LOL!
No no. We couldn't make it through the day without it, being as how weak we are in comparison to the rest of the animal kingdom. I mean, deer can lay a whooping on us for crying out loud. DEER!
I guess what I'm trying to say is, if God is real, than the method in which to know He is real has to be acsessable to the every man and not just the ivory tower of acadameia. The God of the Bible wants to be first in our lives, and for the one who has put knowledge ahead of everything else, including God, than I think He is looking for that "sacrifice" if you will. I don't mean sacraficing one's intelligence either, but sacrificing what one thinks they know to be true, in order to obtain the knowledge of God and His existence.
If you have to sacrifice what you "know to be true" in order to believe in a god...that makes that god "untrue." Either that or "unknowable."
There's a book called
Xenocide (in the
Ender's Game series) that has a character wrestle with the question of how you make a moral decision when you know that you don't know everything. You might be interested in it.
Full disclosure: I only point it out because I agree with the conclusion, and I think it does a good job of demonstrating the thought process.
Basically, human being are restricted by what they know and understand. You have no choice but to assume that the things which, upon close examination, show every sign of being true
are true. People
have to make that assumption, because if we don't, life becomes unlivable. I watched a documentary on hoarding a while ago, and one guy in it had a very different motive than the others: he had some sort of mental problem where he literally couldn't trust what his senses told him. He never threw anything away, because, no matter how long he looked at it, he couldn't be sure that it was actually the thing it appeared to be and not, say, his vintage comic book collection. He couldn't cut anything, because he couldn't be sure that he wasn't accidentally about to cut his genitals instead of the thing he wanted to cut. He was afraid to turn a particular corner in his hallway because he was afraid he might accidentally walk into a tight nook, rather than where he was aiming, and then he'd get stuck.
In order to function, humans
have to be able to work on the assumption that the world around them is as it appears to be. Some people do acknowledge that it might be different, but nonetheless, must continue to work on that assumption just because the world become meaningless if they don't.
So, when religious people say, "Sure this doesn't seem true, but you can't lean on your own understanding--you have to take it on faith," my question is, "Why would you do that?" Why would you sacrifice the most fundamental assumption a human being
has to make, in order to be a functioning creature? Because, once you assert that there are things worth believing in, despite not appearing to be true,
nothing else can be assumed, ever again. If, despite all appearances, there is a god at work in my life doing invisible things that affect me without any discernible cause, then there might also, despite all appearances, be a dragon in my closet or a fake patch in my floor that I might fall through or a rare comic book where I think there's a coupon in the newspaper.
If I can't trust that my most basic ability to discern the world around me is functional, then I can't trust anything, ever. Unless.....
There's one major exception. That's if something
does appear to my senses, on a level that is comprehensible to me, and demonstrates the existence of something that is beyond my comprehension. If a god appears before me--
proves they're a god (which is harder than you'd think), demonstrates their abilities and motives, and then says, "I won't appear to you again, but here's what you should know..... ok, now just trust me."
From then on, it would be possible to continue believing that the world around is more or less as it appears (and thus remain functional) while also trusting that there is more going on that is beyond my ability to discern or understand. But nobody who tells me I ought to do this is able to provide this type of reason. They basically say, "Don't trust what seems to be true to you; sacrifice the #1 thing that makes you functional; sacrifice your ability to discern truth from untruth and good from evil,
because I'm telling you you should."
The example from the book was of a girl trying to figure out whether to help in a mission where it was very unclear what was going on. On the one hand, it might be that a government agency had caused the people on her planet to have a mental illness that kept them under the government's control, and she had the chance to help somebody cure the illness. On the other hand, it could be that the gods of her world were speaking to some of the people there, and if she helped in the mission, she'd be doing a monstrous thing--spreading heresy and maybe even severing the ties between the gods and their prophets.
Ultimately, she comes to the decision that she has to do what
seems to be right, based on the information that she has, even though it's possible that she's wrong. This is simply because, to do what seems to be wrong is evil. If you act in a way that seems right, and you are mistaken, then you are a trustworthy, decent person who make a mistake and accidentally caused harm. If you act in a way that seems to be wrong, and it turns out you were mistaken, then you are still an evil person who does things they believe are harmful.
The idea of "lean not on your own understanding and just have faith," seems all nice and trusting and romantic, until you realize that it requires you to not care about what seems to be right, and
that requires you to not care about anything at all.
People who actually live up to this tend to be utterly monstrous people who commit atrocities. The only reason this idea doesn't cause more harm than it does is because the people who say it don't actually live by it.
(None of this is to suggest that it's impossible to
consider ideas that conflict with your understanding of how the world works. It's absolutely possible, and advisable, to examine hypotheticals based on, "So, if I'm mistaken about this, and it turns out
that is actually true, then ..." But most Christians aren't asking atheists to do that. They're asking atheists to make the leap from "This is what appears to be true," to "no,
that is actually true, even though it didn't look like it was at first," without any reason at all.
Be still and let God speak to you. I am sure that He will.... drop all defenses for a while, go into a mode of "observation" and you will see God in your life... reaching for you... judge nothing but allow yourself to open your heart, don't question now (you can ask later)... and find God. He is there.
