Does God Matter?

Dateline: October 14, 1999

The question of whether or not there exists some sort of god is not one which should necessarily preoccupy the minds of atheists, but it is one to which we should return from time to time. Theists - especially Christians - regularly challenge us with all sorts of arguments and ideas which supposedly demonstrate that some sort of god definitely exists. We can always hope that someone will come along with an original idea and manage to convert us, but I personally have never seen it happen. Instead, we get the same tired old arguments and, if we are especially lucky, we might get them in new wrapping. Nevertheless, it is important to be able to address these arguments. But prior to that, there is an even more important issue to address: is a god really important in our lives?

Is God Important?

If the existence of a god isn't important, we certainly needn't waste our time debating the issue. It should be expected that theists, and Christians in particular, will quickly say that the question of their god's existence is indeed vitally important. It would not be unusual to find them saying that this question eclipses all other questions which humanity might ask. But the atheist should not simply grant them this assumption.

Theists who try to argue that their god is indeed important will naturally support their position by reference to all its supposed characteristics - like perhaps that it offers eternal salvation for humanity. This seems like a reasonable direction to go, but is nevertheless flawed. Of course they think that their god is important, and of course this is closely related to what they think their god is and what it does. But if we accept this line of reasoning, we are accepting a particular set of characteristics which have not yet been established to be true. It must be remembered that we didn't ask if their god with its supposed characteristics is important. Instead we asked if the existence of any god, generally speaking, was important.

These are very different questions, and theists who have never thought about the existence of a god outside of the sort of god they've been indoctrinated with may fail to see the distinction. Atheists might choose to later grant that if a particular god with certain characteristics exists, then that existence could be important - then we could move on to see if there are any good reasons to think that that god exists. But we might also just as easily grant that if a particular elf with certain characteristics exists, then that existence would be important. That, however, begs the question of why we are talking about elves in the first place. Are we just bored? In a similar vein, it is justifiable to ask why we are talking about gods in the first place.



Social Order & Morality

One reason which some theists, and Christians in particular, will quickly reach to for dealing with the issue of a god is that belief in a god is good for, or even necessary for, social order and moral behavior. Christian apologists for hundreds of years have argued that without a belief in a god, basic social structures would disintegrate and people would no longer find reason to treat one another morally. It is a shame that so many Christians argue this because it's such a bad argument. The first point which should be made is that it obviously isn't true that their god is required for good social order and moral behavior - most of the cultures in the world have gotten by just fine without their god.

Next is the question of whether or not belief in any god or higher power is required for morality and social stability. There are any number of objections which can be made here, but I will try and cover a few of basic ones. The most obvious thing to point out is that this is nothing but an assertion, and empirical support is clearly against it. An examination of history makes it evident that believers in gods can be very violent, especially when it comes to other groups of believers who follow different gods. Atheists have also been violent - but they have also led very good and moral lives. Thus, there is no apparent correlation between belief in gods and being a good person. As Steven Weinberg noted in his article Designer Universe:

With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.

Another interesting fact to point out is that the claim doesn't actually require any god to really exist. If social stability and morality are only achieved with believing in a god, even a false god, then the theist is claiming that human societies require massive deceit in order to survive. Moreover, the theist is arguing that a society doesn't actually need their god, since any god will apparently do. I'm sure that there are some theists who will quickly agree with this and not be bothered, but they are rare.

A more fundamental objection, however, is the implicit portrayal of humanity which such a claim makes. The unspoken reason why humans need some god to be moral is that they are not capable of creating their own social rules and hence require an eternal rule-giver with accompanying eternal rewards and eternal punishments. How can a theist possibly claim this when even chimpanzees and other primates are clearly capable of creating social rules? The theist is attempting to create ignorant children out of all of us. In their eyes, we are apparently incapable of running our own affairs; worse yet, only the promise of eternal reward and the threat of eternal punishment will keep us in line. Perhaps this is actually true of them, and that would be unfortunate. However, that is not true of any of the atheists I know.