"I'M ALMOST CERTAIN THERE IS NO GOD..., WELL, PRETTY SURE..."

Here lie I, Martin Elginbrod,
Have mercy on my soul, Lord God,
As I would do, were I Lord God,
And thou wert Martin Elginbrod!
   ~ tombstone, from George MacDonald

I am fascinated by the faith-science interchange and the dialogue/controversy between people of faith and the "new atheists" which is a subset of it. It is in part a matter of intellectual recreation for me, and in part an earnest component of my mindset and beliefs.

I have never entered an internet "chat room" (always been kind of scared of them), but a few days ago, while following a link, I stumbled upon the blog of a self-described skeptic and joined the blog's comment chain that, for a while, became a real-time back-and-forth debate. After hunching over my keyboard for about forty-five minutes, firing comments into the ether as fast as they were fired back at me, I extricated myself from the fray, and have not returned. I felt like I was fleeing a crescendoing spiral of madness out of Fellini. (Not "madness" because of the content of the comments, but because of the feeling that one could become trapped in a Hydra-headed argument without end.)

The subject of the comment chain was (to oversimplify a bit) "is there a God?". There were six or seven of us in the real-time back-and-forth, and I was the only one arguing for the philosophical possibility that God might exist. I was not arguing for the Judeo-Christian God, or against evolution (which I buy), but for an uncreated non-material force that was the causative agent for everything material.  Two things surprised me. One was that the conversation - though frustratingly anonymous - was relatively civil. The other was the number of my correspondents who said something to the effect that of course there is a chance that something like a god exists but, "he's certainly not doing much," to paraphrase one comment. I was surprised that some so easily allowed a chink to open in their skeptical armor. (The argument seemed to be "I may be persuaded that God exists if only he behaves according to my pre-conceived notions of how God would behave if God existed.")

Although I do not have a record of this exchange (as I said, I ran away, so I admit this is a one-sided report from my memory), I found the arguments rather un-subtle. It is as though they had given up belief in a Sunday School God, and the only thing that would convince them would be a divine Sunday School performance. I came away with the distinct impression that they -- like the more well-known atheists Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins -- mainly just have a beef with the church and with "religion" (as do I); they do not probe very deeply into the philosophical question of whether or not there may be a god. Certainly doubt is a part of faith (including mine), but this exchange wasn't so much about faith as reason.

All this to introduce a good essay on this subject by Gary Gutting in the New York Times Opinionator blog. I recommend following the links referred to in the essay. But, be careful, you might get trapped!

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I have posted elsewhere on this subject. Here and here.