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Disbelief in God is incompatible with disinterest in God. The first may be intellectually honest; the latter is not. Anyone intellectually alive is interested in life, death and the brain-teasing complexities of living a meaningful mortal life in an impermanent universe.
Interest in God is imperative for atheists. Dismissing God without entering into a spirit of absorbing interest in him and genuine search for truth, does not qualify anyone as an atheist (Don't-Believe), nor an agnostic (Don't-Know) but only as a ..... Can't-Be-Bothered-to-Think-About-It. And a disinclination to think about serious issues is not a characteristic of high intelligence.
The serious issue of God, however, differs in one respect from other serious issues. It or He is not simply a subject for the intellect to chew on, but an emotional issue. The question ‘Who or what is God?' cannot be asked without asking, ‘Who or what is a human being?' and, by extension, ‘Who or what am I?' If God is God, am I a creation of God? If God is not God, what am I? A biological by-product of human impulse? An independent self-creation? A random chunk of genetic material or clump of atoms, as easily rearranged as constructed?
Whether God is God affects how I see myself and the context I live in, how I set my priorities, and by what kind of criteria I judge my life to be fruitful or unfulfilled.
No wonder, then, that the mention of God not only invites so many opinions among people of high intelligence, but also causes such strong emotions.
If belief or disbelief in God were purely intellectual, the debate would be an intellectual one. It would not incite fear, rage, hostility or scorn in some people, nor induce others to make themselves vulnerable to ridicule, abuse, and verbal or physical violence in the interests of trying to communicate their faith to the unbelieving.
Intellectual debates about God go round in circles, damage relationships, and end up nowhere. The same people reiterate the same views, till the enormously exciting possibility of a loving, powerful creator of a fascinating, frightening universe is reduced to a boring argument on the level of ‘I'm right and you're stupid!'
This Punch and Judy approach to God won't work, except for children or those of childish intellect. Children need simple guidelines of right and wrong, true and false, good and bad, in order to build a more complex value system as their world expands. Different parents and different cultures offer different foundations of belief, but all kids are fed on faith in something.
The real, hidden, faith of a family or society has more impact on a child than the professed one. If actions speak louder than words, then deep-down inner beliefs can speak louder than either. A child may not be able to discern that a professed Christian is, deep down, an atheist, or that an apparent philanthropist is really a control freak - but any child can detect conflict, and react to it with anger and frustration.
Faith in God and his design for human living cannot co-exist with faith in any other source of hope or security, since God either occupies first place, or no place, in a person's life. By nature a creator cannot be ‘equal first priority' with anything created.
The distinction between creator and created is recognised in every field apart from belief in God. An author is never mistaken for a book. As an author myself I'd be concerned about anyone who believed I was not only implicitly present in my books, but that my books contained the sum total of me, or had created themselves independently.
If God is to be examined for his reality, it must be as God that he is examined, not as something less than human, or no more than nature. To acknowledge or deny him as anything other than creator of everything created is pointless. A great deal of argument about God consists of disproving and dismissing concepts of something called God, which actually nobody believes in.
If this claim sounds exaggerated, make allowances for my frustration in constantly being told, as a Catholic, that Catholic beliefs are ridiculous. As proof of this, I am subjected to descriptions of ridiculous beliefs. The arguer is right: the beliefs are clearly absurd. The absurdity of the argument, however, is that no Catholic holds such caricatured beliefs.
To be intellectually honest in searching for the truth about God, then, involves searching for the God in whom believers actually believe, and exploring those concepts and not some invented ones. God-as-tyrant, God-as-robot, God-as-human-fantasy, or God-as-magician, are not valid subjects for research because they are not subjects of belief.
This search for truth, if it is to be really honest, requires solitude and privacy because it begins with questions that are personal. What would I have to lose if proved wrong in my present securities? How much humility would it cost to take this search beyond a level I can control - my conscious mind, my reasoning power, my IQ - to a level where I am no expert, and the effects on me can't be prejudged?
Crossing the divide between intellectual research and personal quest for truth about God means accepting the limits of human reasoning and inviting a person, as yet unknown, to make their presence felt in my life. It is not an open invitation to anything or anyone, but only to the God who has made himself known to some as consolation and to others as emptiness. Saul of Tarsus, killer of Christians, met Christ. Religious people with neatly packaged beliefs have met a void.
A quest for truth involves baring the soul and risking both belief and scepticism. The goal is reality, the process is insecurity, and the outcome may be unwelcome. But without embarking on a personal search for God, a person has no authority to claim any title for themselves - pagan or believer, humanist, intellectual ... or fully alive human being.
(Article first published in Mensa Magazine)
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