The reasoning that supports the view that moral values connect us to physical reality is difficult. Explaining that reasoning once again is what my last two posts were devoted to. But the reasoning that I then follow to argue that it is rational to believe in a kind of a deity in this universe probably still seems to many of my readers to be drawing too large a conclusion from too little evidence. 

But let's have another try at reaching that conclusion, anyway. 

If we accept that moral values are our names for patterns of behavior that enable us as whole societies to handle the giant, general qualities of physical reality, then I maintain that when we continue along that reasoning path, the theistic conclusion comes up before us as a choice. And it is rational to choose to believe in God. 

Let's briefly review. Over millions of people and thousands of years, courage and wisdom, in balance, are the human response to entropy. Freedom and love, taken together, are our response to uncertainty. These values cause us to behave determinedly while being clever, and creatively while being kind. Societies that are better at those balancing acts outlast more intolerant, ignorant rivals. If we accept this picture of the universe and our place in it, then the universe starts looking like it has some kind of consciousness of its own. It favors the good. 

Now if we add quantum entanglement and the universal awareness that it implies, the cases for believing in a deity and not believing in a deity get to be pretty nearly even in weight. 

Finally, we see ourselves and our ability to choose as mere parts of the overall calculation. We see that the societies in which people believe in their values, and are willing to fight to defend those values if need be, are the societies that go on. The decent and reasonable over and over defeat the devious and obdurate. Of course they do. Higher levels of decency give us more diverse communities. Pluralistic societies are resourceful societies. 

Consider some examples. 

The Japanese naval codes were broken early on in WWII, but the Japanese never broke the American code because it was Navajo. None of the few thousand Navajo in the whole world ever sold out to the Japanese, and as a result the American code in the South Pacific war was never broken. 

The Brits had the master code-breaker, Alan Turing. He was a homosexual. After the war, his sexual preference was even seen as something to persecute. But in Germany, homosexuality was a death sentence from 1931 on if you were caught. Did the Germans have a Turing who stayed out of sight or even hated Nazism and worked for the Allies? We don't know, but I think the point is clear. A diverse society is resourceful in ways a more homogeneous one can't ever be. 

The Japanese soldiers and sailors were told that Americans were incapable of discipline and sacrifice. They were stunned when they saw the willingness of the Americans to die for their cause. The navy torpedo bombers in the Battle of Midway, in particular. They kept trying hopelessly for hours. They all died. But they ran the Japanese Zeroes that were shooting them down out of fuel. Then, while the Zeroes were refueling on the decks of the carriers Soryu, Hiryu, Akagi, and Kaga, a flight of American dive bombers caught them by surprise. All four carriers were burning in under ten minutes, and that ten minutes made the Battle of Midway the turning point in the Pacific War. 

The first giant step in the building of the atomic bomb was organized and overseen by Enrico Fermi, who had left Europe to escape the Nazis because his wife was Jewish. Many of the scientists who built the bomb in the desert in New Mexico also were Jews who had left Europe for the same reasons. America got the bomb in early 1945. No other country did until well after the war was over. Did the two American uses of the bomb end the war with fewer lives lost on all sides? It's still debatable, but Truman and nearly all of his generals certainly thought so.  

It's not that more homogeneous populations in more regimented states don't have courage or wisdom. But they don't have as much of wisdom because they are so homogeneous. They don't have as many different kinds of people. And their unquestionable courage at that point is not going to be enough. The longer the war goes on, the greater are the odds that they are going to lose. The more regimented states won't, in the end, even have as much population. People come to a democracy from all over the earth because they believe that it will give them a chance in life to build their fortunes in ways their countries of origin did not make available. 

Yes, democracies are slow to anger and to act, but when they do find resolution, look out. 

Now to that picture which shows that the universe is stacked ever so subtly in favor of courage and wisdom and of freedom and love, add the evidence of physics which says that the universe feels itself all over, all at once, all of the time. Quantum entanglement.  

Finally, add the confidence you have when you see all of the evidence and conclude that decency for whole populations is just smart gambling in the long haul. In other words, millions of people like you choosing to believe in values that, in the short-term, they cannot see make a society that has better odds of surviving and passing on its values to its kids. Even your choosing is part of the calculation. Your choosing to believe in decency and sense shows you have a kind of faith. Even if you don't like calling it by that name, that's what it is.  

Add it all up. You come to the theistic total. 

Or to put the matter another way, if you believe values are not just fantasies and they do connect to physical, empirical reality, and you believe that quantum entanglement is not an illusion or a mistake, and you try to live a decent life day by day, choice by choice, I don't much care whether you ever say you believe in God. By the visible evidence, which is all that science cares about, you already do. 

You're missing the therapeutic value of meditation and communion with that conscious universe, but choosing to leave that element out of your life is your choice.  

Alright, God is a hard case sometimes. Has to be. Adults know that. A vast, subtle universe cannot be pulled into shape instant by instant except by a balance of forces. As a result, there have to be the same odds for tragedy as there are for triumph. 

But I'll repeat it one last time: if you try your best to live intelligently and decently, and you keep on trying even when it would be easier to take an impulsive or cynical route, you may say you absolutely do not believe in God. But in reality ... oh yes. You secretly do. 

                                                             Hermann Hesse 

"We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land. It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the other's opposite and complement."

                       Mustafa Kemal Ataturk 

"My people are going to learn the principles of democracy the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will, every man can follow his own conscience provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him act against the liberty of his fellow men."