An (almost) Useless Debate about God on British Buses

The Washington Post reported last Friday that thousands of people in Christian groups in Britain raised money to place ads in buses to combat an advertising campaign by atheists. In theory, this kind of dialogue could be quite useful. One side might provide an intellectually provocative argument, and the other side would respond with something equally compelling. The rest of us on the sidelines (or sitting on the bus) could benefit from the exchange. Sadly, that is not the case.

Here is the type of exchanges that appear in the ads: The atheists' ads said: “There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” The Christian groups’ response was: “There definitely is a God.” Another: “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” Do you get much out of that exchange?

The unstated premise in this back and forth is that the conception of God each side has in mind is the God we learned about as children in Sunday School. If the only possible meaning of the term “God” is something like the God described in the Old Testament, an anthropomorphic being who created the universe and intervenes in the world, then we are stuck in a bipolar world between atheists and traditional believers. In fact, as I explain in The Uncertain Believer, there are many ways to conceive of God. Some of the greatest thinkers in history from Aristotle to modern theologians have held conceptions of God that are very different from the one described in the Bible. It makes no sense to accept without question the conception advanced by our pre-scientific ancestors. With all due respect to the authors of the Old Testament, we have learned a lot since then.

The most important question for modern humans is how to think of God, once we see that we are free to rethink the conception of God we inherited from those who have gone before us. The arguments about these possibilities are provocative, even exciting. Now that would be a useful debate.