The simple answer is that I just don’t. While I don’t have a conceptual problem with God’s theoretical existence–I’m not actually convinced by the formal logical arguments of atheists because I’m not actually usually convinced by formal logic at all–I simply have a hard time believeing that a being matching the description of most theists exists.
I will grant that it doesn’t look to me like God is necessary. We don’t need God to explain the phenomena of the natural world. no, scientists haven’t figured everything out yet, but they have figured out a surprising amount and there’s no particular reason to assume that there’s any area where they won’t be able to make any headway at all. At least, to our knowledge there’s not a big off-limits gap in scientific understanding that seems to be marked off by God as his and his alone. So there’s no need for a “God of the gaps.”
I also don’t think that the existence of God is necessary to make sense of human existence. Perhaps we need to believe in a God to make sense of our lives, but that doesn’t mean that such a deity in fact exists. I’m not sos sure that the nonexistence of God necessarily implies a cold and unjust universe, but if it does, then so be it. If the universe is cold and unjust then it is cold and unjust–the fact that it makes me uncomfortable does not imply the existence of an all-powerful supernatural being who can and will fix everything.
Certainly I do not believe in a personal God. If something exists in the universe (or as the universe) that we could stretch the term “god” to fit around, and it certainly might, I’m skeptical that it would be a personal entity capable of (or likely to) interact with us on our level. While I find the idea of a personal god appealing, I’m not going to believe it just because I want to, and it doesn;t resonate with me well enough for me to plunge into the idea without a better reason. I think that at least some of the burden of proof is on God to reveal himself, especially if he is a personal God and especially if we make an effort to connect with him from our side. I have never had an experience that would lead me to believe (or even really to infer) that God is personal. God has never spoken to me, and “spoken to me through his Holy Book/Holy Prophet(s)/Only Begotten Son” absolutely doesn’t cut it. That is a woefully insufficient copout. If there’s a personal God, he should be able to talk to me personally. He hasn’t and he doesn’t, so I have no reason to believe in him except for the testimony of others.
What of the testimony of others? I realize that plenty of people claim to have had mystical experiences with a personal God. I know some atheists would just label them crazy, but I’m not comfortable with that. I’m inclined to think that there is something to these mystical experiences that people have been claiming to have since the dawn of time when the first shaman went on a vision quest, but I am also not inclined to believe that they are reliable evidence for a personal God. There are too many alternate plausible explanations, even validating the mystical experiences. Such experiences could be, for example, communication with or journey into the human psyche, clad in metaphor and symbol. They could even be some kind of state of oneness with the external universe but one that has to me re-interpreted by human consciousness to make sense of it. In other words, the mystics have touched something too big to be comprehended so their minds put a face and a personality on it so their heads don’t explode. At the very least the diversity of recorded mystical experience would seem to undermine the likelihood of us being able to take them at face value (as contact with a personal God), especially since as I understand it, people tend to have mystical experiences that are more or less consistent with or at least complimentary to their native religious tradition. If Jesus is talking to Christian mystics, Allah is talking to the Sufis, and Apollo is talking to the Neopagans, then we have a bit of a problem. at least, none of their experiences tells us much about objective reality.
If I had a personal experience with a personal God, I might be willing to change my tune. I realize that such a mystical experience would be intensely subjective and wouldn’t actually tell me any more about the objective universe than the mystical experiences of Joseph Smith or Joan of Arc, but at least I’d be willing to subjectively believe in a personal God. Of course I would have to retain the reservation that it was extremely likely that the God I was experiencing was merely an aspect of my own psyche, or a face my own brain had imposed on an immense and unknowable transcendant reality. But in any case, such a mystical experience of a personal God has never happened to me. Even in twenty-eight years as an active, believing Mormon, the best I got as answers to my prayers were vague feelings and impressions, things that were far more likely to have come from inside my head than from outside it.
I’ve spent a good portion of this last year yearning for contact with God, but it hasn’t happened. At least, not in a way that satisfies me. It has come to the point where I don’t think God’s going to give me a call, so I’m not really waiting for it or expecting it anymore. So while I’m not denying the existence of God, I can’t say that I actively believe in one. You can only let the telephone ring for so long before you’ve got to eventually conclude that nobody’s going to pick it up.
Sailing to Byzantium 
I’m glad that your vague feelings and impressions made you so sure about marrying me. 🙂 Whether it came from God or your psyche, I’m pleased with the outcome…
I’m inclined to believe that the few experiences I’ve had were expressions of my psyche, communications from my Self. I wanted them to be personal and so they felt that way.
katyjane: Me too! Smartest thing I ever did. I married way out of my league, and pretty much everyone knows it.
kullervo, you have a way of saying what I’ve been thinking. I have been thinking of writing something along the same lines, but then I read this post and decided not to. I’ll just copy your post into my journal and say “ditto”.
Pardon the intrusion. I followed link you left at Beliefnet about “Sailing to Byzantium”…and was going to suggest…why not Orthodoxy and its theology is not well known to western Christians, and like the garden at the heart of Narnia it has a way of being ever bigger on the inside than it might seem from without. I converted back in 95 and while the emotional “gosh/wow” aspect has subsided the dumb awe has increased.
But after looking at your posts above I’m not so sure another Church invitation is what you are looking for. After reading your last few entries about wanting but not finding a moment of personal contact from God I’m thinking what you really need is another type of encounter. As you say the “world” of phenomenology is pretty big and its hard to know what’s wishful thinking, what’s self delusion, and what might just be dumb luck…not to mention what might actually be God. The problem is not that there are not enough truth claims out there, the problem is how to filter the whole breadth of human “spiritual” experience.
The question I have to ask is even if you had some sort of profound “mystical” experience what about it would necessarily confirm to you that it was genuine and God given and not either a delusion or an active deception of the enemy masquerading as God to get his hooks in you some way?
As you now at least you are free from the conflicts of having to determine if your experience was trustworthy. Where you are is a bit empty…but that could be maddening.
So, in my opinion, what might be most helpful is meeting and developing a personal relationship with a saint…or at least someone well on their way to becoming one. Living saints are not as numerous as they once were…not that they were ever terribly common…but there are a few still with us.
The proof of God is not an argument. The proof of God is His saints. He is a Person and is revealed in persons who have a depth of communion with Him. If you want to find them, then I suggest visitation to Orthodox monasteries. If there are none present at the ones you visit they can inform you about those they know of elsewhere. Actually there is one, if I remember correctly, whom many regard as a living Saint in AZ, the spiritual son of St. Joseph the Hesychast. There are definitely living saints on Mt. Athos (the holy mountain) in Greece.
Anyway…you might want read up on these things, maybe even visit, and if you do, be circumspect, living saints flee praise and are generally among the last to know that they are.
There is actually an award winning Russian movie “Ostrov” that may help introduce some aspects of Orthodox spiritual life to you. It won the grand jury prize at Sundance…its a terrific movie.
anyway…its an idea.
I’m completely with you on your first three paragraphs except for the aside “I’m not actually convinced by the formal logical arguments of atheists”. This is a common misconception about atheism: it’s not usually a question of having a formal proof of God’s nonexistence, but rather a lack of evidence to convincingly justify the extraordinary claims of theists.
C. L. Hanson, two things:
1. For the question to be answered by a lack of proof on behalf of the theists starts out with a bunch of assumptions that I don’t necessarily buy. Most notably, it would mean beginning with the assumption that God does not exist, and asking the theists to prove otherwise. I’m not saying there’s anything inherently wrong with this position, but that it’s just not my position. I’m not by nature a scientist, and the scientific method is not my intuitive way of dealing with the world. I don’t necessarily feel by default that the only phenomena that exist are those phenomena that are observable to me or others. I mean, I don’t have intellectual trouble with that proposition, I just don’t think it’s central enough to the way I think for it to really inform my worldview.
2. This is an old blog post, recently imported from another blog, so keep in mind it may not really reflect anything I actually think right now.
My point with #1, for a tad more clarification, is that I am not an atheist because atheists failed to convince me of God’s nonexistence, as opposed to you who are apparently an atheist because theists have ailed to convince you of God’s existence.