Customer Reviews

Can a Smart Person Believe in God?

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This small book makes some excellent arguments in defense of a religious/spiritual point of view or, as the author puts it, a Spirituality Quotient (SQ). Dr. Guillen, a bona fide "smart person" with PhDs in math, physics, and astronomy, writes without rancor and does his best to see the debate from both sides. His basic point is that the world needs more people who combine IQ and SQ (i.e., logic and intuition, left brain and right brain, intellectualism and spirituality). He shows that while science and religion are different disciplines bound by different rules, they can complement each other, with science providing the data and religion providing the meaning.

The book is slightly undermined by some shoddy proof-reading, by a few errors of fact (e.g., Samuel Butler lived in the 19th century, not the 17th), and by the author's narrow focus on Christianity as almost synonymous with religion. Although he acknowledges other faiths, nearly every example of spirituality Dr. Guillen cites is taken from the Bible. His Christian focus is particularly evident in a twenty-question "SQ test" at the end of the book, in which answers consistent with Christian thinking are always scored highest, even when other answers might be equally "spiritual" when judged by alternate traditions.

Still, in the end the book answers its own question most convincingly. Yes, a smart person can believe in God, and need make no apologies for doing so.

For a lengthier and more technical treatment of similar ideas, consider Barr's "Modern Physics and Ancient Faith."

I picked up this slim book because it was directed to both believers and atheists. Unfortunately, it didn't live up to its marketing copy. "Can A Smart Person Believe In God?" never properly answers its title question and utterly fails to address the concerns of the nonbeliever. Unfortunately it doesn't even address all believers, as this work is willfully ignorant of the existance of any religion but evangelical Christianity.

Michael Guillen is an evangelical Christian who accomplished a lot in a field that usually doesn't attract religious believers. He feels this book will straddle these two disparate worlds, but all he's accomplished is demonstrating how out of his depth he is with a work like this. In order to reconcile science and religious belief, Guillen would have done well to learn plenty of philosophy, history of philosophy, history of religion, and history of science. But this book seems to have been put together with a few Google searches and a couple of lookups in an encyclopedia. He missteps left and right in invoking arguments that were abandoned more than a hundred years ago in trying to 'disprove' atheism, while at the same time admitting that most areas of religion cannot be measured scientifically.

His categorization of the different varieties of atheist were at best patronizing and in many cases far worse. While he quotes Robert Ingersoll, it isn't apparent that Guillen ever actually read his work for understanding. He seems unsure how to handle the "practical atheist" who is willing to accept a divinity should one actually manifest. And he saves his greatest contempt for the rock-solid atheist such as Richard Dawkins, labeling them Arrogant Atheists.

More than a third of the book suffers from the Argument from Authority when the authority is the Bible. Guillen never makes a case for why the nonbeliever or the non-Christian would accept the King James Bible as a solution. In fact, Guillen never addresses the existence of any form of religious tradition other than Christianity at all, which is probably the book's biggest failing on the believers' side. It's as provincial as a book on Life in the Twentieth Century only talking about New York City; yeah, it's big, but it isn't all there is.

The Spiritual Quotient is another one of Guillen's ideas gone wrong, because he doesn't seem to be able to define it very well. The scoring of his SQ test shows some hostility toward not only rational-types but again, non-Christians (not going to church counts against you). And he missed the boat by not looking into the work being done in neurology and evolutionary psychology which shows that religious ecstacy can be induced with proper stimulation of certain brain regions, or that humans may have been selected for belief in the divine as a social survival trait, whether or not any divine being exists or not.

Ultimately, the biggest failing of this book is that Guillen was the wrong person to write it. The intersection between science and religion is a fascinating field for discussion. But when a proponent dismisses atheism with one straw man argument after another, ignores the existence of most of the world's religious traditions other than his own, and treads on the field of philosophy without understanding it, the result is an embarassment that should not have been published.

Michael Guillen, a theoretical physicist and professing Christian, has been a science correspondent for NBC News, and now serves as Robert Schuller's Crystal Cathedral Ministries' chief consultant for science and religion. In this short book, Guillen counters the popular notion that religion and science are necessarily at odds. The book is written primarily for laypeople, and though the author is extremely knowledgeable and broadly read, he communicates this vast learning in a simple, direct, and easily accessible manner.

Guillen introduces the idea of SQ (spiritual quotient) as the spiritual counterpart to IQ (intelligence quotient), a device that presents his view of the relationship between religion and science in a simple, memorable way. While IQ measures one's intellectual capacities, SQ measures our spiritual intelligence or capacity for awareness of spiritual realities. Though many people value one more highly than the other, Guillen argues that we need both kinds of intelligence in order to have a full, three-dimensional view of reality. He calls those who value and develop only one kind of intelligence Cyclopes. They see from only one eye and thus have a flattened view of reality.

Although addressed to both religious believer and secular skeptic, Guillen focuses primarily on rebutting secular skeptic's arguments. To this end he delineates several varieties of atheism, focusing particularly on what he calls Arrogant Atheists, those who are outspoken and condescending in their unbelief. He responds to several popular anti-religious arguments, explains the difference between science and scientism, shows the limitations, weaknesses, and failures of science, affirms the positive effects of religious faith in historical and personal health terms, and discusses some of the many brilliant people who have expressed their belief in a reality that transcends nature. This last category includes many important contributors to the history of science.

Guillen argues for what he calls a "collaboration model" of the relationship between religion and science where these two ways of knowing complement each other, while existing in their separate domains, neither impinging upon the other's territory. Though he believes human beings need both science and religion in order to have a full picture of reality, he believes that neither science nor religion as such needs the other. Science can never prove or disprove the existence of God, and our faith in him can be alive and healthy without science. Likewise, science can continue to function as an enterprise without ever acknowledging the existence of God. Guillen endorses methodological naturalism (the practice of excluding any reference to supernatural causes from science a priori) as a neutral stance, calling it "exclusion without prejudice."(78)

I am uncomfortable with Guillen's acceptance of methodological naturalism, and the way his view puts science and religion into separate watertight compartments. I see this as undermining what the author claims he is trying to do in the rest of the book, which is to grant science and religion equal status as sources of truth about reality. In our culture, the world that science can study is considered synonymous with the "real world." Therefore, methodological naturalism effectively bans God from the realm of reality. Religion speaks only to "spiritual" matters, which have nothing to do with the "real world." Interestingly, Guillen notes that according to the principle of Occam's Razor (that the simplest explanation is always to be favored), God "is fast becoming the much-sought-after simplest explanation of all."(77) But in the same sentence he writes that scientists will never be able to accept this because of the principle of methodological naturalism. This might be a good reason to discard the principle of methodological naturalism.

Allowing God into the realm of science would not need to result in automatically resorting to the extreme of offering supernatural explanations for every phenomenon in nature (i.e. lightening is the thunderbolts of the Gods). God is both immanent in and transcendent of nature, and can work through both natural and supernatural means. Biblical Christianity is fully compatible with the idea that the natural world functions according to its own laws, but understands that these laws are sustained by the immanence of God in nature. If the evidence from science would seem to point in the direction of God, then scientists should be free to consider the possibility that at least some phenomenon in nature exist as the result of His actions. To exclude Him from the start is to bias the interpretation of evidence and automatically favor certain explanations over others.

Despite this major concern with Guillen's view, I still think that on balance his book provides a good, short, accessible introduction to some of the major issues of science and religion. It effectively and simply counters some of the most popular misconceptions surrounding these issues.

I'm of two minds about this book. The first half is quite compelling, and I enjoyed his enumerating various classifications of athiests. His brief discussion about how most arguments about the evils of religion fall flat in the face of hard evidence is informative and enjoyable. He makes is points concisely and clearly.

And therein lies the problem. The book really only needs 70-100 pages, not 170. He says all that needs to be said in the first few chapters.

Further, I have a minor problem with his introduction of the concept of a Spiritual Quotient, or SQ, analogous to IQ. I don't have a problem with the concept per se, but rather that it is overused in characterizing people. His main idea is that there is an IQ and an SQ, and the ideal is to develop both. Coincidentally, one gathers that the author likely regards himself as having both being high. The problem is that this is not a tenable position from which to make solid arguments. If you are low in both, you're merely superstitious, if you're high in SQ, you're practicing blind faith. If you're high in IQ, you're an "intellectual cyclops" which all too often is synonymous with being an "Arrogant Atheist." If you're high in both, you have "stereoscopic faith" and are an ideal person.

Sorry, that just doesn't wash. I don't mind these being used descriptively, but he regularly relies upon these initial generalities to make points later on. I don't necessarily disagree with his points, but the text reads as if he's drawing conclusions in a circular manner. I suspect this is mostly because the points he is making are at best observations combined with personal opinion, and do not really follow from his concept of SQ at all.

The SQ test is cute, but entirely useless. The main flaws I see within it are that the answers are not mutually exclusive, and the scoring not only appears to be arbitrary, but scores you lower for having a high IQ, which runs counter to his prior assertions about IQ and SQ. The particular question I'm thinking of is asking about your reaction to a beautiful sunset; if you answer that you thank God for creating such a wonderful thing, you get the high score, while if your tendency is to think about how the colors are created, you get the low score. Sorry, I think about how the colors are created, because that is how I appreciate the beauty at many different levels. Also, most of the questions on spirituality measure frequency of church attendence, frequency of praying, and frequency of thinking about God, and so on. I can think of some very spiritual people I know who would not score high on this at all, and conversely, I can think of some very selfish, small-minded people of little faith who would score very high.

I strongly appreciate the author's attempt to describe the dichotomy between atheist and theist, and similarly between religion and science, and the first half of the book is worth the price. If you've ever been interested in this topic at all, it is a remarkably good summary. The second half is just filler, stating the obvious or restating things already discussed in prior chapters in more detail, but without more real insight.

Just a quick review to help those thinking about this book.

I read this book hoping it would directly and intelligently (after all, it says "smart person" in the title) address some of the questions we all think about and discuss regarding God.

Unfortunately, the author insults smart people with a dumbed-down attempt to help Christians feel better about their belief in God. The author erects tightly defined strawmen that should blow over in a spiritual wind, but even then the author has trouble constructing a coherent argument and widely misses the mark several times. Given his credentials, he must be relatively intelligent, but I have genuine doubt given the material in this book.

Whether you believe in God or not, do not waste your time with this weak offering. It probably sells well at the creation museum, but don't waste your money.

I am a Christian but I am also wary of those the "beat it over your head because there is nothing more to life" Christians. It's not them that bother me so much as their method, but anyway, this book was far from that. The overall premise of the book is that both scientific and spiritual knowledge are important, powerful, and necessary. Those that have one (either one) but not the other are missing out on a huge part of life. It is also interesting to note that "spiritual" knowledge does not refer strictly to judeo-christian beliefs, but to a much broader construct. I was quite struck by one of his first points - both atheists and "believers" believe in something that cannot be proven...

I found this book to be very affirming, informative, thorough, challenging, and well written. It greatly increased how I value both my book smarts and spiritual knowledge. It also offered a greater understanding of others by giving different perspectives on ways of looking at the world. (And the strengths, weaknesses, and other characteristics of each way.) Trust me, no matter who you are, you will get a lot out of this thought-provoking book. If nothing else, this will help you to see where other people are coming from, understand them better, and have a greater depth of respect for them (and yourself!)

First, a qualification: this reviewer believes that smart people can indeed believe in God. That being said, this book was a disappointment. There are many ironies in this book, chief among them being that it doesn't seem to have been written with smart people in mind. Not that Guillen isn't smart himself, but he has dumbed-down his explanations to the point of severe distortion, causing a number of his points to appear as staw man arguments.
For one example, I regrettably have to agree with the reviewer who said Guillen gets Dawkins's "meme" theory all wrong, and thus none of Guillen's objections to the theory carry any weight. A "meme" is simply the smallest unit of re-identifiable culturally transmitted information. Some memes are good, some are bad, some are TRUE. So the point that most people don't outgrow the God-meme the way they do the Santa Claus-meme (page 38) is irrelevant to whether the idea of God is a meme. Furthermore, "inertia, familiarity, and habituation" are not alternatives to the meme theory, as all of these can be described in memetic terms. And even if they were genuine alternatives, as explanations they wouldn't do theism any more favors than Dawkins account does. Finally, "pastiche spirituality" does absolutely nothing to refute the gist of Dawkin's account. Parents are only one pathogenic path memes can take. Peers and books transmit memes as well. That atheism has not prevailed in societies that have formally opposed the God-meme likewise does not disprove Dawkins's theory, but only how powerful and resilient the God-meme can be. What Gullen should have asked was whether anything theoretically COULD disprove the meme theory, for if a hypothesis is not in principle falsifiable, it is disqualified from being scientific at all!
Another example of distorting oversimplification comes on pages 76 through 78, when Guillen explains Occam's Razor and methodological naturalism. Occam, Gullen tells us, was a 14th-century philosopher who proposed we should not posit any more entities than necessary to explain what we observe, i.e., that we should methodologically favor the simplest explanation that accounts for all the given data. Guillen does not bother to mention that Brother Occam was also a Christian monk. This could easily lead the reader to misunderstand the following passage: "...in its blind allegiance to simplemindedness, Occam's Razor automatically eliminates any hypotheses involving the G-word . . . ," especially when combined with a couple subsequent rhetorical references to the unbelief of "Mr. Occam:" "...whilst millions of people on Planet Earth warmly embrace God, Mr. Occam doesn't. For him, God is to SQ, to complex, too far-out, and perforce must be dismissed without further consideration." And on the next page, "In the game called Science, officiated by Mr. Occam, invoking the G-word is definitely considered taboo." All this is misleadingly figurative, since the real Occam was believer. The actual William of Occam may have counseled the separation of science and theology, but for the rather different reason that Man was too limited to comprehend God's ultimate purposes.
Neither does it help matters when, in the middle of the above, Guillen offers the aside that "God is fast becoming the simplest explanation of all!" This makes Guillen's explanation appear self-contradictory, for Occam's Razor does not rule against theism if theism is indeed the simplest adequate explanation. The methodological exclusion of theistic explanation must be accounted for in some other way than by appeal to Occam. And if Dr. Guillen really means to say that methodological naturalism itself is being inconsistent, he needs to be more clear.
Still another example of distorting oversimplification comes when Dr. Guillen canvasses the transitory nature of scientific orthodoxy, noting one theory constantly supplants it predecessors, and concludes that "worshipping the scientific process is like building your house upon constantly shifting sands. As we've seen, all the evidence indicates that science is not converging smoothly and consensually upon one firm, reliable understanding of the way the world began or how it operates, really. It's not even converging upon such an understanding in fits and starts." (97) This is simplistic, post-modern hyperbole at its worst. True, science is not static and dead like a house. It is fluid and adaptive. But that science is not converging?? How much lack of controversy is there about the broad outlines? Does radical lack of consensus explain how we got to moon-shots and personal computers? Likewise, the section entitled "Logic and Reality Itself are Insurmountably Uncertain" makes it sound like things are worse than they are. True, we will never a complete system of logic or a totally determinate knowledge of every physical state. But we could still have more than enough logical and scientific certainty for all practical purposes. Did we really need Goedel or Heisenberg (or Quine) to tell us we'd never be infallible?
I'd like to conclude by expressing my misgivings with the whole idea of quantifying spirituality, the "Spirituality Quotient." Thomas Aquinas once explained that the reason why God made faith (and not reason) sufficient for knowing Him was so that everyone would be on an equal footing before Him. The wise and the learned along with the simple and the child. The idea of a heirarchy of spirituality, where some people, poor souls, just don't have the SQ to understand the Truth, reinstates the kind of self-congratulatory spirtual elitism Aquinas (and, I believe, Christ) spoke against. It also is just another excuse to summarily dismiss the arguments of the "low-SQ" atheists, and so closes off dialogue rather than promoting it. I took Guillen's SQ test at the end of the book. Seperately, I also guessed what the "right" answers were supposed to be. My honest score was only 67, but dishonest score was 99. (I wondered how a Theravedan monk would do on his test.) Guillen constructs "spirituality" in a very one-sided, predictable, and doctrinally biased way. You don't have to be spiritually developed to ace his simple test, you just have to know Gullen's party line.

I approached this book with interest because, although I am a non-believer, I share Guillen's sense of wonder and awe when we contemplate the mysteries of the universe.

Guillen, of course, believes (pages 11-12) in the "...God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.... who defines standards of behavior that invite us to transcend our baser, more destructive tendencies ..." Yes, some sections of the Bible provide fine standards of behavior - but this is not uniformly so. Guillen does not mention that God approved selling one's daughter into slavery (Exodus 21:7), or that God apparently favored genocide, ordering the deaths of many tribes - among others, almost everyone in Jericho (Joshua 6), all the male Midianites (Numbers 31) and all the Amalekites (Samuel 15).

Guillen ignores the obvious question of whether God is cruel and vengeful - and the more likely explanation that the Bible was written by ordinary mortals who were themselves cruel and vengeful. Biblical scholars tell us that the Torah, the core of the Old Testament, is a compendium authored by a series of remarkable writers over a period of some 500 years, from about 900 to 400 BCE. Analysis of the Bible and its authorship does not detract from the wisdom contained in its pages, but should raises questions as to whether the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob dictated the Bible to Moses.

Guillen seems to believe that one can curry favor with God and that God can interfere in the affairs of our world. An especially dangerous belief is that "God is on our side" in whatever war we are currently prosecuting. Such a conviction was used by Islamic terrorists to justify destroying the World Trade Center - and has been used by many world leaders to intimidate those who disagree with their policies.

Guillen offers the pretence of fairness - for example, on page 33 he expresses the hope that he has "...done justice to [the] arguments [of atheists]..." but I think not. He has caricatured, ridiculed and patronized atheists. He has set up straw men and knocked them down, but hasn't come close to addressing the serious views put forward by thoughtful non-believers.
Yes, some atheists are - as he notes - shamefully arrogant. But so are many religionists - arrogant to the point of believing that it is all right to disregard the views and feelings of any who disagree, to trample on their rights, to dispossess them from their lands and, if it seems convenient, to kill them.
Guillen implies (pages 49-51) that the horrendous crimes committed by various leaders in the USSR, China and North Korea are related to "... their godless political philosophies..." This suggests that atheism is at the root of these crimes, for which there is no evidence. Long before the barbarities of the 20th Century, the world witnessed, throughout the millennia, barbaric cruelties that clearly were inspired by religion, but Guillen takes no note of this.

As evidence of a coherent worldview (pages 135-6) Guillen juxtapose angels and neutrinos, the devil and a black hole, monotheism and quantum mechanics. This is mind-boggling. Intelligent people believes in neutrinos, black holes and quantum mechanics because there is abundant evidence for them. Inexplicably, Guillen finds an analogy between such evidence and a belief in angels or in the devil. But somehow he suggests that intellectual people and spiritual people are moving toward a mutually coherent understanding of the world.

Guillen's approach to miracles (page 119) is astonishing. He suggests that because modern science can help a 63-year-old woman become pregnant, this somehow gives credibility to the story that God caused Sarah, at age 90, to become pregnant. He seems to be trying to make science complicit in legitimizing a miracle.
Aside from statements of faith - where Guillen has as much right to his opinion as I have to mine - there are occasional misstatements of fact. For example, he states (page 137) that "The three angles of any triangle - wide, narrow or in-between - always add up to 180 degrees." Really? Try that on the surface of a sphere, like the one we live on. (A cheap shot, but I couldn't resist.)

Guillen finds meaning and purpose in life through his "...wise inner counsel [that Christians call] the Holy Spirit..." (page 140). All well and good. But many others find wise, inner counsel in their own ways. Inner wisdom is not denied to Jews, to Buddhists, to Muslims, to pantheists or to non-believers.

I think Guillen is probably correct (page 102) that we can never hope to fully understand the world solely on the basis of intellectual analysis and that some questions will always remain beyond the reach of scientific knowledge. But this does not justify the notion that we must formulate answers to those questions solely on the basis of faith. He alludes (pages 40-41) to "...the ubiquitous evidence for God's existence..." Where is that evidence? The evidence seems to be "... the deity inside my head, and also my heart and soul..." (page 44). That is not evidence, but simply a matter of faith. Although he has every right to maintain that faith, he has failed completely to make his case (page 146) that a smart person cannot avoid believing in God.

In the final analysis Guillen's thesis is unconvincing, lacking in logic, and unlikely to persuade many non-believers. Although secular humanists do not believe in God, they believe in the beauty and grandeur of the natural world and in the importance of cherishing and preserving it. They believe in human decency and dignity and caring and love, and in striving for justice and fairness to all human beings. They seek those goals as urgently as any devout religionist and their ability to achieve them is not diminished because of their agnosticism.

I found this book fascinating, well-written, and on-point. It is interesting that other reviews for this book on this site are long in nature, and quite strong in tone, which just shows that this author has hit on an emotional divide for lots of us. Do we believe in our faith, or our intellect? This author contends that you can believe in both, and that science is, in effect, a gift from God.

I like this length of this book as well, because it is not overwhelming in useless information, but stays on-point. The author is obviously of high intelligence, and adding his passion for God into the mix is compelling. I read a book from the 1950's called "Scientists Who Believe" and have long wished for an up-dated version of those ideas presented by those scientists - and here it is. I would highly recommend it to anyone. I can see why those who believe solely in "science" or "mankind" would be affronted - this book makes a logical, practically inarguable case for a Divine Creator that anyone who uses logical thinking would have a hard time refuting. A must-read for anyone who wrestles with questions of who we are.

EVERYONE should read this book. As youngish, well educated, smart people (We belong to Mensa & Intertel.), we felt Guillen's book was a "God-send"--a work that finally encapsulated (& enlarged) our scientific & religious views, and those of so many of our friends & relatives.

We hope EVERYONE reads and discusses this book. What Guillen shows is this: How can a smart person NOT believe in God?

We are ordering more copies of this book to give to (or lend to) the many friends & relatives who also want to read it after we mentioned it to them.

Thank you, Dr. Guillen. We hope to see more such books from you as you further develop your ideas.