Welcome to Season 8 of the Enter the Bible podcast! In our premiere episode, hosts Kathryn Schifferdecker and Katie Langston welcome back Professor Alan Padgett from Luther Seminary to tackle a challenging question from a listener: "Is believing in God or Jesus like having an imaginary friend?"

Professor Padgett offers a thoughtful exploration of the philosophical foundations of belief in God, addressing skeptical perspectives while providing insights into the rationality of faith. Whether you're a believer, a skeptic, or somewhere in between, this episode provides valuable perspectives on these perennial questions.

Professor Padgett approaches this question from multiple angles:

Rethinking "Imaginary" - Rather than dismissing imaginary friends as negative or childish, Padgett notes their positive developmental role and cultural significance.

Monotheism as Sophisticated Philosophy - He explains how monotheism represents a complex philosophical tradition developed over centuries by brilliant minds from Plato and Aristotle to Augustine and Aquinas.

Scientific and Philosophical Evidence - The conversation explores how belief in God provides philosophical explanations for scientific observations like fine-tuning in the universe and the existence of natural laws.

When Science Reaches Its Limits - Padgett shares his personal journey from studying physics to recognizing science's limitations in addressing questions about meaning, purpose, beauty, and morality.

General vs. Special Revelation - The discussion concludes with an important distinction between knowing a creator God through nature versus understanding a loving God through Jesus.

Mentioned in this episode:

2025 Aus Memorial Lecture

Hello and welcome to the Enter the Bible podcast where you can get answers or at least reflections on everything you wanted to know about the Bible but were afraid to ask. I'm Kathryn Schifferdecker.

I'm Katie Langston. Here to kick off our eighth season of the podcast, amazing, we have, of course, a returning favorite, Professor Alan Padgett, a professor of systematic theology here at Luther Seminary and the one that we call on when we get the weird questions.

Exactly. I'm no... I would have to double my pay, think. Double my pay.

Exactly.

So you can take your wife out to lunch and not just just...

⁓ There you go, zero, that's right.

Yeah, we're always like, that one's kinda weird, let's leave that one for Alan.

Yeah, that one's for Alan. That's right.

Okay, they actually like the cultural, philosophical, all kinds of different perspectives, more ⁓ of the barrier on this stuff.

Very good. Yes, we love that about you as well. So here we do have a listener submitted question and dear listener or viewer on YouTube, if you would like to submit a question, you may do so at the website enterthebible.org, click on the little questions button and fill in the form. So I like this one. It's ⁓ sort of an apologetic question actually and it says,

How would you answer someone who asks, isn't believing in God or Jesus like having an invisible or imaginary friend? you're in a conversation with a skeptical friend and they're like, and you're like, and I was praying and you know, I heard this and the person says, you mean your imaginary friend told you that? Like that, because that's, that's

That's where that one comes from.

I think so. yeah, is are we all is this a mass delusion? Alan that we all believe in God, but it's all just made up and it's the our synapses firing in a certain way to make us think that we believe

Well, actually, I think I want to start by saying I don't think we should totally dismiss the significance of imaginary friends as if we use that when we're talking about something totally made up. I mean, imaginary friends, child psychologists tell us that it's kind of a good developmental moment to have an imaginary friend. And imaginary friends have appeared a lot in literature, in movies and stories, you know, from Mr. Snuffleupagus on Sesame Street to...

something a little more serious like Charlie in that wonderful movie, A Beautiful Mind. First of all, would like to say, why don't you just say that it's all your imagination? would prefer that, actually. I have a granddaughter and she has imaginary friends and she's not crazy or anything. That's just what happens when you're...

It's something.

Isn't there a movie that came out just a year or two ago? Ryan Reynolds? I F if right, Imaginary Friends. It's all... ⁓

⁓

cute.

I my favorite movie with an imaginary friend is Harvey with Jimmy Stewart. It's a great one. Yeah, yeah. rabbit. He's nicer than anyone else in the whole movie.

Yeah.

Right, right.

Really awesome. don't think I know that one.

So, okay, so is belief in God just completely imaginary, something that our psyche throws up, whether you want to read Feuerbach back in the past or Freud or whoever is your favorite skeptic, you know, this is a skeptical response, it's just an imagination. Well, I think we can say, first of all, I don't want to collapse God and Jesus, so let's just talk about is there a creator God or not. We can talk about whether God loves us another day.

right. Is it rational, reasonable to believe that the universe is created by a God, whether that God loves us or God is beyond person, good or bad, know, beyond moral categories altogether or whatever? We'll think about that maybe another day. And the answer to that is there's an awfully lot of good evidence that shows that it's belief in monotheism. Okay, and I have to say my terms here right.

Monotheism is believed there is one God. It's a very developed theological understanding. It is not natural or typical or normal for human beings to have a monotheistic faith of a very philosophical, scientific type. It's true that, you know, it's natural according to the cognitive sciences and developmental cognitive sciences.

believing in some kind of gods or spirits or, you know, that kind of thing is typical and normal and natural for humans, just the way that we grow up. It's the way that our brain, mind, body complex in community with other humans interacts with our environment. It's the normal way that we develop a kind of a folksy theory of mind or whatever and attribute that to the forces of nature. Okay, fine. I get that.

Monotheism is like the advanced version of religion where it actually requires…adults have to constantly be reminded of what they actually believe, you know? That's why put…the Lutherans have catechism and stuff, is you have to learn this stuff. It is not normal and typical and just, you know, something you'd come up with yourself. ⁓

doesn't

just emerge kind of naturally.

And so, if we think of a God who is, you know, the source of all that is, the essence of being, the most alive person, the source of all life itself, who's eternal, who cannot have a creator because he is or she or they, is the essence of existence itself forever. And so, the very idea of that God philosophically means to ask whether this God has a creator is like asking what color is the number three, right?

Numbers don't have colors, and gods like this don't have creators. Either they're real or they're not real, but if they're real and they've always been there, they'll always be there. They'll never die. They'll never be unmade by anything we do, and such a god is eternal and without any creator. Okay. And then this god creates everything. What that helps us to understand is it gives us philosophical reasons for a lot of scientific data that we see in the universe.

There's all these evidences of fine-tuning, not only at the Big Bang, but continued on in the development of the cosmos. There's the ongoing reality of the laws of nature, which physics and astronomy just assume. They just figure, well, they're just there. They're like, I don't know, eternal ideas that have no creator or whatever. So, they kind of give the laws of nature some semi-divine properties, so they don't have to think about where they came from.

It's actually much simpler and easier to think there's an eternal God, which is an idea we get from philosophy and theology, right? It's not an idea in physics. I'm not pretending like it is. But such a God developed carefully over centuries by brilliant minds, people way smarter than, you know, me. Or anybody I've had lunch with lately, you know? They've developed all these carefully developed…

The

Yeah.

concepts going all the way back really to Plato and Aristotle and Plotinus, but know, people like Origen and Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Their science is out of date, right, but their understanding of God was far more advanced than many of the people who advocate belief in science instead of God. One of the worst theologians you're to run into is a guy called Richard Dawkins who writes all these books on science, and he's a wonderful biology teacher and scientist, but his theory of God is, you know…

right?

I think if he had passed catechism he would have had a better theology than he actually does. So I mean I don't believe in Dawkins God either right now.

Well, he's taking sort of fundamentalism and kind of strong fundamentalism and saying all theists are this.

What I want them to say is, so what…take a developed theory of God from someone who's at Oxford, maybe like Alistair McGrath, and have a dialogue with them. And so, it out Dawkins did that one time, and he didn't put it in his book or anyways because they didn't get anywhere. was like, McGrath has to develop the concept of theology to…even though they both have doctorates in biology, McGrath's theology is to advance the fall, pray to some of the problems that like…

popular Christianity books and things like that make.

So say a bit more about Dawkins God, why, what is, for those who haven't read Dawkins.

Okay, so, well, McGrath has a great book called Dawkins God that I'd recommend to you, but basically he goes back and he takes what, let's say Aquinas has these famous five ways, right, for belief in God, right? They're famous because they're influential, but they're medieval. They're based on out-of-date scientific perspectives. They don't use modern logic. They don't use the developments in probability theory that we've had lately, you know, I mean...

It's medieval. Now it's very up to date on science when Aquinas was alive, okay? He was taking ideas that were highly controversial and using them in the Aristotelian physics of his day. But now they're kind of easy to dismantle. And so what Dawkins does is he dismantles those.

Cutting it.

I see, I see, okay.

So, he hasn't taken into account, he doesn't take into account the concepts of God and the idea of God. The other thing is, when he goes after the Old Testament or the New Testament, he doesn't read the Bible very sophisticated way. It's very literalistic and simplistic. And so, when he says, you know, belief in God is just as silly as belief in the flying spaghetti monsters, he just clearly doesn't understand how complicated and beautiful the belief in the

philosophically advanced monotheism actually is. And it's why Hindu philosophers, Jewish, Muslim philosophers, Christian philosophers, for thousands of years have found this to be a beautiful, powerful, explanatory perspective that gives reason to reality and to the world. Dawkins doesn't really have much of a belief in God. He just picks up whatever belief in God is popular, and he attacks that.

So he himself has no unified perspective on who God is or what God is up to. He just attacks these rather simplistic, popular notions from people that haven't been trained in theology or biblical studies. So he doesn't actually have a view of God, I don't think. I think I was, I had heard Dawkin lecture, I was at Oxford for a while when he was there, and they asked him about theology, and he says, theology is not a discipline.

I don't read theology because there's no God, and so they have nothing to talk about. So, that's kind of his attitude. So, he doesn't actually have a unified…

⁓ Like me saying, you know, I don't believe in biology, so I'm not going to read about it, right? And then just dismiss it. Right, exactly.

I'm

just interested in death, I'm not going to what happens.

not going to read anything about it. mean, not that I read a lot of biology, but I do acknowledge its existence. So yeah, I got it.

So now I have to say a couple of things here. One is that it's perfectly reasonable to not believe in God. I'm not saying atheists are dumb or they don't understand anything or they're unwise people, or even that they're bad people, because there's a lot of misunderstanding of atheism in Christianity and in popular apologetics. But at the same time, all I want to say is

It's perfectly reasonable to believe a complicated, often difficult concept of monotheism—there's one God who is the source of all things—without believing that God is somehow imaginary. I mean, now, I will grant you that most people don't believe God for those reasons, right? But there have been people, and I'm one of them, that have thought through atheism that they were in and realized that

belief in God makes more sense in the long run. However awkward that might be for someone who wants to be completely autonomous and control their whole life and have become believers, you know. And so I think, you know, at least the belief that there's a Creator God who is eternal, I think that's perfectly fitting with everything we know about the sciences. And you can give some reasonable, rational, philosophical argument for such a God.

Not that it's knocked down proof, but it's as rational as any other worldview I know. How's that? It's as reasonable. They all have problems.

really appreciate that statement, Alan. And I know that it means a lot coming from you because you were raised in a very secular household with no time or thought or sympathy for religious folks. So what

Such

lack of sympathy would be a positive way to put it.

So say a bit more, I mean, I don't mean to make this into your personal testimony, how did you come to rationally think about this as ⁓ an option even? Like, what is it about the world or the creation, the natural world perhaps that

time

persuaded you rationally that the belief in God might not be a fantasy or a wishful thinking.

I'm not sure I could put it quite the way you did, but I will say this, that I was studying physics and mathematics. I wanted to go into astronomy, and I ran into some difficulties in life where…and I'd been raised to be a good person, you know, general sort of humanistic values and everything. And I was curious about things like right and wrong or meaning, like the meaning of life or purpose, human purpose beyond…

You know, just, you know, the selfish gene DNA, you know, once we procreate, then you might as well die, kind of an understanding of purpose. So, you know, that sort of reductionism, I recognized that that was inadequate and that there were questions I had that the sciences could not answer. And I was taking electives, those good old breadth electives, you know. I took world religions because I was actually interested in

Right, right.

Taoism and was a Taoist for a while, and I wanted to see what the other, mostly Eastern religions were. For some reason, on the West Coast, Eastern religions are way more interesting than anything from the Mideast. Like Judaism, Islam, Christianity. So I'm not sure why that is, but I was kind of in the mood there. It was the done thing, I guess. And I took some classes on Shakespeare.

which I recognize Shakespeare's writing about relationships, right and wrong, good and evil. What does it mean to be human? And I said, well, the sciences can't teach me anything about this stuff. So that's kind of how I got going, actually. It wasn't that there was something in the natural world, but rather I recognized the limitations of mathematics and physics and biology and all the natural sciences to answer some of my, well, now I would say more spiritual, philosophical, moral questions.

about meaning and purpose and right and wrong and beauty and goodness and things like that. So that's kind how I got started.

Yeah, that's really helpful. So those questions about meaning life's purpose, right and wrong, beyond just like survival of the fittest or whatever.

And beauty. The universe is just beautiful. Where does that come from? And is that all just, I happen to be the kind of animal that evolved on this planet, and so I naturally respond that way. I mean, you could explain it that way, but if you think of the beauty of God and who God is, that's also a good explanation for the beauty of the cosmos.

What I like about the way that you sort of responded to this question, Alan, is that you haven't turned it into a zero-sum where it's like, I mean, yes, at the end of the day, there either is a God or isn't, right, like you said? Right, right. But the way that you're framing this is not about, here, I'm going to prove to you God's existence through these four fun steps, but instead it's kind of opening the question up and

That's right,

saying that a sophisticated, deeply considered perspective or concept of God is perfectly reasonable within a context or I guess, what's the word, epistemology? Like how we know what we know kind of thing. Like within it with the worldview that tries to take in different points of view and different pieces of evidence. And it's not, at least it's not contradictory too.

what we understand in science and through nature and things like that. Certainly there are perspectives of God that would be contradictory. I think we've had episodes like that often with you, Alan, because of your interest in the sort of intersection between science and faith where we've talked about, you have to believe the earth is 6,000 years old or can you believe in the Big Bang and in evolution and still be someone who reads the Bible and cares about it and believes in God and

⁓ in the Christian God, But what I like about this is that you're not trying to prove one way or the other, but you're saying this is also – belief in God is also a rational response or a rational conclusion to draw from the evidence that we have. And so in that sense, no, it's not like having an imaginary friend. Although I am of the mind that you can't prove God's existence in an empirical way.

I think the best you could say is looking at this evidence, it's more reasonable than other alternatives that we are aware of. How you assess evidence and how you assess probability and what evidence you look for and what value you give it, these are all highly contentious and complicated problems. I just have to say here at the end too.

I want to give a shout out to my teacher and now my friend and my doktorvater at Oxford, Richard Swinburne, who's still with us and is arguably the greatest philosopher in the world on these exact topics. He has written and rehabilitated things like the arguments for the existence of God grounded on all kinds of modern logic and philosophy and science in a way that's just amazing. So if you were interviewing him, he would say, well, you can argue that it's more likely than not.

than other alternatives, more likely than other alternatives. Some kind of monotheism is true. But I would say, yeah, I think if you assess the evidence the way he does, you can come up to that conclusion. But that whole question of what the evidence is and how we treat the background knowledge in ranking probabilities is complicated and open to...

Well, that's precisely right. That's begging the question in the literal sense. Like that's actually that is the question, right? The devil is in those details and how you

Devil's

in the details. Yeah, I agree with that one. I'm not so much about Patitio Principi or begging the question.

I wonder if it's helpful to, I'm thinking about certain scriptural passages like Romans 1 or the whole book of Proverbs really that, you know, since this has entered the Bible, I want to talk about the Bible a little bit.

Right,

the book. What's that? Right.

that I wonder, so we talk in theology about special revelation and general revelation. Do I have the right term there? Right, then special revelation is scripture and ⁓ things that are revealed that are not generally accessible to everyone but have to be revealed. But the Bible and particularly wisdom literature like the book of Proverbs does talk about kind general revelation. And I think that's somewhat what you're getting at.

Correct me if I'm wrong, Alan, but right, if we observe the world around us, you mentioned beauty before as something that is hard to explain, you know, if you don't believe in a deity, right? The beauty of the world, the laws of nature, the way that ecosystems run, the way that planetary systems exist, right? You can come, it is a reasonable thing to come to some idea of a creator behind this all.

when you see the way in which the world works and when you allow yourself to experience that kind of wonder at the beauty of the world. I know some people argue, many people argue, right, when you see the evil in the world or the bad things that happen, you know, that that's, it's very hard to believe in a God. But I think it's, it can also be said that when you see the, when you wander at the beauty and the order of the world, it's hard, it's hard not to believe. Is that fair to say?

I agree with that and many people have agreed with that, but I also think that here Martin Luther might actually have an insightful thing to point out, which is that...

This

friend says this.

I'm sorry, Wesleyan friend.

Well, yeah, I know a little bit about this old dead German monk dude also. And what I'm trying to say here is if you look back at the history of Western thought, all the early scientists and for centuries were believers in some kind of God or other. You know, they're Jewish or Muslim or Christian, but…and they believe God was a lawmaker, and that's why they looked for order and structure and mathematical principles. In the first place, Galileo was a Catholic, and he called himself a Catholic astronomer. mean…

Yes you do.

So first of all, if you like science, then just recognize that the believers in a monotheistic God were the people who developed science for you, I mean, over time. other thing though, that what you can get to in general revelation is a God who creates, but not a God who loves us. That's true. Luther was interested in this Bible too, a little bit.

That's true.

No, that's true.

in his explanation of the book of Jonah, you know, he's pondering, how did the people on the ship who threw Jonah overboard, right, how did they believe in a God? Because they clearly believe in some kind of God or other, but they're not Jews, they don't know who Moses is, they don't, you know. And Luther talks there about how you can know the God of creation, right? But that's a scary God.

That's a God of justice who looks at you and says, you're a sinner. I am the holy God, you know, you're in trouble. In fact, you should probably jump in the big fish with Jonah because, you let's get you out of here. And so, I think Luther is right about that, that you can…not everyone agrees with me, including my own supervisor, but I think that the arguments for and against the existence of God can only get you so far.

like some kind of deism or something like that, or, belief in a creator God, we call that deism in the Western tradition. I don't think it gets you to a God who loves you. And so, I actually think they're probably right. If you just look at evolution, for example, and you say, does God love me as a human being? It doesn't look like it, you know. On that, notice how I'm saying, that's the evidence you're looking at. You're not looking at anything else. Jesus, no Bible, no... Let's just look at, you know, the evolution of the solar system and biological evolution. Does that God love us? Doesn't look like it.

Right, ⁓

maybe God loves life, sure, but loves me now. So, I think that is a problem for the God of the philosophers, to use another phrase that's very useful from the good old Blaise Pascal. And so, yeah, I would say you're absolutely right about that. So, the Bible authors themselves, like Paul, who wrote this book called Romans, and there's like in the beginning part, he's saying, how do these Gentiles, you know, the non-Jews,

know all this good stuff about God, well, they just can see the natural world and they understand there's a God like this. And so it is in many cultures they've developed some form of monotheism over time. ⁓ in China, it's much less common in China, but there have been philosophers who developed something close to monotheism. And also in the Indus Valley tradition, you know, we call it India, know, Indian philosophies, they developed a Hindu version of monotheism.

And so, I think that general revelation, as you defined it, does make belief in a creator God rational, as rational and reasonable as other worldviews. It doesn't respond to the problem of evil and suffering. And really, behind all that, I think, is does God love you and does God love me? It doesn't answer at all. And for that, Luther's right, you have to go to Jesus for that.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Right.

which we said would be exactly as I was going to say, like precisely to the cross that you have to go. ⁓ and we did say that that would be another topic for another day. ⁓

I'd say the cross, but I...

Maybe

another podcast on that. On the wheel? else please. Someone else now.

he doesn't want to know. think we have an episode on the problem of evil with you, Alan. I feel like we do. So that is the next step, right? It is the next step and it is, And the cross is the bridge, I guess, to get you there. Yeah. But we digress. Well, thank you so much. What a good and rich conversation. really, I learned a lot from this one. I haven't spent a ton of time in science or, you know.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure we do.

It is.

philosophy. I try to read philosophy and then I get all confuzzled.

It really was helpful, Alan. Thank you for sharing your perspective.

Thank

you very much as you know, so it's just a pleasure to talk with you both.

Likewise. Likewise.

And thank you to those of you who have been joining us on this episode of Enter the Bible. You can get more wonderful conversations like this, as well as commentaries, resources, maps, courses on every book of the Bible at enterthebible.org. And of course, if you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review this podcast on your favorite podcast app or like and subscribe on YouTube. And of course, the very best compliment you can pay us is to share the podcast with a friend.

Until next time.