Your Brother Daniel
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God,
the Evidence, and its Denial
In a debate against a
theist, atheist Justin Schieber argued that if God exists, he would have gladly
provided ample evidence of his existence so that humanity would be able to
“freely respond to God’s grace.”
Schieber then correctly
anticipated the Christian response that God has already amply revealed Himself, but humanity has gladly rejected
Him.
Schieber then roughly
responded:
· This is arrogance of biblical proportions to
dogmatically claim that all humanity has rejected the evidence of God… There is
no reason to believe that this is true.
Schieber is seriously
wrong about this. The experimental evidence that humanity is in denial about
uncomfortable knowledge is rampant. In a New
York Times 2007 article, “Denial Makes the World Go Round,” Benedict Carey,
by virtue of the overwhelming evidence, concludes:
· Everyone is in denial about something; just try
denying it and watch friends make a list. For Freud, denial was a defense
against external realities that threaten the ego, and many psychologists today
would argue that it can be a protective defense in the face of unbearable news,
like a cancer diagnosis.
· “The closer you look, the more clearly you see
that denial is part of the uneasy bargain we strike to be social creatures,”
said Michael McCullough, a psychologist at the University of Miami and the
author of the coming book “Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness
Instinct.” “We really do want to be moral people, but the fact is that we cut
corners to get individual advantage, and we rely on the room that denial gives
us to get by, to wiggle out of speeding tickets, and to forgive others for
doing the same.” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/health/research/20deni.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
These observations are
extensive within the world of clinical psychology and perhaps most apparent in
the field of addiction:
· The concept of denial calibrates widely shared
ideas about language with the clinical regimen that characterizes mainstream
American addiction treatment. Since the 1930s, denial has stood at the
ideological center of the field and has enjoyed a wide range of professional
adherents across otherwise distinctive theoretical orientations. As in so many
contemporary addiction treatment programs, the professionals I studied believed
that addicts are—by definition—unable to clearly see themselves. By extension,
they also believed that addicts are unable to speak about themselves and their
problems authoritatively. https://ssa.uchicago.edu/research-journal-many-faces-denial
Psychologist Shelley
Taylor writes that denial does not just apply to the addict but to humanity as
a whole:
· As we have seen, people are positively biased
in their assessments of themselves and of their ability to control what goes on
around them, as well as in their views of the future. The widespread existence
of these biases and the ease with which they can be documented suggests that
they are normal. (Positive Illusions,
46)
Taylor adds that:
· On virtually every point on which normal people
show enhanced self-regard, illusions of control, and unrealistic visions of the
future, depressed people fail to show the same biases. (214)
However, she observes
that once the depression lifts, “normal” people return to denial and other
forms of self-deception.
Psychologist Harold
Sacheim also had argued that self-deceptions are normal and even “profitable”:
· Through distortion, I may enhance my
self-image, not because at heart I am insecure about my worth but because no
matter how much I am convinced of my value, believing that I am better is
pleasurable. Such self-deceptions may prove to be efficient in constructing or
consolidating a solid and perhaps even “healthy” identity.
Perhaps denying the
evidence for God might also be “pleasurable.” God not only interferes with our
autonomy, awareness of Him also brings disruptive guilt feelings.
Psychologist Roy
Baumeister has extensively researched the relationship between high self-esteem
and performance. He concludes:
· There are now ample data on our population
showing that, if anything, Americans tend to overrate and overvalue ourselves.
In plain terms, the average American thinks he’s above average. Even the
categories of people about whom our society is most concerned do not show any
broad deficiency in self esteem. African Americans, for example, routinely
score higher on self-esteem measures than do European-Americans.
In other words, we have
a great capacity to believe those things that make us feel good and to deny
those realities that threaten our self-esteem and autonomy. The existence of
God threatens our self-esteem, exposing our falsely constructed self – the
delusion that we are worthy people.
In contrast to this,
Schieber claims that there is no evidence of any widespread denial of the
evidence for God. Meanwhile, many atheists have even admitted that they don’t want
there to be a God. Others have admitted that by going to extra step, denying
freewill, they have been able to assuage their guilt.
The Bible claims that
we all have the truth but choose to deny it (Romans 1:18-21). We love darkness
rather than the light of truth (John 3:19-20) – the very substance of the
experimental findings.
· Therefore, I declare to you today that I am
innocent of the blood of any of you. For I have not hesitated to proclaim to
you the whole will of God. (Acts 20:26-27)
For Paul, success wasn’t
measured in numbers but in the faithfulness to the “whole will of God.” How
else are we to judge success? Can we read the hearts of the others who had been
part of the success-story of the church? Do we know what will happen to this
“successful” church the next week or year? Perhaps instead, we must commit all
of these concerns to the Lord of the Gospel, who will save whom He will and how
He will.
I therefore need not be jealous of the Dalai Lama and discouraged by his successes. Our Lord reigns! What a relief!
I therefore need not be jealous of the Dalai Lama and discouraged by his successes. Our Lord reigns! What a relief!
