom (along with objective research and logic) serve as our best guides to that middle realm.

The First Judeo-Christian

The fact that Jesus was an Israelite is sometimes ignored.⁷ But Jesus’s Jewishness created a problem for the clique of Germans who formed the vanguard of the Nazi Party. Those men realized that the New Testament’s light of the world was a son of Judaism. (However, Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda, solved this problem simply by deciding that Jesus was not Jewish!) Jesus also vexed the Nazis in another way: he exuded compassion, a quality that did not advance the Nazi agenda or actuate the murderous potential of German boys. Both of those problems (i.e., Jesus’s Jewish identity and his emphasis on merciful love) coughed up considerable bile in Hitler’s gullet.⁸ But no matter how the Nazis spun those uncomfortable truths, the fact remains that Jesus embraced the spirit of Judaism.

The form of Judaism heralded by Jesus evolved into a movement that is known to us as Christianity. The latter blossomed directly from the former (as we will see in chapter 6). The relationship between Judaism and Christianity is more intimate than the relationship between any other two major religions. With that close kinship in mind, the phrase Judeo-Christian appears throughout this book. If I were an obsessive stickler for accuracy, the words Judeo and Christian would always be linked. For although Jesus amended certain aspects of Judaism, it is impossible to be a sincere Christian without absorbing the core ideals of the religion that guided his life.

Mere Words

It is very human—poignantly human—to close one’s mind to any thought that doesn’t quickly fit one’s worldview. But if you reflexively dismiss any of the thoughts in this book, I ask you to delay overall rejection until you read through the Q/R segments that deal with your concerns. After doing so, if you’d like to share your thoughts, please write to the email address given at the end of this book. I appreciate constructive criticism even if a reader’s final verdict is not favorable to my work.

Mere words, those malleable vessels that arise from the grayish depths, cannot penetrate a closed mind. Words matter nonetheless. They may be clumsy vehicles, but no one has yet devised a better way to transport subtle thoughts or gangly concepts from one brain to another. In that hopeful spirit, the words in this book are addressed to anyone whose mind isn’t welded shut. This book was written in the sincere belief that tough questions can be fruitful—so long as the questioner is willing to conscientiously search for answers.

AT, April 9, 2018

Chapter 1

God and Science

One side of Pensador’s lip curled upward. I get a strange quiver of satisfaction when I pull people’s teddy bears out of their arms. That includes the ultimate teddy bear: God.

God is more than a teddy bear to me, Felipe said.

It’s just a word, Pensador said with a flick of his hand. Pick ten people, and they’ll give you ten different versions of God.

Felipe’s face tilted at an angle as he watched plump rain drops gather and glisten on the cross-wires of the window screen. There was just enough light in the western horizon to cast a faint shadow of the rectangular grid-work against the white window sill. Felipe turned to face Pensador. "Pick ten people standing in ten spots across Europe and Asia, and they’ll give you ten different views of the sun and its place in the sky. Yet they’re all looking at the exact same sun at the exact same moment. Does that mean the sun isn’t real?"

—The Atheist and the Christian

1. God In A Box?

Question: Atheists don’t believe in some Zeus-like guy who peeks down from the clouds and manipulates every atom on earth. How do you respond to their unbelief?

Short Response: With a sense of relief, because I don’t believe in that god either. According to Judeo-Christian theology, our minds cannot contain God. Any concept or understanding we may have of God is far from complete.

* * *

Follow-Up: If God is beyond our comprehension, why should we pretend to comprehend God?

Short Response: We shouldn’t pretend to comprehend God. But as we will see in the pages ahead, crucial moral and spiritual truths are within human reach, and a deepening awareness of such truths can help us develop a better understanding of God. Although our three-pound human brains cannot contain full knowledge of God, we can have meaningful insights and deeper understanding.

It’s as if we are climbing a mountain. We cannot get to our destination all at once, so we cannot see everything from the summit as quickly as we’d like. The climb may be long and even arduous at times. But that would be a poor reason to never look up. It would be an even poorer reason to just give up on the journey.

* * *

Follow-Up: If we concede that God is beyond our purely intellectual clutches—if we have that kind of humility—aren’t we weakening our reliance on intellect and reason?

Short Response: As almost any scientist will admit, intellectual vigor and curiosity are not subverted by an honest sense of humility. Our capacity for reason and intellectual growth are not at odds with our awareness of our own limitations.

Some atheists (not all, but some) claim that anyone who believes in God cannot do a very good job of pursuing scientific knowledge. Such claims are demonstrably wrong. Many of the greatest and most productive scientists in history were deeply religious individuals.⁹ Their discoveries and contributions prove that a personal belief in God need not impede anyone’s quest for scientific knowledge.

For example, Michael Faraday’s vision of an underlying unity in nature and his incessant experimentation throughout the early 1800s provided major breakthroughs in our understanding of electromagnetism. Faraday’s devout Christian beliefs did not impair his scientific abilities (unless you count his refusal to develop poison gas for the British military on the grounds that such an undertaking was against his Christian principles).¹⁰ Faraday’s accomplishments and those of many other researchers prove that one’s personal belief in the Judeo-Christian God need not be an obstacle to a scientifically oriented mind.

The key point is that a person can face his limitations while challenging those very limits. A chess player can admit that it is impossible to always make the perfect move, but that doesn’t keep him from trying. By the same logic, you can admit that God is bigger than your brain while keeping your mind open, hungry, and in the hunt for more knowledge. In fact, our ability to reason enables us to grasp this fundamental principle: the finite cannot contain the infinite. God, according to Judeo-Christian theology, is infinite. Yet the borders of the human mind need not keep us from stretching those intellectual boundaries to their furthest extent in the quest for greater understanding.

* * *

Follow-Up: In what way is God infinite? Does God occupy every cubic millimeter of space and matter?

Short Response: No. Rather than a pantheistic outlook (pantheists maintain that God is the sum total of nature), Judeo-Christian theology affirms that God is not limited by our concepts of space, time, or matter. In other words, God transcends every category of being that we can hold in our minds. The human brain is imbedded within the cosmos, but God encompasses the universe in which our minds are enmeshed. So if space, time, and energy can vex even the most brilliant human minds, how much more perplexing must be the creative spirit that authored those things? According to this Judeo-Christian perspective, God is not hemmed in by the natural laws that framed the development of our brains, so we shouldn’t expect God to fit into any conceptual box that our brains can construct.

None of which puts an end to our search. As we will see in the Q/R segments ahead, some range of spiritual awareness is within our reach, and our capacity for reason is essential to such awareness. That’s why Jesus encouraged his listeners to use their minds (as we will see in chapter 4). By trying to get people to think, Jesus was telling us that reason is a trustworthy tool in the quest for spiritual truth. Thus, Christians have a sacred obligation to strive for greater understanding. A closed mind (or even worse, an arrogant mind) doesn’t further that cause.

Far from being an enemy of God, freedom of thought is crucial to an open-minded Judeo-Christian ethos. (This, of course, is in sharp contrast to the medieval perversions of Christianity that led to inquisitions and witch hunts.) Without freedom of thought, it would be impossible to think beyond the confines of absolute materialism. And if we are unwilling to think outside of that enclosure, we won’t be able to learn very much about spiritual/moral truth—the kind of truth that offers us a greater awareness of God.

* * *

Follow-Up: People like to throw around the word spiritual, but it is very vague. What does spiritual actually mean?

Short Response: Religion has become a bad word in the twenty-first-century West. Many academics, along with a slew of movies and TV shows, coach us to view religion as an embarrassment. As a result, lots of people distance themselves from all religion. But many of those same people often seek out shelter against a meaningless existence. For them, the word spiritual provides a comfortable way-station between specific beliefs (i.e., religion) and unspecific intuitions (i.e., spirituality).¹¹ However, I must confess that I cannot find an absolute dividing line between spirituality and religion. As spiritual truths become clearer and more distinct, they inevitably crystallize into a form of religion.

In this book, the word spiritual refers to a truth, reality, or concept that doesn’t strictly conform to—or isn’t limited by—our present understanding of matter or materiality.

Spiritual truths do not exist in a vacuum. They are all interrelated, with lesser ones deriving from greater ones. The ultimate truth—the One which braces all other truths within an infinite spirit—is God. The New Testament proclaims God is love.¹² That’s a compact way of saying that God is the eternal reality which gives love and ethics intrinsic meaning. In other words, one’s faith in God is the bulwark upon which our human loves and moral convictions can stand up against the specter of meaninglessness. That’s why theologians sometimes refer to God as the ground of our spiritual existence.

* * *

2. Nullifying The Christian God?

Question: George H. Smith says that our thoughts about God are immersed in ignorance. If he is wrong, where do we find what he calls the God of Christianity?¹³

Short Response: In his determination to nullify the God of Christianity, Smith overlooks this cornerstone of Judeo-Christian conviction: although we cannot wrap our intellects around God, we can touch the reality of God through (here I go again) unselfish love, benevolent conscience, and that peculiar form of awareness called wisdom. Those three inner lights—which are defined in the introduction—help us to draw closer to God. They are like universal homing signals that guide us to spiritual wholeness.

Of course, as atheists often point out, religious leaders throughout history (right up to this day) have assigned the highest priority not to love, conscience, and wisdom, but to rituals, membership in a specific group, theocratic power, financial contributions to their cause, or some quasi-narcissistic form of self-involvement. But Jesus of Nazareth pushed those things aside—explicitly as well implicitly—and assigned the greatest importance to unselfish love, benevolent conscience, and prejudice-piercing wisdom.

* * *

Follow-Up: Some people claim that no truth—not even spiritual truth—can exist beyond their purely intellectual grasp. What would you say to them?

Short Response: Never close the door of objective research on any mystery. But in a more personal sense, don’t close the door on spiritual truth either. Don’t dim the lights of love, conscience, and wisdom as you contemplate life’s larger mysteries and meanings. Moreover, questions about spiritual truth are too important to be left on a back burner. There is urgency in the human condition that calls on us to honestly face such questions here and now.

It is humbling to admit that pure human intellect cannot neatly envelop life’s greatest truth. But every time we throw some sort of conceptual lasso around God, the noose turns out to be all too small. That’s why Christ said we can only approach God in a childlike spirit of humility.¹⁴ Children are far less likely than adolescents or adults to harbor intellectual pretensions that block out the lights of love, conscience, and wisdom. Those three intersecting rays are deeply personal, but they can illuminate each individual’s unique path to the infinite-eternal truth which we have nicknamed God.

Of course, some atheists will insist that since God doesn’t fit between our objective pincers, we should not believe in God. But we must be honest enough to admit that no amount of objectifying genius can substitute for unselfish love, self-questioning conscience, or that peculiar mode of insight called wisdom. A man can boast the highest IQ on record yet be oblivious to the most self-evident truths of a loving mind.

* * *

Follow-Up: Surely, atheists are well versed in love, conscience, and wisdom.

Short Response: They are indeed. But they tend to view those inner lights as ad hoc Darwinian tools. To their minds, such devices exist only to serve raw genetic survival—they have no other inherent meaning or purpose. If I shared their view (that is, if I believed that love, conscience, and wisdom are just the accidental outgrowths of accidental organic tissue in an accidental universe), I’d be an atheist too. Of course, I cannot prove that the cosmos exists to serve any purpose(s). Yet though I am not an especially gifted apprentice of love, conscience, and wisdom, those three inner lights persistently guide me to the conviction that the cosmos has intrinsic meaning.

All too often, people debate the God hypothesis in antiseptic terms, as if exploring a vast ocean by observing its surface from a dry vantage point.¹⁵ But according to Christ’s teachings, we cannot explore that ocean until we plunge beneath its waves.

We touch the truth about God in the depths of unselfish love and in the fathoms of conscience-affirming wisdom. We see the truth about God in the countless people who not only faced death with greater courage but face life with greater dignity. We encounter the truth about God even when we cry out for wholeness during brutal ordeals, like a child crying out for his parent’s touch. And we intuit the truth about God whenever we experience the profound peace that suffuses every moment of personal grace.

I offer those examples not as conclusive proofs of God but as noteworthy pieces of evidence—slices of experience that deserve serious consideration. Of course, some atheists seek to dismiss such modes of awareness by labeling them nonrational or irrational. But how rational is it to depreciate truths that cannot be discerned without the inner lights of unselfish love, conscience, and wisdom?

* * *

3. God As An Orthopedic Device

Question: Jesse Ventura (ex-governor of Minnesota and erstwhile professional wrestler) said that religion is a crutch for weak-minded people.¹⁶ Your response?

Response: Some atheists seem to enjoy speculating about the psychological inadequacies of religious people, but those same atheists become indignant when their X-ray beam is turned back on them. For example, I could claim that atheism is a crutch for people who cannot shoulder the weight of intrinsic spiritual meaning. An atheist might reply: Don’t impugn my beliefs with negative presumptions about my character. Fair enough. But many of atheism’s most esteemed champions take swipes at other people’s possible weaknesses. Why is it okay for them to play with that psychological scythe but wrong for religious people to do so?

Despite those points, my Christian response to Ventura would be: "You’re right." Admitting the merciful light of Christ into one’s life is like having a spiritual crutch, for it helps a person—anyone who truly honors Jesus’s core teachings—to choose gentle humility over arrogant pride, generosity over greed, peace over egotistical displays of power, tolerance over intolerance (in matters of spiritual choice), honesty over self-serving deception, and compassion over cold indifference. With each such choice, a person hobbles a bit closer to God. No matter how straight or short the journey may be, the love of Christ helps us make our way. Despite the attitude of some self-righteous Christians, Christ’s spirit is not for people who think they are morally exceptional or spiritually unimpeachable. Jesus said, I have not come to call upon the righteous, but sinners.¹⁷ Christ’s spirit dwells within people who have enough humility to honestly say these words: I cannot complete this journey on my own. Help me walk in your love. And no matter what hardships or sorrows may weigh me down on this human stage, guide my soul all the way home.

* * *

Follow-Up: What would you say to people who are offended by those words? What would you say to people who insist that they have no need of such love?

Short Response: There is no shame in admitting one’s need for love, nor is there any good reason to be offended by the love that comes to us through the message and spirit of Jesus Christ. If someone honors the Christian verse which tells us that God is love, it can only help that person do a better job of living in a spirit of love. Jesse Ventura can—with considerable accuracy—call that a crutch. But if such a crutch strengthens your spirit of compassionate dignity, don’t be too proud to take hold of it. Whatever anyone may say about human weakness, it is far better to hobble on three shaky limbs toward greater love than to stand proudly on two muscular legs, surrounded by horizons that are fading into meaningless oblivion.

* * *

Follow-Up: What good is such a destination if it’s just an illusion?

Short Response: We are free to believe that God is just an illusion. Such a belief compels us to stay within the confines of the final no. Yet Jesus asked us to honor God not by kidding ourselves but by living in a spirit of love, for he affirmed that ultimate truth (re: God) transcends any philosophy’s ultimate no.

Going a Bit Further: Richard Dawkins is eager to banish God. In 2006, the editors of Time magazine arranged a debate between Dawkins and Francis Collins, a scientist who is also a practicing Christian. During the discussion, Dawkins characterized Collins’s faith in God as a cop-out. Later, as if to remove any doubt that he had overstated his position, he called it the mother and father of all cop-outs.¹⁸ In order to understand how baseless Dawkins’s accusation is, we must understand something about his target. Francis Collins was a well-respected biologist when he became the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute in 1993. He was at the forefront of an international effort to identify and map all the genes of the human body—a goal that was achieved in 2003. It was a noteworthy scientific achievement. Dawkins’s attack on Collins’s supposed scientific shortcomings would be comical if it didn’t have the power to deceive uninformed onlookers. Some of Time’s readers probably thought Dawkins got the better of Collins simply because he ridiculed him.¹⁹ Like a bully’s snarl in the schoolyard, ridicule has a very persuasive mystique. Everyone wants to be behind the bully, not in front of him. So the ranks of Dawkins’s followers have swelled right along with his contemptuous swipes. But in the quest for truth, it is a mistake to be swayed by ridicule.

Francis Collins’s belief in God doesn’t keep him from pursuing scientific inquiry wherever it may lead, and his zeal for greater knowledge (as he has shown throughout his career) is at least the equal of Dawkins’s. Yet Dawkins looks upon Collins’s life-perspective as a cop-out. This is significant, for it exposes Dawkins’s true agenda. The issue that divides Collins and Dawkins isn’t science. These two scientists are separated by their personal beliefs about life’s possible meanings. That’s the real thorn in Dawkins’s paw. His poor tolerance of that nettle is revealed by the way he flings around scornful words (cop-out, delusional, vice, diseased)²⁰ when describing the minds of individuals who dare to disagree with his atheistic (re: