Rational Faith: The Reasonable Choice Over Chance and Atheism

I made an interesting discovery at Westover Field in Massachusetts when I was base chaplain there during the war. An organizer of a certain religious group, not a Christian group, came on the field to care for the young men of the Air Force that belonged to his denomination. One day he greeted me and obviously had a very bad cold, so I said, "Mr. Carey, how's your cold?" He blew his nose and said, "I don't have a cold." I said, "I'm sorry, I thought it's not hay fever this time of the year; there's snow on the ground." "Oh," he said, "you see, in our denomination we don't believe there is such a thing as a cold. I have the illusion of a cold," as I see. Well, I said, "I hope you'll get over the illusion."

Next week when he came back, he looked as if he was just having the tail end of a cold, so I was about to say, "Glad your cold's getting better," when suddenly I remembered that he didn't have a cold. So I said, "How is the illusion coming along?" "Well," he said, "it's almost gone." And he was quite serious. You say, was that some ignoramus that had never been beyond the third grade? No, no, no, this was a university graduate, but he chose to believe that disease doesn't exist, just as his group chooses to believe that there's no such thing as sin. It's all an illusion.

I would like to point out to you that faith, Christian faith, is a gift of God, but from the human point of view, believing is a choice. You choose to believe. You can choose to believe what you want to believe. If, for example, you wish to believe that the earth is flat, you may so choose to believe. There's a group in Zion, Illinois, who to this day believe that the world is flat. They believe it's got four corners, and they believe that if you get too far off towards one corner, you may have the danger of falling off into the abyss. They choose so to believe. If you showed them a picture taken from a great altitude showing the curvature of the earth, they would refuse to believe that. So I would like you to understand clearly that believing is a choice, and you choose to believe.

Now, your choice up to this present moment is based upon your training. You were brought up in a Christian home, or you chose a Christian environment, or perhaps a Sunday school or church. But when you come up against some other people's arguments, you may choose to believe otherwise. Unless, of course, you have that abiding Christian faith. I find that I had to go through the middle. I had to run the gauntlet when I went to school. And unless going to school is just one big parade for you, one big joke, you're going to run into intellectual difficulties also.

A pilot came to me once, and he said, "Tell me, chaplain, why does a man have to have a religious faith, or a philosophy, for that matter?" I said, "Why not?" "Well," he said, "couldn't everything begin by chance?" I said, "What do you mean?" "Well," he said, "I was told when I was in school that perhaps a wandering star came near our sun and tore some pieces off the sun, and the pieces cooled down and became planets. One of them was the earth, and life appeared on the earth, and there you have it." I said, "All by chance?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Well, that's one theory. I don't know how accepted it is today. But the thing I want to get at is, you said all by chance?" He said, "Yes." I said, "What do you know about chance?" "Well," he said, "as much as anyone."

So I took out a coin, and I tossed it, and I said, "Heads or tails?" He replied, "Heads." I said, "What's the chance of getting heads?" He said, "One out of two." I'll write this. "What's the chance of getting two heads in succession?" He said, "One out of four." Then I had a more important question. "What's the chance of getting three heads in succession?" One out of, he was about to say six, then he said, "One out of eight." It's a multiplied chance. I said, "That's right. It's the probability of the first occasion multiplied by the probability of the second occasion. I take it now, for instance, you know that if our church had a raffle, I'm taking a far-fetched, impossible example, and supposing 800 members each put in a dollar, and winner take all, supposing, can you imagine this happening? Imagine Dr. Thomas proposing this. And winner take all. What's the chance of your winning $800? It's one out of 800. You see? But now supposing there are two prizes of equal, now you begin to get the idea. It's a multiplied chance."

So I said to him, "Do you know anything about dice?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "What's the chance of getting a six from your roll of dice?" He said, "One out of six." "Two sixes in succession?" He said, "One out of 36." I said, "Chance of getting three sixes in succession?" He said, "One out of 216." "Chance of getting four sixes in succession?" Well, he said, "Don't tell me, one out of 1,296." I said, "Chance of getting 12 sixes in succession?" Well, he said, "I'll let you tell me." I said, "One out of 2,176,782,336." He took my word for it. Now I said, "What do you think would be the chance of getting diced or rolled the same way all the time?" Man, he said, "That's fantastic." I said, "Exactly. And yet you talk about chance. To get a little piece of wood with simply four possibilities, or six possibilities, to roll the same way 12 times, the chance is one out of two billion something. And yet you talk about chance explaining the multiply complex universe that we have today. I said, I don't think it works."

Let's take something a little more complicated. Take the human body. When your life began, it began as a single cell, which doubled after fertilization, became four cells, doubled again, doubled again, until it kept on growing, until it became thousands of cells. Finally, it became millions of cells. But these cells immediately seemed to follow some kind of plan, each taking much the same shape, fulfilling much the same pattern of organization, until finally you were born. Now those millions of cells cooperate in a complex pattern.

If I were to send a telegram to Boston, I would go to the Western Union, take a telegraph form, write it out, probably tear it up again, write another one out, score out a few words, shorten it as much as I could, finally take it to the office desk clerk, and then I would pay a certain amount, leave the telegram, she would take it, type it, give it to a telegraphist, it would be sent to Boston, it would be decoded there, and finally delivered. Can you imagine all that happening by chance? Can you imagine, for instance, the underground cables being there by chance? Or the telegraph poles being there by chance? Or the telephone instruments there? Or for instance, the girl getting her wages by chance? Some accountant working out the wages by chance? No, no, you say, that's fantastic. It takes a complex organization to send a telegram.

Now some people who tell us that everything began by chance, when they tried to explain the human body, they're saying, in effect, if I take a pin and stick it into your leg, a nerve in your leg sends a telegram to your brain saying, "Betty, you've been stabbed." And Betty's brain sends a telegram to her vocal cords and she says, "Ah," and it happens just like that. Do you mean that happened by chance? No, it's a free country. To believe is a choice. You can believe in chance if you want to, but I insist it's unreasonable. Or, if we put it in a comparative way, it's the most unreasonable thing I've ever heard, that the world could have begun by chance.

Now, chance, of course, is an alternative to the Christian faith. So let's say we have shown that chance is not the most reasonable. We'll turn now to atheism. Perhaps it would be wise to define all these terms. An atheist is a man who says there is no God. He denies God. Atheism, of course, is not the same as agnosticism, but for the time being we'll treat atheism just like agnosticism.

By the way, one thing I should stop to say regarding this question of chance, it's an afterthought that occurs to me. It's well worth giving to you. I was at the University of Washington, I think it was, when an atomic scientist came up to me afterwards and he said, "Oh, your illustration about the coin and the dice is very interesting, but it's quite superfluous." I said, "What do you mean by that?" Well, he said, "In physics, statistically speaking, there is no such thing as chance." And I suddenly saw what he meant. When you burn hydrogen in oxygen, you get H2O. When you burn hydrogen in oxygen 100 times, you get water 100 times. If you burn hydrogen in oxygen 1,000 times, you get water 1,000 times. If you burn hydrogen in oxygen 1,000,000 times, you get water 1,000,000 times. It's so exact that if you burned hydrogen in oxygen and got something else, such as a trace of neon, and took it to your instructor or professor, he'd say there's some impurities crept in somewhere. He would refuse to believe that the burning of pure hydrogen and pure oxygen would give you anything but pure water.

Likewise, if you take caustic soda and hydrochloric acid, two deadly opposite poisons, and mix them together, you'll get a big fizz, but you get sodium chloride, which is table salt, which you can put on your dinner, if you wish to. If you mix hydrochloric acid and caustic soda 1,000,000 times, you'll get sodium chloride 1,000,000 times, nothing else. So you see, statistically speaking, there is no such thing as chance. The idea that you'd get chance some other way, I think, is a fallacy.

Now, if somebody says yes, but why do you say statistically speaking? Well, I'm giving myself an out on one point. For instance, if you take a piece of uranium, you know that certain of the atoms have a half-life. There isn't anyone who can predict which ones are going to break down in atomic reaction. There isn't anyone who can make that prediction. But you can tell statistically that with a pound of uranium, it will happen in such and such a way that it will have an exact half-life, and that a certain amount will turn to lead. You can tell it exactly. As a matter of fact, the carbon-14 method of dating ancient remains is based on the regularity of the half-life, so nobody can tell which of the atoms of the carbon-14 are going to break down. You can say that carbon-14 will break down in a regular way, so you can say that statistically speaking, in physics, there is no such thing as chance. I say that in case there's some advanced physics students here who wondered about this question of atomic behavior.

Now, coming back to the point of atheism, we've already defined atheism for you. A pilot came up to me at Morotai, and he said, Chaplain, I believe in the good work you're doing. I mean, I approve the good work you're doing, but I don't believe in it. I said, what do you mean by that? Well, he said, some of these GIs get scared during an air raid. They need a little bit of religion to help them. But he said, I'm an atheist. I don't need any religion to help me. I said, are you really an atheist, or are you just beating your gums together? He said, I'm an atheist. I said, then could I ask you a couple of questions? He said, certainly.

I said, now, the first question is, do you happen to know everything? He said, are you kidding? I said, no, I'm quite serious. Well, he said, Professor Albert Einstein says that scientists as a whole are on the fringe of knowledge. I'll be quite modest, and I'll admit that I'm on the fringe of the fringe. I said, good. Now, the second question is this. If you don't happen to know everything, is it conceivable that God could exist outside what you know? He says, come again? I said, how much do you know, man? Well, he said, in relation to what? I said, in relation to total knowledge. 10%? He says, less than 1%. I said, well, let's just say 1% for the sake of argument. Do you admit that it's possible that God could exist outside your 1% of knowledge? Well, he said, theoretically, yes. I said, you're a most remarkable atheist. Five minutes ago, you said there is no God. Now you say, well, it's possible there is one. As a matter of fact, he was allowing me 99 chances to one note for the possibility. He said, yes, but I said, I'm sorry, I have to go off to the hospital. I felt we'd reached saturation point for the moment because we'd argued for it. We'd just been beating around the bush there. I said, well, I'll see you later. And off I went.

You know, when I was 13 years of age, walking through the Ormond Park in Belfast, I found myself at the top of my class, in fact, at the top of the class in school. And I felt so pleased with myself, I thought, I wonder if there's anything else for me to learn. This is when I was 13. Well, you get over that, of course. There are some freshmen and sophomores at UCLA who haven't got over it yet. They're just sailing steadily on. When they get near their final year, they change their opinion slightly. However, as far as I was concerned, I had to admit that the more I knew, the greater my ignorance. And I was saying to my wife as we were driving yesterday, what has amazed me is what the world has discovered this past 50 years. You could say that in the days of Queen Elizabeth I, people lived much as they did in the days of the Romans. They didn't have automobiles or telephones or anything like that. But suddenly, this past 50 years, we've seen such a terrific rise in invention, discovery, and application of science. I said, what will it be like in another 50 years if the Lord tarries? What will it be like? But I think you'll all agree with me. If in your short lifetime, scientists have discovered so much, you'd have to agree there's a tremendous lot more to discover. It's astounding.

Therefore, for anyone to say I'm an atheist means he's claiming to be so infallible, utterly infallible, that he says there is no God, there's no possibility of a God. My pilot friend came back to see me a week later, as I felt sure he would. He said, Chaplain, I've been thinking a lot while I've been flying back on missions. By the way, he was a pilot of a pursuit plane, single-seater, so he had time to think after the mission was over and the tenseness was relieved. And he said, you know, you're quite right. No man knows enough to be an atheist. But he said, I just used the wrong word. I'm not an atheist. I'm an agnostic. I said, congratulations. Oh, he said, you like that? I said, yes, that's fine. I said, last week you said I'm an atheist. There is no God. But you couldn't prove it. You're in a very weak position. Now you say I'm an agnostic. I do not know whether there's a God or not. You're in a much better position because you're telling the truth. You don't know.

The word agnosticism comes from the Greek word agnoskos, which just simply means I do not know. I think the term was coined by Thomas Huxley, who used the word agnostic for one who was not bold enough to deny the existence of God, but who said there was no evidence for the existence of God. In other words, he didn't know. I said, congratulations. But I said, what kind of agnostic are you? Oh, he said, are there different kinds? I said, yes, there are two main kinds. I said, just as among Christians there are Roman Catholics and Protestants, so among agnostics there are two main denominations, ordinary agnostics and ornery agnostics. He said, what do you mean by that crack? Well, I said, the ordinary agnostic says I don't know whether there's a God or not. The ornery one says I don't know, and you don't know, and nobody knows, and nobody ever will know. I said, what kind of agnostic are you? I said, because if you say that you know that I don't know, I'm going to ask you, how do you know that I don't know? He said, I'll quit right there. I'm a plain, ordinary agnostic. I said, congratulations.

He seemed to resent my congratulations. He said, look, what about the arguments for agnosticism? I said, there aren't any. Come along now, come along. He said, Professor Julian Huxley's a very brilliant man, and he's an agnostic. I said, granted, Professor Julian Huxley's one of the most brilliant men in his field, which is biology. But how could any man be brilliant in agnosticism, which means not knowingness? Now, for example, I'll ask the secretary of the group here. I took a course in Chicago in hermeneutics. Betty, what do you know about hermeneutics? Pardon? You don't even know what it means? Well, you don't know anything about hermeneutics, you're granted. And Linda, what do you know about hermeneutics? Well, here are two young ladies who don't know anything about hermeneutics. Which of the two is more brilliant in not knowing? Would you start saying what education Betty had in Melbourne and what Linda's having in Los Angeles to try and decide which of them is the more brilliant in not knowing what hermeneutics is? What has that got to do with it? If Julian Huxley's a brilliant man in biology, but he says he's an agnostic, he doesn't know whether there's a god or not, how could he be brilliant in that? Imagine saying to one of your professors after an examination, how did I do? And the professor says, let me tell you, you're really brilliant in the things that you don't know. That's not much of a compliment.

Well, you see, when a man says, I don't know, he disqualifies himself. He utterly disqualifies himself. You see, one of the troubles is that people won't accept evidence. Supposing everyone here were blind, and I said, I'd like to talk to you about color. You say, well, we vote 26 to 1 that we don't accept the eyesight as evidence. Now, some people will say, we refuse to accept any evidence whatsoever unless we can weigh it, smell it, taste it, feel it, take a specific gravity or atomic weight, which really puts you in a difficult way. They simply say there's no such thing as spiritual evidence. By the way, I mentioned the ornery type of agnostic, the objectionable type, who says, I don't know and you don't know either. I had a rather painful experience at Northwestern University. I was taking a course in historical bibliography and criticism.

The professor that taught that course took ill and died, and the man who took his place called himself a secularist. He was an agnostic, possibly an atheist. He was a renegade candidate for the ministry. He had taken his Bachelor of Divinity and turned against the whole thing, and he seemed to take particular delight in picking upon believing Christians in a class and grilling them. Do you know what I mean by grilling them? Frying them in a pan. When he discovered that I was a Baptist minister, he was going to have fun at my expense.

So, he said, you believe in God. Now, I should explain why the subject came up. He gave me a paper to write on the influence of geography upon history. Among my conclusions, I said it was remarkable that the world's three great revealed religions began in the little land bridge between Europe, Asia, and Africa, the center of the land mass of the world. I thought that was most significant. That's why I said, so, you believe in God.

Well, he said, I want you to go to the blackboard. I went to the blackboard. He said, I want you to diagram your beliefs. Now, if I gave you a piece of chalk and said, come to the blackboard and draw a diagram of what you believe, you'd really wonder where to begin, wouldn't you? So I said, what do you want me to do, sir? He said, put a dot on the blackboard. So I obliged him. Oh, beside the dot on the blackboard. Now, he said, give me a definition of science. I said, well, science is, I said, science, science, well, I said, we both know what science is. He said, I'd like to know what you think it is. Well, I said, science is the realm of proven fact or demonstrated knowledge. Good, he said, good, that's good. The word I want is the word knowledge. He said, Latin, scientia, for knowledge. Is there any limit to human knowledge? I said, yes, sir. He said, take your chalk and draw a circle theoretically enclosing all of science. I was playing for time, you know how we do. So I said, what scale shall I use, sir? He said, never mind the scale, draw a circle. He said, why don't you put the dot in the middle of the circle? Well, I said, because I know more in some directions than others. Good, he said.

Now, inside that circle, theoretically speaking, is every known fact. Give me an example of a scientific fact. Well, I said, oxygen is 21% of the atmosphere. I was hoping he wouldn't ask me to go on very far. He said, quite, it's quite so, quite so. Now, he said, how do you know? I said, well, I have proved it. Where? I said, in the lab. Good. Now, he said, inside that circle is every known fact, every bit of knowledge. Is God inside that circle or outside that circle? And I suddenly saw he had me on the horns of a dilemma. If I said God was inside the circle of science, he would say, prove the existence of God the way you proved the existence of oxygen. How could you do that? How could you take his specific gravity, his atomic weight? Would you use litmus paper to see whether or not he were present? Or use a spectrograph to see what color he is? The thing's fantastic. So finally, I wrote the letter G outside the circle. See my professor's face, he had his thumbs in his lapels, so he said, an honest man come to judgment. Now, he said, God is outside the realm of knowledge, your definition. A man can think about God, he can pray to God, he can talk about God, but can any man know God?

I've learned one thing from experience, and that is, when I get into a difficulty such as this, I examine the basis, the premises of the reasoning. I'm Irish, and as you know, Irish people are not brilliant philosophers. In fact, there was only one Irish philosopher of any reputation, that was Berkeley, and he was really an Englishman living in Dublin. The other was George Bernard Shaw, and I don't know whether to call him a philosopher or not, he was more of a playwright, but he was certainly a brilliant man. But being Irish, I'm not good at philosophy, but I am good at re-examining things and see if I'm not being carried along where sometimes a philosopher might fall into the trap that another philosopher has set.

What was wrong with my diagram? He said, well, what do you mean re-examining the premises? I knew of a fellow in California who was doing a doctor's thesis on alcoholism, you know, what makes people get drunk. And he found an old fellow in Skid Row who was willing to do all the research for him for nothing, just for the raw materials. The old fellow got drunk on Monday. Tuesday, he got drunk with rum and soda, and on Wednesday with gin and soda. On Thursday, he got drunk with brandy and soda, but on Friday, in spite of Senator McCarthy, who was alive at that time, he got drunk with vodka and soda. He was quite a broad-minded fellow, was good at algebra, of course. He said, what's the common denominator? What makes him get drunk? Obviously, the soda. That sounds good, doesn't it? But it's nonsense. And yet there are people who, if they hear a theory stated or couched in scientific terms, they will swallow it, hook, line, and sinker. Why? Well, they like to keep up with the crowd, that's one thing. Sometimes they're afraid to say they didn't quite follow that, but they'll accept it if it's put over them.

And that's one thing you'll find an unbelieving professor very ready to do. He will actually academically bully you. Now, some are not like that, but there are some, for instance, who actually have it in for Christian students, and as soon as they know they've got a believer in the class, I heard of one at the University of Kansas the other day, he will actually bully you in an academic way, put something over on you, instead of trying to get down to your level and explain it to you to see whether or not you can follow his reasoning. So you go away saying, my professor said thus and so. Now, don't misunderstand, the majority of university professors I've met, whether believers or unbelievers, were gentlemen. But you get the occasional bully who tries to take advantage of physiology to put something over on a student. So you've got to be careful there.

Now, look at my diagram again. What's wrong with it? The dot in the middle of the circle. What would you say is wrong with it? Well, what right did he have to make me put myself as a little dot within the realm of science in the first place? Well, it's quite true if you're to cremate me. You could sell me to a chemist for the carbon and calcium and phosphorus in my body for about, I suppose, $1.17. Dr. Evers would go for about $2.24. But is that all there is of me? When Winston Churchill stood in London and said, we shall fight in the beaches, we shall fight in the streets, we shall never surrender, what chemical formula said that? He said that was the spirit of Winston Churchill. And what's the specific gravity of a spirit? Nobody can say. So I took my chalk and I drew myself as an axis, not as a dot. Because although my body and things pertaining thereto are all known to science, science can say nothing about things spiritual, nothing whatsoever. And I have a spirit. And I connected myself outside the circle of science by an arrow with God. Because it's in my spirit that I know God. They that worship him, that really means to contact him spiritually, they that worship him must worship him in spirit. It's only by a spiritual means that we get there.

So I think you could safely say that an agnostic doesn't have a leg to stand on. Rather, you could say he's got nothing to say. Where an atheist contradicts himself, an agnostic disqualifies himself. Now, I'm going to give you just one other point, and we'll not have any discussion today. You can hold your questions for next Sunday. Try and bring some other students along. I want to give you one other point, and that is this question of science and spiritual faith.

I studied under a brilliant geologist at Northwestern, Professor Harold B. Ward, author of some books on meteorology and other things. I asked Professor Ward, is there anything in geology that hinders you believing in God? He said, certainly not. Geology is a study of the crust of the earth, and you wouldn't expect to find God among the sedimentary rocks. I asked a chemist the same sort of question. Anything in chemistry keeps you from believing in God? He said, chemistry is a study of the elements in the compounds, according to the old definition. And he said, we wouldn't expect to find God in a test tube as a residue. I think I can go further and say if you take every science from astronomy to zoology, you'll have to agree that not one science contradicts the idea of God.

A fellow once came to me at a university and said, but why is it you religious people can't prove anything? I said, what do you mean? Well, he said, a mathematician can take you to the blackboard. A biologist can take you to his microscope. An astronomer to his telescope. But you're always talking about faith. This you must take by faith. I said, man, can't you see that true faith is a kind of eyesight?

It says spiritual things are spiritually discerned. I said, supposing this whole class were blind from birth, and I have been asked by the professor in charge to give a lecture on color. So I begin by saying, ladies and gentlemen, color is a manifestation of light. Up goes a hand. Sir, before we go any further, what is light? I said, don't you know what light is? He said, no, sir. Well, light's a kind of radiation. Well, we've heard that, but what's it like? Well, as you know what heat is? Yes, sir. Well, now, just as heat radiates warmth, light makes things visible.

Somebody else raises a hand and says, what is visible? I said, well, so that you can see. But we can't see. We don't know what you mean by that. I said, isn't there anyone in the class that had sight at one time? No, sir. We're all blind from birth. Well, allow me to go on with my lecture. If you let a little beam of light in the window and it strikes a prism of glass, the prism will break up the light into a little spectrum of color on the wall like a rainbow. Up goes another hand. What is a rainbow? Well, it's a rainbow that's caused by the reflection of the sun's rays in the rain cloud. Yes, but what's it like? Well, I said, it's red and blue and green. Somebody said, well, what's the difference between red and blue? I said, red's the color of blood, blue's the color of the sky, green's the color of grass. We've never seen these things. Then another student said, what is the essential characteristic of red? I said, it's redness, I suppose, reddishness. Well, can't you explain further than that? Is red made up of anything? No. Red is the primary color. Then another student said, is it possible to describe color in scientific language without referring to the context of eyesight? Oh, yes. There's a Swedish scientist called Angstrom. He measured the wavelength of color. Red is 7,000 Angstrom units, blue is 4,500 Angstrom units.

Do you think all you blind students would nod in appreciation and say, thank you very much, sir, for explaining what color is in scientific language? Do you think that you would say that? I don't think for one moment. Wouldn't you agree that a poor old washerwoman with the blessing of eyesight knows more about color than a blind mathematician? Likewise, a poor old washerwoman with faith in God knows more about the reason for the universe than the most brilliant unbeliever, no matter about his genius.

It remains for us to consider a couple of other points of view. During World War II, it was my privilege to serve in the United States Air Force. We were stationed on the island of Morotai, where we had landed on D-Day plus three. My tentmate was a medical officer, a noted obstetrician from Philadelphia. We kept our mind off the air raids at night by discussing politics, science, philosophy, religion, anything to keep our mind off the raids. One night he said to me, but now listen, chaplain, God is nothing more than an idea in people's minds. In other words, if you were to talk to a Solomon Islander, ask him about God, he hears the thunder, so he says, that is God. He doesn't understand thunder, and so he simply calls it God. But go to India, talk to an Indian peasant there. You'll find that that Indian peasant doesn't believe that thunder is God, but when an epidemic breaks out, he says, that is God. Travel down to Australia, you'll find educated Australians who don't believe that thunder is a manifestation of God or that epidemics are a manifestation of God, but he believes that God is the great unknown. He said, what I'm trying to prove is that the further you push back the frontier of knowledge, the less you will need the idea of God. God is nothing more than an idea in people's minds.

I said, now I'd like to take up that analogy you've given. Supposing you talk to a Solomon Islander, and you ask him, have you ever heard of King George? He says, yes. Me British subject, me belong King George. But you say, how do you know there is such a person as King George? Have you ever seen King George? He says, no, but me British subject, me belong King George. Well, how do you know there is such a person? He insists, you Melican soldier, me British subject, me belong King George. Then you say, well, what do you think King George is like? That's a fair question. But on the Solomon Islands, the chief of a village has four wives, and the chief of an island has 40 wives, so he thinks of King George in that context. He says, King George, very big chief with 4,000 wives, which is a rather primitive idea of constitutional monarchy.

You travel from the Solomon Islands to India, ask an Indian peasant, have you ever seen King George? No. Who is King George? What is he like? He thinks, in terms of India, the Mughal emperors. He thinks of Rajas and Maharajas. So he says, King George, imperial Raj. King George, British Raj. That's his idea of King George. Talk to an Australian, the Australian says, you Yanks don't understand monarchy. King George doesn't rule us. He reigns. He's a symbol of the Commonwealth. He doesn't tell us what to do. We rule ourselves as much as you do. But he represents us the dignity of the country, much as the flag is a symbol of your country. Then you go to London, and you meet someone in London who said, I went to Cambridge University with King George. You talk to Queen Elizabeth, and Queen Elizabeth says, he is my husband. You talk to an American, he says, well, it's all right for the Limeys to have a king, but we don't need to have a king. We have no objection to them having a king, but we don't believe in monarchy. We are a republic. Then you talk to a Russian, and the Russian says, the monarchy is a cat's paw of the capitalist system, and when we take over, we will destroy the monarchy.

Now there you have seven different ideas of King George. But the important thing is that if there is such a person as King George, what people believe about him doesn't change his character. Then said my friend the doctor, how is anyone to know anything at all about God? I said, God is revealed to us through Jesus Christ.

On another occasion we were landing. I was on an LST, a landing ship, and that morning a colonel of the army was leaning over the tafrail of the ship talking to me. He said, I enjoyed your talk, chaplain. He said, I thought you made some good arguments for God. He said, of course I believe in the existence of God, but I don't believe in Jesus Christ or in prayer or anything like that. I said, what do you mean? Well, he said, I believe that God created the universe. He set the ball rolling, but I don't believe that God interferes in things. He delegates his authority to nature. I said, you'd be interested to know that your point of view is the same as that of Thomas Jefferson, who was a deist. Well, he said, I'm glad to hear that I am in such good company. But I said, there's an essential weakness to your argument.

Look, chaplain, he said, let me explain. General MacArthur is in charge of this theatre of war. He is essentially in charge. Now, supposing a sergeant here wants to get a furlough to go to San Francisco to see his girlfriend, he won't get past his captain, let alone see General MacArthur. General MacArthur is responsible for him, ultimately. But General MacArthur is too big and too busy to be bothered with this sergeant wanting to go to San Francisco. Now, he said, that's my idea of God. God has delegated his authority. He's ultimately responsible for us. But he couldn't possibly be interested in us and our ways.

I said, Colonel, there's a young man called Arthur MacArthur, and I'm quite sure he has the right to go to his father any time he wants to. And even if his father were busy, he could walk in on a conference of officers, and his father would say, I'd like you to meet my son, Arthur, because he is his child. And I said, Jesus Christ, who claimed to come from God, told us that God was our father. Therefore, we do have access to him. I believe that God is not limited. Therefore, he can take an interest in every last one of his children.

Perhaps we should also consider the pantheistic view of God. The word pantheism itself suggests the meaning that God is everything, that everything is God. God is made to be the equivalent of the universe as we see it. In other words, God is everything. God is good. God is evil. God is light. God is darkness. God is night. God is day. God is all these things. That's essentially the pantheistic conception. But it's not one that we find makes much appeal to us. For example, you will find in India a great deal of pantheism. You'll find people worshipping gods and various manifestations of God, but these gods that they worship are worse than themselves. I find in India that many people had a great respect for Mahatma Gandhi because he was essentially an honest man, a truthful man, a loving man, a self-sacrificing man. He was of the best. But how could an Indian worship a god who didn't live up to the standards kept by a human being like Mahatma Gandhi?

How could we have any respect for a god who didn't hold to our own best standards? Pantheism makes very little appeal to us. We find that it's just an easy explanation of things, and so we're bound to reject it. Besides, pantheism, when it's allowed to run by itself, soon degenerates into an animism by which not only do we believe that God is everything, but we believe that everything is God. Therefore, we believe in the God of the trees, the God of the wind, the God of the sea, the God of the sky, the God of disease, the God of filth, the God of lightness, the God of kindness, and the God of wickedness. All this is degenerate pantheism.

Of course, in an enlightened country, you find people don't believe in such crude things, yet we have our own sects today who have essentially a pantheistic conception of God. They believe that everything is God, and anything else we have in our minds is nothing more than an illusion of mortal mind.

We want to come to the other side of the questions we've been discussing. Is it possible to prove that there is a God? Now, in order to have any kind of intelligent discussion, you have to have a measure of agreement with which to start. I remember when my children were much younger, hearing an argument between two of them. You know how boys and girls argue at home? My daughter said, I tell you, it is. And my son said, I tell you, it's not. She said, but it is. He said, but it isn't. She said, oh, you know nothing. He said, you know nothing. And she said, listen to the copycat. He said, listen to the copycat. And she said, oh, shut up. He said, you shut up. I said, both of you, shut up. They weren't trying to find out anything. They were just arguing. And you'll find many a discussion on campus exactly like that.

I crossed the Pacific on one occasion with 8,000 American soldiers headed for Guadalcanal. One night, I got into an argument with an atheist from Brooklyn. Now, I can stand atheists and I can stand people from Brooklyn, but atheists from Brooklyn are very hard to take. He said, go on, chaplain, you don't believe all that, do you? I said, I do. He said, I wonder if you do. I said, now, just a moment, don't reflect on my integrity. I said, do you believe the Bible? He said, the Bible's only a book. I said, it's an inspired book. He said, that's what you say. Well, I said, do you believe in Christ? He said, Christ is dead. I said, he rose again. He said, that's what you say. Well, I said, do you believe in God? No, he said, I'm an atheist. Well, I said, what do you believe in? He said, I believe all religions are a racket. I said, no, it's not. He said, yes, it is. I said, that's just what you say. And there we were, just like a couple of kids arguing about nothing. We were getting nowhere.

Now, supposing this morning we were to have as a guest that well-known apostle of goodwill, Mr. Nikita Khrushchev. And I said, now, Mr. Khrushchev, we differ, don't we? But we ought to have, as you say, an exchange of views. Isn't there anything we agree upon? Anything? And Mr. Khrushchev and I put our heads together. What can we come up with that we agree on together? The very first point, I think, is the axiom of existence. I believe that I exist, and he believes that he exists. Is there anyone here who's not sure? You may smile at this, because there are people who believe that existence is an illusion.

I was speaking once at California Polytechnic, and a student stood to his feet. He said, I don't accept the axiom of existence. He said, life might be just an illusion of the five senses. Now, that's possible. But I said to him, it's strange that you've come all the way from Persia. He was an Iranian. You've come all the way to Persia to study in California, not sure whether you're here or not. No, no, you can talk about life being an illusion, but we feel that we're all, shall we say, going through the same illusion. When I look out the door, I see the same things that you see. Now, is that just an illusion of my mind, or am I under the illusion that you tell me that you see the same things that I see? Well, it's a contradictory sort of argument.

And yet, this argument about the five senses is an interesting one. One of our planes crashed at Morotai. I had to bury some of the men who were killed, and help some of the men who were badly burned. One man was dying of his burns. He was very badly burned indeed. And as I was talking to him, I didn't know whether he was Roman Catholic, Jewish, or Protestant. He didn't have his dog tags, his identification disks on, and so I didn't know what he was. So I decided I would read to him the 23rd Psalm. I read it to him, but got no comment. But right in the middle of reading that psalm, he called out loudly, Hey, Doc, Doc, open the window, Doc. It's awful stuffy here. And he was out in the open air in a casualty section of the hospital. But he didn't hear me. He was deaf. He didn't see me. He was blind. He had lost a sense of smell, presumably, as burned people do, and a sense of taste, which is akin to it. The only thing he had left was somewhat a sense of touch, which he was losing very fast because he's under sedatives, and he soon lapsed into a coma, and that was the end of life to him. Now he stayed in a coma for some time. He was still alive, but life didn't mean a thing to him. So in one sense, we are the prisoners of our five senses. That's certainly true. But we believe, and communists believe, that existence is an axiom.

Now I want to remind you students that an axiom is something we don't attempt to prove, something that's commonly accepted. So I'm going to write on the board the word existence. Mr. Khrushchev and I believe in the axiom of existence. Now can we go any further? Is there anything else Mr. Khrushchev and I believe in? Yes, we believe in the fact of design or order or pattern in the universe. Every single Russian scientific achievement of recent years has been based upon the fact of design. They have studied, for instance, the movement of the moon in order to launch a rocket in that direction. It runs like clockwork. You can go down to Santa Monica or San Pedro, and there you can get the tides for the next 50 years. Exactly. It runs like clockwork. And that element of design we find in every part of our universe.

Now there are some people who question this. I remember I was speaking at the University of Adelaide in Australia when the president of the Rationalist Club got up and he said, now are you not just choosing facts that suit your argument? Isn't there a great deal of chaos in the universe? I shall give him an example. What example? He said, they err in this room. The molecules are bombarding each other in every possible way in the most chaotic arrangement. You couldn't say there's any design there. I said, on the contrary, the very chaos of the diffusion of gases is an argument for design. If it weren't for the diffusion of gases, I said, all the carbon dioxide would collect around me and I'd drop dead while I'm speaking to you, which would be actually the case. If it wasn't for the diffusion of gases, poisonous gases, poisons to human life, would collect in one place. Whereas we find that even this chaos of diffusion is an argument for design. Now, you find that communists will not dispute this. So at least we've got two points to go on with. We believe in existence. We believe in design.

An axiom is something we all accept. A fact is something we can all observe. There's a difference between an axiom and a fact. You can prove a fact. You can test a fact. So we have moved in our argument from an axiom to a fact. Now we're coming to another point. How can we explain the pattern of the universe? How can we explain design or order? You say, well, do you have to? Yes, I think you are obliged to, if you think at all. Of course, there are some butterflies who don't think. They just flutter around and they don't have any opportunity for thinking, apparently. They're so busy in social life that they haven't any chance to think. But you've got to explain things as they happen.

For example, an astronomer noticed in England that the planet Uranus was slightly off course every so often. But it became such a regular thing that he came to the conclusion there was some other force of gravity exercising that astronomers knew nothing about. An astronomer in Germany at the same time got the same idea. And almost the same week, those two astronomers discovered the planet Neptune because of its effect on this. Now when we see a series of facts, we look for an explanation. We look for a hypothesis. Now some of you may say, well, just a moment, you went from an axiom which everyone accepts to a fact which all can observe to a hypothesis. Aren't you getting weaker in your argument? On the contrary. All science is based on hypotheses. Dr.

Jonas Salk discovered his vaccine for polio by trying 1001 things. In science, we try this, we try that, we try the other thing. That's why there's so much money devoted to pure research. They accumulate things that are apparently now of no use whatsoever, but one day they'll be useful. They try out every possible hypothesis.

Now we have this question of design to explain to ourselves. What hypothesis are we going to accept? At the beginning of this series, I talked about the element of chance. We rejected it. It doesn't explain things. We've got to have something else.

We moved out of Sansepur in New Guinea. We left behind us a jeep. A Papuan native who had never seen a jeep before came down the mountain. He had never seen a jeep. He had never seen a wheelbarrow. He didn't know what to call it. As the Papuan native came down the mountain, his wife following him, she said, "What's this?" He said, "I don't know." "Where did it come from?" "I don't know." "What is it for?" "I don't know." "What does it do?" "I don't know." He didn't know very much about it at all.

One thing he recognized was the seat. So he sat on it. He turned the steering wheel. He blew the horn. He pulled the brakes on. He put them off again. He changed gear. He opened the glove compartment. He didn't know what it was all about. His wife, of course, wouldn't venture inside the thing. He happened to touch the self-starter button. The jeep had been left in gear, so it just rocked him. That didn't make much sense. He looked at some other things. Then he touched the self-starter button again. It rocked him the second time. But the third time he tried, he happened to have his foot heavily on the clutch pedal. So, of course, you know what happened. The engine started up front. He had never heard an engine before. It sounded like a great cat purring. So he thought he'd get out and run around the front and see what was making the noise. When he did that, the thing stalled.

He got back in again. He tried to start it again. It just rocked him. Then he remembered to put his foot on this connection with this noise. So he put his foot on the clutch pedal again. He got the noise going, the purring, once more. He decided to let his foot off that clutch pedal slowly enough to give him time to run around the front and see what was making the noise. When he did that, the whole jeep moved forward with him. He was driving, very much against his will, of course. He didn't wait more than two seconds to dive right out on his head. He was so scared, and he ran away. He didn't come back for another half hour. But when he did come back, he discovered he could drive. His wife, of course, hid behind the nearest tree, but he was able to drive the jeep right across the clearing where he got stuck against the tree until he stumbled on the reverse gear. Then he was able to back out and drive again. His wife said, "Well, what do you call it?" He said, "I don't know." "Well, where did it come from?" "I don't know." "Well, what is it?" "Well," he said, "it goes by itself." That's a very good word. It goes by itself would be a good translation of the word automobile, self-moving. It goes by itself. She said, "Well, where did it come from?" He said, "I don't know, but whoever made this must be a lot more intelligent than I am."

I remember once taking down a movie projector. I decided I would take it to pieces. This was some ten years ago. When I put it together again, I had four parts over. I didn't know what to do with them. I decided I wasn't quite up to the makings of a movie projector. I decided that somebody with a very fine mind had designed that.

Now, as we look at the universe, all we can say is that the first great cause, the power, the supreme being, call that factor whatever you like, must be a lot more intelligent, not only than I am, but than this whole room. Not only this whole room, but this whole city. Not only this whole city, this whole country. Not only this whole country, but the whole population of the world. The supreme being who brought the universe into operation must be a lot more intelligent than the sum total of all human intelligence, and we call him God.

Now, I recognize there's a jump from that kind of greatness to infinity, but the more we think about it, the more we believe, then I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth. So we have this hypothesis. I'll write down the word design and the word designer.

Now, this brings us to a question. If there is a supreme being, I say if, we're coming to a question. If there is a supreme being, and the majority of the inhabitants of the world of all time have believed this, but if there is a supreme being, could we communicate with him? Could he communicate with us? Now, the answer is why not?

Here I am talking to you, but I'm using the English language. I remember addressing a group of students in India with an interpreter into Tamil. I couldn't speak Tamil, not more than two or three words, so I had someone to interpret for me. On the other hand, I have read books written by people of other languages, of which a translation has been made, and we believe that God has had his interpreters. Those who are, shall we say, more conscious of God than others, more sensitive to him, more aware of him, they have spoken for him to others who are less aware. In the past, of course, we called them prophets. They learned the language of God, so to speak, and they interpret God for us. Not only that, but the word of God, the revelation of God, has been translated into various languages for us.

A sergeant said to me, "What do you mean, the revelation of God? Isn't the Bible only a book? It's a wonderful book, but isn't it only a book?" I said, "I believe that you can find very good examples in the Bible of what we mean, the revelation of God."

For instance, when I was in Soviet Russia in 1935, a man could get married on a Thursday, take his wife to a hotel for the honeymoon, kiss her goodbye on Saturday morning, go down to the divorce bureau, divorce her. He didn't need to go back to tell the girl. They often sent her a postcard. That was Soviet Russia before the Soviet government cracked down upon it. Why did they crack down upon it? Because girls were committing suicide, babies were being abandoned, social diseases were increasing, and the children were turning into juvenile delinquents by the million. So they put a stop to it. Today in Russia, it is more difficult to get a divorce than in the United States of America. Why? They are a disciplined people, and they discovered that free love and loose moral living is bad for the nation. But Moses said, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," which teaches us the sanctity of the marriage relationship. The family should be a closed unit. A man should be loyal to the woman that bears his children. A woman should be faithful to the man that fathers her children.

When I was in Soviet Russia in 1935, they didn't keep one day in seven. They kept one day in six as a vacation day. They took off the 6th, the 12th, the 18th, the 24th, and the 30th of each month. That was in 1935. What was the big idea? Well, they said it was more scientific and more regular. They stopped using the terms Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. They simply went by the day of the month. They were trying to regularize things. But also, it was a great blow to organized religion. It meant that godly Muslims couldn't go to mosque on Friday more than eight times a year. It meant that godly Jews couldn't go to synagogue on Saturday more than eight times a year. Godly Christians couldn't go to church more than eight times a year on Sunday. That was one of the ideas. But they're back to one day in seven. Why?

The French revolutionists tried the same thing. They had a holiday one day in ten. They were going to be scientific. They had invented and applied the metric system, and they were going to be more regular in the idea of the calendar. So they decided to have one day in ten. But they gave it up. Why? It was contrary to human rhythm. There's something about one day in seven that means a lot to us. During the Blitz, the Royal Factory Commission in Britain, trying to find out how they could get the best possible labor out of Englishmen during the Blitz, found that men who worked six days and took one day completely off did better and more work than men working in any other pattern whatsoever. But the Bible says, "Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work. The seventh is the rest of the Lord thy God." So one day in seven, we take a complete rest from work. I'd like to say in passing, of course, that there are variations to this. I suppose the pastor of this church works harder on Sunday than any other day of the week, so he should take another day off.

Any minister is bound to work harder on Sunday than any other day of the week. But I'll say something to you because you're students. While I was studying, I was carrying 32 hours a week for three years in Chicago. And I did that without ever doing any homework on Sunday. I made a promise to God I would not do homework or assignments on Sunday. There's nothing you do on Sunday you couldn't do on Saturday or Friday. But the trouble is we procrastinate. And I would say if you do trespass and find you can't get it done, it would be far better to keep your day clear and get up early Monday morning and ask God's blessing, because God can help you study. That I find to be true.

Now you see, we have here an axiom of existence, the fact of design. We have the hypothesis of a designer, and we have the question of divine revelation. And now we have the test of experience. Is it possible to put all this to the test? Well, many people have put it to the test. You will find atheists and agnostics and other unbelievers and skeptics in every walk of life. But it's remarkable, in every honorable profession, you'll find true believers. You may find a professor at UCLA or USC who doesn't believe, but you'll also find believers. Just as you'll find taxi drivers who don't believe, you'll also find taxi drivers who do believe.

I think in the last census, more than 60% of atomic researchers said they believed in God. I'm not quite sure of the figure. I shouldn't have quoted it without being exact. But it was certainly a majority. And I've put this to the test. And I believe that it works. And the scripture says, he that comes to God must first believe that he does exist. Those who won't believe, of course, are up against it.

Don't think for one moment that I arrived at my faith this way. I didn't sit down and work it all out. I was taught the facts of the gospel. And as a boy of nine, put my trust in Christ. I was brought up in Sunday school and church. But when I was thrown out into the world, I came up against all these questions. And I can tell you, for one who's been brought up to believe, it's a very refreshing thing to find that faith makes sense.

And going back to what I said when I started in this series, I think we can prove that faith in a supreme being is the most reasonable of all explanations of the world in which we find ourselves. So, I've given you something to think about.