Rebecca Goldstein - 36 Arguments for the Existence of God

“These are ingenious attempts to reconcile the facts of our world to the existence of a God who cares, and the very ingenuity they require shows how difficult the reconciliation is.

“And of course even here the explanation can’t cover all the cases, since so many of those who suffer are never given the opportunity to achieve soul-making at all-like people whose lives are snuffed out in an instant, together with all those who might have developed virtues in the grieving for them, or children who have no way to make sense of their suffering. Once again, their suffering, according to this rationalization, can perhaps serve the moral needs of others, and so can find justification.

“I don’t know about any of you, but I find this rationalization, as ingenious as it is, morally offensive. The suffering sacrifice of some so that others are afforded the opportunity to achieve moral transcendence doesn’t strike me as descriptive of a moral universe. At the very least, shouldn’t all God’s creatures be given an opportunity for transcendence? The believer who’s satisfied with this ingenious answer isn’t paying close enough attention to the facts of suffering. His moral calculus of costs and benefits doesn’t add up.

“And it’s at this point that the believer, if he feels this objection at all, will take refuge in the inscrutable will of God. Or perhaps he’ll argue that the very resistance of these facts of suffering to any explanation that we can come up with points to the existence of God, since there must be a way in which this suffering is redeemed, and since it’s not in this world, then it has to be in the next. But, of course, to believe that there must be some way in which this suffering is ultimately redeemed is already to assume a level of transcendent explanation, which is the same thing as assuming God, which makes an argument of this kind circular.

“So at some point the believer, no matter how ingenious his attempts to reconcile the existence of God to the nature of the world, will have to fall back, when it comes to some of the most heartrending of cases, on the inscrutable ways of God. But to speak of the inscrutable ways of God is to acknowledge that the moral complexion of our world doesn’t favor the existence of a benevolent deity, which is the very point that I’m making.

“How am I doing for time?”

“You have a minute left,” Lenny says, without looking at his watch. Cass has the feeling Lenny is keeping time or not, as the spirit moves him.

“Okay, then, I’ll wrap it up. It’s often said that, just as theism can’t be proved, so, too, atheism can’t be proved. Just because no argument manages to establish God’s existence doesn’t show he doesn’t exist. Both beliefs depend on faith alone. But to this I respond that there is so much about our world-in particular, its moral complexion-that makes it appear to be unruled by a beneficent being, there is so much that we either have to callously ignore or else lay at the feet of God’s inscrutability, that in the absence of any argument for God’s existence so compelling as to overcome these facts of suffering-and I haven’t heard one tonight-the reasonable conclusion is that God does not exist.”

Cass stops speaking, and there’s some rustling and whispering and thumping out in the pews as people rearrange their bodies and prepare for the next round.

Fidley goes to his lectern, while Cass remains standing at his, and Cass finds he no longer feels intimidated. He thinks he’s acquitted himself well so far, and he wistfully wishes that Lucinda were here to see it. But there are Roz and Mona, both looking optimistic-in fact, Roz looks radiant-and now that he’s no longer nervous, he feels grateful to Sy Auerbach for traveling all the way from New York, and to the Agnostic Chaplaincy and to Harvard University, to whom he feels doubly grateful, and he realizes that he’s once again on the verge of ascending on the flapping wings of his grateful soul, and so he takes a good hard look at his adversary to bring him back down to this moment and to what still lies ahead. Fidley has struck a formidable pose, his shoulders looking wider than ever, and he’s been hastily scribbling while Cass has been doing nothing but counting his blessings like a fool. He concentrates now and thinks he knows what Azarya would say about Fidley’s enlisting of Humean skepticism, and thinking that he knows how Azarya would respond calms him down again.

Lenny Shore comes over to Cass’s lectern and speaks into his mike.

“Before we go on to the next phase of this debate, I just want to say to Professor Fidley: You know, you’re right! And I would like to say to Professor Seltzer: You know, you’re right!”

The audience laughs, and Lenny laughs with them, right into the mike.

“So-now on to the questions. Professor Fidley, you have the first question.” Lenny returns to his seat.

“Thank you very much. I’m more grateful than ever to have the opportunity to question Cass Seltzer after having listened to him. Only now do I fully understand why he is referred to as ‘the atheist with a soul.’”

Felix takes a little longer this time to smile and then waits for a few snickers to join him. Is Lenny keeping time? Roz has murder in her eyes.

“That was an impressively soulful homily on the virtues of atheism. Cass Seltzer makes it sound as if anyone who cares sufficiently for his fellow man is duty-bound to be an atheist. A believer such as Mother Teresa, who devoted her life to serving the most suffering of God’s creatures, apparently isn’t paying enough attention to the facts of suffering, at least not as much as academicians like Bertrand Russell and Cass Seltzer are paying attention, ministering to God’s unfortunates by being professors and writing best-selling books.”

This is the second time that Fidley has gotten in a dig about best sellers. Perhaps the sales for Welfare Warfare Wherefore had been disappointing.

“The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, who forfeited his life in the struggle to alleviate the misery of his people, apparently didn’t pay close enough attention to how people suffer, or he would never have been a man of God. Despite lives of self-sacrifice-to which, I think even Cass Seltzer will agree, the religious are far more prone then the irreligious- such people as these are cold of heart compared with the atheists, who care too much for their fellow man to be able to believe in God.

“My first question to Professor Seltzer is whether he really does mean to suggest that Mother Teresa was a callous woman.”

Fidley spaces out those last six words so that they make their full impact, and there’s a faint rushing noise that Cass is pretty sure is coming from the audience and not from inside his own head, as if of the collective intake of breath.

“I’m sorry if I gave the impression that I think believers are callous and uncaring. That certainly isn’t something that I believe.”

Cass swallows. This head-on attack is unnerving. He’s unnerved. He takes a sip of water.

“You and I are here today, Professor Fidley, to debate the resolution ‘God exists.’ We’re evaluating arguments for and against that resolution. As those of you who have read my book know, that’s not how I think religious beliefs are generally formed. When it comes to religion, arguments usually come after belief, not before. Far more potent than arguments are certain emotional attitudes that permeate one’s whole sense of being in the world, emotional attitudes that orient a person in the world rather than say something true or false. Theistic propositions like ‘God exists,’ or ‘God is good,’ or ‘God loves me,’ are metaphorical expressions for these permeating attitudes and emotions-metaphors that can seriously confuse us. For me to debate the truth or falsity of the proposition ‘God exists’ with you tonight therefore has nothing much to do with the psychology of religion as I understand it, with what it feels like to hold a spiritual attitude toward the world and to live accordingly. So, when I criticize theodical arguments as being cavalier toward suffering, I’m not criticizing religious people as being cavalier toward suffering, since the whole point of my book is that the psychology of religious conviction has little to do with arguments.