Meaning and Mystery

It is widely assumed that the appropriate way to decide whether to believe in God is to consider whether God is needed as an explanatory hypothesis. However, this way of thinking about the issue turns it into a theoretical question, which distorts what it means to believe in God. Alternatively, I propose that the idea of God is better understood as part of an answer to the practical question of how to live.

All of us need a narrative that I call a life-orienting story to frame our understanding of the nature of the situation we live in and to structure our sense of what is worth doing. Some life-orienting stories include God and some do not. The task of reflection is to find a story that we actually believe, whose account of what is good can engage us.

When we view the task of reflecting on God from this practical viewpoint, several features of the issue, which tend to be obscured by standard discussions of arguments for and against God's existence, become clearer. One is that remaining neutral about things is not an option; we need some kind of story to guide our lives.

Another is that the story as a whole is epistemologically prior to individual propositions, such as "God exists." It is the story as a whole that persuades or fails to persuade us, and procedures that insist on removing the idea of God from a functioning theistic story remove much of what makes the idea a potential object of belief.

Additionally, when we think about life-orienting stories, the relevant data are not just facts we can view at arm's length. Each story will appeal to our moral, aesthetic, and emotional capacities. We have to be moved by the good a story describes to find the story acceptable for purposes of life-orientation.

Meaning and Mystery by David M. Holley explores these ideas, offering insight into how these narratives shape our understanding of belief and guide our lives.