[Originally published July 30, 2007]

Via Dr. Joan Bushwell’s Chimpanzee Refuge, we have a good example of the “superstitious” apologetic for faith in God:

My relationship with God isn’t based on wishful thinking, it’s based on the fact that I actually am blessed to have a relationship with God. Basically, you must simply dismiss any supernaturally-caused experiences I’ve had or events I’ve witnessed that are reasonably unlikely to occur through sheer chance and coincidence without divine guidance as being simply by-products of a sort of mental illness.

Notice what his “evidence” for God is: “experiences…that are reasonably unlikely to occur through sheer chance.” In other words, his faith isn’t based on God actually showing up in the real world. If he had a genuine real-world manifestation of God, like say a video or audio recording of God preaching, then he’d have it up on YouTube or something so that the rest of us could be edified. But no, nothing like that. His faith is based on his own subjective opinion that some of the things which had happened to him were “reasonably unlikely” to have happened through chance alone.

This is a classic case of superstition in action. The believer takes certain ordinary, everyday events (which, by the way, aren’t even supernatural/miraculous events), and attributes them to an unseen Cause, though he can neither document the connection between this purported Cause and his experiences, nor even give a reasonably specific description of what the connection would be if it did exist. It’s all just magic, you see (a “miracle,” if you prefer). Whenever you “explain” real-world events by ascribing them to an invisible cause that “magically” (and indetectably) caused them to happen, you are being superstitious. You’re being no different from the Little League ball player who claims his team won because he wore his “lucky” (magic) undershorts to the game.

The appeal to “events…that are reasonably unlikely to occur through sheer chance” is a common red herring in this sort of apologetic. All it takes for some event to appear “unlikely” is for people to make inaccurate guesses as to what the actual odds are. That’s an embarrassingly common experience. People routinely miscalculate the odds of something happening, especially since no actual calculation even happens. People expect things to turn out a certain way, and when they don’t, they must either admit their inability to predict the future with 100% accuracy, or else invoke some kind of divine intervention to explain how they could have been so surprised. Unfortunately, a lot of people prefer the latter alternative.
It doesn’t take a miracle to produce a chain of events that surprises people. Each of us has a common sense, intuitive ability to judge what we should and should not expect to see happen. This intuitive sense, while often correct, is not infallible or omniscient, and is not infrequently wrong. When it’s wrong, we’re surprised–things turned out in a way that we thought was “reasonably unlikely” to occur. And that’s when the superstitious among us cry “Miracle!” But it’s not a miracle at all, it’s just ordinary human fallibility and pride. We think that things should turn out the way we expect, and we’re so conceited that we think it takes divine intervention to make them turn out differently.

This is not “mental illness” of any kind. It’s simply human fallibility and superstition. The future scares people by being unpredictable, and people console themselves by believing that life will only surprise them when a loving God supernaturally intervenes to change things for the better. Such a nice, comfy view! But sadly, people to take this easy road to perceived security often find themselves at a loss when things like 9/11 happen. And even more tragically, they tend to react in extreme, and sometimes violent ways to such disillusionments. But that’s a subject for another time.