Sun 24 Aug 2008
Not Enough Evidence
Posted by Darren under Apologetics , Atheism , Epistemology , Evangelism , Faith , God , Philosophy , SkepticsBertrand Russell was reportedly once asked what he would say to God if he were to find himself confronted by the Almighty about why he had not believed in God’s existence. He said that he would tell God “Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence!” [Source: Victor Reppert, "Hume on Miracles, Frequencies, and Prior Probabilities"]
Recently in an online discussion regarding the reliability of the New Testament, I asked a person engaged in the discussion the following question: “Let’s say, after a few more months on this forum, that your questions regarding the Christian faith and God were answered beyond a reasonable doubt. Not utterly completely proven 100%, but at least plausibly answered. Would you then put your faith and trust in God?”
His reply surprised me: “No, probably not.” He went on to list some of his objections (and straw-man characterizations of Christian beliefs) before concluding that “even if you did manage all that and managed to drive me insane enough to believe in an invisible man in the sky, my common sense would just tell me that that is impossible.” [Thread on SCAE]
I thought back to Russell’s response quoted above. Ignoring for a moment the question of “How much evidence is needed?” that is discussed at length in the linked article, I have to wonder about the honesty of Russell’s response. Let’s paint the scenario: Russell has spent his life arguing that God does not exist, and especially not the Christian God. Now he stands before this God and has been proven utterly and totally wrong. This just, holy, righteous, omnipotent, omniscient, and awe-inspiring God stands before Russell and asks him the question. Instead of being humbled, Hume says he’d flippantly respond by saying “Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence!”
Given that (in the scenario) God is omniscient, it seems silly to assert that God hadn’t provided enough evidence. Wouldn’t God know better than Russell how much evidence was needed? Wouldn’t it be slightly insane to tell the almighty God of the universe to His face that you know better than Him?
Christians are often branded as being “closedminded” (sometimes for good reason) but often atheists or members of other non-Christian faiths are just as closedminded.
As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. During my conversation with an Internet friend mentioned above, I decided to break off the conversation at that point. When a person states that they will continue to refuse to believe something even if they become convinced that it is true (!) there’s not much point in talking anymore.
Of course, to be fair, this situtation somewhat paraellels my own story, when I first became convinced that Christianity was true, but still wasn’t quite able to take that final step of faith (trust) right away. This is why I think that often issues of faith are, primarily, heart issues rather than head issues; intellectual objections are often legitimate and worthy of discussion, but in reality those sorts of questions merely scratch the surface while a person’s actual underlying concerns go much deeper.
August 27th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Very interesting. I think that the reason that you can’t get some people to convert is that they’re padlocked into their beliefs so tightly that it’s almost impossible to change them. “…when one insists on padlocking one’s belief system against the possibility of evidence that the belief system might be in error, I am inclined to suspect that all is not well from the point of view on rationality.” (C. S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea, PP: 126)
I blogged about the exact same thing about a week or so ago – http://scaeministries.org/blog/?p=147
August 27th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
By the way, you quoted Bertrand Russell, but you referred to him in your post as David Hume.
August 27th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
[...] something quick that I wanted to note. Darren over at the WhyFaith blog has posted an entry about a discussion that took place with an atheist over at the Think-Tank. I had blogged earlier about the same discussion (Common Sense is Not So [...]
August 29th, 2008 at 1:25 am
Oops, thanks Tim. My mind was probably befuddled due to the fact that the linked article focuses mostly on Hume.
Fixed in my original post.
September 22nd, 2008 at 3:45 pm
I say this respectfully but aren’t you missing the point. To reason with a person on the basis of eveidence seems futile because my understanding is that by necessity faith is an integral part of, well, faith in God. Surely, I forgive my assumption around the simplicity of this, we believe in order to understand and not understand in order to believe is applicable here. Faith seems undeniably essential – if we lean on our minds we will not find faith there – faith has the heart as its dwelling place – if we are mind dominant how can we believe coz even when our heart is screaming hey, I believe, a person with mind dominance will deafen that voice with the greatest of simplicity. Get the mind out the way – lose the rationalising, and be honest enough to speak vulnerably about heart and you may connect with heart? Mind to mind seems meaningless to me – its a bit like pitting body against body in the boxing ring – the outcome is a function of the individuals and not of God?
September 27th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Hi Barns, thanks for your comments!
“To reason with a person on the basis of eveidence seems futile because my understanding is that by necessity faith is an integral part of, well, faith in God.”
I would never say that a person could be “argued into faith” or anything like that. (Although, when you read the story of someone like Lee Strobel, there certainly was an element of that going on.) My view of apologetics has actually changed since I first became a Christian. I see it now as sort of pre-evangelism or pre-gospel work, removing certain roadblocks that prevent a person from even hearing or seriously considering the gospel.
I think we also have different definitions of faith. How would you describe what faith is? I’d say faith is, essentially: Trusting wholeheartedly in something that a person has good reason to believe is trustworthy which in turn provokes action. Of course, there is more to it than that, but by that definition I can certainly see evidence playing a major role.
Greg Koukl puts it this way:
“People have this feeling that faith is something that is resident within you and the power comes from within you. I’m not at all surprised in one sense, because a great portion of Christianity–especially in the area of the electronic church–seems to represent faith as a force in itself. So if you have enough of this faith force you can accomplish more things.
But faith isn’t a force; it is an attitude of trust which allows you to depend on someone that can do for you what you cannot do for yourself. Now, this is very important. Faith is trust. Trust allows you to go to the source of the power.”
http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5496
December 1st, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Strangely I came across this blog while doing an image search for the homer-doh.jpg.
As a longtime athiest who is now a christian I wanted to chime in on a point that I think is often missed when Christians are trying to “convince” athiests.
Your friend is right. 100%. Our belief is just that, a belief. If you try any form of scientific argument or reasoning it will crumble in the face of logic. There is only one fact (question really) that can be used in support of God. Stephen Hawking summed it up basically as this: Science has or will explain why all things are the way they are. Yet they it will never explain why thing are at all.
When speaking to non-believers do NOT be insecure in your beliefs. You believe what you believe. Some pattern has formed for you. You have put together something from all the pieces of life you have seen and have arrived at the belief you have. You will never be able to explain it. Do not give up though. Keep trying to figure it out, and keep trying to explain it as best as you can.
Athiests will get into factual and logical discussions with you. Your belief in God will never withstand such tests so stop putting them to such tests. You have a *belief*. Lack of evidence does *not* make it irrational. Trying to cram this belief into some sort of logical or factual discussion *is* irrational. Don’t do it.
Do not be discouraged and give up in some “can’t make the horse drink” thoughts. Your friend like every creature on this Earth knows “something” is up. He can’t put his finger on it any more than you or I can. He knows though. Explore this with him. He needs to become comfortable with the idea that not all things that are real can be explained.
I did.
Above all show him by example not by faulty scientific logic. Show people what Love is about.
September 11th, 2009 at 1:45 am
In your article you use the adage, “You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink”. This is very true. But it’s a non-sequiter to your argument. Water has physical properties and has an effect on the human body that can be measured and quantified. Hume, in his statement, has the understanding that evidence is not subjective. Either there is overwhelming proof of a claim due to repeatable results during experimentation or there is not. When you can make predictions based on observation and those predictions bear out, then and only then can you call something a scientific theory, i.e. provable. Reality demands evidence. Gravity is a good example. Relativity, special and general, is another. If you think about it, really think about it, the evidence for god, whether or not he exists, is ambiguous and anecdotal and best. If I am wrong, please, let me know.
September 12th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
Adam, thanks for your comments.
The “horse” adage was not being used to refer to arguments put forward for God’s existence per se. It was being used in the specific context of my Internet discussion partner’s admission that, even if he had what he considered completely reasonable evidence that God existed (ie, if he had evidence that by all accounts warranted belief) he still would refuse to believe it because “my common sense would just tell me that that is impossible”. So you are correct in the sense that the adage would not apply (at least, not unequivocally) to the traditional evidences for God’s existence.
With regards to evidence that is not “ambiguous and anecdotal”, what kind of repeatable results would confirm God’s existence? Two previous posts come to mind … one regarding the scientific method (of which I am a fan btw, regardless of my poor marks in grade 12 physics!)
http://www.whyfaith.com/2007/01/26/on-scientism-and-faith/
And the other on why I think science alone is an insufficient methodology when it comes to God:
http://www.whyfaith.com/2006/11/01/knowing-god/
Peace!
December 7th, 2012 at 7:52 am
This article presents a self-evident misrepresentation of Bertrand Russell, and then attacks this as though it were true:
“Now he stands before this God and has been proven utterly and totally wrong. This just, holy, righteous, omnipotent, omniscient, and awe-inspiring God stands before Russell and asks him the question. Instead of being humbled, Hume says he’d flippantly respond by saying ‘Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence!’”
God’s question was about what Russell decided BEFORE he met God, not what Russell thought of the revealed God before him. Get it?
The rest of the article continues on the basis of this clear misinterpretation.
“Wouldn’t it be slightly insane to tell the almighty God of the universe to His face that you know better than Him?”
Russell was talking about what he KNEW, before he knew there was a God, not what he knows now.
As much as I have reservations about Bertrand Russell, his legacy was to call out the kind of misrepresentation that Darren demonstrates in this article.
December 25th, 2012 at 3:43 pm
Hi TJ,
I think you make a good clarifying point, but I was already aware of that when I wrote the post. The sense that I get from Russell’s response to God (and why I said “Wouldn’t it be slightly insane to tell the almighty God of the universe to His face that you know better than Him?”) is that it sounds like Russell is still blaming God for not believing in Him. (Ie, he’s trying to justify his behavior; it’s God’s fault that Russell didn’t believe.) But surely once he knows God exists, no justification is sufficient, since God surely would know how much evidence is sufficient to warrant belief without compelling belief. Given the situation, any response other than “I’m sorry God” is, IMHO, entirely inappropriate. Responding, when confronting God, by saying “It’s your fault God!” doesn’t seem like a reasonable response to me.