Victor J. Stenger
For Reality Check in Skeptical Briefs December, 2008.
Most Americans say they are Christians. In fact, when you ask what they really believe about God you find that almost half are not Christians at all but actually deists. LetÕs look at the data.
A 2006 Pew survey reports that about 50 percent of Americans say they are Protestants and another 25 percent say they are Catholics, which would indicate a strong Christian majority of 75 percent. Like most such surveys, however, Pew simply asked people to state their religious affiliations. A 2005 survey by Baylor University tried something different and questioned people about what they actually believe. The results were surprising and have great significance in properly comprehending religious belief in the U.S., but they have received little attention.
The investigators found that they could divide their subjects into believers of four different types of gods with the remainder nonbelievers:
Type A: Authoritarian God (31.4 percent): Individuals who believe in the Authoritarian God tend to think that God is highly involved in their daily lives and world affairs. They believe that God helps them in their decision-making and is also responsible for global events such as economic upturns or tsunamis. They also feel that God is quite angry and is capable of meting out punishment to those who are unfaithful or ungodly.
Type B: Benevolent God (23 percent): Like believers in the Authoritarian God, believers in a Benevolent God tend to think that God is very active in our daily lives. But these individuals are less likely to believe that God is angry and acts in wrathful ways. Instead, the Benevolent God is mainly a force of positive influence in the world and is less willing to condemn or punish individuals.
Type C: Critical God (16 percent): Believers in a Critical God feel that God really does not interact with the world. Nevertheless, God still observes the world and views its current state unfavorably. These individuals feel that GodÕs displeasure will be felt in another life and that divine justice may not be of this world.
Type D: Distant God (24.4 percent): Believers in a Distant God think that God is not active in the world and not especially angry either. These individuals tend towards thinking about God as a cosmic force that set the laws of nature in motion. As such, God does not ÒdoÓ things in the world and does not hold clear opinions about our activities or world events.
The above definitions are all taken from the survey. In the last case, I donÕt think they meant to imply that God does not hold clear opinions but that it is not clear that he cares about our activities.
Remarkably, these results indicate that many people who think of themselves as Christians actually disagree with basic Christian teachings. Of the four types of belief defined above, only the Type A Authoritarian God seems to be strictly traditional Christian, with the Type B Benevolent God probably still consistent with general Christian teachings. The rest simply do not believe in the Christian God. This result agrees with a 2006 Harris poll, which found that 44 percent of American adults believe that God observes but does not control what happens on Earth.
The Type C Critical God and Type D Distant God are far closer to the deist god of the eighteenth century Age of the Enlightenment than to the Christian God. That was the time when educated people began to trust reason over faith. Many of the most prominent of the founding fathers of the American republic were deists, notably Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, and probably our first four presidents. JeffersonÕs ÒcreatorÓ in the declaration of Independence was the deist god.
It made no sense to these thinkers that an all powerful, all knowing God would have to step in the make changes once he has set the universe in motion. In 1687 Isaac Newton had published his laws of gravity and motion that allowed the prediction of the exact path of any material body knowing the initial position and velocity of the body and the forces acting on that body. This suggested the universe was a vast machine or clockwork, with everything predetermined. Since God made these laws, the deist saw no reason for him to act further.
Now, I am sure most of todayÕs deists still regard themselves as Christians (as did many Enlightenment deists). But they are not. We can safely label as a non-Christian anyone who believes in a god who created the universe but plays no further role in it. TodayÕs American deists are in fact in tune with the founding fathers. Perhaps deism has been around, unrecognized, since their time.
However, it canÕt be the same deism today. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics has shown that the paths of bodies are not fully predetermined but contain an element of chance. This rules out the Enlightenment deist god but still allows for the possibility of a god who designed the universe to contain a large amount of randomness. In fact, this is just the ÒGod who plays diceÓ that Einstein refused to accept.
Modern Christian theologians have seen the need to address the question of GodÕs action in the universe and have held a series of conferences at the Vatican on the subject. Several physics-trained theologians have suggested that quantum mechanics and chaos theory provide possible mechanisms. Others have found almost no choice but some version of a deist god without identifying it as such. So far they have not been able to reconcile such a god with the Christian God who still should be worshipped and prayed to.
This column is based in VicÕs latest book, Quantum Gods: Creation, Chaos, and the Search for Cosmic Consciousness, which will be published by Prometheus early in 2008. Also check out VicÕs popular web site http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/.
The Pew Global Attitudes Project, ÒWorld Publics Welcome Global TradeÑBut Not Immigration,Ó Pew Research Center (October 4, 2007), http://pewglobal.org/reports/pdf/258.pdf.
The Baylor Religion Survey, The Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion (September 2006). Selected findings at http://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/33304.pdf.
The Harris Poll #80, October 21, 2006. Online at http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=707.