James A Haught: “A Freethinker’s Testimony”

Just because you grow up in the Bible Belt (I was born in a West Virginia hamlet with no electricity) doesn’t mean automatically that you’re a fundamentalist. My family never went to church. Most people I knew laughed at “holy rollers.”

I wandered into adulthood and, rather by accident, became a reporter at The Charleston Gazette. The staff contained a few Catholics, but most of the rest were heathens like me. Our city editor was an H.L. Mencken clone who ridiculed redneck religion and wrote brilliant columns lampooning hillbilly preachers.

One day he told me: “Haught, we want you to be our religion columnist.” I said, “But I haven’t been to church in 20 years.” He said, “Fine – that means you’ll be objective.”

So I started attending churches and reporting my impressions in a Monday column. I covered everything from a national Episcopal bishop assembly to rattler-waving serpent-handler services – from Ph.D. theologian lectures to a “spiritualist” church receiving messages from the dead. I heard thousands babble “the unknown tongue.” (Once, believe it or not, I took Harvard theologian Harvey Cox to a snake-handler church in the hills. When the worshipers began “dancing in the spirit,” Cox jumped up and joined the hoofing. Honest to God.)

I covered evangelist Tiz Jones, who secretly burgled homes in towns visited by his revival, until he was caught and sent to prison. I covered a brawl among rural Baptists who fell into doctrinal dispute and attacked each other with “seng hoes,” mountain implements used to dig ginseng.

Once I wrote a sneering account of a faith-healer who claimed that he raised the dead. He sent 40 of his followers to storm the Gazette newsroom. Luckily, I was out. The night city editor called for burly printers to back the mob out the door.

Faith-healer A.A. Allen came through West Virginia with his traveling show, which included jars containing bodies that Allen said were demons he had exorcised from sick people. (Skeptics said they were frogs.) At Wheeling, Allen vanished – and later was found dead of alcoholism in a San Francisco hotel room, his pockets crammed with cash. (Boy evangelist Marjoe Gortner, who confessed that his shows were a money scam, wrote that Allen advised him how to tell when a revival was over and it was time to go to the next city: “When you can turn people on their head and shake them and no money falls out, then you know God’s saying, ‘Move on, son.’”)

I watched religious history being made in the 1974 Charleston uprising against “godless textbooks.” When our county school system adopted new books, a born-again board member and evangelists declared that the texts were un-Christian. Mobs filled the streets. Schools were dynamited. Two people were shot. School buses were hit by bullets. A fundamentalist boycott left classrooms half-empty. The Ku Klux Klan and California porn-fighter Robert Dornan came to Charleston to oppose the evil books. (The texts looked just like ordinary schoolbooks to me.) The madness finally ended after a preacher and a couple of his followers were sent to prison.

Well, my years of covering Bible Belt religion hardened my youthful skepticism into militant agnosticism. I came to feel that every supernatural claim – from papal bulls and ayatollah fatwas to astrology horoscopes and tarot card readings – is mumbo-jumbo. There’s no tangible evidence for any mystical, magical, miraculous malarkey. I joined the Unitarian Universalist Church and allied myself with its toughest doubters.

At the newspaper, when I was taken off the religion beat and reassigned to corruption investigating, I was relieved. I had felt dishonest reporting stuff I deemed a fantasy. Eventually, I won 15 national prizes as investigator, and became the paper’s editor.

But my disdain for supernaturalism didn’t fade. I felt compelled to tell the world that believing in gods, devils, heavens, hells, angels, demons, miracles, saviors, salvation and all the rest is chasing a will-’o-the-wisp. Invisible spirits are imaginary, as far as an honest observer can tell. They’re a universal delusion. So I wrote five books and dozens of magazine pieces pushing this message.

As you may guess, it’s a bit precarious for a crusading agnostic to run a newspaper in the heart of the Bible Belt. I don’t hide my beliefs; my books are reviewed in the paper. So far, there has been no fundamentalist outcry. But I try not to flaunt my skepticism before churchgoing readers. Endlessly in editorials, I attack religious attempts to ban abortion, to censor movies and magazines, to halt sex education, to outlaw stripper clubs, to distribute Bibles in schools, to restore the death penalty, to teach children creationism, to provide tax-paid vouchers for church schools – but I do it in purely secular language.

Our new religion reporter is a gentle Jew who bends over backward to be fair to every belief. When I tell him he’s covering a zoo of make-believe, he just grins. He’s even tolerant of me.

James A. Haught: “Murder in the Name of Religion”

When you think of saints, you envision stained-glass pictures of piety. But the truth can be horribly different. Consider Pope Pius V:

When he was Grand Inquisitor, he sent Catholic troops to kill 2,000 Waldensian Protestants in Calabria in southern Italy.

After becoming pope, he sent Catholic troops to kill Huguenot Protestants in France. He ordered the commander to execute every prisoner taken.

Pius also launched the final crusade against the Muslims, sending a Christian naval armada to slaughter thousands in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.

And he intensified the Roman Inquisition, torturing and burning Catholics whose beliefs varied from official dogma.

After his death, he was canonized a saint. He still is venerated by the church.
It is as if Adolf Hitler were elevated to sainthood.

Or consider Saint Dominic, the king of torture. He founded the Dominican order, whose priests were judges of the Inquisition. They presided while screaming victims were twisted and ripped on fiendish pain machines until they confessed to thinking unorthodox thoughts. Then the Dominicans led the broken “heretics” in grand processions to the stake.

The priests also tortured thousands of women into confessing they were witches who had sex with Satan, changed themselves into animals, flew through the sky, caused storms, and the like. The “witches” also were burned for their confessions.

Or consider Saint Cyril, whose monks and followers beat to death the great woman scientist, Hypatia, director of the Alexandria Library, for her scientific approach to nature.

Or Saint Pedro Arbries, a Spanish inquisitor who tortured and burned former Jews for harboring their old beliefs. An ex-Jew assassinated him, and he was canonized as a martyr.

I was a newspaper church columnist for many years. Endlessly, I heard ministers proclaim that religion instills love and compassion in believers. It’s a universal message. Meanwhile, back at the paper, our headlines said:

“Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs Massacre Each Other in India”
“Protestant Gunmen Kill Catholics in Belfast, and Vice Versa”
“Shi’ites in Iran Hang Baha’i Teens Who Won’t Convert”
“Christian Snipers Pin Down Muslim Machine-Gunners in Beirut”
“Hands and Feet Chopped Off Under Islamic Law in Sudan”

Politicians always call religion a mighty force for good. President Reagan labeled it “the bedrock of moral order.” They say it builds brotherhood.

But Christians killed 3 million Jews during Europe’s centuries of religious persecution, before Hitler secularized the process.

And the Reformation wars pitted Catholics and Protestants in a ghastly century of slaughter.

And the Third World today still suffers bloodbaths caused by religious tribalism.

There’s a tinge of the Twilight Zone in the constant declarations that religion creates love, when opposite results are everywhere.

Did religion make Saint Pius V loving as he killed Waldensians, Huguenots, Muslims and nonconforming Catholics?

Did it make the Ayatollah Khomeini compassionate as he ordered the hanging of Baha’is and demanded the assassination of a “blaspheming” British writer?

Did it make the Aztecs affectionate as they sacrificed and skinned maidens to appease a feathered serpent god?

Did it make brotherhood in Lebanon, where religious tribes wreak endless warfare?

Religion always is hailed as the cure for the world’s evils. But, too often, it’s the problem, not the solution.

James A Haught: “The Meaning of Life”

Young seekers of truth go through a phase of wondering whether life has any discernible meaning. Why are we here? Why is the universe here? Is there a purpose to it all? This is the ultimate question, overarching all others.

The seekers usually plunge into philosophy, and spend years sweating over “being” and “essence” – and quibbling over how the mind obtains knowledge – and how we determine reality – and how language shapes our comprehension. In the end, most of them emerge (as I did) with no better answer than when they began – and a feeling that they wasted a lot of time and effort. Omar Khayyam felt the same way 900 years ago:

Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and saint, and heard great argument
About it and about, but evermore
Came out by the same door as in I went.

However, despite this futility, I think intelligent people can address the meaning-of-life question sensibly, without bogging down in philosophical stewing and hair-splitting. That’s what I’d like to do today: just spell out what’s knowable, as I see it. The following is my personal, amateur view.

First, 90 percent of humanity – the religious believers – don’t need to ask the meaning of life. The church tells them the answer. Priests and scriptures say a magical, invisible god created the universe, and put people here to be tested – and set behavior rules for us to follow – and created a heaven to reward the rule-followers, after they die – and a hell to torture the rule-breakers – etc. This supernatural explanation, or some other mystical version, is accepted by the vast preponderance of the human species.

But some of us can’t swallow it, because there’s no evidence. Nobody can prove that people continue living after death. Nobody can prove that people are tortured or rewarded in an afterlife – or that there are any invisible spirits to do the torturing and rewarding.

Therefore, we unsure people are doomed to be seekers, always searching for a meaning to life, but never quite finding one. I’ve been going through it for half a century. Now, I think I can declare that there are two clear answers: (1) Life has no meaning. (2) Life has a thousand meanings.

First, the lack of meaning: As for an ultimate purpose or transcending moral order, all the great thinkers since ancient Greece have failed to find one. The best philosophical minds have dug into this for 25 centuries, without success. There have been endless theories, but no clear answer.

Martin Heidegger concluded that we are doomed to live our whole lives and die without ever knowing why we’re here. That’s existentialism: All we can really know is that we and the material world exist.

The universe contains awesome violence. Nature here on Earth can be the same way. Both seem utterly indifferent to humanity, and care not a whit whether we live or die. Earthquakes and hurricanes and volcanos, etc., don’t give a damn whether they hit us or miss us.

As for morality, I don’t think any exists, independent of people. It’s merely rules that cultures evolve for themselves, in their attempt to make life workable.

Conservatives talk of “natural law” – but there really is none. If Ku Klux Klansmen lynch a black from a limb, the tree doesn’t care. Neither do the squirrels and birds in the branches. Neither do the sun or moon above. Nature doesn’t care. Only people care.

Take human rights. Thomas Jefferson said all people “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” But I think Jefferson was wrong. There’s no evidence that any Creator endowed anyone with any God-given rights. What unalienable rights were enjoyed by African blacks who were sold into slavery – including those on Jefferson’s Monticello plantation?

What God-given rights were assured the 6 million Jews sent to Nazi death camps? – or the 1 million middle-class Cambodians murdered by Pol Pot’s peasant army? – or the 1 million tall Tutsis killed by short Hutus? – or Ulster children killed by Catholic and Protestant bombs? – or Hiroshima residents in 1945 – or around 1 million women burned as witches by the Inquisition?

What was the meaning of life to the millions dying of AIDS – and the millions who died in the 1918 flu epidemic, and in the Black Plague – and the 900 who gave cyanide to their children at Jonestown – or the 90 who burned with their children in the David Koresh compound? What meaning existed for thousands of Hondurans drowned in hurricane floods a couple of years ago? Or those 16 Scottish kindergarten tots who were massacred by a psycho with pistols? Or the 2,000 American women killed by their husbands or lovers every year? Or the 20,000 victims the Aztecs sacrificed annually to the invisible flying serpent? – or the 20,000 the Thugs strangled for the goddess Kali?

Meaningless, senseless, pointless – all these horrors have a grotesque absurdity about them. Words like purpose, rights and morals simply don’t apply.

I think these evils make it obvious, by simple logic, that there is no all-loving, all-merciful, all-compassionate, father god. How could a kindly father watch idly while thousands of children die of leukemia, ignoring the desperate prayers of their families? Why would a kindly creator design nature so that lions slaughter antelopes, and pythons crush pigs, and sharks rip seals apart – and women die of breast cancer? Only a monster would arrange such monstrosities, and do nothing to save the victims. Therefore, common sense proves that the beneficent modern god is a fantasy who doesn’t actually exist.

In his book, Consilience, the great Harvard socio-biologist E.O. Wilson pointed out that there are two fundamental ways of looking at reality: Empiricism, believing only what evidence tells you – and Transcendentalism, believing that a divine or cosmic moral order exists, independent of humanity. If any proof ever upholds the latter, he said, “the discovery would be quite simply the most consequential in human history.”

So much for meaninglessness. Now for the many meanings:

Obviously, the reality of physics, chemistry, biology, atoms, cells, matter, radiation and all the rest of nature imposes a physical order upon us. We can’t escape the laws of nature that govern animals on an orbiting planet. And the inevitability of death is a force stronger than we are. We can’t prevent it. Therefore, whatever meanings exist must apply to the temporary period while we live.

Clearly, there’s a physical and psychological purpose to life. Our bodies need food, and clothing, and shelter, and health, and affectionate comfort, and security from violence and theft, and so forth. We also need gregarious social reaction with people around us. And we need democratic freedoms, so we can speak honestly without fear of punishment – and justice, so we won’t be treated cruelly. These are the humanist purposes of life: to provide better nutrition, medicine, housing, transportation, education, safety, human rights, and all the other needs of people.

To attain this humanist “good life,” the species has a strong need to raise intelligent, healthy, affectionate, responsible children. Sometimes I think the single biggest purpose in life is raising good kids.

I think we all endorse this biological/psychological meaning of life. We believe in preventing war, curing disease, ending hunger, improving literacy, reducing crime, averting famines, and taking all the other steps that make life pleasant – until death takes us.

However, aside from this “housekeeping” type of purpose, is there any greater meaning that transcends our human needs?

I don’t think so. At least, I’ve never been able to find any proof of it. We simply must try to make life as good as possible, and avoid horrors, and care about people, and have fun, even though we know that oblivion is coming.

Make hay while the sun shines – because darkness is on its way. Carpe diem – seize the day for now; live fully while you can. Omar Khayyam saw the folly of aggrandizing oneself, because ill fortune or sickness and death soon wipe it out. And praying for heaven after death is even greater folly: “Fools, your reward is neither here nor there.” So Omar’s solution was to take comfort in verses, wine and his lover “beside me singing in the wilderness – and wilderness is paradise enough.” About 1,400 years before him, the great Greek skeptic Epicurus felt the same way.

So there you have it: We who are not orthodox religious believers can’t find any underlying reason for existence. And we know that death looms ahead. So we must make the interval as enjoyable as possible, while we’re here. This view of life’s purpose was summed up a few years ago by the title of a Unitarian seminar: “Dancing over the dark abyss.” And Zorba the Greek said: “What is life, but to dance?”

James A Haught: “Let’s outgrow Fairy Tales”

The supernatural spectrum is immense:
Gods, goddesses, devils, demons, angels, heavens, hells, purgatories, limbos, miracles, prophecies, visions, auras, saviors, saints, virgin births, immaculate conceptions, resurrections, bodily ascensions, faith-healings, salvation, redemption, messages from the dead, voices from Atlantis, omens, clairvoyance, spirit-signals, spirit-possession, exorcisms, divine visitations, incarnations, reincarnations, second comings, judgment days, astrology horoscopes, psychic phenomena, psychic surgery, extra-sensory perception, telekinesis, second sight, voodoo, fairies, leprechauns, werewolves, vampires, zombies, witches, warlocks, ghosts, wraiths, poltergeists, dopplegangers, incubi, succubi, palmistry, tarot cards, ouija boards, levitation, out-of-body travel, magical transport to UFOs, Elvis on a flying saucer, invisible Lemurians in Mount Shasta, Thetans from a dying planet, etc., etc., etc.

All these magical beliefs have a common denominator: They lack tangible evidence. You can’t test supernatural claims; you’re supposed to accept them by blind faith. Their only backup is that they were “revealed” by a prophet, guru, astrologer, shaman, mullah, mystic, swami, psychic, soothsayer or “channeler.”

That’s sufficient proof for billions of people. Most of humanity prays to invisible spirits and envisions mystical realms. Most politicians invoke the deities. Supernaturalism pervades our species, consuming billions of person-hours and trillions of dollars. Millions of prayers to unseen beings are uttered every hour, and millions of rituals performed. This extravaganza requires a vast array of priests and facilities. The cost is astronomical. Americans give $70 billion a year to churches and broadcast ministries – more than the national budgets of many countries. Other investment is enormous: Americans spend $300 million a year on psychic hot-lines. Angel books and end-of-the-world books sell by millions.

Amid this global mishmash, I want to offer a lonely minority view: I think it’s all fairy tales. Every last shred of it. The whole mystical array, from Jehovah and Beelzebub to Ramthis and the Lemurians, lacks any type of proof – unless you count weeping statues. My hunch is that every invisible spirit is imaginary. Therefore, the planet-spanning worship is expended on nothing.

I think that most intelligent, educated, scientific-minded people suspect that the spirit world doesn’t exist. But they stay silent, because it’s rude to question people’s faith. However, what about honesty? Aren’t conscientious thinkers obliged to speak the truth as they see it? Aren’t logical people allowed to ask for evidence?

Some researchers recently concluded that the human species is “wired” for faith, that our DNA includes coding for mystery. Maybe – but what about exceptions like me and similar doubters? Why doesn’t our wiring cause us to swallow the supernatural?

Moreover, even ardent believers see absurdity in rival religions. Consider these examples:

Millions of Hindus pray over statues of Shiva’s phallus. Ask Presbyterians if they think there’s an unseen Shiva who wants his anatomy utilized in worship.

Catholics say that the Virgin Mary makes periodic appearances to the faithful. Ask Muslims if it’s true.

Mormons say that Jesus was transported to America after his resurrection. Ask Buddhists if they believe it – or if they even accept the resurrection.

Jehovah’s Witnesses say that, any day now, Satan will come out of the earth with an army of demons, and Jesus will come out of the sky with an army of angels, and the Battle of Armageddon will kill everyone except Jehovah’s Witnesses. Ask Jews if this is correct.

Florida’s Santeria worshipers sacrifice dogs, goats, chickens and the like, tossing their bodies into waterways. Ask Baptists if the Santeria gods want animals to be killed.

Unification Church members say that Jesus visited Master Moon and told him to convert all people as “Moonies.” Ask Methodists if this really occurred.

Muslim suicide bombers who sacrifice themselves in Israel are taught that martyrs go instantly to a paradise full of lovely female houri nymphs. Ask Lutherans if past bombers are now in heaven with houris.

Millions of American Pentecostals say that the Holy Ghost causes them to spout “the unknown tongue,” a spontaneous outpouring of sounds. Ask Episcopalians if the third member of the Trinity causes this phenomenon.

Scientologists say that every human has a soul which is a “thetan” that came from another planet. Ask Seventh-day Adventists if this is true.

Aztecs sacrificed thousands of victims – cutting out hearts, killing children, skinning maidens – for various gods such as an invisible feathered serpent. Ask any current church if the invisible feathered serpent really existed.

During the witch hunts, inquisitor priests tortured thousands of women into confessing that they flew through the sky, changed into animals, blighted crops, copulated with Satan, etc. Ask any current church if the execution of “witches” was based on reality.

You see, most believers realize that other religions are bogus. Why do they think their own theology is different? I’m calling for the final step to honesty. If some magical spirits obviously are imaginary, it’s logical to assume that others are similar.

The western world is turning more rational, more scientific. Education is dispelling superstition. Most advanced nations in Europe are abandoning belief in gods, devils, heavens, hells. Church attendance there has dwindled to a tiny fringe. America remains a bulwark of churchgoing — but educated Americans don’t really expect divine intervention. If their children get pneumonia, they trust penicillin over prayer.

As for the familiar contention that supernatural beliefs make people more moral and humane, do you really think that Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are ethically superior to non-religious Americans?

Polls find that the more education people have, the fewer their religious convictions. Therefore, the educated are the natural group to break away from magic. I’d like to see a revolt by the intelligent against myths.

Generally, the educated class laughs at quacko miracle reports, but not at the prevailing majority religion. However, there’s no logical reason to consider one supernatural claim superior to another. No matter how much it’s cloaked in poetry and allegory, religion consists of worshiping spooks – imaginary ones, in my view.

The time has come for thinking Americans to say, publicly and bluntly: There’s no reliable evidence of invisible spirits. Worshiping them is a waste of time and money. Instead, let’s use our minds to improve life for people here and now. Fairy tales came from the primitive past, and they have no place in the 21st century.

James A. Haught: “Where do Beliefs Come From?”

Suppose a miracle is reported – say, another Virgin Mary sighting by Catholics, or the nine hundred-foot Jesus seen by evangelist Oral Roberts. Some Americans will embrace this news joyfully, as evidence of the holy, while others will be skeptical.

Here’s my question: What causes some people to believe such reports, and others to doubt them? What is different inside the minds of the two groups? What makes believers and doubters?

I really don’t know – and neither do any of the believers or doubters, I suspect.

This quandary applies to more than religion. It covers all human belief systems. For example, what causes some people to be political conservatives and others liberals – right-wingers and left-wingers?

What creates rebels and conformists, puritans and playboys, social reformers and traditionalists, militarists and pacifists (“hawks” and “doves”), Democrats and Republicans, gun-lovers and gun-haters, environmentalists and industry-boosters (“tree-huggers” and “spoilers”), death penalty advocates and death penalty foes, etc.?

A half-century ago, why did some Americans support racial segregation, and some integration? A century earlier, why did some clergymen uphold slavery and others denounce it?

Nearly everyone has a “worldview” encompassing such issues – but does anyone know how he or she acquired it? Where do beliefs come from? Over the years, I’ve put this question to various psychologists, but I never got an answer I can understand.

If you ask, say, a conservative why he’s conservative, you’ll probably get an answer something like: “Because I’m intelligent and can see the obvious correctness of that position.” And a liberal would say exactly the same. Neither really knows why.

Odd “agendas” of beliefs exist. Protestant fundamentalists usually want to censor sexy movies, ban abortion, impose the death penalty, punish gays, allow pistol-carrying, ban marijuana, curtail sex education, reduce welfare, outlaw go-go girls, require prayer in schools, etc. But why is there a link between sexual taboos, executions and welfare? Offhand, the topics don’t seem related.

Conversely, secular liberals generally back an opposite agenda on all those subjects. And Catholics often are switch-hitters, opposing sex while embracing share-the-wealth efforts. How are these outlooks implanted?

In psychology, there’s a factor called “bias reinforcement.” It means that people with certain inclinations constantly look for evidence to back their views, and shrug off opposing evidence. Does that help explain beliefs?

Do we condition ourselves, like Pavlov’s dog, to give knee-jerk reactions to stimuli? Also, some new research implies that beliefs may be partly genetic, locked into our DNA.

More than a century ago, in a lecture titled “The Will to Believe,” famed philosopher-novelist-psychologist William James told Ivy League students that people believe what they want to believe – what their personal orientations draw them to accept – and that this human instinct is desirable. This is called “volitionalism” by scholars. But it really doesn’t explain anything. For example, it doesn’t clarify why evangelist Jerry Falwell is drawn to believe the word-for-word truth of the Bible, but renowned astronomer Carl Sagan was drawn to reject it.

In some cases, circumstantial causes of beliefs are visible. For example, women traditionally held nurturing roles while men went forth to conquer.

So women tend to be “liberal,” supporting school lunches, health care, welfare, etc., while men are inclined to militarism. (Women are from Venus, men from Mars.) Blacks have been cheated in America for so long that they naturally see society from an underdog view – rallying behind O.J. Simpson, for instance. Underdog feelings apply even stronger to gays. Most Jews feel an ethnic affinity for Israel and can’t be objective about Mideast politics. Ditto, in reverse, for Arabs.

Growing up in a working-class family, or in poverty – instead of being born to wealth and privilege – undoubtedly inclines many to embrace labor union beliefs and egalitarian causes. But there are exceptions to all these patterns. And other belief roots are too unfathomable for such simplistic explanations.

Beliefs of the whole society evolve. When I was young in the 1950s, gays were put in prison, and it also was a crime to buy a drink, look at a “girlie” magazine, buy a lottery ticket, marry someone of a different race, have sex out of wedlock, etc. Today, the beliefs behind those laws seem as antiquated as powdered wigs.

In the end, I’m still mostly unable to deduce why people are religious believers or skeptics, political conservatives or liberals, moral puritans or fun-seekers, military hawks or doves, and all the rest. Yet these are powerful psychological forces that shape the very nature of our society, and its internal conflicts. Where do beliefs come from? It is a puzzle.

James A. Haught: “Does God Exist?”

Does God Exist?

Well, it depends on what you mean by God.

The universe is a maze of mysteries. How can gravity – an invisible, unexplainable force – pull the Milky Way into a spiral? How can atoms contain such awesome power that an amount of matter smaller than a dime produced the energy in the bomb that killed 100,000 Hiroshima residents? How can the double-helix thread of DNA create all living things, from bacteria to trees to Beethoven? How can electrons, dormant in every atom of your body, explode into violent lightning bolts when they’re detached? Finally, why does anything exist, at all?

If you say that the power of gravity, atoms, DNA, lightning and all the rest is God – that God is E = MC2 – then God exists. Those baffling forces are undeniably real.

Or if you say, as some do, that God is the love and pity in every human heart, then God exists. Those feelings are real – just like the paranoid capacity for suspicion, hate, jealousy, anger, and the like.

But if you mean church-type deities – the three gods of the Christian Trinity, the 330 million gods of Hinduism, the wrathful Jehovah of the Old Testament, the multitudinous Greek and Roman gods, the invisible feathered serpent of the Aztecs, etc. – you’ve entered the Twilight Zone.

Human logic can find no trustworthy evidence to prove, or disprove, the existence of unseen spirits. Weeping statues and holy apparitions aren’t reliable proof. So the only truthful answer for an honest person is: I don’t know.

But honest people can go farther and speculate intelligently: Do demons exist? Angels? Leprechauns? Fairies? Vampires? Werewolves? Lack of tangible evidence leads educated people to laugh off these imaginary beings. It’s a small step to apply the same rationale to holy ghosts, resurrected saviors, blessed virgins, patron saints, etc. You can’t prove they aren’t hovering invisible in the room with you – but it’s unlikely.

Sigmund Freud said the widespread belief in a father-God arises from psychology. Tiny children are awed by their fathers as seemingly all-powerful protectors and punishers. As maturity comes, fathers grow less awesome. But the infantile image remains buried in the subconscious, and attaches to an omnipotent, supernatural father in an invisible heaven. Without knowing it, Freud said, believers worship their hidden toddler impression of the biological father, “clothed in the grandeur in which he once appeared to the small child.”

That makes sense to me. It says the father-God is just a figment of the imagination. But you can’t prove it’s true.

Through logic, you can see that the Church concept of an all-loving heavenly creator doesn’t hold water. If a divine-maker fashioned everything that exists, he designed breast cancer for women, leukemia for children, cerebral palsy, leprosy, AIDS, Alzheimer’s disease, Down’s syndrome, etc. he mandated foxes to rip rabbits apart (bunnies emit a terrible shriek at that moment) and cheetahs to slaughter fawns. No human would be cruel enough to plan such horrors. If a supernatural being did so, he’s a monster, not an all-merciful father.

When you get down to it, the only evidence of God’s existence is that holy men, past and present, say he exists. Priests have built worldwide, trillion-dollar empires on their claim that an unseen Deity waits to reward or punish people after death. But such priests once said that witches exist, and burned thousands of women on charges that they flew through the sky, copulated with Satan, changed into animals, and so forth. Priests later dropped this claim (but never apologized for the witch-hunts). If their assertion about God is as valid as their assertion about witches, their trillion-dollar empires rest on fantasy.

The universe is a vast, amazing, seething dynamo which has no discernible purpose except to keep on churning. From quarks to quasars, it’s alive with incredible power. But it seems utterly indifferent to any moral laws. It destroys as blindly as it nurtures.

Martin Heidegger said we know only that we exist for a while and we are doomed to die without knowing why we are here. If you are scrupulously honest, you can’t say much more than that.

Are the profound forces of the universe God? I don’t know. Is human love God? I don’t know. Is there a personal God waiting to reward me in a heaven or punish me in a hell? I don’t know – but I doubt it.