Dr. Michael Shermer has a video on the OxfordUnion YouTube channel titled, God does NOT exist. Yawn. The video is only about 16 minutes long and you can watch it for yourself but the point I'm interested in is only in the first few minutes. Shermer introduces his argument with the following observation:
Worldwide, there are about 10,000 distinct religions each one of which may be further subdivided and classified…. From a skeptic’s perspective (which is what I do), what are the chances that these guys got the right god and the right religion and the billions of other people in the world, that don’t believe what they believe, got it wrong? When you leave the house tonight just ask yourself that question, “What are the chances that they just happened to get it right?...” Or, is it more likely that all of these religions and god beliefs are socially constructed - psychologically constructed - and that none of them are right in any reality sense?
It’s a rather flimsy argument. I don’t want to put words into Shermer’s mouth but he seems to be saying that, since there are so many religions in the world, the odds of any one religion being the correct religion is very small. It smacks of an argument from incredulity where Shermer is basically saying that since something seems unlikely, it must not be true. Remember, too, that the name of the video is that God does NOT exist. So Sherman seems to want us to believe that since we can’t absolutely know which religion is true, then none of them are true! That doesn’t quite seem to work.
I love using analogies and sometimes try to use analogies to show the weaknesses of certain arguments. In this case, I'm going to use a jar of jellybeans to demonstrate why I think Shermer's argument fails.
Just by looking at the glass, I could come up with a guess that might be reasonable. But if I were really determined to know how many jellybeans there are, I could go to greater lengths:
I could count how many jellybeans were visible at the very bottom, count the number along a straight line up the side, and multiply the two together. This could get me pretty close.
I could find an identical jar and count how many jellybeans it would take to fill it. That would be a very close estimate too.
I could weigh the full jar, weigh the empty jar, then weigh an individual jellybean. The difference in weight between the full jar and empty jar, divided by the weight of an individual bean should tell me about how many jellybeans are in the full jar.
I could compare all these different methods and see if any or all of them arrived at the same number or a very narrow range of numbers.
As I narrow down my estimate, I could also rule out other people's bad guesses. I know the guy who guesses there's only 1 bean in the jar is wrong because I can see more than one through the glass. I know the guy who guesses a million jellybeans is wrong because a million wouldn't fit inside. Furthermore, I could focus on those guesses that are close to mine and ask those people how they arrived at their number. Based on what they say, I might think of other experiments which might give me even more confidence in my estimate.
My point is this: there is a correct answer. There is an objective answer that could be known if I were allowed to open the jar and count the jellybeans. There is a number that is correct and, even if I could never prove my estimate is correct, I could have confidence that my estimate could be the correct number or, at least, be very close.
When we apply Shermer's argument to the jellybeans, he seems to suggest that any guess is as good as another but because we don't have the actual number, then all guesses must be equally wrong. It's like he's saying that, since I can't ever be sure of the exact number, my guess can't be correct nor even close. In the case of beliefs, Shermer is literally saying that, because there are so many beliefs, mine cannot possible be true. How does that follow? At best, Shermer might say we should all be agnostic but he isn't arguing for agnosticism – he's making a case for atheism. That would be like saying since we can't know how many jellybeans are in the jar, then there aren't any! You can see how that doesn't work.
There are lots of religions in the world. There are a lot of ideas about God. I admit, they can't all be right but that alone doesn't prove they're all wrong. Reasonable arguments can be made that God must exist. Reasonable arguments can be made that the Bible is His revealed word. Reasonable arguments can be made that Jesus lived, died, and rose again. Even if I'm wrong on some minor detail here or there, I am confident that I am very, very close to the Truth. What is not reasonable is to say that, because other people have different beliefs, then we shouldn't believe any of them.
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