Can A Smart Person Believe In God?

Rating:
Summary: smart people can also be psychotic
Review:

In time for the Christian right's apparent triumph in the presidential election comes Dr. G's book on spirituality. What, according to G, is `spiritual'? `...I've decided to use the words `religious' and `spiritual' interchangeably.' P6. Of course G is free to define his terms as he pleases, but by this definition any atheist or agnostic is poor in spirit, or unspiritual, by definition. Somehow that doesn't seem fair to atheists like Steven Hawking or Richard Dawkins who, although nonbelievers, clearly possess a lot of spirit of some kind. Why doesn't their spirit, or great gift for life, count for something? Dawkins in fact has claimed to feel liberated by atheism.

`As a Christian, I believe in the monotheistic God of Abraham...who...finally took on the form of the teacher Jesus of Nazareth...' G goes on to say, p 12, that his religion, Christianity, is only `seemingly' different from other religions that worship this same God. I'm not sure in how many other religions, as opposed to denominations, God became Jesus, but my guess is not many. But G doesn't mention by name any religion other than Christianity. He does not even mention religions whose adherents are more numerous, worldwide, than Christians. He does say, without naming other religions, that he respects them, if they are law-abiding and decent, although he strongly `opposes' them. All this is a bit too vague, not to mention hostile, for comfort, and rather carelessly glosses over the fact that, in China, say, a Chinese physicist may have written a similar book to G's, only to equate spirituality with Confucianism or Taoism or Buddhism or even Islam rather than Christianity.

Whose book's the spiritual one then, the Chinaman's or G's, and how are we to decide? G doesn't go into this.

G is downright unfair in discussing the scientific alternative to religion, in terms of how we got here and what it's all about, namely natural selection and cosmology. In discussing what secular scientists believe to be the origin of life, he names `Randomness' and even calls this a `god.' P33. It's odd that a theoretical physicist goes all the way back to the Chaos of the ancient Greeks for the low-down on today's scientific view. But that's because he wants to belittle the ideas that have come to be called evolution and natural selection. How, indeed, could the obvious order of the world result from Chaos or Randomness? Well, you won't find the explanation in this book, but you can in Dennett or Dawkins or, of course, Darwin and Mendel. As a scientist, G knows that evolution does not proceed from Randomness alone, but from chance mutations that are selected for survival. By omitting the most basic details from his opponents' arguments, he makes them look easy to refute.

And is he unfair to biologist Dawkins! `Arrogant Atheist Richard Dawkins claims humanity's belief in God persists...because...religious parents keep infecting ...their offspring with a stealthy virus.' P 37. Having planted the false idea that Dawkins holds religious belief to be the result of a viral infection like the flu, wherein the living organisms of a virus attack healthy human bodies and weaken them, he never again achieves intellectual honesty about Dawkins' real view. Dawkins actually discusses memes, or units of culture that can be passed on by training to new generations. Dawkins does, metaphorically, compare memes to viruses. But in Dawkins' view, memes may or may not exist on a neurobiological level, and it's certainly possible to discuss the transference of culture from one generation to the next without using the word meme or even a synonym. Nor does a scientist need to compare culture to a virus. See for example E.O.Wilson's chapter on genes and culture in his book Consilience, where he discusses hereditary epigenetic rules for human traits rather than memes or viral attacks.

G uses the word `memes' exactly once, but never defines it and certainly never distinguishes it from flu-like viral agents. To do so would expose his game. In fact G's argument against Dawkins is hardly more than a pun and a smear. For Dawkins' real views, read his book The Selfish Gene or his online articles. A recent one in Free Inquiry has him attempt to explain adherence to a religion as, ultimately, an innate tendency to do and believe what our parents and elders tell us. Dawkins does not, here, mention the memes and viruses that allow G to make puns.

But what of Dawkins' view on religion? Well, it can't be right, according to G, because `...in China...for several decades...Communist party officials tried nearly everything...to destroy religion...' and failed. P 39. All that says to me is that Dawkins may well be right. The religion meme (or `virus') may be tough enough to remain dormant for several decades without fully erupting. In fact, as an honest historian, G should point out that Taoism and Confucianism thrived in China for centuries before the Christian era, Buddhism from the first century AD, and folk religions for ages before the Communist Revolution of 1949. Against belief systems and traditions that old, what were a few decades of communist atheistic suppression?

G hides behind Fred Hoyle. P 122. `The probability of life originating at random is so utterly minuscule as to make it absurd.' And he gives Hoyle's calculation of the odds. But why doesn't G, himself a physicist, derive his own odds? Plenty of other scientists have labored here, and the prevalent view is that the evolution of life is not only not absurd, but a fact. By agreeing with the controversial cosmologist Hoyle, whose cosmological views, be it mentioned, are also not generally accepted, G puts himself outside mainstream science.

Among G's other points are that religious people are healthier and happier than secular beings. This is an interesting claim, and somehow I don't doubt it. We certainly see on the nightly news what spirited groups religious extremists are. But it doesn't prove that God exists, as G acknowledges. In fact nothing he says proves the existence of God, as he also acknowledges. Other interesting claims are that science, too, must at bottom be taken on faith, just like God. Also that subatomic particles are just as ghostly as spirits. Fair enough, though these ideas smack of wordplay. After all, subatomic particles are derived from experimental data and defined as mathematical constructs. Can we say the same of spirits? And while David Hume argued that we take it on faith that the laws of nature will remain constant from day to day, did Hume by so doing invoke a god?

G ignores the truly interesting arguments against God. For example, he doesn't mention Nietzsche's idea that, once you know the history of God, and trace its development throughout history, you no longer have any need of proofs or disproofs. G doesn't discuss the idea that the idea of God may be confused and incapable of clarity. For example, the philosopher Collin McGinn holds that since God is omniscient, He is not the same sort of conscious entity as a human being. A human being is finite and limited to his or her own point of view, that of `I.' God has no `I', since that would be a limitation, but is all points of view at once. Therefore: can God really say or think such things as `I love you'?

Also, what is the meaning of our world, in God's view? Science has shown that we occupy no special corner of the universe, and that our planet does not even hold the central position in our solar system. More, why would God create us? As the physicist Richard Feynman noted, if we are supposed to enact a Biblical struggle between good and evil and nothing more, we are too grand a stage, too needlessly complex. And finally, G does not address the fact that God explains nothing about our world, and Himself is in need of explanation. Consider the question: How did man come to be? In G's view, natural selection beginning with inorganic chemicals is not enough, but God is involved. The next reasonable question, it would seem, is: where did God come from? G would of course reply that God is eternal, and that we also can't know, or at least do not yet know, the ultimate beginnings of the material world considered apart from God. True enough, but if pre-Big Bang physics and the ultimate nature of the universe are still mysteries, no less of one is God.




Rating:
Summary: A Must Read
Review: EVERYONE should read this book. As youngish, well educated, smart people (We belong to Mensa & Intertel.), we felt Guillen's book was a "God-send"--a work that finally encapsulated (& enlarged) our scientific & religious views, and those of so many of our friends & relatives.

We hope EVERYONE reads and discusses this book. What Guillen shows is this: How can a smart person NOT believe in God?

We are ordering more copies of this book to give to (or lend to) the many friends & relatives who also want to read it after we mentioned it to them.

Thank you, Dr. Guillen. We hope to see more such books from you as you further develop your ideas.

Rating:
Summary: What's Your Sanctimony Quotient?
Review: First, a qualification: this reviewer believes that smart people can indeed believe in God. That being said, this book was a disappointment. There are many ironies in this book, chief among them being that it doesn't seem to have been written with smart people in mind. Not that Guillen isn't smart himself, but he has dumbed-down his explanations to the point of severe distortion, causing a number of his points to appear as staw man arguments.
For one example, I regrettably have to agree with the reviewer who said Guillen gets Dawkins's "meme" theory all wrong, and thus none of Guillen's objections to the theory carry any weight. A "meme" is simply the smallest unit of re-identifiable culturally transmitted information. Some memes are good, some are bad, some are TRUE. So the point that most people don't outgrow the God-meme the way they do the Santa Claus-meme (page 38) is irrelevant to whether the idea of God is a meme. Furthermore, "inertia, familiarity, and habituation" are not alternatives to the meme theory, as all of these can be described in memetic terms. And even if they were genuine alternatives, as explanations they wouldn't do theism any more favors than Dawkins account does. Finally, "pastiche spirituality" does absolutely nothing to refute the gist of Dawkin's account. Parents are only one pathogenic path memes can take. Peers and books transmit memes as well. That atheism has not prevailed in societies that have formally opposed the God-meme likewise does not disprove Dawkins's theory, but only how powerful and resilient the God-meme can be. What Gullen should have asked was whether anything theoretically COULD disprove the meme theory, for if a hypothesis is not in principle falsifiable, it is disqualified from being scientific at all!
Another example of distorting oversimplification comes on pages 76 through 78, when Guillen explains Occam's Razor and methodological naturalism. Occam, Gullen tells us, was a 14th-century philosopher who proposed we should not posit any more entities than necessary to explain what we observe, i.e., that we should methodologically favor the simplest explanation that accounts for all the given data. Guillen does not bother to mention that Brother Occam was also a Christian monk. This could easily lead the reader to misunderstand the following passage: "...in its blind allegiance to simplemindedness, Occam's Razor automatically eliminates any hypotheses involving the G-word . . . ," especially when combined with a couple subsequent rhetorical references to the unbelief of "Mr. Occam:" "...whilst millions of people on Planet Earth warmly embrace God, Mr. Occam doesn't. For him, God is to SQ, to complex, too far-out, and perforce must be dismissed without further consideration." And on the next page, "In the game called Science, officiated by Mr. Occam, invoking the G-word is definitely considered taboo." All this is misleadingly figurative, since the real Occam was believer. The actual William of Occam may have counseled the separation of science and theology, but for the rather different reason that Man was too limited to comprehend God's ultimate purposes.
Neither does it help matters when, in the middle of the above, Guillen offers the aside that "God is fast becoming the simplest explanation of all!" This makes Guillen's explanation appear self-contradictory, for Occam's Razor does not rule against theism if theism is indeed the simplest adequate explanation. The methodological exclusion of theistic explanation must be accounted for in some other way than by appeal to Occam. And if Dr. Guillen really means to say that methodological naturalism itself is being inconsistent, he needs to be more clear.
Still another example of distorting oversimplification comes when Dr. Guillen canvasses the transitory nature of scientific orthodoxy, noting one theory constantly supplants it predecessors, and concludes that "worshipping the scientific process is like building your house upon constantly shifting sands. As we've seen, all the evidence indicates that science is not converging smoothly and consensually upon one firm, reliable understanding of the way the world began or how it operates, really. It's not even converging upon such an understanding in fits and starts." (97) This is simplistic, post-modern hyperbole at its worst. True, science is not static and dead like a house. It is fluid and adaptive. But that science is not converging?? How much lack of controversy is there about the broad outlines? Does radical lack of consensus explain how we got to moon-shots and personal computers? Likewise, the section entitled "Logic and Reality Itself are Insurmountably Uncertain" makes it sound like things are worse than they are. True, we will never a complete system of logic or a totally determinate knowledge of every physical state. But we could still have more than enough logical and scientific certainty for all practical purposes. Did we really need Goedel or Heisenberg (or Quine) to tell us we'd never be infallible?
I'd like to conclude by expressing my misgivings with the whole idea of quantifying spirituality, the "Spirituality Quotient." Thomas Aquinas once explained that the reason why God made faith (and not reason) sufficient for knowing Him was so that everyone would be on an equal footing before Him. The wise and the learned along with the simple and the child. The idea of a heirarchy of spirituality, where some people, poor souls, just don't have the SQ to understand the Truth, reinstates the kind of self-congratulatory spirtual elitism Aquinas (and, I believe, Christ) spoke against. It also is just another excuse to summarily dismiss the arguments of the "low-SQ" atheists, and so closes off dialogue rather than promoting it. I took Guillen's SQ test at the end of the book. Seperately, I also guessed what the "right" answers were supposed to be. My honest score was only 67, but dishonest score was 99. (I wondered how a Theravedan monk would do on his test.) Guillen constructs "spirituality" in a very one-sided, predictable, and doctrinally biased way. You don't have to be spiritually developed to ace his simple test, you just have to know Gullen's party line.


Rating:
Summary: Powerful
Review: For those that have ever identified with the verse "Lord I believe, help my unbelief", this book is wonderful. I've know with my heart that God existed for a long time; this book has satisfied my IQ as nothing else has.

It took a while to get to what I considered the good stuff, but when there it actually brougt tears to my eyes.
I think Michael Guillen is probably right when he wrote that perhaps this book is what God had in mind for his life.


Rating:
Summary: A book for everyone
Review: I found this book fascinating, well-written, and on-point. It is interesting that other reviews for this book on this site are long in nature, and quite strong in tone, which just shows that this author has hit on an emotional divide for lots of us. Do we believe in our faith, or our intellect? This author contends that you can believe in both, and that science is, in effect, a gift from God.

I like this length of this book as well, because it is not overwhelming in useless information, but stays on-point. The author is obviously of high intelligence, and adding his passion for God into the mix is compelling. I read a book from the 1950's called "Scientists Who Believe" and have long wished for an up-dated version of those ideas presented by those scientists - and here it is. I would highly recommend it to anyone. I can see why those who believe solely in "science" or "mankind" would be affronted - this book makes a logical, practically inarguable case for a Divine Creator that anyone who uses logical thinking would have a hard time refuting. A must-read for anyone who wrestles with questions of who we are.

Rating:
Summary: Bleh
Review: I saw Guillen intereviewed about this book on television, and decided to take a look. Even as a Christian, I was sorely disappointed.

Briefly:

1. The substance in this book drops off almost entirely after the halfway point in the book. After you reach that point, it becomes increasingly clear in this already small book that Guillen is simply going for length to constitute a "book". I realize that without doing this, it only would have been 70-80 [small] pages of material, but I found the additional content vapid and insulting.

2. The entire book is convoluted and inconcise. In one chapter he might cover the same ground ten times, and in another he will barely provide a cursory overview of the content implicit in its title. Then again he may begin a chapter consistent with its title and close it up accordingly, but everything in between will be painfully vague and/or utterly irrelevant.

3. He seemingly writes from the standpoint of someone who genuinely believes the ongoing debate between atheists and theists is one of "Science" vs. "Religion", respectively. I totally disagree with this assessment, and I believe he fatally undermines the premise of his book from the outset by failing to set right this assertion. He never adequately sheds this myth and instead goes on defending the Christian role in the matter. The prevailing knowledge is that everything emanating from the scientific sector is inextricably intertwined with truth, and what comes forth from "Religion" is dubious, at best. But if it is atheists who possess an absolute monopoly on "Science", who cares what "Religion's" theists have to say? He fails to dispel this myth, and instead assumes its veracity, and therefore his argument is stripped of all its force and potency, in my opinion.

4. There is no new content in this book. Guillen's authority is derived solely and depends entirely on your hook, line and sinker acceptance of his scientific qualifications and not on their own strength. I am not a credentialist, and so even as a Christian, I simply can not accept anything on the basis of credentials alone.

5. With the exception of a select few micro-arguments, Guillen does not even attempt to appeal to our empiricism, rationalism or otherwise, to portray Christianity as an equally reasonable choice to its many alternatives, let alone their superior. Again, he just assumes the truth of his beliefs and that he is in the sole company of likeminded believers, and so he throws forth a few wimpy, unconfident arguments while cowering over in the corner.

Guillen does, however, make some good points. In particular, I enjoyed his quick quasi-refutation of the common (yet unimportant) objection that Christian belief is fundamentally no different from belief in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. He mentioned the inconsistencies building up to critical mass, to the extent that belief in such tales was no longer responsible. You may not believe and you can say what you want, but the discrepancy of consistent informational depths is one of many important fundamental differences between fairy tales and Christianity.

Unfortunately, aside from a few great observations and some refreshing commentary on public axioms in the religious arena, this book contains no sufficiently redeeming qualities to offset its overpowering incoherence, irrelevance, repetition, self-refutation and vapidity.

Rating:
Summary: Brisk Defense of Spiritual Values
Review: This small book makes some excellent arguments in defense of a religious/spiritual point of view or, as the author puts it, a Spirituality Quotient (SQ). Dr. Guillen, a bona fide "smart person" with PhDs in math, physics, and astronomy, writes without rancor and does his best to see the debate from both sides. His basic point is that the world needs more people who combine IQ and SQ (i.e., logic and intuition, left brain and right brain, intellectualism and spirituality). He shows that while science and religion are different disciplines bound by different rules, they can complement each other, with science providing the data and religion providing the meaning.

The book is slightly undermined by some shoddy proof-reading, by a few errors of fact (e.g., Samuel Butler lived in the 19th century, not the 17th), and by the author's narrow focus on Christianity as almost synonymous with religion. Although he acknowledges other faiths, nearly every example of spirituality Dr. Guillen cites is taken from the Bible. His Christian focus is particularly evident in a twenty-question "SQ test" at the end of the book, in which answers consistent with Christian thinking are always scored highest, even when other answers might be equally "spiritual" when judged by alternate traditions.

Still, in the end the book answers its own question most convincingly. Yes, a smart person can believe in God, and need make no apologies for doing so.

For a lengthier and more technical treatment of similar ideas, consider Barr's "Modern Physics and Ancient Faith."