Can a Smart Person Believe in God? by Michael Guillen

Author:Michael Guillen
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Religion
ISBN: 9781418529673
Published: 2004-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Religion Needs Reason

During the sixteenth century, many God-fearing people insisted that Copernicus was mistaken in believing the earth spins on its axis and also revolves around the sun. They staked their faith in God on it. After all, in Psalms 93:1 it says clearly: “Surely the world is established, so that it cannot be moved” (NKJV).

We all know how that one turned out.

More recently, when I was a kid, I remember Dad telling me there were godly people who believed humans would never land on the moon. They staked their faith on it—that’s how certain they were. In Isaiah 55:9, they argued, God Himself tells us: “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts” (NKJV).

Surely this meant the moon—being part of the “heavens”— was off-limits to us mortals. Only God, whose ways are “higher than ours,” could ever possibly visit the moon. Right?

I’ve always wondered what became of those poor people when on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong planted his foot on the gray, dusty lunar surface. Their faith in the Bible must’ve been shattered, or at least sorely tested. For them, God had taken another blow to the chin from big, bad Science.

And yet, He hadn’t really. The Bible was never on trial, nor was God. Instead, as James Carvill might say: It's the interpretation, stupid!

In every generation, many of us convince ourselves that God’s existence utterly hinges on one particular interpretation of some sacred verse, holy relic, or scientific discovery. (According to the 2003 World Christian Database, there are about 37,000 different denominations in Christianity alone!) In those moments, because it means everything to us, the interpretation itself becomes a god. A false god.

We who believe in the Bible must continue to assimilate into our various interpretations of its scriptures any and all irrefutable scientific discoveries—be it Copernicus’s heliocentric theory or the moon landing—or risk taking an indefensible position that undermines the public credibility of our faith, and by association, of God Himself. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once put it, “The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.”

Having said that, I hasten to point out something else we should also bear in mind. Even though my religious brethren have placed their faith on a mistaken interpretation now and then, religion as a whole works—the evidence of that is everywhere.

Historically, as I’ve mentioned before, our belief in God has tamed the worst elements of our former barbarism, including brutishness, moral chaos, political anarchy, incest, and casual homicide. It’s also played a leading role in abolishing slavery, championing women’s rights, and most recently—through the historic efforts of religious leaders such as the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.—garnering civil liberties for racial minorities.

New York’s famous Bellevue Hospital—oldest in the U.S.— was started in 1658 in a poorhouse supported by a church in New Amsterdam. Says Gloria Shur Bilchik, writing in the magazine Hospitals ScHealth Networks: “Until the early 20th century, almost all hospital

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