In a round table discussion on The Diary of a CEO, host Steven Bartlett, atheist Alex O’Connor, and Stand to Reason’s Greg Koukl debate whether personal transformation and religious experience can serve as evidence for the truth of Christianity.
Greg: I was making the case about the genetic fallacy, and just because a person has a motivation to believe something doesn’t necessarily mean that that thing is true. I think it goes a little further than that, though. If you went to the doctor, and you weren’t feeling well, and the doctor gave you a pill, and then you went home, and you took the pill, then you felt better, I think it would be appropriate for you to say, well, that pill—taking that pill, going to that doctor—had something to do with my experience that I’m having right now.
Alex: Oh, yeah.
Greg: I think this is why I think it might have unintentionally been an overstatement on your part, because I think just like your friend Steven, who, in Dubai, all of a sudden became a Christian. Everything changed. Okay? Well, I guess you could say the change of life isn’t maybe knockdown, drag-out proof that what he believes now is actually true—big T.
Alex: That, like, Jesus rose from the dead. It’s got no bearing on whether that’s true or not.
Greg: Well, I’m speaking of a different thing right now. I’m thinking about the experience, now, with God that he’s having. If he’s having this changed life, this is evidential. This lends credibility to the belief system that he’s now adopted because it created this particular significant change in his life. It may not be proof—and that word is really a loosey-goosey word, hard to pin down—but nevertheless, it still seems to be evidential. It speaks to the legitimacy and accuracy and truthfulness of the belief system that produced this changed life. That’s what I’m saying.
Alex: It’s only evidence that belief in that thing makes someone feel more fulfilled. That’s the only thing it’s evidence of.
Greg: Okay, so this is where we differ. Just like—
Alok Kanojia: I want to hear this one.
Greg: Just because a certain—you’re saying, just because they believe it, this makes them better, it doesn’t mean that the belief is actually sound.
Steven: Greg, I’ve got a good way of coming at this, then.
Greg: This is where we differ.
Alex: That’s right.
Steven: If I had five friends, and they all picked five different religions, and they all felt the same thing that my friend did in Dubai, where they all felt better for it, is that evidential that all five religions are true?
Greg: Well, see, I don’t actually think it works that way. You can speculate and offer that illustration, but I don’t think it actually works that way. I think that, universally, the experience of Christians is very, very quantifiable in terms of transformed lives, and this is one of the reasons that these transformed lives lend credibility to the belief system itself.
Steven: So, in that scenario where one of my friends turns to Islam, one of my friends turns to Christianity, etc., etc., the only experience that’s evidential of truth is the Christian’s?
Greg: Well, I think you have to look at every individual thing. All right? Here’s my suspicion. And I haven’t quantified this across the board. All right? Different people have different experiences by engaging different religious belief traditions. Whatever. But insofar as anybody’s life is significantly altered by that thing, this to me is evidence that something is going on here more than merely the belief. If it’s just the belief, you’re back to Marx again and the opiate of the people. You know? That would be Karl, not Groucho—not that anybody knows who those two people are anymore.
Alex: It sounds as though, you know, if I lied to somebody in a cruel prank, and I told them that—say they’re really struggling with money. They’re really, really suffering for it, and they have these psychological effects of feeling that life is meaningless. They want to kill themselves. Whatever it is. They cannot keep living. And I tell them, good news, you’ve won the lottery. You’ve won a million pounds. And suddenly the weight is lifted. The joy is brought. Of course, money isn’t sufficient for bringing about meaning in life, but I’ve lied to them. The fact that they feel this immense sense of meaning from a belief that they’ve adopted bears absolutely no evidence in that case whether it’s true that they’ve won a million pounds.
Greg: I’m just saying that to divorce all results from belief systems is a mistake. There can be a connection there. Just because you can mislead somebody by telling them a lie and they can experience something emotionally doesn’t mean that the other person who’s experiencing something transcendent in their emotions—and by the way, for Christians, it’s not just a high, because Christianity is not a continuous high. Even people who are suffering terribly as Christians in persecution—read Foxe’s Book of Martyrs—still have this strong sense of value, purpose, and security even so. I’m just saying there’s an evidential relationship between those. It’s not enough to simply dismiss it.
Steven: Do you think you would be happier if you believed in Greg’s views of the world?
Alex: Almost certainly, but not because of Greg’s views but because of the confidence and satisfaction that they bring. I think I’d feel just as much meaning in my life if I was a convicted Muslim or were a Jain or something like that. I think I would find that fulfillment.
Greg: So, the content of the theology has no bearing, in your mind, on the way a person experiences their life?
Alex: Of course it does.
Steven: Can you explain specific terms—content of the theology?
Greg: Well, you talk about different religions, and these different religions cannot all be true, as Alex has pointed out. They have different content. They say different things about human beings. For example, the view that human beings are just an illusion—that reality is illusion, maya, that kind of thing—well, that seems to me to convey a certain understanding to human beings about themselves and about the world. If you have a view that human beings are significant individuals, this is going to convey a whole different experience that they have. So, in other words, the theology that they believe is true is going to affect their feelings and their experience. This is what I was getting at a little bit ago when I talked about the person whose life has been changed by becoming a Christian. And these aren’t just—what you explained to your friend—these are not things that just happen here and there, but there seems to be a very, very broad experience of this, and a change that doesn’t depend on circumstances. Okay? It’s because they adopt an understanding of the world that I think is an accurate understanding, and this is why their emotions and their experience follow along—because they’re choosing an accurate understanding of the world. When you look at Jesus in the Gospels, I think it’s so interesting to me that people read the Gospels to be uplifted by the reading of it. It seems that misses the point—that Jesus is talking about the way the world is. He’s teaching about the nature of reality. He was a Torah-observant Jew. He wasn’t a Hindu. He wasn’t a Buddhist. He was a Jew, and he spoke in the context of that. Okay? So, just to simply read the Gospels as if we’re going to read some nice things that people said to make me feel better is missing Jesus’ point when he’s trying to describe the nature of reality.
Alex: I don’t think that’s how the Gospels should be read. But I do think—
Steven: I have a question for you on that. This is a personal question more than anything. So, I find myself in the same position as Alex, where I think I’d be happier, all things considered, if I had an anchoring in a religion. I think that’s subjectively true—that I’d be happier—probably just because it would close a gap of some sort. It would anchor me in some way.
Greg: Answer a question.
Steven: It would answer a question, and then it would give me more of a structure to my decision-making, and, you know, it would mean that when I have moments of suffering, I’d have a solution to that moment of suffering. So, if my parents end up dying someday—which I’m sure they will—I will believe that they are still alive, and they are somewhere, and they’re fine, which will ease my suffering. So, I agree with Alex in that regard. The problem I have is, in order to adopt that view, I need to believe it’s true. People aren’t very good at lying to themselves. And also, when you talk about my friend in Dubai has had this experience, he now feels better. He could have well felt better, I believe, if he had believed that Islam was true and become a Muslim. So, it’s the feeling itself people can get in a lot of ways. I know people that actually would tell you that they feel better now that they’re out of the cult and they’re agnostic, and the cult made them feel terrible. Now they’re agnostic, they feel better. Does that mean agnosticism is truth?
Greg: So, the presumption that you made is a presumption—we have to keep that in mind. The people that I have talked to who were former Muslims and are now Christians—very devout Muslims—they did not have the experience of satisfaction and fullness and connection with God in Islam that they do in Christianity. Okay?
Steven: There’s people that would have gone the other way, and they’ll be in the comment section right now saying, “Well, I went from Christianity to Islam.”
Greg: Okay. Well, sure. I’m just telling you what I know of those people. Okay? And I think it’s a mistake to say, “Well, everybody has their own religion. They have their own experience with their religion.” Because I don’t think that’s the case. I’m not saying there aren’t satisfied Muslims. That’s not what I’m saying. Or Buddhists or Hindus or whatever. But what I’m saying is, there is an evidential element to the changed life. And it may not be decisive. There may be other things that are involved. Okay?
I do think that for many Christians—and I think you’ve made this point in the past, too—it’s the experience with God that makes the difference. But it’s not that the other evidences for the existence of God—maybe philosophical types of evidence—haven’t made a difference, because I’ve talked to lots of people where they have made the difference, moving them in that direction.
Steven: The point there that it’s evidential—that’s a presumption.
Greg: What I mean by evidential is that there is information that can be brought to bear that seems to be evidence indicating that the belief system is true.
Steven: Is that a presumption?
Greg: I don’t know why you would call it a presumption.
Alex: As in the evidence that Christianity is true from the increased sense of purpose that people get from becoming a Christian.
Greg: I think that’s one of the evidences. It’s a subjective evidence.
Alex: Of the truth of Christianity?
Greg: Well, I wouldn’t build the whole thing—
Alex: But it’s evidence? It’s contributing evidence to the actual truth?
Greg: Yes. Think of it this way. If the story of reality is simply that God made us to be with him, and then we find the way that God intends for us to connect with him—principally through forgiveness—and be restored to our relationship with the Father, and then that gives us, when we do that, a deep sense of satisfaction, I do think that’s evidential.
