STARTING HALF WAY UP THE HILL:

The Skeptical Inquirer: If Only Atheists Were the Skeptics They Think They Are (Edward Tingley, June 2008, Touchstone)

Unbelievers think that skepticism is their special virtue, the key virtue believers lack. Bolstered by bestselling authors, they see the skeptical and scientific mind as muscular thinking, which the believer has failed to develop. He could bulk up if he wished to, by thinking like a scientist, and wind up at the “agnosticism” of a Dawkins or the atheism of a Dennett—but that is just what he doesn’t want, so at every threat to his commitments he shuns science.

That story is almost exactly the opposite of the truth. [...]

There are skeptical theists; Pascal was one. Skepticism and theism go well together. By a “skeptic” I mean a person who believes that in some particular arena of desired knowledge we just cannot have knowledge of the foursquare variety that we get elsewhere, and who sees no reason to bolster that lack with willful belief.

“Believing is not something you can decide to do as a matter of policy,” as Dawkins says—though it is odd that he does so in a discussion of Pascal, who, like him, is a skeptic. A complete misunderstanding of Pascal, however, is crucial to the way that Dawkins and every one of his fellows (past and future) always think.

Evidence is just not available to demonstrate the existence of God, said Pascal, who called himself one of those creatures who lack the humility that makes a natural believer. In that, he was of our time: We are pretty much all like that now. Three hundred and fifty years ago he laid out our situation for us: Modern man confronts the question of God from the starting point of skepticism, the conviction that there is no conclusive physical or logical evidence that the God of the Bible exists.

“I have wished a hundred times over that, if there is a God supporting nature, [nature] should unequivocally proclaim him, and that, if the signs in nature are deceptive, she should suppress them altogether”—but nature prefers to tease, so she “presents to me nothing which is not a matter of doubt” (429). “We desire truth and find in ourselves nothing but uncertainty” (401). “We are . . . incapable of knowing . . . whether he is” (418). This is where the modern person usually starts in his assault on the question, Is God real or imaginary?

This is base camp, above the tree-line of convincing reasons and knock-down arguments, at the far edge of things we can kick and see, and it is all uphill from here. Thus, it is astounding how many Dawkinses and Dennetts, undecideds and skeptical nay-sayers—that sea of “progressive” folk who claim to “think critically” about religion and either “take theism on” or claim they are “still looking”—who have not reached the year 1660 in their thinking. They almost never pay attention to what the skeptic Pascal said about this enquiry.

Instead, the dogmatic reflex, ever caring for human comfort, has flexed and decided the question already, has told them what to believe in advance of investigation and rushed them back to the safety of life as usual.

The modern thinking person who rightly touts the virtues of science—skepticism, logic, commitment to evidence—must possess the lot. But agnostics are not skeptical, half the atheists are not logical, and the rest refuse to go where the evidence is. None measures up in these modern qualities to Pascal.

A Hidden God?

Pascal says that from base camp we must try to find a non-dogmatic route of assault upon the question. Think about it logically, he says. If we do not know that God even exists, we hardly know how he behaves. So we cannot begin this ascent with any dogmatic presumption about his behavior.

Maybe, if he exists, God would show himself directly to our senses. But maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he would hide from us—maybe he is a Deus absconditus, Pascal says, following Isaiah 45: “Truly, thou art a God who hidest thyself.” What evidence do we have by which to rule that out? We can’t be dogmatic, can’t say that God is this way or that way: Everything possible is possible.

But we have, in fact, already tested one hypothesis about how God behaves: that he shows himself directly to our senses. That is what got us up here past the tree-line in the first place. We now have evidence for a conclusion that all our fellow seekers of truth ought to draw: Either God does not exist or he exists but does not show himself to our senses.

Our skepticism rejects the likelihood that things we can see will resolve our doubts; that is progress already made. The Humean idea so nicely put by Carl Sagan—that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”—was hardly worth resurrecting, given that it was passé before Hume was in diapers. “If this religion boasted that it had a clear sight of God and plain and manifest evidence of his existence, it would be an effective objection to say that there is nothing to be seen in the world which proves him. . . . But . . . on the contrary it says that men are in darkness. . .” (427).

A hundred years earlier, Pascal had already ruled empirical theism a dead end, a foolish hope for what we ought by now to know we were not going to get: clear material evidence of clearly immaterial being. By 1660 there were only two options left: Either God does not exist or he is not a gift to our senses.

Pascal the skeptic has ruled out a fruitless path, the path to God via logic or concrete evidence: the easy route to the summit, sought for centuries but never found. The only way forward is up from where we are, onto the icy slopes out past the limit of concrete evidence. If that is possible.

At this point, of course, the venture is not looking especially promising. The mind is made for hard evidence.