Does Belief in God Result From Fear?

When I was an atheist, I was certain that all of life was meaningless and that upon death I would fade into nothingness: no afterlife, no answering for my sins, no worries. I was 20 years old, felt pretty invincible, and looked forward to the long life ahead. However, about a year into this nihilistic outlook on life, I watched a gruesome video of someone dying in front of their family via a flying brick. As traumatizing as that was by itself, it hit me much deeper than I expected. My feeling of invincibility crumbled. Death can now strike me at any moment. What made me so special that I would live a long life? For the first time in a long time, the philosophy of meaninglessness and absurdity went from a comforting, cozy fire to a flame which engulfed all hope. I was living in total anguish for months, and the string of rationalism, which I thought was a strong rope, could no longer pull me up from this fiery pit. The pleasures of life only made me forget my fate for a moment.

Eventually, I stopped grasping for the rope and took hold of Jesus’ hand. He was always there, but I rejected Him many times, until one day I didn’t. Jesus pulled me out of despair and led me down a long path towards the Church He established: The Catholic Church. Throughout this journey, I have often asked myself: Did my belief in God stem from fears of death, nihilism, or hell? Did my sense of peace matter more to me than discovering truth? These are good questions, but here I will show that, in the context of whether belief in God is irrational, there are often unjustified assumptions about the truth of atheism and about what constitutes a good argument. Further, the accusations become uninteresting because Christians can propose symmetrical questions towards the atheist.

What is a Good Argument?

What constitutes a good rational argument? Some people believe a good argument is one where any reasonable person should believe it. If I am presented with a good argument, and I take it that I’m pretty reasonable, then there is an epistemic obligation for me to believe in it. It’s not so much that all reasonable people will believe, because reasonable people disagree all the time. So, rather than placing blame on the argument itself, disagreement arises when reasonable people have some sort of psychological or irrational reason for denying it.

For example, let’s suppose Albert Einstein encounters this argument:

1. All men are mortal.
2. Socrates is a man.
3. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

What if we found out that Einstein denied the soundness of this argument? Would we conclude that Einstein is unreasonable? I think not! Rather, we would likely conclude that Einstein had some irrational reason for denying the specific argument. Perhaps he had a personal vendetta against Socrates. Or perhaps he feared that if we accept that all men are mortal, then this would only lead to negative thoughts about death. But we simply couldn’t conclude that such an intellectual giant is unreasonable. It would be simpler to conclude that his reasons for denying the argument were likely psychological and irrational.

From this framework, we can identify two assumptions about those who claim belief in God results from fear: first, that there are no good arguments for theism, and second, that there are good arguments for atheism. These assumptions, however, hinge on an idea that good arguments are those that any reasonable person should believe, which isn’t an obvious theory.

The Problem

There are two major problems with claiming belief in God results from fear. First, it is not entirely clear whether a good rational argument is one that reasonable people should agree to. Relating to the first, the second problem is that it assumes a successful de facto objection to God’s existence. Without a clear de facto objection, the de jure objection of rational belief in God becomes moot.

When Relativism is Good

By my lights, what makes an argument good is relative to the person in question. Not that good arguments themselves are relativistic, but how the argument relates relativistically to the frameworks that a person is using to process reality. This is entirely different from the idea that a good argument should persuade a reasonable person, because that assumes a transcendent standard amongst all arguers and arguments. (A transcendent standard, by the way, which hasn’t been established by anyone who holds to this view of arguments.) A standard is relative to the person who is presented an argument for or against anything.

The “goodness” of an argument, then, isn’t so much an ontological value which relates to Goodness itself, but one of function. An argument is good insofar as it functions well within a framework and within a system.

Good Arguments as Function

Suppose I believe that Santa Claus exists. Not in some mystical “in my heart” way, but that he, Mrs. Claus, and his elves truly live in the North Pole, and are currently working hard to deliver Christmas presents to all the good children this year. My Santa-denying friend says, “There is no evidence for Santa Claus, and we have pretty convincing evidence from science that he doesn’t exist.” I say, “Well, I do not trust these scientists. Take me to the North Pole so I can see whether there is a toy-making factory or not. I’ll only stop believing it if I see it with my own eyes!”

My friend points out a conflict within my worldview. He says, “You say you’ll only believe there is no toy-making factory in the North Pole if you see it with your own eyes, but you haven’t seen Santa Claus with your own eyes!” I realize my friend makes a good point. If a standard for my belief is that I must see it with my own eyes, it follows that I should stop believing in everything I haven’t seen. This includes my long-held belief in Santa. We can see that my friend makes a good argument because he used the very frameworks I was working with. Of course, “I’ll only believe it if I see it” is a bad epistemological framework, but good arguments work well within both good and bad frameworks. It should go without saying, but good or bad frameworks and arguments are subordinated to the laws of logic and probability. One can hold to an internally coherent belief, but that does not mean they ought to hold to it based on that fact.

There are hierarchical orders to how well an argument functions, and I will name three. The best arguments function in the first order, when the conclusion of the argument, and its logical implications, either provide a better alternative or bolster the interlocutor’s worldview. Second-order function occurs when the conclusion provides a better alternative worldview for the interlocutor, but its logical implications are in tension with some fundamental beliefs. Function within the third-order occurs when the conclusion of an argument is in direct contradiction with the worldview of the interlocutor. Still, its logical implications are counterfactually permissible (that is, iff the conclusion were true). A failed argument occurs when there is direct contradiction and the logical implications are counterfactually impermissible (logical incoherence or the interlocutor’s worldview provides a better explanation).

Since good arguments are relative to the person, no particular argument is universally categorized within an order. This may help explain why we see people we disagree with as “obviously wrong,” and are tempted to resort to psychoanalyzing them. The de facto objections themselves are relative to the person, which leads to our next point.

De Jure/De Facto Distinction

In Warranted Christian Belief, Alvin Plantinga made a crucial distinction when discussing the rationality of belief in God. De jure objections argue that a specific belief is irrational because of psychological or moral factors. For example, Sigmund Freud argued that belief in God is irrational because we are prone to wanting to build the perfect father in our minds. Thus, God the Father is nothing but a comforting fantasy that helps us navigate this messed-up world. This is not too far from saying that belief in God results from fear.

A de facto objection is where the truth of the proposition is attacked. Like saying Santa Claus cannot exist because such a creature would break the laws of physics.

Alvin Plantinga argued that we must first provide a de facto objection before asserting a de jure one. This is because belief in God is properly basic, that is, a fundamental belief. These fundamental beliefs would also include the reliability of my senses and belief in the external world. There is no need to argue for the reliability of my senses, and likewise, there is no reason to argue for the existence of God. To undermine either belief, there must be an argument against the proposition itself first before we start throwing out de jure objections.

As we’ve shown, a good argument is functional. Thus, a good de facto objection to God’s existence attacks the proposition itself within the framework of the theist. Currently, the Evidential Problem of Evil remains the prominent argument against theism. These arguments point out that there are instances of intense suffering which seem gratuitous. All we need for the argument to succeed is to show that a particular instance of intense suffering would’ve likely not occurred if God existed. But since it still occurred, God likely doesn’t exist.

By my lights, this vindicates the theodicy of multiple (or cumulative) theodicies, wherein both explanations and arguments for the existence of God defeat the Evidential Problem of Evil. The argument intrinsically fails to bolster or provide a better alternative for the theist’s worldview if the theist holds that multiple theodicies (like free will, the grand narrative, and soul-building), in conjunction with arguments for the existence of God, succeed. The philosopher Joe Schmid recently converted to Catholicism because of the vast amount of evidence for miracles that vindicate Catholicism. With the fact that naturalism fails to explain the data of Catholic miracles, and in conjunction with the success of arguments for theism, the Evidential Argument from Evil would fall under the third-order of argumentation.

Conclusion

It’s been six years since I became a believer, and it’s been a little over a year now since I converted to Catholicism. Sure, there are seasons of anxiety, and certainly seasons of sin. But overall, I’m much happier than I was for the first 20 years of my life. Was it all because of some sort of fear of death, hell, or nihilism? I believe we have an answer: no, because there are no good arguments for atheism. The objection that belief in God originates from fear is not a de facto objection, but it remains a failed de jure one. The idea that there are good de facto objections to God and that I should accept them is absurd and is inferior to the framework of argumentation I put forth.