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The secular humanist’s have come out with a new slick ad campaign for the upcoming Christmas season – Why Believe in God?  Just be good for goodness’ sake?

Apparently, they feel lonely on Christmas and are trying to get some “good cheer” from their fellow secular humanists and other athiests during those cold, dark winter months.

But they ask a good question, and it deserves an answer.  Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) a brilliant French mathematician attempted to give a completely logical answer to the question in what as become known as ”Pascal’s Wager ” – it is a convincing argument that has withstood scrutiny from the most articulate and thoughtful opponents. Pascal approaches the question on the basis of “decision theory”…looking at the value of expected outcomes in light of uncertainty. He makes the observation that there are only two states of reality: either God exists or God does not exist, and there are only two states of behavior – you can live your life “as if” God existed or you could live your life “as if” God didn’t exist. Pascal’s Wager only makes the argument that it is better to live your life “as if” God existed – regardless of the unknowable reality of God’s existance.

I will not reproduce the depth of Pascal’s argument and I refer you to the very good wikipedia article …but Pascal concludes that the only choice a thinking person could make is to live his life “as if” God existed.

Of course there is the reality that history is dripping in the blood of horrible acts carried out “in the name of God” (the Inquisition, the Crusades, the Islamic conquest) … and we have the present day Islamist terrorists who flew planes into buildings and butcher innocents in pizza parlors and city busses “for the sake of heaven”…but these facts do not in any way counter Pascal’s argument.  These facts just show that religion, like any other belief (e.g. nationalism, racism) can be usurped as an excuse to do the most horrible acts.  In fact, I would posit that religion used in this way is just another form of idolatry (where you elevate your desires, your needs, your views to the status of a god).

What I find remarkable about the ad campaign is that it uses the line “for goodness’ sake”.

For goodness’ sake … does that make sense?  What is “goodness” that something should be done for the “sake” of it?  Is “goodness” a bank account…and if so, in who’s bank?  Is “goodness” an entity…and if so, how is this different than “God”?  I’m terribly confused by secular humanist’s message.

Is goodness just some collection of “happy feelings” that my deeds engender?  If so, why should I be concerned about creating those “happy feelings” – if there is no God, then shouldn’t I be more concerned about creating happy feelings for me and if as a side effect, I create happy feelings for others then great..an added bonus but not a reason for the act in the first place.  In fact, that $10 I gave to charity last week will create bad feelings today as I try to scrape enough together to pay my mortgage and provide food for my kids…. so when I give that $10, I have to do a calculation as to whether my current good feelings will outweigh my bad feelings on bill day?…  something is indeed wrong with this approach as it seems that my goal is to maximize my own “happy feelings”.

The “fact” of whether or not God exists is clearly something we can never know – nor should we ever know in the same way we “know” whether or not the sun is shining right now.  If we did “know” the existence of God in this way, it would strip us of the very humanity to which we are endowed – a humanity defined by the freedom to choose.

Choice exists only when you see that you could choose either option. As an example, if I offer you a choice between 50 one dollar bills or 5 ten dollar bills…you have a choice, you might need the smaller bills or you might need the ease of having fewer bills…but there is a choice to be made.  On the other hand, if I give you the choice between 50 one dollar bills and 10,000 fifty dollar bills, I would argue that there is no choice.  Hence if you knew whether there was a God to the same degree you knew whether the sun was shining today – you would also have no choice – unless (for some reason) you viewed infinite bliss as roughly equivalent to eternal damnation .

While the above makes a case for “Why believe in God?” from a perspective of ”self interest”, I can also make a case from a societal and sociological perspective.  Quite simply, belief in God is the surest antidote for idolatry and narcisism is the ultimate form of idolatry.   I don’t mean the ancient worship of stone statues, I mean the modern form of idolatry such as worship of ideologies such as liberalism, conservatism, political correctness and the worst form: the worship of self.  So ignoring such questions as who/what “goodness” is …  that for the sake of it I need to do good – the reality is that if I don’t want to be a narcisist – someone who does things simply because it makes “me” feel good, then I should be doing good because God expects me to do good regardless of how I feel.  When I believe in God, how I feel when I “do good” is purely a side effect – it’s not the reason.

Yes, the tag line “Why believe in God?” was probably viewed as a jab by the secular humanists to get people’s attention – but their unconscious coupling with the line “Just be good for goodness’ sake” results in not a “jab” but a great question – for how can you do “good” for some sake other than just to make yourself feel good?  How can you do good without it becoming a vehicle for the idolatry of self worship?  If you ultimately find yourself doing good - not because it makes you “feel good” but because you are trying to repair a blemish in the universe and all you want is to add to the “goodness” in the world and oh…by the way… yes, you may ”feel good” as a byproduct…then you are on your way to understanding what ”to connect to God” means - whether or not recognize it as “belief”.

When Moses asked God “what is your name?” – ie: how should You be known, how should You be described – God’s response was “I will be what I will be” – using the future tense.  God just “is” and it is our job to figure out a way to connect.  That is what “belief” is.

–Robert Light