Can we hope that God exists? If so, should we?

I do not believe that God exists, but I hope that I am wrong.  In fact, everyone should hope that God exists: believers (perhaps with nagging doubts), agnostics, atheists, and those who haven’t given the God question much thought. The evangelists of cross and crescent and their antagonists, especially those atheists still called “new,” have had a well-publicized, widely published, and mostly tiresome debate whether belief in God is reasonable. Completely ignored is a question on which even the most dogmatic theist and virulent atheist might possibly agree: is it reasonable to hope that a powerful intelligence lovingly created us and everything else? See my Hope to God
https://scribl.com/books/E9HZ8/hope-to-god

God, optimistically understood, is worth at least wishing for because the reality he fashioned would both make sense  to and be congenial for beings like us who are capable of suffering, enjoying, remembering, and reflecting on our condition and our future. We would be a special part of the universe, as all religions have maintained. We might even continue to exist in some way after death.  

Most of my book, “Hope to God,” is devoted to showing that we can have more than a mere wish that there was such a God; we can have a well justified hope. Yes, it has been a long while since science included God on its list of probably existing things. Research has produced knockout arguments against much that is in the various scriptures, but of God’s existence science can claim no more than,“We have no need of that hypothesis.” There are, however, some points on which it appears that science might well be less than complete. Why is there something rather than nothing? What makes this instant now? How is it that consciousness is so different from apples and planets? Then there is the fact that millions of sincere and competent people have reported an experience of God. Perhaps these are all the equivalent of Elvis sightings, but it would be gross overstatement to say that psychologists have shown that there is nothing but delusion behind each and every one of these reports.  

I take no position in the book on whether the facts make belief in God unreasonable, but I argue strenuously that neither facts nor philosophical demonstrations defeat the reasonableness of hope that God exists. In the last part of the book I trace out some consequences of hope for God’s existence for living one’s life and for public policy touching religion.

If you are interested in any part or parts of this manuscript, just make a request via my Dartmouth email, which can be easily found, I think.

Table of Contents:

PREFACE.. 3

 1. INTRODUCTION FOR ATHEISTS. 6

 2. INTRODUCTION FOR BELIEVERS. 8

 3. WHY HOPE?. 12

     A. Intrinsic Goodness of the Existence of God. 14

     B. Cosmic Meaning and the Existence of God. 16

     C. Life After Death. 19

     D. Plural Gods and Other Possible Objects of Hope. 21

 4. SKEPTICISM AND RESPONSIBLE HOPE.. 22

     A.  Symmetrical Skepticism... 22

     B.  William James and the Will to Believe. 25

 5. HOPE AND THE DURABLE MYSTERIES. 27

     A. The Existence of Something Rather than Nothing. 27

     B. The Order of the Universe and its Accessibility. 29

     C. Time. 29

     D.  Consciousness. 32

     E.  Other Possible Mysteries. 35

     F.  Not Mysteries But Nonsense?. 35

 6. COMPLEXITY AND DESIGN; GAPS AND HOPE. 36

     A.  Complex Biological Systems and Gaps in Explanation. 37

     B.  The Ultimate 747 Argument. 41

     C.  The Friendly Universe. 45

 7. HOPE FROM EXPERIENCE. 50

     A.  Visions and Voices. 52

     B.  Direct Awareness of God. 54

     C.  Confirmation in the Transformation of Lives. 56

     D.  An Overview of Religious Experience and of the Many Believers. 57

 8. HOPE FROM MIRACLES?. 59

     A.  Scriptural Miracles. 60

     B.  Medical Miracles. 64

     C.  Signs. 67

  9. A HOPE VERSION OF PASCAL’S WAGER. 70

10. HOPE IN A HIDDEN GOD. 73

11. HOPE DESPITE THE SCRIPTURES. 81

12. HOPE DESPITE EVIL. 86

     A. Moral Evil. 86

     B.  Natural Evil. 87

     C. The Dark Side of Religion. 92

13. AN ECONOMY OF HOPE.. 99

14. THE TENSION BETWEEN HOPE AND DISBELIEF. 101

     A. Why it is Wrong to Cease to Hope. 102

     B. Why it May Be Impossible to Come to Belief or to Deepen it. 104

     C. Living with the Tension between Hope and Disbelief or Weak Belief 106

15. THE CONTENT OF HOPE.. 107

     A.  Scriptural Expressions of Hope. 107

     B.  The Content of Hope and the Content of Belief. 111

     C.  A Method for Hope. 111

     D.  Hope in a Good God. 112

     E.  Hope for an Afterlife. 114

16. HOPE AND THE BELIEVER.. 119

     A.   Hope as a Corollary. 119

     B.   Avoiding the Deflationary use of “Hope”. 120

     C.  Testing Hope and Doctrine against Each Other. 123

     D.  Broadening the Conversation and the Scope of Evangelism... 125

     E.  Hope as a Backstop against Doubts. 125

17. HOPE AND THE UNBELIEVER.. 126

     A.  The Atheist at Prayer. 126

     B.  Which House of Worship, if Any?. 129

     C.  The Sticking Points – Doctrinal Qualifications. 130

     D.  Proselytizing. 132

     E.  Rearing Children with Hope. 132

18. HOPE, VALUES, AND RELIGION. 133

     A. The Independence of Morality from God. 133

     B.  Values and Meanings. 138

     C.  An Approach to Scripture. 141

     D. Hope and the Fundamentalist Tide. 142

19. HOPE AND TOLERANCE. 143

      A. Church and State. 143

      B. Being Civil and Not. 148

20. CONCLUSION. 157