April 16, 2008 | By Paul F. South
NEW ORLEANS -- Are humans hard-wired for religious faith?
Atheists from Karl Marx to Sigmund Freud to Richard Dawkins claimed that religious faith is a man-made opiate of the masses, a cultural virus which plagues the human mind.
Christian scholar and theologian Paul Copan takes a different view, taking to task those who question the existence of the human soul and even the very existence of God. While biology and psychology may play a role in religious faith, it does not prove the non-existence of God, nor does it diminish the existence or role of the human soul.
“God has placed eternity in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11) so it makes sense that we would be hard-wired with God-ward inclinations,” Copan said. “That natural processes contribute to religious belief doesn’t disprove the existence of God.”
Copan made the remarks in a recent lecture at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, part of a series of lectures surrounding the seminary’s annual Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum. Copan holds the Pleger Family Chair in Philosophy and Ethics at Palm Beach Atlantic University.
Backers of research in what is called the Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) seek to transform religious belief into a psychological or biological process, Copan said. But Christians can turn Dawkins’ argument that religion is a virus, “on its head.
“If God has designed us in such a way that these sorts of processes enable us to come to know God personally, we’re actually at our cognitive best when our faculties direct us to a true belief in God,” Copan said.
He added: “Despite religious superstition and extremism, natural processes partly contributing to the formation of religious belief are not at odds with God’s existence; indeed such processes may indicate that our minds are properly functioning –according to the way they’ve been designed.”
The existence of God is a better explanation for the creation of the universe than the atheist view that the universe came to existence without cause from nothing.
“The better unifying explanation is a supremely valuable, supremely aware, reasoning, truthful powerful, intelligent, beautiful being.
Copan also took issue with those who deny the existence of the human soul. Christians have long believed that humans are comprised of the physical body and the soul, in which human identity continues, even after the physical body dies. CSR, however, links personhood to the physical. Acceptance of the CSR view packs dangerous consequences.
“Besides the existence of God, the existence that of the soul is also at stake and the suggestion that our choices, behavior, reasoning and beliefs are physically determined is hard to escape,” Copan said. “The clear result (of rejecting the soul’s existence) is undermining of robust freedom of the will, moral responsibility and the human ability to reason and seek truth.”
Copan argues the atheist argument that theology is “a useful fiction” -- or worse, a harmful delusion – falls short of telling us why the religious impulse is so deeply imbedded.
“The reasons humans persist in looking beyond the finite realm in search of the source of coherence, order, morality, meaning and guidance for life is because this realm doesn’t contain it,” Copan said. “Humans, though embodied, are moral, spiritual beings with the capacity for self-transcendence upon our world and our condition; that in turn enables us to search for a world-transcending God.”
Copan was the featured speaker at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Philosophical Society at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. The EPS gathering on campus coincided with the seminary’s annual Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum, which featured theologians Bart Ehrman of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Daniel Wallace of Dallas Theological Seminary in a dialogue on the reliability of the New Testament.
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