Why Aren’t All Thoughtful People Believers?
An engineer’s case against the fallacy of a theological system that can stand on its own.
If it weren’t such a well-known fact, it might be puzzling that thoughtful people who genuinely strive to get to the root of things so often don’t end up becoming my fellow Catholics — or even Christians at all. In my experience, not only does the evidence seem weighty enough to substantiate the hypothesis that the Lord Jesus is the Son of God, but believing the opposite makes life a fairly irrational endeavor to continue at all. If the Lord Jesus were a product to sell, He should be the easiest thing to promote, since everyone is hardwired to long for Him. He should be every marketer’s dream!
The more I think about it, the more plausible it seems that it is we the believers who do such an effective job of concealing the truth of the Gospel, which hides in plain sight. By the same token, there is also hope that this situation won’t last forever, and that a return to normal may come relatively soon. To explore the phenomenon more closely, let me analyze what may be the most effective of the fallacies on offer.
I would call it the fallacy of a theological system that can stand on its own.
I encounter variants of such construction all the time. It is so popular that it is not only served to those who ask questions, but often expected by them as well. The only problem is that, having received the desired answer, they cannot believe it, internalize it, and live as if it were true — and thus be faithful to it. And there is no faith without being faithful.
The outline of these explanations is always the same. A set of logical statements is presented that, taken together and cleverly analyzed, can prove that God is who we Catholics claim Him to be. The argument usually rests on a few axioms that are hard to dispute and quite reasonable to believe, which are then logically combined to generate new conclusions. In the end, these yield a novel and unexpected truth about God — one that seems equally hard to deny.
A short example of such a construction is the well-known Kalam cosmological argument, which goes like this:
Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
The universe began to exist.
Therefore, the universe has a cause.
The conclusion drawn here is obviously that the universe must have had a creator who chose to bring it into being.
I deliberately chose a short example, yet there are whole books full of such eloquence and rhetorical craftsmanship. It’s hard to argue against these statements. They follow logic flawlessly, the assumptions are ones no reasonable person would oppose, and the individual terms clearly describe objects and processes in the real world.
I’m an engineer. That means I’m one of the many people whose vocation is to use real-world objects to achieve customers’ goals. From years of practical experience, I have to say that I’ve unfortunately encountered far too many cases where such perfect logical constructions failed terribly on first contact with reality. I’m sorry I have to say this, but reality tends to evade our attempts to bring it under control. It constantly invents new dimensions, edge cases, side effects, and double meanings. Over the years, I’ve come to a strange realization:
The more elegant and logical the explanation sounds, the greater the failure when you let it face reality.
“Why, then, do you engineers use logic at all, if it’s so useless?” you may ask. To which I have to say that it isn’t useless at all. There are many perfectly logical explanations that work reliably; you just never know in advance which of them will survive contact with reality.
A standalone theological system has one obvious advantage: it needs no external validation, since it can stand on its own. Yet that doesn’t make it better in the eyes of people like me. It makes it worse — to us, it’s unacceptable. Some would even say it feels detached, or cowardly. Many of these critics invoke science and, for lack of a better word, say these systems feel unscientific to them. In turn, they are usually attacked by my fellow apologists for their alleged scientism. It’s all one big misunderstanding.
What these people in fact demand is to be able to test the explanation in reality. Not just once, in a subjective, personal way, but repeatedly. Many apologists say this is impossible, but it is actually quite possible. It is what the Lord Jesus does in the Gospel; it is why I was already half convinced after reading it for the first time. He is no philosopher and constructs no standalone mental models; He shows examples and challenges you to test the claim for yourself, to find out whether it’s true.
Christianity can never be lived alone; it’s a religion that can only exist in a real community. Creating a community is even one of the visible effects of the Eucharist, which is absolutely central to all Catholics. And the community exists, among other things, so that everyone who shares life with others can see — not only in their own life, but in the lives of those around them — that what the Lord Jesus says in the Gospel really does stand the test of reality. It gives evidence that we all experience God in remarkably similar ways, too striking to be accidental. This is the kind of scientific proof — a repeatable reality check — that the community provides. Only upon such experience can anyone live a faith one can lean on.
So please, if we can, let’s stop using standalone theological systems for evangelization. I’m not suggesting that we throw Thomism and similar systems out the window; many of them are good analytical tools for those who already believe. But since theology is often described as a mere commentary on the Gospel, I’d suggest we all do our best to respect the fundamentally scientific method laid out there by an engineer (then called a carpenter), the Lord Jesus, our God.
And for those who can’t bring themselves to believe, who keep searching for the ultimate elegant explanation that will finally switch on the light bulb in their head — let’s help them reset their expectations. Let’s explain that they will have to step out of their private comfort zone and draw physically closer to their parish, or another such community. At least if they want a science-grade level of confidence to build their faith on.
Christianity is no ideology, no set of axioms, not even a set of values. Let’s stop misrepresenting the Church as such and focus on explaining the absolutely essential part — the community. In fact, Christianity is an objective, scientific endeavor, in the widest sense of the word. It’s just that you don’t test your hypotheses behind the doors of a lab — you test them by sharing your life with people you love.
A note from the author: I've applied this same engineering lens to Catholic doctrine as a whole in about 150 pages. If you keep searching for an explanation that survives contact with reality, check out my book Design Patterns of Catholic God.