Put Your Ideas to the Test - #7 – Old Lessons about the “Obvious” God

Previously [here] we looked at the common phrase:  “If God is there, then He should make Himself obvious.”  In this entry I’d like to present some illustrations that are directly relevant to this issue.  These illustrations are from the Bible; specifically from the Old Testament.  I know that many of you don’t consider the Bible to be highly reliable.  But even if you don’t consider the stories as real historical events, at least consider them for what they say about human nature and about the nature of God.  In my opinion, these stories give us some real insights into the issue of “God should make Himself obvious.”  Some of you may argue that the portrayal of human nature shown below is not correct…but my years of observation of human behavior – particularly my own behavior – would suggest that these portrayals are absolutely correct.

          The first story is the “be careful what you wish for” story.  This event is described in Exodus (chapters 19-20), wrapped around the giving of the Ten Commandments to Moses.  The people of Israel have recently escaped from Egypt and Moses is leading them on a journey up north to a new place to live.  Up to this point, God has communicated with Moses in a “back room” and the rest of the people only hear God’s words indirectly through Moses.  In this story, God tells Moses to have the people come around the mountain where Moses will be meeting with God so that they can experience and hear God’s words firsthand.  This is God making Himself obvious to a whole nation.  So, the time comes and the people gather around, and God creates fire and lightning and thunder and it is extremely loud and frightening.  The experience appears to be relatively short, but afterwards the people tell Moses “we don’t want that again.  You just talk to God and tell us what He says.”

          The point of this story is that our request “God should make Himself obvious” is not something that can be done flippantly or even half-seriously.  We human beings say it rather flippantly because we either don’t believe it could happen (because there is no God) or we have a pre-conceived notion of what God’s appearance would be like.  We are expecting the white-haired man on the Sistine chapel.  We are expecting a grandfather.  We are expecting some being who looks entirely human, just a lot bigger and, presumably, a lot stronger.  And we are expecting a being who is very nice and laughs off our failures.  Well, that’s another “such a” problem, because “such a” God doesn’t exist.  No, the problem for us is that God, if He exists, is certainly not “tame” and is not just a friendly grandfather.  What the people of Israel realized was that even though they could understand that God was always present with them, being reminded of His fierce power visibly and audibly was not pleasant.  In other words, “be careful what you wish for!”

          I think this situation is a bit analogous to how we sometimes think we would like to know the future; like knowing when we are going to die or other events that are going to happen in our lives.  But would we really want to know the future if we were powerless to change it?  Would we really want to know that there was some tragedy in our future?

          The point is, if there is a God, He is dangerous.  Human beings may say that want to “see” Him, but they are generally happier if they don’t.  In reality, most of us are happier living in some level of ignorance and getting to do what we want.  Deep down, I think we say to ourselves “I really don’t want God to be obvious, because then I can do whatever I want, and I can always justify any lack of belief in God on the fact that He hasn’t made Himself obvious.”

          The next story follows in the previous one in book of Exodus and could be entitled “how quickly we forget.”  Within a few weeks of the event where God appeared to all the people on the mountain and they reacted in fear – and probably a few months after they experienced all of the “great” miracles like passing through the Red Sea – we see the people of Israel giving up on their “faith.”  Specifically, as described in Exodus 32, Moses has been up on a mountain with God for some time – more than a month I think – and the people get bored.  They decide that the worship of God isn’t working anymore and they turn back to their old habits.  They ask Aaron (Moses’ brother) to create for them a golden calf, which they then proceed to worship.  Within weeks – weeks – God is dumped!

          This illustrates another problem with human beings:  we are way too fickle.  When we say “make yourself obvious God” we also ought to ask ourselves “how often?” and “for what?”  Implied in our statement is that if God were to make Himself obvious, we would believe.  And, I think, we’re also implying that if God were to make Himself obvious, we’d believe “forever.”  “Just do this one thing for me God and I’ll serve you the rest of my life.”  But this Old Testament story shows the fallacy of that thinking – and it is based on human character.  We quickly forget the past, no matter how intense the situation was.  The nation of Israel had just walked across the Red Sea on dry land, with water stacked up on both sides, then stood on the other side and watched as the water came crashing down on the Egyptian soldiers, drowning them.  The greatest deliverance of all time – or at least surely one of the greatest and most iconic miracles of all time.  And yet, here it is, a scant few months later, and the people have completely lost their faith in God.  “What have you done for me lately?”

          So, I ask you, if you were God, would you do a miracle, knowing that in a very brief period of time, everything you’ve done will be quickly forgotten?  What does God gain out of doing even the greatest miracles if all that happens is that fickle human beings proclaim their belief in Him for a few days or weeks and then start going back to their old ways and old habits and live as if nothing had ever happened?  When we say “make yourself obvious God”, we are also adding some fine print that we don’t usually express:  “…and keep making yourself obvious whenever any doubts arise in my mind.”  That’s weak.  But isn’t that the reality in most cases?

          You might say “I’m different – if I saw the Red Sea parted then I would believe God and serve Him for the rest of my life – I would never forget.”  I understand that reaction.  I’ve said similar things myself.  And then I’ve gone out and done exactly what I said I would not do.  It really is a foundational part of human nature.  The past becomes less and less real to us.  Present difficulties become the most important thing in front of us.  Maybe you are the only person in the world who doesn’t have that characteristic.  Maybe.

          The final story comes from the same time period in the Old Testament and I would call it “getting bored with the miraculous”.  The people of Israel were traveling in the desert after they fled Egypt.  They needed food and so God gave them “manna” to eat.  Manna was an interesting bread/grain like food that would appear every morning (except on every seventh day).  There was only enough manna for each day’s needs – they couldn’t store it.  On the sixth day there was a double portion available, and that would keep so they could eat it on the seventh day.  This happened, apparently, for years – decades – the whole time the people of Israel were travelling in the wilderness.  For those who want God to make Himself obvious, this seems like the greatest event ever:  every day you can wake up and see a new miracle:  the old manna that you picked yesterday has now been replaced with new manna!  This seriously helps you with your forgetfulness.  Maybe in the evening you’re kind of doubting the reality of the situation…“did manna really appear or was it just some odd mushroom?”  But you only have to wait until the next morning to be reassured yet again – yes it really does appear.

          So what happens?  Does this create a generation of people with the greatest faith in God ever?  They get the one thing that everyone else in history wants:  a God who makes Himself obvious every day.  But what happens?  It is not long before the people are grumbling about manna.  They get tired of it and, as described in Numbers 11, grumble against Moses and against God and want something else.  They are ready to go back to Egypt.  One daily miracle is not enough – now they need another!  What does God get from His daily provision of manna?  Complaints.

          To me this illustrates the “natural” problem that God has if He is to make Himself obvious.  If manna appears every morning, it soon becomes “natural” and is no longer considered a miracle.  This is the problem I discussed earlier [here].  Why isn’t a daily sunrise sufficient to make God obvious to us?  Because we attribute that to nature.  We’ve taken nature out of the equation when it comes to God making Himself obvious.  If manna started appearing every day, we wouldn’t call it a miracle – we’d call it some kind of natural anomaly and we’d start trying to figure out the scientific (i.e. natural) explanation for its regular appearing.

          You might argue with the first two illustrations above and try to say that they don’t describe human nature correctly.  But you can’t argue with this last illustration.  This is exactly what happens today.  I think in my next entry I’ll focus on what I believe is the clearest example of this type of thinking.  In fact, it’s the primary thing that got me started down the path of this series of entries on “experimenting with God.”

          My point in today’s entry is not to argue the historical record with respect to these famous early stories from the Old Testament.  My point is to bring out what they say about human nature and the way humans respond to God.  When it comes to God making Himself obvious to man, we should keep these things in mind.  First, we need to take the whole thing seriously – do we really want God to show Himself if that means that He can then make demands on us?  Second, how often would God have to make Himself obvious to us?  Once is clearly not enough.  And third, if we don’t allow God to use nature to make Himself obvious, what have we left Him with?

          I hope these illustrations were useful.  Soon we’re going to have to get back to formulating our question to guide our experiment with God, but I felt it was necessary to take the detour of these last few entries to lay some important groundwork.

Put Your Ideas to the Test - #6 – The “Obvious” God

           “If God is there, then He should make Himself obvious.”  I’ve heard that said many times.  Since we are exploring the idea of an experiment that directly relates to statements such as this, I thought it would be worth discussing this issue directly before we go any further.

          I hate to quote from someone I haven’t vetted, but in this case it doesn’t matter much.  I’m just including the following excerpt to serve as an example of the type of statement I’m considering here.  This is from Greta Christina on Alternet:

          “If the arguments for religion are so wonderful, why are they so unconvincing to anyone who doesn't already believe?

          And why does God need arguments, anyway? Why does God need people to make his arguments for him? Why can't he just reveal his true self, clearly and unequivocally, and settle the question once and for all? If God existed, why wouldn't it just be obvious?

It is not up to atheists to prove that God does not exist. It is up to believers to prove that he does. And in the absence of any good, solid evidence or arguments in favor of God's existence -- and in the presence of a whole lot of solid arguments against it -- I will continue to be an atheist. God almost certainly does not exist, and it's completely reasonable to act as if he doesn't.”

          First, the writer says something a bit contradictory at the end, and it is worth highlighting briefly:  “It is up to believers to prove that he [God] does [exist].”  But earlier she says “Why can’t he [God] just reveal his true self…”  Actually, as far as I can see, it is up to God to prove that He exists.  I don’t think human beings, whether they believe in God or not, can prove His existence one way or another.  This is why I said last time that “I need revelation”.  If God doesn’t reveal Himself to me, what chance do I have of figuring Him out?  That’s why I am spending so much time on the idea of a spiritual experiment.

          But that’s not the main reason I’m bringing up this quote at the moment.  Rather, I want to consider the question “If God existed, why wouldn’t it just be obvious?”  Of course, as presented in the quote, it is actually made as a statement, or at best a rhetorical question, not as a real honest question for consideration.  But I think it is a great question (but a foolish statement).  That’s what I want to consider today.

          So…how would God’s existence be obvious to humans?  I am thinking first here that we want God to make Himself obvious to all people for all time (as opposed to God making Himself obvious to me individually today, which is a different kind of discussion[1]).  Well…how about if God creates a universe out of nothing and let’s man sense it and explore it?  Obviously that’s not enough – we have that already.  What if God signed every aspect of His creation like an artist would sign a painting?  Hmmm.  Not sure what God’s signature would look like.  Would it be “GOD” in English?  Probably not.  I had a friend once who took the Hebrew name for God, “YHWH”, and said that God had signed everything with the letter “Y” as the “first letter of His name”.  For example, every branch of every tree forms a “Y”.  Everywhere you look you see “Y”s, so he saw God’s “signature” everywhere.  Of course such foolishness breaks down when you realize that the Hebrew character for the letter “Y” looks nothing like the English letter “Y”!  And besides, when anything branches off, it can either make a “Y” or a “T”, so the odds of a lot of “Y”s in nature is pretty high!  That’s probably not what we’re looking for here.  Or maybe God’s signature is “GATC” or “TTTGTCT” or “ATGAAGGTCA”?  Who knows?  The point is that none of these concepts will work for the purpose of making God obvious.  If they’ve been there since the beginning of time, we will all just see them as the natural design of things.  Without revelation of some sort, we won’t be able to separate some “signature” from the rest of nature.  God would have to say to us “see that rose there?  That’s my signature.”  Otherwise, it’s just a rose.

          How about if God shows up every day as a bright light shining in the sky?  So bright that it lights up everything around you and allows you to see things that you never knew existed?  So bright that everyone in the entire world can see it every day.  And God consistently appears every day, without fail.  Oh, that’s the sun.  Humans sometimes worship the sun, and it makes some sense when you think about it that way.  But now we know that the sun is just a big ball of really hot hydrogen and helium and a few other things.  How do we know that’s not God up there?  Couldn’t God be really hot?  And made of hydrogen?  And round? 

If we have already decided that God is not in nature, or demonstrated by nature, then we have already decided some specific characteristics of God without ever knowing who or what He is.  When we say “make yourself obvious God”, we are talking about a supernatural God that is outside of nature.  Thus, everything that is normally obvious to us – nature – is excluded.  We are saying “God, make yourself obvious, but not in a way that is obvious like nature – it has to be some new obvious thing.”  What could that possibly be?  Again, we’re talking about God making Himself obvious to all people for all time.  And now we have just excluded everything that has been obvious to all people for all time, which we call, collectively, nature.  Are we saying that God must make Himself obvious in a way that has not been obvious until now?  Yet that would mean that the people who lived in the past would have missed out on the new “obvious” God.  How could that work?  We are like a child saying to a parent “feed me…but don’t use food.”  “Make yourself obvious God, but don’t use any of these obvious methods to do it!”

Maybe God isn’t the sun, but is God in a sunrise?  Is God in beauty or ideas???

          Maybe God is the strong nuclear force?  That would make Him everywhere and in everything at the smallest level.  But the strong nuclear force is a natural thing…so we exclude that.

          The point is, nothing natural will do to answer our question.

          OK, so what is left after we exclude God from making Himself obvious through nature?  Well, how about a supernatural miracle?  A supernatural miracle is something that happens outside of nature.  But most atheists, and many scientists, would exclude the possibility of miracles a priori.  This leaves us with the final clarification of our original statement.  What we are really saying is: “God, make yourself obvious, but you can’t use nature to make yourself obvious, and you can’t use anything supernatural, because supernatural things don’t exist.”  Does my previous statement about “locking and bolting the door” [here] make sense now?  If you exclude miracles – if you exclude the supernatural – you have locked the door to God.  He cannot get in.  If He is there on the other side, He cannot get in to you.  You cannot blame God for that.  You can’t blame God for not coming in and showing Himself to you.  You cannot say “make yourself obvious” when you’ve locked and bolted the door.[2]

          All I’m hoping for is that you unlock the door…and then stand back!  I personally am a strong believer that it is God’s responsibility to prove Himself to us.  It is not up to the believer in God to prove He does exist, and it is not up to the atheist to prove He does not exist.  It’s up to God.  But we human beings have to allow God an avenue through which to do that.  Allow God to make Himself obvious.  That’s the journey we are taking with the idea of a “spiritual experiment”.  But if the door is locked and bolted, you can’t even start.  And, in my view of reality, the only way to unlock the door is to allow for the possibility of a supernatural event – a miracle – in your own personal concept of reality.

          You are safer, by the way, to keep the door locked.  Conducting experiments is not safe.  But it is exciting.

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[1] I think that, in reality, most of the time when people say “God should make Himself obvious” they really mean the latter:  that God should make Himself obvious to them personally.  But when they make the statement, they make it sound as if they care about all humanity for all time.  So, today I’m addressing that implied aspect of the statement.  We’ll have to pick up the idea of God making a “personal appearance just for me” issue at a later time.

[2] Why doesn’t God just break down the door and barge right on in?  Well, that’s a “such a” problem (see here).  That’s not an issue of God’s existence – that’s another issue of God’s character.  He could break down the door, but He chooses not to.  And really, how hard do you want to make God work to get your attention???

Put Your Ideas to the Test - #5 – A “Reasonable” Time-out

          My previous entries on this topic have been exploring the possibility of “testing” the supernatural.  One of the key issues we’ve had to confront is trying to define a very specific question that could be used to design a “spiritual” experiment.  However, I think it is appropriate to take a brief “time-out” from this discussion and address those who have “closed and locked the door” to anything spiritual.  I briefly mentioned this group before (here), but kind of left it hanging.  However, if you’re in this group, I’d like to give one more try to see if I can get you to come along for the ride in our spiritual experiment.  I don’t want you to miss all the fun!

          I tried to motivate the concept of experimentation in my Introduction to this whole discussion (here).  Here, however, I want to talk about “reason” and “reasonable” and see if I can make what would be loosely classified as an “apologetics”[1] argument, only with a different goal in mind than is typically identified with Christian apologetics.

          To do this, I want to go back to one of my favorite quotes (here):

“If we submit everything to reason, our religion will have no mysterious and supernatural element. If we offend the principles of reason, our religion will be absurd and ridiculous.”

Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 1669

          I made previously the statement that “You can’t prove Christianity through reason alone.  The best you can hope to do is show that it is reasonable.”  I’d like to carry that thought out further and put forth a few specific examples to show how I separate “reason” from “reasonable”, and why it is so important for us to do.

          The beginnings of everything.  This is a common area for contention between science and faith (although I think that is a mistake, as I have discussed here and here).  The Christian will say “see that beautiful sunrise?  Obviously there is a God.”  The scientist will say that there are entirely natural, scientific explanations for the existence of sunrises, beautiful or otherwise – and sunrises have nothing to do with God.  In my opinion, that’s a difference of opinion that is unresolvable.  I don’t think reasoning from nature can force you into the conclusion that God exists, nor do I think that reasoning from nature can force you into the conclusion that God does not exist.  But I don’t need to prove either extreme.  All I want to be able to posit is that the idea of a Creator God is not unreasonable.  Going back to the principle Pascal proposed, Christian beliefs regarding creation do not offend the principles of reason – there could be a Creator – but reason alone cannot force us to that conclusion. 

          The reliability of the Bible.  Many Christians claim that the Bible is reliable in what it says, and some even claim it is inerrant.  There are also plenty of critics of Christianity who claim that the Bible has been modified, edited, or completely fabricated over the course of time.  It would be hard to get into any level of detail here, but let’s just consider one of the most outlandish things included in the Bible:  Jesus’ bodily resurrection.  Is this reasonable?  Well, it is fundamentally a miracle – it goes against all natural laws.  In that sense, it is difficult to see how reason alone will drive you to the conclusion that it actually happened.  It is the “mysterious and supernatural element” that Pascal mentions.  But can it be considered unreasonable?  If there is a God who is all-powerful and He came to live on earth as a man, it is not unreasonable that He could come back from the dead.  If there is no God, or if Jesus was just a man, or if the whole story is just legend, then the idea of breaking natural laws is totally unreasonable.  But you can’t use reason to eliminate the possibility of a supernatural God outside of human reach.  If a person is honest, I think they have to say “the resurrection of Jesus could have happened – I can’t eliminate that possibility 100%, however unlikely it might be.”

          The problem of evil.  There are plenty of issues here.  How can a loving God allow such awful things to happen to innocent people?  How can a “good” God allow evil?  Did God create evil?  If not, who did?  Etc.  But for me I just have to ask “does the obvious existence of evil and tragedy exclude God, or does it just make God difficult to understand?”  I do not see how this line of questioning and thinking can end with the statement “…and therefore this completely excludes the idea that there could be a God in the universe.”  These issues don’t have anything to say about God’s existence – rather, they have something to say about God’s character.

          I have no interest in trying to construct rational proofs for God’s existence; and there can be no rational proof for God’s non-existence.  If you start with the assumption that there is, or at least could be, a God, then you will probably conclude there is one.  If you start with the assumption that there is no God, only nature, then you will conclude that there is no God.  To me that’s not very helpful.  In my view, either conclusion is reasonable, given the starting assumptions.  We need something else – that’s why I’m so interested in the idea of an experiment.

          What I personally find unreasonable is the idea that the supernatural can be “figured out” without revelation.  This, I propose, would be the kind of religion that would fit into Pascal’s definition of “absurd and ridiculous.”  For example, I consider it unreasonable to think that I can figure out what happens after I die without some sort of supernatural revelation.  A religion based on logically-reasoned arguments alone seems devoid of what religion is really good for.  My personal yardstick is “if I could sit in a corner of a room and reason out these ideas, then they are not good enough.”  I need something more – something supernatural – and it has to come from outside of me.  If religion can’t offer that, then I’ll stick with the natural sciences alone.  I need revelation.  And revelation is closely related to, if not almost the same as, an experiment.

          I don’t know if this line of discussion is helpful at all.  At the very least, I hope it helps explain why I am interested in a “spiritual experiment” and maybe it will get you thinking about it as well.

          Finally, I know that there are some who say “well, I told God to show up in front of me if He is real, and He didn’t, so that’s that.”  To me this is a very valid problem, which I would like to discuss…next time.

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[1] The word “apologetics” refers to reasoned arguments in defense of a particular view, usually with reference to Christianity.

Put Your Ideas to the Test - #4 – The Question Part II

          In the last entry on this topic (Entry #3), I discussed the question “What would God have to do to prove Himself to you?”  Sometimes questions tell us as much as the answers do, and I find this question useful as a starting point for a very interesting line of thought.  But it is too vague and, frankly, too wimpy to be used to help in designing the spiritual experiment that we have been discussing.  We need a better question.  To make this better question, we need to:  1) carefully define God and the characteristics of God, and 2) use those characteristics to our advantage in designing the experiment.

          We are limited to certain types of gods in our testing.  For example, a capricious God with no standards who would just as soon lie as tell the truth – such a God is always going to be outside of our ability to experiment.  In fact, we need a God who is willing to reveal Himself to human beings.  We also need a God who is willing and able to make Himself known in the physical realm, since that is the only realm in which we can observe the results of our experiment.  In fact, you may start thinking “by the time we’re done, the definition of God will be so narrow that there is nothing left”, and that is a valid concern.  Our experiment, and the meaning of its results, is going to have to be rather narrow.  But that is true of most well-defined experiments.

          There are also some "Gods" where an experiment is not even necessary because our past experience or current situation already tell us that such a God does not exist.  For example, a God who doesn’t allow hardship or tragedy in our lives – clearly such a God doesn’t exist.  We have those things in our lives already, so we can answer the question without any further evidence:  such a God doesn’t exist.  However, we have to be careful not to leave out the “such a”.  For example, a common argument is “there is evil in the world, therefore:  God doesn’t exist.”  That’s the problem with not carefully defining the question.  If the question is “Does a God exist who doesn’t allow evil in my life (using my definition of evil)?” then the answer is clearly “such a God doesn’t exist.”  But it is incorrect to then extend the statement by dropping the “such a” and saying “God doesn’t exist.”  Usually, though, there is some implied definition of God in such statements.  The problem is that if we don’t make those statements highly specific, the meaning of such statements becomes very hazy.

          As I mentioned in an earlier entry on this topic, we’re going to focus on a specific “God”, and that God is Jesus.  Further, at least as a starting point, I said we would focus on Jesus as described in the Bible.  I do not want to get into topics such as the accuracy and “inerrancy” of the Bible here.  Instead, we will just use a practical definition for my phrase “as described in the Bible”:  any description of Jesus, sayings of Jesus, actions of Jesus, as described in the Bible, can be taken at face value as reliable.  We’ll use this as the basis for helping to define the characteristics of Jesus, and therefore of God, for our experiment.  Actually, we will just need to pull out a few key characteristics and a few key sayings.  Our experimental question will be based on the assumption that those key things are true. 

          The first key characteristic is the same characteristic that I labeled as the #1 Crazy Thing That Christians Believe (here):  Jesus is alive today and still active in people’s lives.  This is absolutely critical to our experimental design.  If our experiment ends with a negative outcome, then it could be that Jesus is not still alive, or that he is not still active in people’s lives, or that he never existed in the first place.  I think these would be the kind of negative conclusions that we would expect from such an experiment.  I bring them up because it is critical to keep these kinds of issues in mind as we more carefully define the question.  Every carefully-defined aspect of the question also results in a more carefully-defined outcome.  As I said earlier, don’t forget the “such a” in describing the final answer.

          The second key characteristic is also in my Top Five Crazy Things list (here):  Jesus is God.  Now, that could mean a lot of things, so for our purposes I want to specifically highlight two things that “being God” means:  1) ultimate free will, and 2) omnipotence (all-powerful).  The combination of these two features means that God (Jesus) can decide what He wants to do and He can carry it out and no one or no thing can stop Him. 

          I will have to add a third characteristic that helps clarify God’s/Jesus’ actions.  Specifically:  Jesus can decide not to exercise his “free will” if he chooses.  Really, I’m just clarifying that free will can be positive (I will do…) or negative (I will not do…).  The reason this is important is that we already talked about how some people have locked God out by their own views of the world (see here).  I said that God could not show Himself to those people because they had arranged their belief system such that nothing God might do would lead to their believing in Him.  From a theological perspective, this appears to go against a God who is all-powerful.  Thus, we say that “such a God” doesn’t exist:  a God who always carries out His plans and never “checks Himself.”  Actually, nature is just such a “god” – nature never “checks herself”.  The law of gravity always acts, even if that means someone falls to their death.  Nature has no mercy, no forgiveness.  But Jesus, as God, is clearly described as having mercy, forgiveness, etc. in the Bible.  Therefore, we do not seek “such a God” as nature in our experiment.

          I will summarize these features in the future, but one more piece of our puzzle in characterizing God for the purposes of experimentation is this:  He (Jesus) made two statements of relevance to our experiment, as I mentioned earlier.  These are:

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”  [Matt 7:7-8]

And also

“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”  [Rev 3:20]

          We’re going to have to spend some time understanding these statements, or at least defining our understanding of them for the purposes of the experiment.  That will add another detail into our results (i.e. our interpretation could be wrong), but we’ll just have to live with that.  But, I’d like to stop here and begin to start phrasing a more specific question for our experiments.  We can now start with something like: 

          “What would Jesus have to do to prove to you that He is still alive, still God, still active in people’s lives, and can be found by everyone who seeks Him?”

          Do you see how a more specifically worded question might allow us to conduct our experiment?  At least this gets us closer, I think.  Does such a God exist?

          Well, we still have a ways to go before we are ready to do an experiment.  There are some pretty difficult issues still to address.  But I hope you at least find this journey reasonably intriguing!

Put Your Ideas to the Test - #3 – “The Question” Part I

          An important part of designing a good experiment is formulating the question that the experiment will answer.  Often this takes the form of a hypothesis, and a lot of scientists consider the statistically-testable hypothesis as one of the most, if not the most, critical part of doing science.  A testable hypothesis would be something like “People who read blogs will raise their IQ by 5 points in a year.”  This would be a hard test to design, but it could be done.  The end result of such an experiment would be to have results that either support or do not support that hypothesis, and that “decision” will be made using statistics.

          Not every experiment starts with such a specific hypothesis, but the more specific and directed you can be in defining your experiment, the more useful the results will be (usually!).  If we’re going to experiment with God, we’re not going to have a statistically-testable hypothesis, as I discussed earlier.  We only get one sample and there are way too many variables that we can’t control.  That doesn’t mean we should just give up, but it does mean that we need to carefully consider the question we are addressing before we start.

          I used to think that THE QUESTION was “What would God have to do to prove Himself to you?”  I still think this is a worthwhile question for people to consider, but I’ve come to realize that it is not a question that helps us define an experiment with sufficient clarity to be able to proceed and get the answers we are seeking.  But before we try to develop a better question, let’s first consider the limitations of “what would God have to do to prove Himself to you?”  Or, stating that question another way “Is there anything that God (or anyone or anything) could do to change your mind to believing in God’s existence?”

          Most people probably haven’t thought about this question in any serious way and very few would actually have a specific answer.  I’ll come back to the latter group at the end of this entry, but for those who haven’t thought about this question in any detail (and for many who have), the de facto answer is essentially “nothing.”  Specifically, there is nothing God could do to prove His existence to these individuals.[1]  For these individuals, any shocking, mind-bending, or even miraculous event will not be attributed to God – it will be attributed to nature for the simple fact that these individuals are convinced that nature is the only thing there is.  And, in point of fact, this is how science must be conducted.  Scientists have to assume that what they are measuring is a consistent and predictable natural phenomenon, not a supernatural miracle.  But science can’t rule out the supernatural – it has to start with that assumption from the beginning.  It does seem pretty safe to say that if there is anything beyond the natural, it doesn’t mess with nature very often!  Otherwise, science could never work. 

So, science has to assume there is not a God interfering with nature…but scientists do not have to make that same assumption.  This is the first issue that we have to settle.  If the scientist (or anyone else, for that matter) is not willing or able to separate the principles of science from their own personal lives, then the possibility of a spiritual experiment stops right there and we can go no further.  If there is a God out there, these individuals have already locked and bolted the door and God has no further access to them.  I know that it seems ridiculous to claim that there is an all-powerful God on one hand, yet claim that He is prevented from entering someone’s life by a surely less-than-all-powerful human being.  But this is a deep theological truth in Christian beliefs.  It is an issue that has been discussed for at least two millennia and we will certainly not be able to explore it here.  For now, we will simply have to look at it from the human perspective.  The person who says “all that exists is natural; there is no supernatural and there is nothing that I might experience that will ever change my mind” is in a fixed, closed state.  If they are right, they are fine.  If they are wrong, they are in the worst situation possible.  There is no more to be said about these individuals[2] except that it would be really nice if they stopped claiming that they are “open-minded” and “only believe the evidence”, because that is clearly not the case. 

In the realm of science, we’re not supposed to be closed-minded.  For example, if a scientist said “I’m so convinced of my theory that no amount of evidence would ever suffice to change my conviction”, that would not be considered a good scientific position.  Of course that happens all the time in science, because scientists are human.  But every theory in science is supposed to be “disprovable”.  I think a good scientist should be able to outline the experiment and experimental results that would disprove the theory they are putting forward.  That’s hard to do sometimes.  It’s also human nature to hate being wrong, and that complicates the whole matter.  I have to admit, though, that the question we are dealing with here, about God proving Himself, is outside the realm of science anyway, so I’m not sure the standard rules of scientific questioning apply.  Personally I can’t blame anyone for being closed-minded on this issue.[3]  Truly being open-minded is very unsettling for us humans – like a hermit crab outside of its shell!  So, if you’re closed-minded, just admit it!  And I’m not just talking about scientists here – no one achieves the heights of closed-mindedness more completely than someone convinced of their own religious faith!  In fact, in order to really experience the full force of belief, it is necessary to become closed-minded.  My point here is that it is useful for us to recognize our own closed-mindedness.  However, if you want to conduct our experiment, you’ll have to unbolt and unlock the door first.

As I mentioned at the start of this entry, there are a few people who have a ready answer for the question about God proving Himself.  They have considered the question and defined a specific event or task that God must do to prove Himself to them.  And, I guess, most of them are still waiting for an answer!  A lot of times the answer that people give to this question is given a bit flippantly, and that is not at all appropriate for a question of this magnitude.  For example, it could be an answer like “I want God to appear before me, sing the Hallelujah chorus, and then hand me a winning lottery ticket.”  That’s a creative answer, but probably not given very seriously and certainly not well though-out enough.  I’d like to get into the details in the future, but for now I will just say that the main problem with most “answers” to the question, including the example I gave, is that there are specific characteristics of God that are implied in the answer.  That’s ok as long as the original question is re-framed with those specifics in mind.  The answer given in my example implies a God who cares about the individual (“gives a lottery ticket”).  It implies a God who is visible and, I presume, still looks like His picture on the Sistine Chapel despite having aged a few hundred years[4] (“God to appear”).  It implies a God who is a fan of Handel and has some musical talent.  Most importantly is implies a God who is willing to be told what to do by a measly little human!  So, in this case, the question is better framed as “What would a caring, classical-music loving, singing, milktoast God have to do to prove Himself to me?”  That’s the experiment being conducted in that case.  And, I’m guessing, the answer is “there isn’t one”!  But is that really the question we wanted answered?

I think I’m going to have to come back to this whole issue down the road.  I hope that this entry at least gets you to think about this question with a certain degree of seriousness.  In the next entry on this topic, we’ll discuss a more well-defined question to help design our spiritual experiment.  Better get your test tubes ready!

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[1] Does this mean that these individuals are more powerful than God?  No – but that’s really a theological question that will have to be addressed separately.  I try to keep these entries reasonably short, but that means there are some key issues that I have to kick down the road and address in some future entry.

[2] Actually, there might be more to be said:  how hard do you want to make God work to get you to open your mind?  What if He wants you to cry “uncle”?

[3] A plausible reason for being closed-minded about the existence of a spiritual world is that you have determined that any such belief “offends the principles of reason”, as described by Pascal (see favorite Quote #3http://www.kevinlloydkilgore.blogspot.com/2015/11/my-favorite-quotes-entry-3.html).  As I said in that entry, I think that is a good criterion for excluding certain ideas.  Just be certain that you’ve drawn your conclusions by carefully considering what is unreasonable, and not because it is unlikeable or disagreeable!  Recognizing the difference is critical here.

[4] Seriously!  I have a hard time recognizing old classmates after only 30 years of aging!

God’s Big Dilemma[1]

          Christians describe a God who wants to share His “heavenly home” with others.  He wants to share the joy that He experiences; and apparently He wants to share this with human beings for all eternity.  In this entry, I want to describe how, if there is such a God[2], He faces a huge dilemma.  This dilemma ties in directly with the issue of free will that I am so fond of talking about.

          God has free will.  Regardless of what you think about human free will or human determinism, if there is a God worth calling a God, He has to have complete freedom of the will.  He can decide to do anything He wants – there are no restrictions to what He can decide to do.  Further, He can carry out those decisions due to a little feature called omnipotence.  As a result, we struggle to describe some aspects of God’s character.  Words like “want” or “desires” have a different meaning when nothing can stand in your way.

          At some “point in time” however, God was enjoying His ultimate freedom and His ultimate power and thought “I would like to share this with others.”  So, He made man with the plan of sharing fully in God’s joy – sharing fully in heaven.

          Here’s the big dilemma:  God’s joy is entirely intertwined with His “omni-“ characteristics and His complete freedom.  In order for man to share in God’s joy, man has to be made like God.  John says “…when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” [I Jn 3:2b]  This does not mean that man becomes God.  In fact, the Christian doctrine on this is very clear – man is always distinct from God.  Man is still man, but in heaven he is transformed so that he can experience the joy that God experiences.  But in heaven, what will be man’s characteristics?  I contend that heaven cannot be heaven – it cannot be the full sharing in God’s joy – unless we have the character of God.  And that means that man – faulty man – gets to have the big keys to the kingdom.  Man gets to have complete freedom and he gets to have complete power.  Do you see the problem here?

          The problem with any human being having complete freedom and complete power is that, with one mistake, that human can end everything, including God.  One tiny moment of indiscretion and everything ends with no chance of recovery.  Just consider the danger that God puts Himself in by bringing mere human beings into full fellowship with Him in heaven.

          It is true that, on earth, man can really mess things up.  But there is a significant limit to what man can do, by design.  Maybe, eventually, man will have developed a weapon big enough to blow up the whole earth.  And that will be the end of man.  But not for eternity.  Man can only destroy the physical; and even the ability to destroy the physical is fairly limited.  We cannot kill souls – we can only kill bodies.  And once we destroy ourselves, that is the end of our destroying.  As human beings, we can get frustrated or angry or depressed and we do stupid things.  One person might put their fist through wall.  But imagine if everyone carried with them a little button that released all of the nuclear warheads all at once.  In a fit of frustration or anger or depression, someone would hit that button and…boom.

          But heaven presents that problem in spades.  We’re not just given a button that controls nuclear warheads.  Full freedom and full power means that we could hurt not only ourselves and our fellow man, but hurt God as well.  We could end it all for all of eternity, and there would be no fixing of it.  In the material, finite world, there is a limit.  Death, despite all of the awful things it means, is also the ultimate in “safety limits.”  We, as human beings, can go no further than death.  Our influence extends no further than the finite universe.  But in heaven, our influence extends forever.  A single mistake.  A single mistake…means the end of it all for everyone, with no recourse of recovery.  It’s over.  Love, joy, peace…they end.

          I thought about this from a personal perspective.  Would I want to have the full freedom and full power that God has?  Would I want to have the possibility hanging over my head that in a brief moment of something less than perfection, I would be the one to bring it all to an end?  Is heaven worth that risk? 

          What this means from God’s perspective is that He cannot afford to make one little mistake in who He lets in to heaven.  I mean, if He allows in one person who isn’t completely, wholly, and permanently transformed to a perfect state, He runs the risk of this danger – the danger of complete annihilation.  He cannot take that risk.  So, here is the dilemma God faces:  He wants the companionship of human beings – He wants to be able to interact with humans in a manner that they experience the same joy that He experiences; but to do so He must risk it all, including Himself.  If He makes a mistake and lets in even one wrong person…it’s over.

          That’s God’s dilemma.

          This is why we can’t be involved in figuring out who gets into heaven or how they get into heaven.  We would mess it all up.  We’d let in the really good people that we know.  We’d grade on a curve and take the top 10% or 20%, and then let our good friend in even though they were only at 21%.  We look at heaven as a nice honor for a life well-lived.  A nice gift from God for trying to please Him in some way.  But it is not that.  Heaven is a gift, for sure, but it is first and foremost a gift for God.  It is a final act of creation – creation that started “long ago.”  And it is the most dangerous place in the universe for human beings and human nature.  Without a transformation of our nature – a transformation that only God can ensure is complete – we should not hope for heaven.  Heaven, populated by human beings – even really really really good human beings – would be hell in no time.  And then what will be left?

          In the first creation, there were apparently angels who rebelled.  Satan is described as a “fallen angel.”  But human beings, the Bible teaches, will be made higher than the angels.  The fall of angels was the most disastrous event in the universe.  It led to evil.  It led to the fall of man.  It led to the death of every human being.  It led to Jesus dying on a cross.  But the fall of angels would pale in comparison to a second fall of man.  It just can’t happen.

          That’s God’s dilemma.  Be careful what you wish for, o man.  Don’t think a minute that you would want to be the one with the keys to heaven.

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[1] Is it theologically correct to say that God has a dilemma?  No, not really – not without carefully defining your terms.  But I’ve written this whole thing from a very human perspective, using human terms to describe God, in order to more simply convey the idea here.  If I had to carefully define every term with respect to God and chase every rabbit trail of theology, I’d never be able to get my point across.  You’ll have to take this entry as something closer to an allegory.

[2] If you are certain that there is no such God, then the rest of this entry will not be of much use to you – you might as well skip it.

Not so crazy things Christians believe - #1

          Elsewhere I listed the top five crazy things Christians believe.  But not everything in Christianity, or even in religion in general, can be considered crazy[1].  In fact, there are some things that I view as obvious and, I think, receive general agreement by most human beings.  I think these more generally-accepted ideas or beliefs can be a good starting point for discussion.  Sometimes it helps to find some common ground when starting a discussion. 

Well, here’s the first of my “not so crazy things” that Christians believe:

#1 – Nobody’s perfect.

          I think I’ve only ever met one person in my life who seemed to seriously believe they were perfect[2].  Most people acknowledge that they make mistakes – some more readily acknowledge it than others.  Obviously, there are plenty of people who think they are better than everyone else around them, but that is different than considering yourself to be truly perfect. 

          Christians will generally phrase this concept as “All have sinned.”  That phrase comes directly from multiple places in the Bible, most notably in Paul’s letter to the Romans.  By the way, regardless of your belief system, you should read the book of Romans.  I know that there is a lot of skepticism out there about the Bible and many consider it mythology and so on.  But not the book of Romans.  Good luck finding anyone who has a serious argument that this book was not written by Paul in the AD 50s or so.  As well-preserved ancient writing goes, it is one of the best, so on that basis alone, you should read it.  It won’t take long.

          Anyway, back to the phrase “nobody’s perfect.”  I know that in this day and age, where few people want to acknowledge that there are any moral absolutes, some might start to argue that the idea of “perfect” is outdated.  Personally, in my experience as a human being among other human beings, I don’t think it really matters whether you use an absolute moral standard to judge perfection with respect to this general concept.  If you want to redefine a moral standard based on your own reason, personal experience, or whim of the moment, that is fine – the concept of “nobody’s perfect” still applies.  Maybe you feel differently, but I don’t know anyone who can even live up to their own standards 100% of the time.  I know I can’t.  Even something as simple as staying on a diet or not getting upset with other drivers or paying state sales tax on items ordered off of the internet…we all fail even at the things we say are important to us.  We fail to love the people we say we love.  I don’t mean we always fail.  But we are not perfect – not even when we get to establish the rules!

          I will take it a bit further:  we can’t become perfect, either.  By that I mean that regardless of how many self-help books we read, or how hard we train, or how much will-power we can muster, or how much Oprah we watch…we can maybe become a better person, but never perfect.  We’ll fail again.  We’ll make mistakes again.  And, again, we don’t even need to agree on any kind of moral standard for this statement to be true.  No matter how hard we try, we cannot become perfect.  I mean, even ignoring the fact that we can’t eliminate our past mistakes, we cannot make ourselves perfect going forwards for any reasonable period of time.  For an hour?  Sure, maybe – if we’re sleeping during that time!  For a day?  For a week?  I suppose we can all say facetiously “I was perfect once – for five minutes…”  But even that was in the past!

          The funny thing about the statement “nobody’s perfect” is that most of us get upset when someone tries to get into specifics.  We say “I know I’m not perfect”, but if someone tries to point out a fault, we get very upset.  We know that “theoretically” we are not perfect, but when it comes to the practical implementation of that concept, we often function and act as if we are perfect.  That’s just human nature.  “I know I’m not perfect, but I don’t have any faults!”

          Well, if it is true that we almost all agree about this general concept, it seems like it ought to be a central theme of any belief system that we might have.  Or, at the very least, our belief system shouldn’t contradict that general sentiment.  Not that there isn’t the possibility that we could all be wrong…although in this particular case, if we were all wrong, wouldn’t that just reinforce the truth that “nobody’s perfect”???  But it just seems to me that we’d be fighting against the overwhelming evidence of our personal experience.  A belief system that says:  “I will strive to, and must achieve, perfection” seems doomed from the start.

          Finally, to me, this issue illustrates the inadequacy of science to comprehensively address the human condition.  I am a scientist and I place a high value on science.  I just don’t think it addresses everything, nor is it designed to address everything.  I don’t think science can confirm for me that I am not perfect.  I don’t think science can tell me what, if anything, should be done about it.  That’s why, for me, science is not “all”.  We need more.  Whether there is more is another topic entirely.  But as faulty human beings, we need for there to be more.

          It may be that I have misread my fellow human beings.  Maybe everyone will not agree with my original statement above.  I would be interested to hear any dissenting thoughts on the matter.  But, barring a significant misread on my part, I feel that the imperfection of human beings may be a good place to start discussion, because it can be a point of common agreement among many disparate views.

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[1] I use the word “crazy” because it is a fun word, not because it is the best word in this context.  To me, things that are “crazy” are things that are surprising, unexpected, unlikely, shocking, and/or hard to believe.  Miracles would fit into that category, but so would most of the predictions made by quantum physics.

[2] And they were quite obviously wrong!

Put Your Ideas to the Test - #2 - Experimenting with God (!)

          In my previous entry on this topic, I tried to motivate the desire to “test things out” or “conduct an experiment.”  That’s all well and good in the natural world.  The entire field of science is built on that concept.  But now, I’d like to step out into the deep deep deep end.  What about testing things in the spiritual, or non-material, realm?

          Well…this is going to take a lot of explaining first!  I just want to set up a few things in this entry.

          First, although I just suggested that we might consider “testing the spiritual”, I’m not considering here the things that you see on television about searching for ghosts and so on.  Why is it that non-material ghosts seem to have to produce fully-material electromagnetic waves everywhere they go???  I am highly skeptical of all that sort of thing and I have no real interest in it.  In fact, I feel that it clouds the issue.  With so much foolishness, it’s hard to find the truth and, in fact, hard to believe that there really is any truth to be found there.  So, I want to distance anything I say from that whole realm of craziness as much as possible.

          No, all I care about is performing experiments about the existence of God.  Actually, even the phrase “existence of God” is too generic.  I want to get even more specific than that.  But I have to stop here again and make another point.

          You can’t test God in a randomized, double-blind experiment.  You can’t even do a simple repeat “test”.  It’s the same reason that you can’t trust political opinion polls about which candidate someone will vote for.  How do I know you can’t trust them?  Because I’ve been asked to do some of those polls and – guess what? – I lied.  I lied.  I exercised my freewill as an obstinate human being who doesn’t like being called in the middle of trying to write up a blog entry and being asked about my opinions for a poll that is a waste of time to begin with (in my opinion).  So, I don’t take them seriously.  They can’t make me take it seriously.  Why?  Because I have free will (hah!).

          The point is, if God has any of the qualities that a God should have, then He has free will.[1]  If we don’t place any other requirements on God, then we face the same problem that pollsters face when they ask human beings questions:  God could lie too.  Or He could play hard to get.  He could hide Himself behind blind chance.  There’s just no way to pin God down and do a study on Him.  We’d have to get His consent first, and His willingness to play along and play fair, and even then, how could we be sure He was playing fair?  We just can’t control Him.  So, no, I can’t see any way of testing a general concept of God through any type of experimental means.  That is not what I’m talking about here either.

          We will have to get down to a very specific “God” and a very specific situation to have any chance of testing.  Even then, the rules for this evaluation are going to have to be very carefully spelled out.  But I just want to define the general concept right now and get into the details in the future.

          The specific “God” I am talking about is Jesus.  As I pointed out in my “Top Five Crazy Things” entry, Christians make a couple of claims that are relevant here:  1) Jesus is God and 2) Jesus is still alive today and active in people’s lives.  Further, I’m talking about Jesus as described in the Bible.  I am being very specific because we can only test very specific things.  We cannot test God in general, but we might have some chance of testing – or evaluating[2] – specific aspects of a very specific kind of God.  That is what I am talking about.

          I said all that to say this:  in the Bible, it is recorded that Jesus said the following:

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”  [Matt 7:7-8]

And also

“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”  [Rev 3:20]

          There is a lot to these statements, and we will have to analyze them in detail and make sure we understand them fully before we can go much further.  But for the moment I want you to entertain this one thought:  is it possible to evaluate whether these statements are true or not?  We certainly can’t test to figure out if a lying God exists, but can we test to see if a man, claiming to be God, who made the claims above in the past and still intends to live up to these claims even now, today…can we test to see if such a God as that exists?  From an experimental design perspective, the major advantage of adding Christian beliefs to the statements above is that if Jesus is still alive today, then we don’t have to try to figure out how to test if this statement was valid at some point in the past – that would be nearly impossible to do – we just have to figure out if this statement is valid right now.

          It’s not going to be easy to figure this out.  But I would suggest that, at the very least, it is worth some effort on our part to try to figure it out.  Maybe we can’t figure out a way to test this claim, but ignoring the possibility hardly seems like the smart thing to do.  OK, well, I can’t resist the possibility, and since this is my blog, I get to dive in.

Be careful though – best to think everything through in detail before knocking on the lion’s door!

Next Entry on this Topic

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[1] I’m not talking about a mindless “Force” that has no will.  Actually, such a force, assuming it follows some kind of rules, would probably actually be testable using scientific methods.  And, in fact, such forces have been identified by science…gravity…electromagnetic force…strong and weak nuclear forces…

[2] It is very unfortunate that the English word “test” has different meanings.  A better word would actually be “taste”, but that would probably seem odd without a lot of explanation.  I’ll save that for the future.