An amazingly diverse conglomeration of people arrived at February’s “Theology at the Bottleworks”: atheists, agnostics, Christians, sunworshippers, Buddhists and Muslims. About 100 in total. What could bring out this array of people? Answer: the oldest and most important question a person can ask, “God or no God?” The “new atheists” like Richard Dawins are strident in voicing their disbelief, while believers are more engaged than ever in supporting their views in public. This discussion – held in a pub, no less – had all the makings of a philosophical fight club.

What we had instead was a fascinating evening. We started by talking about “god-ness”, i.e., what do we call God, and what attributes would a deity have? We moved from there to some classic arguments for and against the existence of God: the argument from design, from miracles, from first causes, from moral values. These vary in persuasiveness, how susceptible they are to contradiction, and in weight. For example, the presence of frequent and horrible evil is for many people a high obstacle to belief in an all-powerful and all-knowing God.

The evening was partly cerebral but also could be personal, a bit intimate even. My favorite time was when we moved from logical proofs to consider if it matters whether God exists. What consequences would flow from the presence or absence of a God? As people spoke more from the heart in this time, I saw that whether people are convinced or not that God exists, the answer matters – sometimes so they can vent their frustration about the sufferings they’ve endured or the problems in the world, sometimes so they can seek to understand what deity is or would be to them.

While obviously the crowd this night at the Bottleworks was not going to agree suddenly at the end, there was a certain consensus which when noted surprised many. The debate over the existence of God comes partly from people standing at the brink of a great schism between 2 realities that we experience at the same time. Believers and doubters both see two opposing sides: on one side, there is our own personal world, where there are friends and joys, values and hopes, love and beauty, and dreams of justice and mercy and meaning. Those things aren’t always so logically provable, but they certainly are real to us. A feeling of transcendence on a stunning mountaintop is a good example of this. On the other side of the schism there is the vast universe beyond human life, where there is no sign of caring, value, love joy, mercy – there’s a lot of randomness and chaos and uncaring and directionless, and the farther back you zoom away from individual people, the less these things appear. An earthquake or hurricane is a good example of the unfeeling chaotic movement of the universe.

These are divergent realities that seem both to be true at once. So we ask, does the vast universe have a hidden designer or maker of meaning and purpose – a god who is there? Or do we personalize or anthropomorphize the vast universe because we want there to be some overarching story to belong to, a source and reason for the loves, joys and compassions we see and seek – even if there really just isn’t? We ask the question, “God or no God?”, because we see this paradox and seek evidence and answers, and to know our place in this world.

I’ve learned that the issue of belief in God is profoundly deep, personal and complicated. One’s theism or atheism isn’t a duncecap or a high IQ badge, nor is it a pricetag for measuring a person’s personal value and worth. The answer to the “God or no God” question forms your world. It becomes part of the foundation you build your life on, the chair you’re setting on. To ask another to change their view on the existence of God is not asking them to arrange the furniture in their house, in a sense it is asking them pull that chair out from under them that that they’ve been comfortably sitting on. And it’s not just a mental decision, a quick acknowledgement of “oh, I’m off on my facts, I need to switch teams now.” This is a lifechanger, a worldcrasher of a decision.

So it would be helpful for believers, skeptics, doubters and nonbelievers to understand that about each other. Let us engage and discuss and debate others with both respect and a smile – b/c whether that person you’re talking to is theist or atheist, they’re worth listening to, they have dignity and value and worth.

And where those come from is something you should talk about too.