Customer Reviews

Why Believe?: Reason and Mystery as Pointers to God

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This is basically a book written by a Christian philosopher, explaining some of the arguments for being a Christian and showing how to refute the arguments going the other way. I don't agree with absolutely everything he says, but most of it is excellent.

It sounds a bit academic - it is, but it is very readable and very helpful. The treatment he gives the arguments is well thought through, and it is good as well as challenging (in the good sense) for Christians who read it, especially when he deals with doubt.

Basically, I would thoroughly recommend it for both Christians and non-Christians, mainly of the more intellectual type, but others could certainly benefit from it as well - it is very clearly written and doesn't use obscure words.

The coverage and depth of the book are just right as Christian apologetic for the average person. I was a seeker for 19 years (starting in college) and was saved about a year ago. I have wished since that I could write a book for all those seekers out there like I was, that found it impossible to believe and keep respect for ALL truth. I wanted them to know the Truth, that it all makes sense! I am glad someone else wrote that book.

The book covers all the areas that a modern person questions, such as science, miracles, evil, other religions. There is obviously a lot of depth behind what is included, and at times I wished the book were hypertext so I could click on something and get more deeply into the subject. But I think the choice of depth was right for a general audience, and I think LIVES WILL BE SAVED by this book. Praise God who is so patient and respectful of our questioning!

This title originally published by Inter Varsity Press under the title The Quest for Faith ISBN 0-87784-511-5. Having been loaned a copy of the original title, it was not easy to find a copy to purchase for my own library. Evans helps to uncover the "clues" God has left for those of us who have a difficult time believing in His existence. The first six chapters would be beneficial to most anyone, after that, it is specific to Christianity

Why write a review of a book that was first published in 1986? Well, when I was looking for a book that claims to comprehensively refute the various psychological, cultural, and sociological reasons not to believe in God, this one stood out. It seems that few Christian apologists even recognise these as issues, let alone address them. `Why Believe? Reason and Mystery as Pointers to God' is presented as an attempt to overcome the `intellectual barriers' to Christian faith. Evans claims that it `may be helpful for those who are truly concerned about what life means and are willing to examine or re-examine deeply held assumptions and attitudes'. Evans states that `Religious convictions concern life and how life should be lived. And since we cannot suspend judgement about life itself, in the end we cannot be neutral about religious faith'. This seems like a reasonable position and an unbiased investigation of the issues would be useful.

Unfortunately, because Evans is selective in presenting and refuting the arguments against the existence of God, the book is of little use to someone who genuinely wants to re-examine their beliefs and discover the truth. It may comfort those agnostics who are having some doubts about their Christian beliefs and want to justify them, or it may even convince some atheists to believe in God. However, since it presents a biased analysis of Christian dogma, it is of little help to those who are looking for a thorough and balanced consideration of the arguments surrounding the God hypothesis.

To give Evans credit, he does point out that there are a number of issues raised by psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists and scientists in relation to belief in God. These include the contradictions between science and the creation story in Genesis, alternative explanations for miracles, the fact that people believe because they want or need to, the effect of social conditioning on beliefs, the problems caused by religions and the existence of suffering. However, he does not discuss these issues in an even handed way by presenting both sides of the argument equally. It's not so much what he says as what he doesn't say. In the end he shies away from reason and concedes that `...in reality a person's faith is largely shaped by nonrational factors'.

Evans also fails in his use of logic in some cases, which is disappointing considering he has a PhD in philosophy. Furthermore, his choice of words reflects a bias toward confirming Christian ideas and doubting non-Christian facts. For example, he refers to a `widespread view' that the Earth is `tremendously old'. This is not a widespread view - it is a scientific fact that the Earth is billions of years old, based on extensive evidence from various disciplines. The people who doubt this are either ignorant of the scientific evidence or just completely irrational. Perhaps his failure to mention the counter arguments and his logic problems arose because of his failure to suspend his own preconceived ideas and beliefs. Ultimately he fails to find the truth for the same reason as other Christian apologists - because he assumes the truth and then looks for arguments to support it rather than looking at all the arguments in a balanced way and then deciding what the truth is. Some of the counter arguments and logic issues are outlined below.

Evans claims that not believing in God still involves faith of some sort. This is faulty logic. The natural world that non-believers accept is self-evident, in contrast to the supernatural world. There is no need for faith in a universe without God because we can see at least a part of it with our own eyes and that is sufficient for practical purposes. Evans refers to `faith in the scientific method as the ultimate form of reason' as an example. Whether science is the ultimate form of reason is irrelevant. The point is that it tells us, to specified degrees of certainty, how the universe works. We know that science is the best method of finding the truth about the universe. Scientific theories are supported by experiments that we can witness with our own eyes. There is no need for faith in the scientific method. Even supernatural explanations cannot be put forward as an alternative to the scientific method. Unlike the scientific method, they are simply claims of knowledge that cannot be proven or disproven.

Evans explains that God does not make his existence completely obvious because `God presumably would want his creatures to serve him freely out of love, not simply out of fear of his power'. Well, there are plenty of people we love even though we know they exist. Why couldn't the same apply to God? In any case, even if it's true that people would not freely love God if they knew he existed, he doesn't need to make his existence so obscure that there is no reasonable supporting evidence whatsoever. God did not need to create the universe in a way that enables scientific explanations without the need for God and presents evidence that contradicts claims of the Bible. Surely he could have created a universe in which the claims in the Bible seem a little reasonable rather than outrageous. Is God just trying to fool us by making the Earth look much older than it is? Some apologists actually take this absurd stance.

Evans argues that the `burden of proof' does not lie with the believer in God. Using a courtroom analogy, he says religion is not `guilty until proven innocent'. The problem with this is that one could similarly argue that atheism is not guilty until proven innocent. This renders the legal analogy useless. A more appropriate basis for deciding the burden of proof would be how reasonable and believable the claim is. If someone is making a claim that is extraordinary in terms of our everyday experience and our currently existing explanations for the natural world, then the onus is on that person to provide the evidence. It is reasonable to assume that what is self-evident (that the natural world exists and can be explained without the need for supernatural intervention) should be accepted as true unless proven otherwise. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. For example, Einstein's suggestion that time is relative demanded detailed evidence since it was counter-intuitive. Evans suggests that the evidence for God need only be beyond reasonable doubt rather than certain. This seems reasonable but doesn't shift the burden of proof because, unfortunately for Evans, his evidence raises many reasonable doubts as discussed below.

Evans claims that God has revealed himself in history and points to the Bible as evidence of this. However, he fails to mention that there are numerous reasons to doubt the accuracy of the Bible. Without going into details, these include the evidence for the origin, authorship and details of the Gospels; the fact that at most there were two eye witness accounts of Jesus, both written decades after the events; the fact that eye witness accounts, even of very recent events, are notoriously inaccurate; changes resulting from biased transcription and translation; the lack of independent reference to the existence and works of Jesus; the existence of perfectly good natural explanations for alleged supernatural events such as miracles; the failure of Jesus to always make correct predictions and the disagreement between Jews and Christians as to whether Jesus fulfilled Old Testament predictions.

Evans presents three types of `evidence', apart from the Bible, for the existence of God. The first of these is `the mysterious universe'. He asks `why, out of all possible universes, should ours exist?' and `Why shouldn't there just be nothing?' This is a classic fallacy which is often perpetrated by Christian apologists. It's like someone who just won the lottery asking why they won and refusing to believe, because of the low probability, that there was no causal intervention. Asking such questions after the fact is a misuse of probability theory. Obviously if a different universe to ours existed then people on that universe (if they existed) would probably be asking the same question.

Even though it is nonsensical to ask why the universe exists after the fact, it is worth digressing for a moment to consider the complexity of such questions. Let's consider the case of why our universe exists out of all possible universes. Firstly it is not clear that the existence of other universes is even possible. The laws of Quantum Physics permit the existence of multiple universes, but this is just speculation and I doubt that this is the type of `other universes' that Evans is referring to. He seems to be pointing to other universes that could exist, not others that exist concurrently with our own. This is like asking why I exist as the individual I am and not as someone else, considering the billions of people in the world and the number of infinite number of people that could have been born. It just isn't a sensible question. It's like asking `what's 100 divided by zero?' The correct mathematical answer is that it's undefined - you can't divide a number by zero. Such questions are useful for providing philosophical amusement but are of no value in helping decide practical matters such as whether or not God exists.

Evans then ventures into the Intelligent Design argument, or `purposive order' as he calls it, claiming that the perceived order in the universe implies a designer. This type of argument has been clearly debunked and there are many books and articles that explain the flaws in the ID hypothesis. Although the original edition of Evans' book was published before some of the books and articles that debunk ID, the latest edition was written after books such as Richard Dawkins' `The Blind Watchmaker' and the ID argument had been clearly refuted by William Paley even before Darwin published `The Origin of the Species'. An example of the fallacy of `purposeful design' is the orbit of the planets around the Sun. The reason they orbit so well is that they are travelling at the right speed for their mass. If they were slower they would move closer to the Sun and if they were faster they would have been flung out into space (which some probably were). They weren't placed in the right position by some grand designer. In fact the planets do not orbit as perfectly as some might think. The slow changes in the average orbital distance of many planets and moons indicates that they may not have always been in orbit and may not remain their indefinitely. Evans gives a clue as to why people tend to think there is an intelligent designer behind the universe when he says `the strong sense that there must be a reason for these things is a natural response of a creature capable of experiencing creatureliness and wondering about it'. The tendency to see patterns where there are none and to expect reasons for natural occurrences has been clearly explained by cognitive science.

Evans then contends that there exists a `moral order' that is evidence of God's existence. He recognises that morality may be simply a product of culture but points to the universal acceptance that certain actions are wrong to support the idea of objective morality. Evans outlines the `naturalistic explanation' that societies may agree to a set of moral rules so that each individual is better off than if they made up their own rules. He then rejects this explanation on the basis that individuals will undoubtedly not always comply with such rules. He appears to be arguing, in a somewhat confused way, that the fundamental moral principle that one ought to abide by the agreed rules is presupposed by the contract and must therefore be based on a higher moral order. Well it seems to me that this `fundamental moral principle' is simply the recognition that if people don't stick to the rules the system won't work. It's not any mystical higher moral order. It's not a matter of what we ought to do - it's simply recognition of the consequences, which is completely different to the objective absolute moral order Evans is referring to. Evans concludes that our `conscience', even though it is clouded by cultural influences, shows that there is a moral standard independent of ourselves. He goes on to say that this fits perfectly with the idea of God. He supports this by claiming that the Intelligence that was the basis for intelligent design of the universe is a moral being. There is no discussion that connects the existence of an independent moral standard, if such a thing exists, with his alleged intelligent designer.

There are many questions that Evans' argument for the existence of a morally good God raise, which he does not discuss adequately, if at all. Evans points to universal moral principles as evidence for an objective moral order. However, one could similarly point to the differences between cultures in moral views as evidence against such a moral order. Evans does acknowledge cultural influence and the idea that a common human nature can lead to such universally accepted moral principles, but skirts around this by claiming that such a notion `...seems increasingly to be rejected by those who do not believe in a God who created human beings...'.

Evans' discussion of an objective moral order raises many questions that he fails to address. Even if there is an objective moral order, how do we know that it was created by God rather than just being a conceptual system like, for example, the rules of mathematics? What if the Christians have chosen a set of rules that do not equate to the objective moral order? If God is the judge of what is right and wrong, how do we know that what God commands is morally right? Is it right just because God says so and because he created the moral order or does God give commands based on universal standards that did not need to be created? For example, some proponents of this `divine command theory' claim that if God commanded us to commit murder then murder would indeed be morally obligatory. This is counter intuitive, if not simply irrational. What is the justification for doing what God says? How do we even know what God wants us to do? Do we just rely on what is said in the scriptures to answer these questions? If so, which scriptures, if any, should we use? If we use the Bible do we just do what Jesus says? How do we apply Jesus' teachings to contemporary moral issues such as abortion, the death penalty, euthanasia, war, racial and sexual discrimination, etc, seeing as Jesus did not provide a full and coherent ethical system? Jesus' ethical `system' has been described as `a patchwork of homilies and pronouncements, some of which are unclear and other of which are contradictory'.

Evans fails to address any of these issues adequately, if at all, possibly because they are outside the scope of his book and his intentions, or possibly because he doesn't want to confuse the reader. As a result, he presents a very one-sided and over-simplified discussion of morality as a justification for the existence of a good God. An example of this is his statement that `...anyone who thinks that the abolition of slavery in the Western world was a good thing has really rejected cultural relativism'. He provides no logical justification for this conclusion. Just because a culture's view of what is good and bad changes over time, this doesn't mean that the view is not relative to that culture. An improvement within a culture in one area of applied ethics does not imply that there is an objective `moral order'. In any case, how do we judge if a change is actually an improvement? This part of Evans' book seems to me to be the weakest link in his unfolding smorgasboard of supposedly linked `evidence' for the existence of God.

Evans moves on to discuss the `mystery of persons'. He claims that two things make us different from the rest of nature. Firstly he says we were created in the image of God. This is clearly just an unfounded assumption and it is more likely that God was created in the image of us. Secondly he says we were created to enjoy a relationship with God - another assumption. He says that self-awareness, imagination and the power of reflective choice make us different to other creatures. However, it is not clear that other animals do not possess self-awareness. For example, research has shown that some animals can recognise themselves in a mirror. It may even be the case that many animals have some degree of imagination and free decision making ability, but just cannot communicate this to humans. Evans goes on to point out that `...human beings look pretty much as they should if Christianity is true'. Well of course they do. Can you imagine a case where the ideas of Christianity in relation to human beings would be in contradiction with the reality? Why would anything in the Bible be written so as to not reflect reality? The only reason would be ignorance, as for example in the case of Genesis. Human beings have understood human nature almost since the beginning of human awareness, so of course human nature will correlate with Christianity. Evans cannot be excused for using such poor logic.

The next piece of `evidence' as part of the `mystery of persons' is the natural desire of human beings to believe in God. Evans claims that `...the fact that we have a deep need to believe in and find God strongly suggests that God is real...' Evans seems to have abandoned the power of reasoning here. The existence of a strong desire to believe is obviously not evidence for the truth of that belief. Evans explains this need as a `craving for eternal life, eternal meaning and eternal love.' Firstly it is far from clear that most people have all of these cravings. These desires seem to be essentially held by those who tend to hold religious beliefs. It is not clear which comes first, desire or belief, but they probably feed off each other. Many people can accept that the universe itself is meaningless. This, of course, does not prevent them from finding meaning in their own lives (as opposed to meaning of their lives). Similarly, many have accepted that life and love does not continue forever. Just like all the other events that will cause suffering and fear in our lives, death is not so unacceptable if one can accept that it is inevitable and get on with living. There's nothing to fear about death except the associated suffering and the pain of those left behind. Once we're gone it's no different to us than what it was before we were born.

Having tried and failed to show that the apparent `purposive order' shows that the universe was designed by an Intelligent Designer, that this designer is morally good, that human beings were created in the designer's image, and that many people have a craving for eternity because God exists, Evans then tries to argue that this morally good intelligent designer and Jesus Christ are one and the same. His claims that Jesus actually existed and that the New Testament represents Jesus as divine are reasonable, although the former is far from certain. Evans tries to bolster the credibility of the Bible by explaining that `...the best scholars today...are agreed that the New Testament was written quite soon after Jesus' life' and that the earliest parts, the epistles of Paul, were `...written at the latest only twenty to thirty years after Jesus' death.' It seems peculiar to claim that this is supportive of the New Testament's credibility. Firstly, most theological scholars believe the Gospels were not written by the claimed authors. Even if they were, only two of them were written by eye witnesses. Furthermore, extensive research has shown that the credibility of eye witness accounts is notoriously unreliable, even a few hours or minutes after the event. How could accounts written decades after the events be anywhere near accurate, especially with regard to particular words spoken? Why is it that out of thousands of alleged followers and a dozen supposed disciples, none saw it important enough to write about Jesus during his life or immediately after his death? Why do Paul's epistles make very little reference to the numerous alleged events in Jesus' life. Why are there almost no independent references to Jesus in other historical documents? After numerous transcriptions and translations, why would the writings still be as accurate (or inaccurate) as they were when originally written? The weight of evidence here clearly favours the view that the New Testament is highly inaccurate.

Evans says that `...the texts that have been preserved are both more numerous and earlier than is the case with other ancient documents.' He fails to point out that these texts are not original documents and even the originals are unlikely to be anywhere near accurate. Some Christian apologists argue that they know the Bible is accurate because it was `inspired by God'. This is a circular argument that assumes God exists in order to prove that God exists. Evans overcomes this fallacy by claiming that Christians `...do not begin by assuming the Bible is inspired by God'. Many fundamentalist Christians would disagree with this. In any case the logical conclusion is that the Bible is as fallible as any other history book, for reasons given above, and maybe more so since it was transcribed by people with a particular religious agenda. Evans admits that `...this does not mean that the New Testament is necessarily historically reliable...' and suggests only that it `...should be seriously considered'.

Evans claims that Jesus is God because Jesus claimed to be God in the Bible. As discussed above, it is highly questionable whether the words attributed to Jesus were actually the words he spoke. To use Evans' courtroom analogy, it is certainly not `beyond reasonable doubt'. Evans explains that because of the claim of divinity Jesus would be viewed by most as insane or evil (which he was). But he asks `...why wasn't everyone repulsed?' His answer is that Jesus was a profound teacher, he did not appear insane or wicked to those who knew him intimately and his ministry was `shaped by self-giving love, not the lust after power, money, and fame that invariably accompanies the religious charlatan'. Well I think you could say the same about James Warren `Jim' Jones of the notorious Jonestown. Jones is quoted as saying `What you need to believe in is what you can see...If you see me as your friend, I'll be your friend. As you see me as your father, I'll be your father, for those of you that don't have a father...If you see me as your savior, I'll be your savior. If you see me as your God, I'll be your God'. His followers did not see him as insane and he did not appear to be looking for fame. A clear difference between Jesus and Jones is that Jesus did not convince his followers to kill themselves. Hardly a reason to believe that he was God.

Evans also points out Jesus' alleged resurrection from the dead as evidence that he was God. It's quite obvious that such a claim is false. Nevertheless, as an intellectual exercise let's look at the evidence. Evans says that it is `...hardly likely that Jesus' dispirited followers could or would have challenged...' the military might of the Roman guards. This may or may not be true, but resurrection is only one possible explanation of why Jesus' body was removed. Some non-believers in the resurrection have argued that resurrection is not possible because miracles are impossible since they defy the laws of nature. Evans argues that since it cannot be proven that God does not exist, it also cannot be proven that miracles can't happen. Similarly, many Christian apologists argue that the resurrection cannot be denied on the grounds that miracles cannot happen. However, acceptance of the resurrection of Jesus requires acceptance that miracles can happen, which in turn requires acceptance that God exists and Jesus is God. Evans is therefore proposing a circular argument that must accept Jesus is divine in order to prove that he is divine. It may well be that we cannot prove the resurrection did not happen, but likewise, Evans cannot prove beyond reasonable doubt that it did. Therefore common sense and everyday experience dictates that there probably was no resurrection, even if the reasons given by anthropology, sociology, psychology and cognitive science are ignored.

Evans then discusses miracles and goes to some lengths to show that it cannot be proven that miracles do not happen and that God does not exist. Why he sees it important to show this is not clear. The atheist has no particular need to prove that there is no such thing as a miracle that or that God does not exist. There is already ample reason to doubt the accuracy of the Bible, and hence the existence of the Christian God. There are also plenty of reasons to seriously doubt that miracles happen. For example, there is a complete lack of independent evidence for any miracles that have not or could not in principle be explained by science. On the contrary there are well researched natural explanations for so called miracles. For example, alleged faith healings have been shown to be either false claims, coincidental spontaneous remissions, or caused by the placebo effect. The fact that such a tiny proportion of people who visit miraculous sites are actually healed is clear evidence that these `miracles' are simply coincidence based on the expected probability. If the believer wants to convince the non-believer using the existence of miracles, then the onus is on the believer to prove that they happen.

Evans discusses the Bible as `special revelation from God'. He acknowledges that many people take the view that various books in the Bible were `...written much later than events reported and that the Bible contains a great deal of accumulated myths and legends'. He doesn't address this issue in any detail but claims that such views are `...rooted in philosophical suspicion of special acts of God...' and are `...not solidly rooted in purely historical and textual evidence...'. Basically Evans argues that the claims of the Bible are more likely to be true than the explanations for their falsity. It's a bit like saying it must be true because it's written in a book. This is not very convincing, especially considering the various reasons outlined above for having `philosophical suspicion'. One could just as easily apply Evans' argument to astrology, after all surveys show that around 30% of Amercians believe in astrology and about 40% think it is scientific (the extent of scientific ignorance never surprises me). Astrology is widespread and is clearly `rooted in historical and textual evidence', but no doubt Evans would quickly dismiss it as superstition without seeing the superstitious roots of his own beliefs.

Evans discusses the existence of suffering as a problem for Christian apologists. `Why does God permit such things? Why has he made a world where so many, including innocent children, suffer so much?' His answer to this question is twofold. In relation to suffering caused by people he uses the free will argument. This argument states that evil is a by-product of human free will, which God necessarily had to allow people so they could choose to love him freely. It's not a bad argument, although it has been refuted by some. However, this argument cannot be applied to suffering caused by natural disasters. Evans addresses natural disasters by claiming that we cannot know the reasoning of God, even if we know that there must be good reasons. He claims that we know there are good reasons because we know the nature of God (from the Bible, which is unreliable as discussed earlier). Basically it's the old `God works in strange ways' argument. This is not an acceptable refutation, it's simply an admission that there is no rational answer if God does in fact exist. It's clutching at straws. The simple and more obvious answer is that God does not exist.

Evans touches on the conflict between science and religious belief, especially in relation to the creation story in Genesis. He says that most Christians do not believe that the Bible teaches that the universe is only a few thousand years old, and this enables them to accept the findings of science regarding the age of the Earth and evolution (the minority who take the Bible literally, including the six days it supposedly took God to create the Earth, will find no comfort in this view). Evans claims that this is `...not simply a desperate fall-back maneuver of the part of Christians', explaining that Genesis is `... an account of who and why, not how.' Nevertheless, Evans' interpretation raises the issue of which parts of the Bible should be interpreted literally and which should not - another issue he conveniently avoids.

Regarding the view of Freud that belief in God is a crutch and a form of wish fulfilment, Evans contends that Freud's reasoning commits the `genetic fallacy' by deciding the truth or falsity of a view on the basis of the origins of the view. I'm not sure what Freud's original intentions were, but the psychological reasons for believing in God simply show that the widespread prevalence of religion is not a sign of his existence. I doubt that any reasonable person would claim that it amounts to a proof of God's non-existence. The same line of reasoning applies to anthropological and sociological explanations for the belief in God. What these disciplines do is give us an understanding of why people hold such beliefs. They believe because they are predisposed to, not because God exists. Evans is essentially using a `straw man' argument here, in which he incorrectly puts forward an illogical proposition that is supposedly supported by atheists , then knocks it down to gain credibility.

Evans discusses issues such as sexism, claiming that although `the Church' has practised sexism for centuries, Christianity is actually non-sexist because it is based on a belief that all human beings were created in God's image. He then says that `Christians do not have to defend everything that has been done in the name of religion...' because Christianity is `...not merely a religion...'. Obviously people who believe that Jesus Christ was God are not going to accept their beliefs and institutions as just another religion. However, this doesn't mean that it's not. Christians are responsible for the actions of their institutions whether they like it or not.

The remainder of `Why Believe?' discusses the `mysteries' of Christianity, including the trinity, the incarnation, atonement and redemption and the resurrection. Evans says that these seem absurd because they are `God's mysteries'. They are `above reason but not against reason'. The logic of this argument makes sense. It is similar to trying to explain the concepts and explanations of modern science to someone in Jesus' time. It would seem absurd to them. I doubt that Jesus or any of his cohorts would have believed, if they knew, that 21st Century Christians, with the benefit of the scientific explanations for nature, would still believe in such things as the creation story and the great flood.

Evans doesn't try to use the argument of `above reason but not against it' as a proof of God's existence, but rather as an explanation to comfort those who have doubts because of this absurdity. He says that the fact that Christianity contains doctrines that seem absurd is precisely what we would expect if God existed. Of course the same argument applies to astrology or Scientology or flying saucers or hundreds of other beliefs (most of which, incidentally, contradict Christianity), so it provides little comfort for doubting Christians.

Evans says that the mysteries of the Christian faith `...do not contradict what is known to be true'. This is plainly false, since there are many things we know to be true that contradict the basic mysteries.

In summary, what Evans is basically saying is that we cannot use our reason to understand the mysteries of Christianity. Yet he tries to use reason, often unsuccessfully, to argue in favour of Christianity. Surely conceding that we cannot use our reason is an admission that there is no good reason to believe?