Psychology of Belief: Theism, Atheism, and Moral Resistance

Let's agree right up front that the question of the existence of God is indeed loaded with psychological baggage. I was at a soccer game last night, and I was sitting next to a man who was getting more and more exercised by the referee's calls because he felt that the referee was favoring the opposing team, and he asked me about it after the game. [00:04:17]

And I have to say before the whole world that every bone in my body wants there to be a God. I can't stand the thought that my life is a useless passion, and so I have to admit that it -- not only that I have that desire, but I also agree with the skeptics that it is possible for people to construct philosophical systems on the basis of their own desires. [00:06:06]

But one of the things that I think we have to understand is that everybody who gets involved in a discussion on the existence of God is dealing with the same psychological baggage because for those who deny the existence of God, there is an enormous vested interest on their part for the denial of the existence of God because God stands as the greatest obstacle in the universe to my own autonomy. [00:07:16]

Now again, let me say that if there's a psychology for God, that doesn't prove God, and if there's a psychology against God, that doesn't disprove God. In the final analysis, arguments for the existence of God have to be established on an objective basis, not on the basis of subjective preference. [00:08:41]

For example, the New Testament says, that fallen man -- man in his sinfulness -- will not have God in his thinking -- that our natural, mortal condition is to have a reprobate mind, a mind that has been darkened -- so darkened by prejudice that we do not want to even open the window a crack to allow the rays of God's self-revelation into our head because we know what's at stake. [00:09:42]

Now what Paul is really saying here, and this can be inflammatory if you're not a theist, but at least listen. You can disagree with Paul if you want to -- I don't think you can with impunity -- but if -- you're not accountable to me. But the point is that what the apostle is saying is that in the final analysis your problem with the existence of God is not intellectual. [00:11:26]

He names the child -- "all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness." It is an evil suppression or repression of truth that Paul is describing, and that word there -- suppression -- is just one translation. The form of the verb here in the Greek is a -- comes from the root katakein. [00:14:19]

The word there is phaneros -- that God has clearly -- and the Latin is manifestum -- has manifested Himself so clearly to every human being. This is how radical Paul's affirmation is that he's saying that every single person out there -- every one of you -- knows that God exists because God has shown Himself to you through the things that He's made and that He has demonstrated Himself to you clearly. [00:15:29]

Now if we want to talk in psychological categories, let's translate this phenomenon that Paul is describing here in the modern psychological categories. What kind of knowledge, according to the psychologists and psychiatrists, do we as human beings characteristically repress or suppress? Happy thoughts? No. What we call the images or the memories of painful, traumatic experiences. [00:16:20]

Later on in this text, the apostle Paul uses another Greek word, which is a form of the verb metallasso, which means to trade or to exchange, in which he says, "Men, knowing God through God's self-disclosure, once they repress or bury this knowledge, exchange the truth of God for a lie and serve and worship the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever." [00:19:28]

The apostle is saying there is a psychology to atheism because he goes on to say what it is that we fear more than nature, more than meaninglessness, is that the greatest fear that any human being has by nature is to be held accountable by a God who is holy because in the presence of the holy we are immediately exposed of being unholy. [00:21:17]

And because that is so terrifying, it is our basic disposition as fallen creatures to have a vested interest to flee, since Adam and Eve fled the garden and hid in the bushes because they were naked, and they were ashamed. That's the biggest barrier we have to coming to a full understanding of God -- that we, too are naked, and we know it. [00:22:46]