Chapter 17.                                      (continued) 

Acquiring the cultural model of human evolution changes all this. Under it, values are real, humanity is going somewhere, and whether we behave morally or immorally really does matter, not just to us in our limited frames of reference, but to that consciousness that underlies the universe. That presence, over millennia, helps the good to thrive by maintaining a reality in which there are lots of free choices and chances to learn, but also a small, long-term advantage to those who choose to be venturesome, brave, wise, and loving.

This is the third big idea in my overall case for theism: moral realism. Seeing values as being connected to the material universe in a tangible way.

This model, which shows the role of morals in the human mode of living, shakes everything else atheists claim to know. Under this model, there is no doubt about one thing: the programs that maximize the probability of our survival—that is, our moral values—are our guides for finding safer paths, as a species, through the hazardous patterns in the movements of matter and energy in the physical universe itself.

Therefore, belief in the realness of moral values is not trivial in the same way as belief in the consistency of the universe is not trivial. Both beliefs have an effect, via the patterns of behavior they foster, on the odds of our surviving as a species in the real world. People who believe them out-survive the competition and these people and their ideas spread. 

In short, the presence that fills the universe doesn’t just maintain and feel. It also favors those living entities who follow the ways we think of as “good.”

It cares.

In my own intellectual, moral, and spiritual journey, I was a long time admitting even to myself that by this point I was gradually coming to believe in a kind of universal consciousness. God.

God spans fifteen billion light years across the known part of the universe. Googuls of particles. About 10⁷⁹ instances of electrons alone, never mind quarks or strings. Consistent, aware, and compassionate, all over, all at once, all the time. And these claims describe only the pieces of evidence that we know of. What might exist before and after, smaller or larger, or even in the dimensions that some physicists, in their cutting-edge theories, have postulated?

   

                           

Every idea about matter or space that I can describe with numbers is a naïve children’s story compared with what is meant by the word infinite. Every idea I can talk about in terms that name bits of what we call time has to be set aside when I use the word eternal. For many of us in the West today, formulas and graphs, for far too long, have obscured these points, even though most scientists freely admit there is so much that they don’t know. Newton said, “I seem to have been only a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”⁹

The belief is no longer trivial in more personal ways as well. If I truly believe in the axiom on which my model of science rests—that is, the constancy of natural laws—and also in the relevant models of reality that science has led me to—that is, the “aware” nature of the universe and the values-driven, cultural model of human evolution—then to maintain my claim to being rational, in my own eyes, I must live my life in a moral way. I must choose to act in a way that views my own actions as rational, not as the mere wanderings of a deluded, self-aware, absurd animal. That absurd world view, truly believed and lived, would inevitably lead to madness or suicide.

And the theistic view, when it is widely accepted in society, has large implications for the activity called “science”. A general adherence in society to the theistic way of thinking is what makes sub-communities of scientists doing science possible. Consciously and individually, every scientist should value wisdom and freedom, for reasons that are uplifting, but even more because they are logical. Scientists know that figuring out how the events in reality work is personally gratifying. But much more importantly, each scientist should see that this work is done most effectively in a freely interacting community of scientists supported within a larger democratic society.

Most of us in the West have become emotionally attached to our belief in science. We feel that attachment because we’ve been programmed to feel it. Tribally, we have learned that our modern wise men—our scientists—doing research and sharing findings with one another is vital to the continuing survival of the human race. Of all of the subcultures within democracy that we might point to, none is more dependent on the basic values of democracy than is science.

Scientists have to have courage. Courage to think in unorthodox ways, to outlast derision and neglect, to work, sometimes for decades, with levels of determination and dedication that people in most walks of life would find difficult to believe. Scientists need the sincerest form of wisdom. Wisdom that counsels them to listen to analysis and criticism from their peers without allowing egos to become involved, and to sift through what is said for insights that may be used to refine their methods and try again. Scientists require freedom. Freedom to pursue truth where she leads, no matter whether the truths discovered are startling, unpopular, or threatening to the status quo. And, finally, scientists must practice love. Yes, love. Love that causes them to treat every human being as an individual whose experience and thought may prove valuable to their own.

Scientists recognize implicitly that no single human mind can hold more than a tiny fraction of all there is to know. They have to share and peer-review ideas, research, and data in order to grow, individually and collectively.

Scientists do their best work in a community of thinkers who value and respect one another, who love one another, so much as a matter of course that they cease to notice another person’s race, religion, sexual orientation, or gender. Under the values-driven, cultural model of human evolution, one can even argue that creating a social environment in which science can arise and flourish is the goal toward which democracy has always been striving.

However, the main implication of this complex but consistent way of thinking is more general and profound, so let’s now to return to it.

The universe is coherent, aware, and compassionate. Belief in each of these qualities of reality is a choice, a separate, free choice in each case. Modern atheists have long insisted that more evidence and weight of argument by far exists for the first than for the second or third. My contention is that this is no longer so. Once we see how values connect us to reality, the choice, though it still remains a choice, becomes an existential one. It defines who we are.

Therefore, belief in God emerges out of an epistemological choice, the same kind of choice we make when we choose to believe that the laws of the universe obtain. Choosing to believe, first, in the laws of science, second, in the findings of the various branches of science, notably the self-aware universe implied by quantum theory, and third, in the realness of the moral values that enable democratic living (and science itself) entails a further belief in a steadfast, aware, and compassionate universal consciousness.

                        

Belief in God follows logically from my choosing a specific way of viewing this universe and my integral role in it: the scientific way.

   

The problem for stubborn atheists who refuse to make this choice is that they, like every other human being, have to choose to believe in something. Each of us has to have to have a set of foundational beliefs in place in order to function effectively enough to just move through the day and stay sane. The Bayesian model rules all that I claim to know. I have to gamble on some general set of axiomatic assumptions in order to move through life. The only real question is: “What shall I gamble on?” Reason points to the theistic gamble as being not the only choice, but the wisest, of the epistemological choices before us.

The best gamble, in this gambling life, is theism. Reaching that conclusion grows out of analyzing the evidence. Following this realization up with the building of a personal relationship with God, one that makes sense to you as it also makes you a good, eternal friend—that, dear reader, is up to you.

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