Suppose supernatural truths exist, but they’re not obvious. Instead, we could only dimly perceive them. What would such a world look like?

We might have a Babel of religions because of our imperfect understanding, but we’d also find convergence. As disparate religious groups compared notes, common supernatural truths would become clear. We’d see positive feedback, and pieces would fit together as we matched our tentative consensus against that rudimentary understanding of the Divine. And if that supernatural Divine wanted to encourage our efforts, it could nudge us in the right direction so humanity would gradually cobble together an accurate understanding.

In fact, we see the opposite. No common truth pushes religions toward a single consensus view. There isn’t even agreement on the number of gods or their names, let alone what it takes to please them. Christianity continues to fragment and morph as new denominations form. There are 45,000 denominations of Christianity, and new denominations appear at a rate of two per day. We see that same fertility in other religions.

The Christian response is often to argue that God could have his reasons for not making clear the correct path, and we simply don’t understand those reasons. That is possible, but where’s the evidence? This is the Hypothetical God Fallacy, where God is supposed into existence.

We don’t believe something because it hasn’t been proven wrong; we believe because good evidence shows that it’s right. And when we follow the evidence, it doesn’t point to Christianity.

Christians usually agree that people invent religions—that’s how they explain all those other religions. But in explaining away the other religions, they have explained away their own. Christianity looks like just one more manmade religion.

Religion is built on human imagination and emotions, evolving as conditions change with no immutable truth to guide and constrain it. There is no loving god wanting a relationship who would make his existence known to us, and Christians must use faith to cover up this awkward fact. There’s not even a cosmic truth seen “through a glass, darkly” (that is, seen reflected in a mirror, dimly), as Paul put it. The glass isn’t dark; it’s black. There is no external truth nudging us in the right direction.

If there were a supernatural truth out there and if evidence rather than wishful thinking steered religious beliefs, we’d expect religious claims to be tested and either kept or dropped based on how well they matched reality. With this view, we should see humankind gradually converge on a single religious story, with false beliefs gradually falling away and correct beliefs encouraged and strengthened. But that isn’t how religion works.

Not only is there no evidence that a dimly seen god exists, but religion is the last place you’d expect an unbiased search for the truth. Religion has no interest in following the evidence without bias but in sifting out evidence to support its preconceptions and ignoring the rest.

Continue to chapter 50.

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Notes

Hypothetical God Fallacy: the presupposition of a god without sufficient evidence, often stated, “But if God exists….” We can consider the consequences of God once we have evidence for him, but you don’t imagine him into existence. First the evidence, then the God hypothesis.

45,000 denominations of Christianity: International Bulletin of Missionary Research, vol 39, no. 1, http://www.internationalbulletin.org/issues/2015-01/2015-01-028-johnson.pdf (line item 45).

“through a glass, darkly”: 1 Corinthians 13:12 (KJV)

We see that same fertility in other religions: this is illustrated by this tree of world religions: http://www.the40foundation.org/world-religions-tree.html.