"On reasons for religion," a paper for my Bible class

God talked to me when I was little.
He was this kind of guy who would tell you not to do bad stuff and make you miserable when you did bad stuff.
I remember this one time when my sister followed me to the bathroom because she thought I wanted to play a game when really I just wanted to use the bathroom. I didn’t believe she had her reasons for going to the bathroom, so I told her “you can lie to me, but you can’t lie to God.” She confessed. God talked. God praised her guts.
By the way, I got that line, the “you can’t lie to God”, from my dad, who once scolded me for saying what he heard to be “shut up.” I’m not a bad kid. I was actually just saying “shhhhhhhhuuuuhhh” because I wanted my sister to quit whining, to shut up, and, of course, I claimed my innocence up to the very tragic end, at which point he said “you can lie to me, but you can’t lie to God!” God told me he knew my dad was falsely accusing me. I was satisfied.
There was also the devil. The devil was just as real to me as God. The devil was the one to blame for anything bad that I did. If I got caught doing anything wrong, I’d just tell my mom the devil had been telling me not to listen to God. I wasn’t completely lying, either. I heard voices, or I thought I heard voices, coming from everything—God, the devil, stuffed animals, aliens. They spoke to me through other means, too—the number of spots on a banana, the tiles I stepped on next, all sorts of signs. If you step on that ant, this famous person will die in this year, for example. When I got old enough, of course, I kind of got the impression that I was actually just talking to myself. I stopped looking so hard. The devil hasn’t spoken to me since.
I was sort of schizophrenic back then.
There was this one time when I convinced one of my friends once of a secret portal to another world that lay just behind a huge rock at my school. We spent all summer trying to dig up that rock. When he left for another school that autumn, the project was suspended until we were older and could fight the monsters in that world a bit better. That was in third grade.
In fourth grade, it was the Bermuda Triangle, and the theory that monkeys and aliens were distantly related.
In fifth grade, the kid from third grade found my number somewhere and gave me a call. He told me he had found a few other friends who had known of that world’s existence. I told him that was very nice, and he should go with them instead. I wanted to shoot myself.
In sixth grade, it was the aliens. My friend’s uncle had been abducted.
And now…
I’d like to think I’m pretty normal now. To be honest, I’m still obsessed with the Loch Ness Monster and palmistry and astrology and tarot. Of course, these days, I’m convinced most of it’s just nonsense (ghosts and aliens, I’m still undecided about them). The guys who are absolutely sure, the former me’s, who pore over those Nessie photos or build camps around Area 51, I think many are just complete nutcases.
I’m embarrassed I was among their ranks at one time.

See, religion’s not like that, though. God’s got good arguments on his side. The apologetics books haven’t been wasted:
“There’s evidence in science: The Big Bang, which could not have come from nothing at all, testifies to the existence of something before the birth of our universe. The natural laws, which sustain our universe, would not have been able to do so had they been slightly off. We trust them to regulate our world to act in predictable ways, though we have no reason for believing why they will continue to do so tomorrow.
And there’s historical evidence: Eleven out of the twelve of Jesus’ disciples were executed for their beliefs—Peter was crucified upside-down because he saw himself unworthy to die in the same manner as his Lord. Had they not seen him alive after his crucifixion, they would have no reason at all for believing in his claim as the Son of God.
What’s more, we believe in such a thing as value: Our morality, our willingness to make others happy at great cost to ourselves, seems out of place in the natural world, where the strong dominate the weak. Our belief that there exists a set standard for right and wrong, that serial killers and rapists have violated this standard, rather than just our own set of values, persists despite all lack of evidence that there is anything of the sort. We believe it’s good to tell the truth and to love others. We believe there’s some transcendent meaning in doing so. “
See what I’ve done there? We can now safely take Christianity into consideration. We’ve established it as a logically consistent and scientifically valid belief—that is, it can explain most things without contradicting itself or scientific evidence.
But, you ask, does that make it true?
Because consider: The disciples could have just as well been horribly deluded, like followers of the Heaven’s Gate Cult. Your morals could just as well have been conditioned, and ultimately meaningless. And really, the lack of evidence for the propagation of natural laws and their existence could be explained by the Judeo-Christian God’s existence, but it could hardly prove his existence.
Ah, fine, you win. I concede: I don’t think proving Christianity through science can be done. I would think any religious nut who claims to be able to prove Christianity and refute every other worldview is a bad liar, or else badly mistaken—
because here’s the bottom line:
Christianity isn’t overwhelmingly obvious.
We don’t all “know in our hearts that God exists.”
We don’t all hear him telepathically talking to us.
In fact, if it was so obvious, if God ever appeared on radar, I’m sure most people would believe.
Most people aren’t stupid. They don’t ignore overwhelmingly obvious facts.

But you know that.
Religion, you might have realized, is the belief in the supernatural; it’s the belief that there’s something out there that influences it all that can’t be explained away with science at all—
But here we have a problem: if a religion can’t ever be proven, why believe it at all?
Because the only reason anyone should ever believe anything is because they’ve got evidence, right?
But of course. Religion isn’t negating that statement.
See, religion isn’t blind—I think many seem to think religion is about falling back into a (possibly nonexistent) guy’s arms and trusting he’ll catch you, about not seeing any evidence but deciding to believe anyway. Believing in something despite it contradicting everything you know to be true, that’s called denial. Religion isn’t denial. It’s just as much about the evidence as anything else.
The evidence of the supernatural, however, obviously isn’t of the nature where you could ever lay it out on a table and make a case for it. Rather, I think religion is evidenced through experience—
Oh, I see what you’re thinking.
That was a statement far too radical, I’m afraid.
(Quoth the naturalist, at this point: )
“What is experience? Your thoughts, your feelings, your values, your awareness of self, even that feeling you get when you’re singing a great hymn and feeling spiritual, they’re all caused by synapses firing up in different parts of your brain. Your reality is created by neurochemicals, is a big Sargasso-tangle of synapse-firings. That’s a fact. You may feel like you’ve found God, but it will be just synapses firing in your brain.”
You are correct. So it is, I’m afraid.
But so is your sight. So is your smell. So is your logic. You, even if you believe in souls, are stuck in a physical body. You absolutely cannot have an experience not caused by the firing of synapses. But what about it? You trust your sight, don’t you? And why should you trust your experiencing sight and doubt your experiencing God? Why should you believe this experience is invalid when all your other experiences are perfectly valid?
And so I continue: I believe it’s absolutely essential that anyone making any sort of judgment on a religious view try it for himself before evaluating its claims at truth, because the facts will get him nowhere, because this religion is evidenced to him through experience:
It’s his offering a few prayers to God before bed and looking for change in his life.
It’s his reading the Bible for a few months to see if God reveals himself sometime in those months.
It’s his feeling those chemicals and synapses shooting in all directions because of a spiritual something in those few words spoken by that man in the pulpit.
And after all this, it’s his decision to dedicate his life to the faith—but it won’t be blind. It’ll be because everything he’s experienced about the faith has proven reason enough for him to believe.
So that’s my view on faith. And now, you…
How can I convince you to believe?
You know, screw this. Let’s put it bluntly:
God is real because of thermodynamics, and Jesus is his son because of his apostles’ testimony, and we’re all sinners, and you know it because of your conscience, and we’ll all go to Hell, and—and you’re afraid to come to God because of sin, but you’ll experience Him someday—here, lemme pray for you:
God, let this guy not be afraid of you, and let him realize how wonderful you are and that living a Christian life is full of the truth of your love and grace and peace and joy and eternity with his brothers and sisters in your kingdom of heaven Amen!
Oh dear, I got ahead of myself.
I’m sorry.
See what I did there? That’s precisely what I can’t do: I can’t give you any reasons for belief.
The only reason anyone should ever believe anything is because they’ve got evidence, right? And in religion’s case, the evidence comes in the form of a sort of experience I can’t describe. And I can’t give that to you. Only you can try it out and see if that evidence is there.

So here’s what you could do: you pray for some time and ask God to show himself:
If God’s there and he loves you, he’ll answer in a convincing way.
If you try and you don’t get a convincing answer, God’s not there. You are free to give up.
If you try and you don’t get an answer and you give up, and sometime at the end of seventy years God asks you why you didn’t believe back then, you could tell him you’ve tried it and you’ve experienced nothing. So you’ve got an excuse, at least.
See, you’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain!
Oh, my, what a pretentious statement.
There are quite a few religions claiming the same thing. I apologize (again).
In that case, I shall suggest you go try every one of those religions.
I know I’ve found something in Christianity that’s kept me holding on, despite all my doubts, since my conversion so many years ago. You, though, shouldn’t trust another person’s experience. Give all the religions a fair chance. If the Judeo-Christian God’s there, I trust you’ll also find something in Christianity you won’t find in all the other religions.

But wait—you’ve still got one question: what makes experiences so trustworthy? I never really answered that, did I?
I mean, let’s think—people from all sorts of religions have claimed to have experienced God—what if they’ve all felt the same thing? What about that serial rapist who believed he had a deep calling from God to enslave women? What about the Heaven’s Gate Cult?
Well, you see…
That is, they’re very good questions, I think.
(A sigh of exasperation at this point!)
I’ll be honest.
I can’t answer all those questions.
When I started writing, I wanted to present all the questions that had come to my mind about the topics I discussed—
I didn’t want to give you only one side of the story, the Christian side, and then try to convince you into faith with biased propaganda—that would be horribly dishonest. Yet ultimately, I still believed I would be able to show you how it makes sense to try Christianity out.
I can’t do it. I can’t argue for science or experience.
There’s always going to be a counterargument.
I suppose my efforts were wasted—how disappointing, I think, to have it all come crashing down so suddenly in the conclusion.
You mustn’t read any more.
I have no more good reasons for religion.
You may as well stop reading.

Oh, but wait, please—before you leave—I’ve got a suggestion:
Lemme offer one more, one last argument:
Here’s a third, final, and perhaps only:
Try the religions precisely on account of these hard questions, precisely because you don’t have the answers, precisely because you probably never will—because you probably will never know anything significant enough to disclose to you just what happens after your death, or where you came from, or why you’re conscious—Try religions because now, in this body, you can’t even fully trust your own experiences—Try the religions because you don’t want to die an ignorant, uncertain man.
Try them all, or as many as you can—I hope this isn’t too much to ask—and try hard science, too, and all sorts of experiences—increase both your scientific knowledge and your breadth of experience.
And then try until you’ve found the answer, but even then, question its validity. You must never be certain. If you are ever certain, if you are ever without a doubt, worry for yourself, and then doubt your own certainty.