We also run into a serious quandary if one’s faith in God is predicated on his or her personal experience. Such predication lacks any means of negotiating the differences between a Hindu’s experience with Shiva (or any of the other 329,999 gods), a Jew’s experience with YHWH, a Muslim’s experience with Allah, a Christian’s experience with Jesus, or an animist’s experience with river nymphs. Since I’m not an imperialist, I refuse to chalk all of these experiences up to the same thing. Though Western pluralists fancy themselves tolerant and inclusive in their suggestion that all religions are manifestations of the same reality, I can think of nothing more exclusivistic than the claim that Muslims, Christians, and Shintoists, for example, adore the same reality. Try telling that to any devout practitioners of these traditions and they will certainly not find such a claim to be tolerant, but exceedingly pretentious. After all, what lofty philosophical mountaintops would one need to occupy to make such a judgment? How would anyone possibly verify the truth of such a claim?
Getting back to one’s own subjective knowledge, let it be known that I know people whose personal experience reading a well-written comic book was enough for them to warrant belief in God. Granted, the works of Gaiman, Moore, Eisner, and Vaughn are quite good, but perhaps not that good. Speaking for myself, I have probably never been surer of the existence of God than when West Virginia University beat the University of Kentucky only to be thoroughly pummeled by the eventual champions of the NCAA Basketball Championship of 2010, the Duke University Blue Devils. This reconfirmed my suspicions about the existence of God from a previous experience when I was on Duke University’s campus in April of 2001. Again, for greatness is repetitive, we had just won the NCAA Basketball Championship, which not only proved the existence of God, but also God’s denominational affiliation—Methodist.
Indeed, the major flaw I see in people’s personal experiences (mine included) as the decider or arbiter in belief in a benevolent deity is that feeling good (or blessed) lends itself to Feuerbachian criticism. The eighteenth-century philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach argued that humans were not created in the image of God; rather, we created God in our image.1 Humans, Feuerbach argued, merely project their desires, needs, and wishes onto an imaginary deity that proceeds to fulfill such desires, needs, and wishes. One does not need to be an atheist to see the potential truth in such an argument. Historically, Christianity has rightly criticized the same thing and, to a point, agrees with Feuerbach. Many people’s understanding of God often coincides with the kind of deity they most desire. In this rubric, God, coincidentally, just happens to bless the kind of life we already wanted to live. God makes us feel good, and it makes us feel good that the God of all creation wants us to want what we already wanted. What a wonderful deity to be so concerned with our feeling good about our self-appointed lives! Of course, to paraphrase the religious psychologist William James, if merely “feeling good” could decide the authenticity of our truth claims, then drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience. You will therefore have to forgive me for my reluctance to base my knowledge of God on your personal experiences.
In the case of the more apologetic believer in our midst—where knowledge of God comes, perhaps, from philosophical precision—I find even less hope. To speak crudely, the god of the philosophers is rarely the god of any of the so-called world religions. The god whose existence is proven and disproven by academicians is rarely the god anyone actually believes in. The god criticized in the cosmological argument or the god who “intelligently designed” the cosmos has little to nothing in common with, for example, the God of Jesus worshipped by Christians. What passes for proof and disproof seems to just miss the point altogether.
Take, for example, the argument from design: Even if you concede that the universe is far too complex to have evolved via adaptation and natural selection, and, therefore, you find it necessary to posit the existence of a creator, such a proof tells you nothing about the creator. What am I to worship—the Intelligent Designer? Well, what does that look like? Such a proof tells me nothing about the character of the deity proven to exist. It is the same thing with the cosmological argument. The cosmological argument claims that all things are contingent upon something else for its existence, yet if we assume a beginning in time then there must be one non-contingent being, and that one non-contingent being is God. Even if this were to convince an unbeliever that God exists (and arguments for the existence of God have the uncanny tendency to convince only those who need no convincing), this does not tell me anything about the non-contingent being proven to exist.
The Greek philosopher Aristotle referred to this non-contingent being as the Unmoved Mover. Well, that’s just great. How am I supposed to worship the Unmoved Mover? What shape or form would such worship take? Does the Unmoved Mover punish people for certain actions or reward others for other actions? Does the Unmoved Mover grow angry when I massacre my time, and brain cells, watching Days of Our Lives? Or, is the Unmoved Mover genuinely concerned with “Bo” and “Hope” finding true happiness? How would I possibly ever know?
The problem with such arguments is that if they do convince you of God’s existence they only convince you of what you already were going to be, or needed to be convinced of in the first place. Taken on their own terms, they tell you nothing about the kind of deity “proven” to exist. For that reason alone, I just cannot muster any interest in such arguments.
So, what am I attempting to do by saying I am looking for God by looking for Satan? Are the subjective experiences and the philosophical arguments for God so bad and uninteresting that I would be willing to confront the Prince of Lies (therein making my search paradoxically problematic) in order to learn of God’s existence?
Yes. I honestly think they are that bad and uninteresting.
I have spent quite a few years teaching at a private liberal arts university, as well as at a much larger public university, and have grown quite weary of how utterly predictable every argument, claim, and comment my students make about God turn out to be (no offense to past or present students—it’s not your fault). The god so often discussed and assumed by many of my students, taught to them by their parents, rabbis, imams, priests, preachers, politicians, and marketing consultants, is a god of banal platitudes who apparently exists for no other reason than to make them feel good about decisions they were already going to make. This god is a god who wants all of us to be wealthy and healthy and to find the perfect soul mate.
Pretty swell deity—albeit a thoroughly pagan one.
Of course, this should not be taken as criticism against the possible existence of God. It is not that at all. Rather, it’s because I truly hope that, if the God of Judaism, Islam, and/or Christianity is real, then such a God would have to be far more compelling than the trite and mawkish god I am informed—through the channels of whimsical personal experience and logical reasoning of others—exists. So you see, I am not challenging the existence of God, I am challenging the god thought to exist.
The Wager:
Why Tommy No Longer Works on the Docks
Perhaps that last comment belongs in a book that I will one day write. This is not that book. At least, I don’t think this is that book. What I wish to do is attempt to capitalize on a particular conversation held in one of my Introduction to Religious Studies courses that inspired me to search for Satan as a way of knowing God.
My class was working through some of the arguments I was previously alluding to (argument by design, cosmological argument, etc.), and we were criticizing not only the arguments for the existence of God, but also the arguments against the arguments for the existence of God. The class was moving in a manner that seemed almost pre-programmed.2 Then, a strange thing happened; something new began to develop between two of my more fervent students. They were discussing whether or not one could really know, and I mean know in the sense that I know I am