I want to discuss what I think is a false dichotomy between religion and science, or more correctly between theism and naturalism. It is a basic working assumption of 10s of thousands of Internet debaters along these fault lines that there is a fundamental choice that must be made between believing in a world where magical stuff happens and a world that must be conceived of as having no possibilities for such. I am using the term magic here as a shorthand for anything that can't be fully accounted for by the operation of laws of nature i.e. of what we learn from physics and the other sciences. I could use the term “supernatural” but that term is problematic for reasons I can’t get into here. Another term I like to avoid is “miraculous,” since it can be defined in ways that it can either encompass the operation of laws of nature or not.
It is a strange confluence that most of the ardent religious and most of the ardent atheistic naturalists agree on the following fundamental dichotomy: The world either has magical elements or it does not. The bulk of religious people assert that it does, so they are able to assert their kind of supernatural theism. The bulk of atheists assert that it does not, so they reject the supernatural and assert the non-existence of gods or God.
This seems a false dichotomy. Two other possibilities exist. As the longstanding traditions of diverse forms of "Deism" make clear, and also newer perspectives like Slavoj Žižek's "Christian Atheism," it is possible for this world to be a place in which no magic occurs, but which none-the-less, has as its source some form of eternal agency. Or it is possible that there is no eternal agency, but that the world, is still capable of manifesting profoundly inexplicable events, such as the endless possibilities for weirdness thrown up by the vastness of multiple universes and/or quantum uncertainties. Recent fictional portrayals in movies well illustrate visions of such.
If people were truly to take all these possibilities seriously one would have to accept that one's assessment of evidence, or lack thereof, of the reality or possible reality of magical elements cannot decide the matter between the options theism and atheism.
So, the debate about God cannot just be a debate about the existence or non-existence of an eternal agent as as such. The debate must also discussion about what the presence of “the magical” indicates about reality. That is to say, theists must explain why it must be assumed that God would obviously prefer to make a significantly magical world. And for Atheists why it is obvious that a God or gods would never make worlds like those they assume would possibly result from blind material processes. In other words, they would have to explain in detail why this dichotomy must be accepted.
But as discussions of multiple universes and quantum uncertainty has proliferated, an increasing awareness has grown in popular culture of how inexplicable aspects of nature could be compatible with either theism or atheism being true. There are untold numbers of people who are skeptical about or even outright hostile towards the God of traditional theism, who still none-the-less believe in all kinds of wonderous "spiritual conceits" ranging from ESP, telekinesis, interacting with the dead, to more humble beliefs such as that “love conquers all,” or that there is someone out that they are "fated" to love. As the saying goes “The truth is out there.”
But if one rejects the dichotomy and believes instead that the question of the existence of God or gods cannot be decided by one's assessment of the possibility of magical elements of reality, this raises a major new issue. Can we avoid agnosticism about naturalism? Regardless of arguments about the issue of God one must also resolve this fundamental question:
1. Can we know that reality cannot involve radical departures from the normal expected operation of laws of nature?
One might be tempted to describe this as simply another variation of “the problem of miracles,” as many philosophers and theologians might be inclined to do, but it clearly refers us to a host of not specifically traditional religious topics. The problem of explaining the "everyday miracles" of human consciousness, the experience of meaning, free will and the power of moral obligation, and the possibilities of our speculations about alternate dimensions or universes, apparent evidence for fine tuning, the emergence of life from dead matter, and its very definition, etc. Theists have been accused of resting their faith irrationally on a “God of the Gaps”, which is to say, to feel entitled to believe in God as an explanation for aspects of nature not yet fully understood. But it is just as much a matter of faith to believe in the inevitability of adequate future natural explanations of phenomenon like these.
In short, most theists are magical thinkers, but many, perhaps most, atheists seem to be magical thinkers too-- they are just magical thinkers in waiting. Most theists think the contentious evidence of the magical is enough. Most atheists think the contrary. In the presence of any residue of uncertainty, such theists must live with the ever-present specter of doubt, as is well known, but as is less well acknowledged most atheists seem to live with the ever-present possibility as C.S. Lewis put it, of being "surprised by faith." Why because, it is empirically impossible to do away with the possibility for reality to manifest indications of magic.
Both groups are in their happy place when engaging with each other about their ever-shifting personal assessments about the magical. For example, they both expect that the miraculous events portrayed in scriptures must have occurred as literally presented if they are to be adjudged religiously meaningful. As such they ignore the mundane "miracle" of scriptures, which is that these stirring and challenging narratives emerge through vastly complex processes of human imagination and possibly reasoning working through entire cultures grappling with the implications of their metaphysical judgements through immense periods of time. They are wonderous because they emerge from such processes, not despite of these origins. That we today can also join these conversations simply adds to the wonder. But atheist critics like Dawkins focus only on making fun of theists who feel they must "add fairies" to their gardens to evoke appreciation of the beauty that can be found there, while also arguing that so called "liberal theists," who are satisfied with the garden itself, are not "true believers."
It is for these reasons that I agree with Žižek that something like Christian belief is the only possible foundation for the embrace of a real materialism (the subtitle of his book on Christian Atheism is "How to be a Real Materialist"), although I disagree with his claim that this can only result in a paradoxical form of Christian atheism. Only by positing a creator can one imagine a world ordered enough to be significantly devoid of radical departures from the operation of pitiless material laws. The belief supposedly firmly embraced by naturalists of a world created from blind processes "red in tooth and claw" is fatally compromised when your outlook is fundamentally and perpetually open to the possibilities of being "surprised by faith." But a Christian vision of God doing the ethical work to discern the acceptability of creating substantially pitiless material worlds, that is to say, of worlds like those supposedly grimly embraced by "realist" naturalists.
There is a significant practical conclusion that can be drawn from questioning the supposed forced choice between naturalism and theism. First, in the absence of resolution to perplexing metaphysical matters people have the more achievable epistemological goal of discussing the ethical, self-identity and practical implications of their decision-making drawing on their working assumptions and speculations about such matters. So, exploring the empirical benefits and harms of religious belief or their rejection for individuals, therefore, should have much greater priority than abstract debates about the existence of God.
Second, the fact that many people inclined towards naturalism believe that their work is done if the possibilities of magic are put in doubt reveals that many of them simply assume that deities must be disposed towards magic and therefore barred from creating naturalistic worlds. It is only by this assumption that they can draw the conclusion that evidence for the absence of magic allows them to proceed directly to the conclusion that ultimate agency does not exist. Otherwise, they would have to explain why the absence of evidence of magic necessarily implies the non-existence of an ultimate agent. In this blind spot they overlook what I call the core question of theism:
2. Is there a reason for a God not to make worlds and beings like those naturalists have expected to emerge from purely natural material processes?
The belief that gods or God would never make such worlds seems to be a mere assumption on the part of most naturalists and most theists. But if the presence or absence of magic cannot decide the matter of the existence of God or gods, both these groups may well be wasting everyone's time and distracting us from the discussion of these two much more critical and interesting metaphysical questions. I wish those debating the existence of God while ignoring these issues, who flood my Internet feeds, would move along.
