Sometimes it's easy to believe in God

Like watching the series Closer to Truth on PBS.  I know.  It's not supposed to do that.  It is definitely from a more skeptical, or at least antiseptically secular, viewpoint.  Nonetheless, it's well done and the basic programming, like most of what you get on PBS, is high quality.

Today, I saw the episode 'How to Argue for God'.  In it, we are led by the host (whose name escapes me), saying he's willing to believe, he just wants a profound argument based on something he's not getting from the arguments he hears.

And he doesn't talk to lightweights.  This isn't Religulous by Bill Maher.  This fellow goes to to some respectable names to pitch for God, including Alister McGrath, Russell Stannard, and even gives a nod to Islam with Muslim scholar Mahmoud Ayoub.  Each one has a chance to unpack the rationale behind God, with McGrath and Stannard paying close attention to understanding God in an age of science.

Nonetheless, by the end of the episode, our intrepid narrator decides he's going with his hero, Steven Weinberg.  After listening to some pretty profound arguments, some of which flew north over my own head, he decided that Mr. Weinberg's assessment was the most solid.

And what did atheist Weinberg say that moved him so?  He said that looking for the bigger truth was a pointless venture.  He found the monotheistic, Abrahamic versions of God repugnant, and certainly felt the emphasis on obedience was flawed.  He concluded that we just stop trying to find those big picture truths, which ultimately lead people to God, or Communism, or Free Market Capitalism, or any one of a thousand things that cause people to behave badly.  He concluded that these religions have nothing to say to people about being good people, which involves loving each other.  That, he decides, is the solution: no more big truth, just love each other.

And that, after an episode of some pretty hefty reasoning for God, looking at the science and the theology and the philosophy, unpacking the strengths and weaknesses of both the religious and the non-religious explanations for reality, our interpret narrator conclude his hero hits the nail on the head by basically telling us to stop seeking for big picture truths and:

Yep.  The more our world unravels and the secular left falls into oblivion with such stellar arguments as 'be excellent to each other, dudes', the easier it is to believe in that old time religion.