"Is the Creation unfinished? Yes. And that's the requirement in which, inevitably, God slips into the world to me. If God made us to its image, does God contain the human evil? I answer —Yes. We're too reflection of that evil and unfinished part of God. We work in order to complete God."
- Carlos Fuentes
Even if this is possible, it only explains a world in which there is some evil, not so much evil as we see in this world. In fact, it is easy to give examples of how God could have made a less evil world without ending human freedom. For example, he could have tweaked Hitler’s genes such that he still could have freely chosen the life of a fascist warmonger, but he would have been much more likely to freely choose the life of a peaceful gardener… Doesn’t the sheer abundance of evil in the world at least make God’s existence improbable?
Even though I believe in God, I share the concern of atheists on this issue. The problem of evil is vexing. And more importantly – to paraphrase you, Luke – the problem is not just the mere existence of evil, but the vast amount of it. “Why so much, God?”
Where do I stand on this issue? Well, I’m tempted to say that even while God’s ways are mysterious, “We should have faith in God, because we know through Reason that God is worthy of that faith.” However, I’m sure many people would find that unfulfilling, and I don’t blame them. So I’ll try again…
We should be open to the possibility that God is not perfect, and more importantly, we should be open to the possibility that God WANTS us to acknowledge his imperfection.
When he’s made mistakes, he wants us to join him in an act of co-creation to fix them. And when he’s made gross mistakes – serious moral errors – then he invites us to do what we do for any worthy human being in that situation: Forgive Him!
Yes, forgive God! Seriously. I realize that’s a speculative, controversial idea, and I’m certainly open-minded to better alternatives. But atheism, in my opinion, is NOT one of those better alternatives. Why? Because it is false.
The problem of imperfect design in nature raises serious concerns for the idea of God as the divine engineer...After all, if God designed each detail in the blueprint of life, why would he create mammalian eyes which have a blind spot?...
However, as Karl Giberson notes in his lecture "Wrestling with Darwin", perhaps such problems come from our choice of metaphor. "All of this [concern with design] is driven by a prevailing but kind of unexamined metaphor that we should think of God as an engineer and so we should bring engineering questions to creation and evaluate them as engineering projects," says Giberson.
Yet what if we view God through another metaphor, like that of an artist? Certainly, this does not solve the engineering problems, but it causes us not to look at them as engineering problems anymore. Furthermore, as Giberson notes, "We might begin to see the world as creative and extravagant in its beauty rather than red in tooth in claw."
In their book Questions of Truth, John Polkinghorne and Nicholas Beale raise a similar challenge to viewing God as an engineer:
"God is never spoken of as a 'designer' in the Bible; he is the Creator and Father, and a father does not 'design' his children. Even a great creative writer does not exactly 'design' his or her characters, and in any performance, whether of a play or a piece of music, the individual decisions and actions of the performer are vital elements in addition to the intentions of the playwright or composer. By endowing us with free will and giving us the capacity to love, God calls us to be in a limited but very important sense co-creators."
The Rev. Rene Monette on the Improbabilities of Evolution: “Why is evolution pushed by so many if it is so weak? If a lie is repeated enough, people will believe it. Today the myth of evolution is so well ingrained in science and education that few are willing to buck the trend, regardless of the facts.”
This is a question to which some context is necessary before providing an answer.
First, I think there is wisdom in John 1:1, which is usually translated as, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
Actually, what we moderns call “Word” is better translated as “Logos.”
“Logos” is the Greek word for "wisdom" or "reason" (see the Wikipedia entry).
Thus, “God is the ‘Reason.’ And the ‘Reason’ is ‘God.’”
You asked, “What is God’s morality? Where is it found?”
Dare I answer: To know God is to know ‘The Reason.’
To quote Ayn Rand: “Since reason is man’s basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil.”
On another occasion, she wrote: “Life or death is man’s only fundamental alternative. To live is his basic act of choice. If he chooses to live, a rational ethics will tell him what principles of action are required to implement his choice.”
In stating that Life requires “rational ethics,” Rand was revitalizing the vision of Aristotle (a vision affirmed by Christianity, but sadly, rarely practiced).
To quote Aristotle: “The human function is activity of the soul in accord with reason…Virtue ('arete') then is a settled disposition of the mind determining the choice of actions and emotions, consisting essentially in the observance of the mean relative to us, this being determined by principle, that is, as the prudent man would determine it.”
So again: “Where is God’s morality?” It’s both inside us (Reason) and outside us (Logos). And “what IS God’s morality?” There are no moral commandments (as Rand said, a “moral commandment is a contradiction in terms"). Rather, there is only the strong recommendation that one use his rational power at all times to secure the Good: The Good being his own Life. And every goal and value that affirms his life.
Lawrence Auster’s highly-recommended website, View from the Right, just opened a new discussion: “Arguments for the Existence of God that are Logical, Easy to Understand, and Unanswerable.”
I believe in the existence of God, but the arguments used in your blog post are not "logical, easy to understand, and unanswerable." Rather, they are flimsy, vague, and abstract. If you (or anyone else) wants to validate scientifically the existence of God, you have three solid arguments at your disposal: First is the Anthropic Principle (discovered by Brandon Carter in 1973) which proves (beyond any reasonable doubt) that the laws of physics were "pre-planned" to be "life-friendly" at the conception of the universe because even the slightest tinkering of those laws would make life anywhere impossible. Second is Intelligent Design in biology (best articulated by Philip Johnson, Michael Behe, Stephen Meyer, and others), in which the conception of purposeful Design is vastly superior to the blind, meaningless Darwinian paradigm of natural selection. In the past few decades, the evidence from DNA, irreducible complexity, and the fossil record plus the LACK of evidence for Darwinism has shifted the debate radically in favor of a divine solution. Finally, the vast collection of data from Near Death Experiences (NDEs) shows--again, beyond any reasonable doubt--that consciousness is independent of the brain and survives death, and thus, the materialist paradigm ("matter is all there is") is destroyed beyond any hope of repair. The philosophical implications of these breakthroughs is played out in my novel, The Mustard Seed.
I read through Sage McLaughlin's post, and, I have to say, I don't think he characterized my views very well, or drew the right conclusions from them. First of all, I never said there is "scientific proof of God's existence." In fact, I agree with Sage that such a statement is impossible. Rather, I offered "three solid arguments" to "validate scientifically the existence of God." In other words, I am offering what I can consider to be the best arguments to "validate" God's existence through reason, not faith. If you have faith (as Sage apparently does), God bless him, but a lot of people don't have faith, and it's appropriate for us to persuade those people using the tools they are most familiar with--namely, science and reason. This entire discussion between us proves that when faith is absent (after all, we're not obligated to take Sage's opinion on faith), reason is the only means of communication.
I used three arguments for God's existence: The Anthropic Principle, Intelligent Design, and Near-Death Experiences. I'm not sure why Sage was so dismissive of these arguments. In the case of the first two arguments, if I understand him correctly, he's basically saying, "Yeah, they sort of imply God exists, but it doesn't clinch the argument." The only problem is I never claimed it would clinch the argument. As we all agree, the argument about God's existence cannot be clinched. However, just because we don't have certainty doesn't mean we can't go with the probabilities. In the case of the Anthropic Principle and Intelligent Design, the probability that material forces can be responsible for the creation of life and the universe are so astronomically remote, any truly objective person would affirm that there is a non-material agent at work (specifically, God). To use an example: If you won the lottery 15 times in a row, I suppose you could shrug and say, "It's all chance," but an honest person would say, "I think the game is fixed." And in a sense, the game IS fixed. And that's important.
In the case of the final argument--Near Death Experiences--Sage is just plain wrong. Why? There are two overarching facts. First, these people are dead. Let me repeat that: DEAD. Whether it's for five minutes, 20 minutes, or some cases longer, they are dead. If you are dead, you cannot hallucinate. You cannot have any sensory or mental experience. Period. Second, there are many, many cases where dead people were later able to document events outside their body--i.e, they were able to describe what was happening in our hospital rooms, what their families were doing at home miles away, etc. This is so well-documented a ten minute Google search would suffice.
In conclusion, it's clear that Sage and I are people of faith who think faith is critical to saving our civilization. I respect him for that. But ultimately, I think he is too quick to dismiss my arguments, and in doing so, he is limiting our ability to actively engage and change our culture for the better.
I think your last post was fair and reasonable. However, I would like to reply to your conclusion, "I can't get all that excited about Back to Deism."
I don't want to put words into your mouth, but I presume the source of that statement is an assumption that Deism does not feature a personal God; that God is effectively a "blind watchmaker." However, my faith (which I wouldn't describe as Deism, per se) DOES feature a personal God who loves us. Indeed, that is the evidence provided to us by Near-Dear Experiences and other major mystical events.
But there's an even larger point. For me, the "excitement" doesn't rest in faith directly. Faith itself is not the primary. What is primary is a life of rational self-empowerment. The conviction (supported by experience) that each person, through the use of his mind, is able to succeed and find happiness on this Earth. In other words, our happiness is not contingent on others. We are truly the authors of our own destiny--to the extent that we wish to pick up the pen and write our destiny. That--for me--at least, is something worth getting excited for.
I agree that Deists usually use the Anthropic Principle to validate their philosophy. However, I would argue that people shouldn't limit their interpretation of the Anthropic Principle to Deism (the "blind watchmaker" thesis). We know the act of creation was "fine-tuned" to support life. To quote the physicist Freeman Dyson, "the universe knew we were coming." Life - and specifically, conscious human life - was planned from the start. As such, I think we can infer that God cares for his creation (human beings) and is invested in our progress. Indeed, once we recognize this powerful fact, it is
practically illogical to limit our faith to Deism.
