If you can’t prove God doesn’t exist, why not believe?
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By David Annis
Article ID: 1237
If you can’t disprove the existence of God, why not believe in Him? This is a question often posed to atheists by believers. The basic answer is that there are a lot of improbable things that I can’t disprove, but believing in them leads to a distorted view of the world. These range from things that nobody else believes, such as the belief that there is an invisible snorg
Bertrand Russell gave a rather famous example of an idea that can not be disproved which nobody would seriously ask an atheist to believe called Russell’s Teapot or the Celestial Teapot. Here’s his original description:
“If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.”
Many believers counter Russell’s argument with a list of good things that religion encourages: charity, forgiveness, and social order to name a few. So, unlike the teapot or the snorg, they argue that religious belief is a positive and therefore should be encouraged. There is an element of truth to that argument, but religion has also been used to justify war, the Inquisition, the suppression of ideas (think of Galileo), and slavery. Who can ever really know if religion does more harm than good?
Expanding on Russell’s idea, Richard Dawkins used the teapot analogy and listed a host of problems caused by religious belief in his book A Devil’s Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love
I believe that both Dawkins and most believers neglect the most fundamental problem with belief in religious tenets that can’t be disproved; the loss of intellectual curiosity and honesty. Faith – which is belief even in the face of evidence that your belief may be wrong – is used as a crutch for those who do not want to do the hard work of thinking through tough moral and intellectual issues. This includes opposing scientific inquiry from heliocentrism to stem cell research.
I recently experienced an example of the closed-minded approach to the world engendered by religion. A fundamentalist Christian friend wore a pro-life t-shirt to our house and I challenged her to tell me just how much she did to protect human life. The list was impressive. She had protested for Terri Schiavo and at clinics, sent money to various groups, and so on. I then asked her how many people died because of inadequate health insurance, smoking, and pollution. She didn’t know. “Why,” I asked, “do you only protest for those who can no longer think or have never been able to think – the quality that makes us most human – when the same level of effort could save many more who are living, thinking human beings?”
Her response: “I never thought about it.”
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