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Table of Contents

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Thursday, May 26, 2016

Table of Contents

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Introduction



Thoughts from my free and fully libertarian world (philosophy, not politics!!)

Emergence as related to Free Will, Consciousness, and the Soul



Thoughts related to neuroprosthetic research


Thoughts and challenges for skeptics



Thoughts on contemporary issues

  • TBA!


Thoughts of relevance to Christians


General Musings


Disclaimer
* None of the views expressed here, even those related to my career and field of work, have anything to do with the views of any of my employers, colleagues, family, or friends.  I wrote these myself.  I didn't ask for anyone else's approval!







Saturday, May 14, 2016

Put Your Ideas to the Test - #13 – A Personal Example

          I thought it might be useful to give a personal example regarding something I regard as a “personal miracle.”  We have been discussing the possibility of conducting an experiment to see if God is there[1].  We’ve defined a specific question to guide our experiment.  Last time we talked about one possible experimental design <here>.  But it is probably helpful to have some examples.  At least, for me, I always find examples very helpful.  Vague theories never cut it for me.

          OK.  So I’m going to relay a personal story.  It is from my own personal experience and it is true.  But, since you probably don’t know me, you have no way of knowing whether it is true or not.  Even if you do know me, you weren’t there to witness it, so all you can do is judge whether I’m likely to tell the truth or not.  The point of telling you this story is not to try to get you to believe that it is true.  I can’t really do anything about that.  The point of telling you this story is to motivate you to become open to possibly having your own experience with God.  I’m just telling you one example of how I experienced an act of God in my own life, hoping it helps.

          Many people are influenced by what happens to others – I believe that’s pretty normal.  But a skeptic has a hard time accepting anything without seeing it with their own eyes.  I understand that.  All I want is for the skeptic to open their eyes so that they can “see with their own eyes!”

          When it comes to “miracles”, there are certainly “degrees” of miracles.  For example, there are frequently people who get healed from sickness and claim it was a miracle.  But people recover from sickness all the time, so such events are easy to chalk up to chance.  But as the events become more unlikely, there becomes a point where the skeptic has to change tactics.  Instead of chance, he has to resort to “it never happened.”  For example, some far out miracle, like Jesus rising from the dead, is never chalked up to chance.  Instead, people spend their time trying to show that it didn’t happen. 

          OK.  So what I’m talking about are personal events that fit into the second category.  They are so unlikely that you can’t chalk them up to chance.  But, if you are the one experiencing it, then you can’t say “it never happened”.  That is the category of events that I call a “personal miracle.”  By “personal miracle”, I mean an event that only I am really able to judge how much of a miracle it is.  It is one of a few such “personal miracles” in my life, but it is the easiest to explain, so here it goes…

From as far back as I can remember, I’ve always been very interested in devices and machines and things like that.  As a kid, I would take apart anything I could find to see how it worked.  Sometime in the early 70’s, when I was in 6th or 7th grade, I had a small electric motor that I was taking apart.  It had two small permanent magnets inside of it.  Magnets always fascinated me.  The fact that these hunks of metal could pull things together and push things apart seemed quite magical.  I thought they were the way to solve a lot of the world’s problems!  As I was taking them out, one of them popped out and fell on the floor.  I looked down and I couldn’t see it.  I got down where I could look closer and I still couldn’t find it.  I was very unhappy that I couldn’t find the magnet because I was so excited to have these magnets to play with.  I got down on my hands and knees and crawled all around under the desk and chair, looking for the magnet.    I looked everywhere under my desk.  But I just couldn’t find it.  It didn’t make any sense – it had to be there – it couldn’t just disappear.  So finally – I don’t know why – while I was down there on my hands and knees, I folded my hands and closed my eyes and prayed to God and asked God to help me find the magnet.  “God please help me find this magnet.”  I don’t know how strong my faith was, but I certainly didn’t have a deep understanding of God or what he did or anything like that, but I did think that if there was anyone who could help me find it, it was God.  And I also knew that I couldn’t find the magnet – it wasn’t anywhere to be seen.  It seemed to have disappeared as far as I was concerned.  So I prayed.  When I was done praying, I opened my eyes, and the magnet was right there in front of my nose.  Six inches away!  Right where it would have been impossible to miss.  To this day, as far as I know, that magnet wasn’t there when I started to pray, but it was there when I was done praying.  I don’t have any other explanation for it.

As I’ve grown older and thought back on that event, I’ve tried to come up with some logical explanation for it.  For example, most kids are pretty bad at searching for things, so couldn’t it just be a case of bad searching technique?  However, I’ve always been pretty thorough at searching for things – even at that age – so that doesn’t seem very likely at all.  I also wondered if maybe it was just dark under the desk and my eyes slowly became accustomed to the dark, allowing me to finally see the magnet.  But I’d already been searching for some time down there, so my eyes were already accommodated to the darkness.  Despite my thinking about this for the past 40-some years, I haven’t figured out any other explanation that fits the facts.

That event comes to my mind every once in a while and I still remember finding that magnet as if it happened yesterday.  That event was an important turning point in my early travels to faith in Christ (but it was not the only one).  As I would think about deep concepts and struggle in my mind about ideas like whether God exists, whether the Bible was true, etc., I would sometimes think back to that event and say to myself “if there is no God, then how did that happen?”  Even now I wonder, what else could be the explanation?  I know it sounds like an odd story – almost corny – but that’s what happened.

Again, the point is not to get you to believe this really happened.  I don’t think God did that to help you believe – He did it to help me believe.  You need your own experience!  But before you can experience anything like that, you have to unlock the door.  Many of you would never “pray to God” about anything.  To you, it’s childish.  I think you’re missing out.  Many of you have decided, a priori, that there is nothing supernatural.  If you had been in the situation I just described, you might have momentarily closed your eyes (without praying) and then opened them again to find a magnet in front of you.  You would have chalked it up to bad lighting or bad searching technique and never thought about it again.  I can’t fault you for that type of thinking.  But what I can fault you for is then saying “…and besides, if there was a God, He would make Himself obvious.”  You can’t have it both ways.  Either unlock the door and allow for the possibility of God; or admit that you’ve decided a priori that there is no God and no amount of evidence can change your mind.  Just don’t claim that latter view is based on science and don’t claim you are “open-minded”!




[1] Note:  this is part of a long thread.  To go to the beginning of this thread, *click here*.  You'll have to scroll down to the bottom - they are in reverse order and I haven't ever figured out how to change that - sorry!

Sunday, May 1, 2016

Put Your Ideas to the Test - #12 – Experiment #2

          We are trying to come up with an answer to the following question (an “experiment”):

          “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 known by those who seek Him; proof sufficient that you would live the rest of your life on His terms?

          …and we recognized <previously> that we need to figure out what God wants to do.  Essentially we need to find something that God wants to do that is also sufficient for us as a personal answer to the question above.  Then we can begin the experiment and see if God/Jesus shows Himself to be real.

          What does God want to do?  Previously we said that one way you might figure out what another person wanted to do is to read their letters, diary, etc.  It might not be right to read someone else’s diary, but we don’t have any such concerns about God.  If He’s written anything, and we find it, we can be sure He didn’t accidentally leave it lying around – it was surely intentional.

          So, of course I’m going to suggest looking into the Bible as a way of finding out what God wants.  But again, this is a “such a” issue <see here>.  In the experiment I’ve been talking about, we’re testing “such a” God as appears in the Christian Bible – namely Jesus.  You could certainly conceive of a similar line of reasoning that might test, for example, the existence of Allah or Brahma or anyone else or anything else.  However, as we’ve discussed, the trick is that whatever god you choose has to be personally involved in the experiment, and that severely limits what you can do.  It’s not obvious to me that there are qualities of “non-Jesus gods” that would allow an experiment to be conducted. But, to be honest, I haven’t spent as much time reading the writings attributed to those gods as I have spent reading the Bible, so I certainly can’t exclude the possibility that you could figure out a match between what those gods “want” to do and what you would find convincing in an experiment.  If you know of such opportunities, it would be worth discussing.  But, since I get to decide, we will focus on Jesus.

          If Jesus is “such a” God as described in the New Testament, then we have a wealth of writing that might help us identify what He might want to do.  It is, of course, possible that the Bible does not accurately describe what God wants.  Therefore, if we include the Bible to help in figuring out our experiment, then we are, to a lesser extent, not only testing God, but also the Bible – or at least the Bible’s description of God.  That’s not really much of a problem except that if we don’t observe any response when we conduct our experiment, we could conclude that it was the Bible’s description that was misleading, not God Himself.[1]  But that’s just something we have to keep in mind.

          So, just as a suggestion, I’m going to present two short statements from the Bible and attempt to use them to design an experiment (we’ll take other approaches in the future).  I have to say first that taking random[2] statements out of the middle of the Bible is not recommended, and is definitely not the way to conduct an experiment.  The reality is, you have to get the whole context and you really have to study the words to make sure you know what they mean.  This adds a significant level of complexity to the whole process, but it does not make it impossible.  The Bible is readable.  I would strongly encourage you, if you have any real interest in conducting an experiment, to read the Bible in its entirety. 

          Anyway, here are two statements that describe a couple of things God wants:

Hebrews 11:6 “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”

2 Peter 3:9 “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”

          So, I take from these two statements that the God of the Christian Bible, who is also Jesus, wants human beings to do or have the following things:  “believe that He exists” and “come to repentance”.  That latter phrase, “come to repentance”, requires some study, and I would encourage you to look into it yourself.  But, for expediency’s sake, I will present a definition:  a personal recognition that you have done things that are wrong; that you need to make all of those things right; that you have no chance of making all of those things right; and therefore you are completely hopeless before any judge, particularly God.  It involves more than just an acknowledgement of guilt.  It involves the desire to change and turn from that guilt.  But it also involves the recognition that you, in your own strength, are helpless to do that.  You keep failing.  And you keep saying “I’ll do better tomorrow” – but you don’t.

          A third statement we’ve already discussed, but I’ll quote it here again:

Matthew 7:7-8 "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.”

          Based on what I see, Jesus is “such a” God as one who wants people to repent and believe.  He also says “ask and it will be given.”  How can you turn these observations into an experiment?  Well, here’s my hypothesis for the experiment:

          If Jesus is…
·       still active in people’s lives today,
·       still cares about individual human beings,
·       really wants me to repent and believe in Him,
·       and really is powerful enough to do what He wants…
then:
·       He will somehow cause me to repent and believe if I ask Him to change my mind in that way.[3]

There is much to say about this, but first I need to emphasize the intensely personal context of the experiment.  Remember that, if this happens, we are committed to a complete change of thinking and total allegiance to Jesus, as we have discussed previously <here>.  So, in my opinion, I wouldn’t attempt an experiment around the hypothesis above unless I was totally, 100% certain that I will never believe in God (specifically Jesus), no matter how accidental or fleeting.  This would have to be, as far as I was concerned, a total miracle in my life.  For example, if you were Oprah Winfrey, who seems to believe in everything and nothing and change her beliefs on a whim, this would be a very bad experiment for you.  Remember, the personal risk here is extremely high.  So, you really have to be as convinced as you can be that this would be sufficient evidence for a total life change.  You’d have to say to yourself something like the following:
         
          “One day if I wake up and find myself believing in God, or I take a walk in the woods and find myself believing in God, or I find myself in difficulty or tragedy and find myself reaching out to God in faith, or I become so overwhelmed with my own failures that I cry out to God…this I will consider a personal miracle…something that, as I stand here right now is absolutely and totally impossible…and so, if Jesus does give me that belief, even if for a moment, then I will consider the experiment resolved and accept the hypothesis and live my life on God/Jesus’ terms.”

          It’s got to be so unlikely that, if it happens, it is life-changing.  We’re looking for an atomic explosion here, not a little puff of smoke.

          Well, if the hypothesis seems sufficiently impossible to fit your own personal criteria, how do you actually conduct the experiment?  I think you probably have to work that out yourself, but here are a couple of suggestions:

          1.  First, write down your current “status” as you start the experiment.  Recording your observations is critical in an experiment.  I would encourage you to write down just how impossible and unlikely the hypothesis seems to you.  Should anything ever happen, you want your new self to be convinced by your old self that it really was impossible when you started.  The tendency of all humans is, after the fact, to say “oh, that wasn’t so surprising.”  So, write it out and then sign and date it. 

2.  Start asking the non-existent/dead Jesus to give you belief in Him.  He says “ask and it will be given to you”, so I don’t think it ought to be more complicated than that.  If you’re serious about conducting the experiment, I’d “ask” every day, but I’m not sure that is a requirement.  I mean, presumably, Jesus isn’t hard of hearing so that you have to repeat yourself, or isn’t so forgetful that you have to keep reminding Him of your request.  No, but I think that the continual asking on our part helps us to remember.  We’re the ones who forget!  If a miracle were to occur, you want to be ready and aware.  To be honest, it just depends on how serious you are. 

          I don’t know that there’s much else to it.  I’ll have more suggested experiments to follow, but I hope at least now you get the general concept.  We’ll have to talk about some of the pitfalls and limitations too.  But all in good time.

          Before I end this post, I must admit that this proposed experiment is a bit circular:  if God makes me believe, then I will believe.  But, to be honest, that happens a lot for those who live as Christians.  There’s always a “chicken and egg” problem.  Did you have faith first, or did God give it to you?  My personal experience is that you’ll never know…at least not in this life.



[1] And, of course, it could be our interpretation of the Bible that is the problem.  So, we are testing our principles of interpretation as well. 
[2] Of course, I did not select these verses at random.  I’ve read the Bible many times, and the passages these verses come from hundreds of times, so I have at least a fighting chance of interpreting them in context, which is very important.  Any statement, taken out of context, can lose all of its original meaning.  Understanding the context requires work – but it is not impossible – and no one said this would be easy!
[3] Why do I have to ask?  Why doesn’t He just do it if He is so all-powerful?  Well, that is a “such a” problem.  It seems pretty clear to me, even without doing an experiment, that “such a God” as would force all people to believe in Him does not exist – otherwise we’d all be believers already.

Saturday, April 23, 2016

Put Your Ideas to the Test - #11 – Experiment #1

          OK.  It’s time for the rubber to meet the road.  We’ve been trying to set up the parameters surrounding the possibility of doing an experiment that would demonstrate God’s existence.  First, we worked on defining a question that the experiment would be designed to answer.  Here is the question we have settled on:

          “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 known by those who seek Him; proof sufficient that you would live the rest of your life on His terms?

          To get to this point, we discussed a lot of key points.  I’d like to summarize them here before we talk specifically about one way we can approach an actual experiment based on this question.

1.  There can be a practical benefit to performing an experiment about something you are not sure of…or even things you are sure of! [see here]

2.  Based on the way Christians describe God, and the way He describes Himself in the Bible (assuming there is “such a” God), it seemed like we could test out some of God’s statements in an “experiment.” [see here]

3.  We discussed the need to create a carefully crafted question to define our experiment.  We talked about the need to be open-minded with respect to this experiment if we want to conduct it.  [see here]

4.  We discussed how any result we might get from our experiment will be an answer to a very specific question with respect to God.  [see here]

5.  We discussed what might prevent us from even attempting an experiment in the first place:  that we believed the whole concept was unreasonable.  [see here]

6.  We addressed the whole related issue of why God doesn’t (or can’t?) make Himself obvious to us.  [see here]

7.  We went back to some old Biblical stories to illustrate some of the responses we human beings have when God tries to “make Himself obvious”.  [see here]

8.  I, somewhat foolishly, suggested that the existence of “free will” might be one way in which God tries to make Himself obvious.  [see here]

9.  We pointed out that this experiment was going to be personal.  Also, importantly, God has His own plans that could affect our ability to perform an experiment.  [see here]

10.  We stressed that you absolutely should not do the experiment just to gain information.  You have to be prepared for the possible positive results, even if you think there is zero chance you’ll see positive results.  [see here]

          With that background, I think we can dive in.  Without any further ado, let’s propose a specific experiment:

A.  I buy a lottery ticket and win the lottery.

          This is my proposed answer to the question posed above.  It has some excellent appeal, doesn’t it?  I mean, not only do I get to figure out if God exists, I also become rich.  So, I will conduct my experiment in this way:  I’ll go to the nearest drug store, let God control the random selection of numbers by the machine, and buy a lottery ticket.  If Jesus is still alive and really cares about me personally, then He will make it so that the winning numbers are selected (after all, He does know the future, doesn’t He)?  If I win the lottery, then I will believe in Jesus and serve Him for the rest of my life.  Oh, and I’ll give 10% of my winnings to the poor.

          Well, I hope by now you can recognize that such an approach is wrong on many levels.  But first let me say this:  it is simply not risky enough – at least certainly not for me.  People win the lottery all the time.  I don’t know what the odds are, but whatever they are, they are finite.  Personally, at least, there is no way I’m going to put my personal allegiance on the line in a game of chance.  There is some chance of winning the lottery, and by conducting this experiment, I am putting myself in the position of serving Jesus Christ for the rest of my life, whether He is real or not.  That seems like a really bad idea.  I believe the thinking behind this kind of an approach is that if I win the lottery, then at least I get something positive to balance out having to live the rest of my life as a committed follower of Jesus Christ.  Well, I think it’s a bad trade.

          If it was reasonable to go this route at all, then I would suggest a much more stringent and much more impossible approach.  For example, how about this:

          B.  I win the lottery without buying a lottery ticket.

          Now we’re talking about something that really seems impossible.  At least from the impossibility standpoint, this might start qualifying as a miracle.

          But, of course, there are other problems with this approach.  I hope you can see by now that you can’t just dream up something for God to do and expect Him to do it.  We have to figure out what God wants to do.  I mean, you can attempt the experiment in “B” above, but if nothing happens, it doesn’t mean anything.  Plus, how long do you wait?  Maybe you should add “today” to “B”.  And if that is the sum total of the experiment you’re expecting to run, then you might as well not even do it.  That’s not a serious attempt at all.

          So what does God want to do, if anything? 
Well, how would we figure out what another person wants to do?  Seems like a reasonable starting place for consideration.  For example, if you wanted to do something nice for your spouse, how would you figure out what they might enjoy?  How would you figure that out?  I would suggest there are at least four ways:

A.  You could ask them what they would like.

B.  You could observe the kinds of things they do and infer what they like.

C.  You could ask friends of your spouse what kinds of things they think your spouse would like.

D.  You could read things they might have written (letters, diary) and see if they expressed what they like.

I’m not sure how well this whole analogy works.  In fact, it seems a bit odd now that I’ve written it out.  But I’d just like use it to help guide our discussion going forward.  Next we’ll design at least one experiment based on Option D above.


Sunday, April 3, 2016

Put Your Ideas to the Test - #10 – The Question Part IV

          We have been trying to define a question that will allow us to do an experiment regarding the existence of God.  Here’s the question as defined so far:

          “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 known by those who seek Him?”

          However, in this entry we have to address a key issue that is likely to eliminate most of our would-be experimenters.  This “experiment” is intensely personal and is not something that can be conducted in an impersonal, detached manner.  This experiment is not about gaining information.  And, as we mentioned, the outcome will probably only be relevant to the experimenter personally[1].  If we want to do an experiment to prove that God exists, with results that would be relevant for all people everywhere, well…good luck with that.  As far as I can tell, “such a” God doesn’t exist:  a God who is willing to make His presence obvious to everyone for all time.  On the other hand, we’ve already discussed [here] that we wouldn’t accept that particular evidence even if it were presented to us – we’d classify it as a natural event.

          But today we’re moving on to a personal decision that is going to have to be made by everyone who conducts the experiment we are describing.  To make my point, let me try out an analogy.  Let’s say you ask your wife “do you love me?”  She says “yes, I love you.”  And then you say “thanks – that’s nice to know.”  Will that work?[2]  What if she then says “well – do you love me?”  And then you reply “this conversation isn’t about me – it’s about you!”  That would not be an acceptable response.  I would not recommend trying out that experiment to see what happens!  A conversation like that cannot be one-sided, even if you want it to be.

          The point is this:  you can’t just ask God to demonstrate His presence to you and then, when He does, thank Him for His time and walk away.  Unlike most other experiments, this one can’t be one-sided.  If God is going to demonstrate Himself to you, His revelation is going to place requirements on you.  Before you start the experiment, you have to be ready for the consequences, no matter how unlikely you think they might be.

          If we conduct an experiment and find out that Jesus is still alive, still God, and still active in people’s lives, that’s never going to be just “nice to know.”  In fact, it means, among other things, that we are not the one’s calling the shots in our life – He is.  To conduct this experiment is to play with fire.  If we take the chance and conduct the experiment, and Jesus never existed, or is dead now, then…“whew”, you are fine and you can go on with living your life the way you want to.  You just played with fire and didn’t get burnt.  But if, by some miracle, the answer to your experiment turns out to confirm the hypothesis of the question (Jesus is still alive…), then you are no longer in control of your own life.  You just opened up something that you can never close again.

          I’m going to combine a couple of my past analogies and hope this helps illustrate the issue, although my analogy may seem a bit bizarre at first.  I’ve talked about how we can “lock and bolt the door” on God/Jesus.  Further, let’s use the analogy of Jesus as a lion – an analogy not without significant precedent.  But Jesus is “not a tame lion”.[3]  Letting Him in is not safe.  He is a wild lion.  He is not domesticated.  OK, with that background, let’s try a conversation…

Me:  “There’s a wild lion outside the door.”
You:  “There’s no lion outside – we live in rural America.  Lions live in Africa.”
Me:  “I saw him – he is right outside the door.”
You:  “I don’t see anything.  I don’t hear anything roaring or scratching at the door.  There’s no lion.”
Me:  “The lion hides unless you open the door.”
You:  “I thought you said it was a wild lion.  What wild lion hides?”
Me:  “Well, it may be a wild lion, but it’s also smarter than you.  The lion will only come in if you invite him in.”
You:  “That’s ridiculous.  No lion waits for an invitation.  And I suppose the lion will come in and want to have tea together.”
Me:  “No, actually, when the lion comes in, he will eat you up.”
You:  “Eat me?”
Me:  “Yes, that’s what lions do.  We’re not talking about someone’s pet here.”
You:  “You’re crazy – there’s no lion anywhere that waits for an invitation to come in, and then proceeds to devour you.”
Me:  “Well, it’s easy enough to find out.  All you have to do is open the door.”
You:  “No, I’m not going to open the door.”
Me:  “But how can you say there’s no such lion if you don’t open the door?”
You:  “I’m not going to open the door.  And there is no lion.”
Me:  “If you don’t open the door, you can’t claim there is no lion.”
You:  “OK – I’ll open the door a crack and then close it quickly.”
Me:  “No, the lion only comes in if you open the door and step back.  You have to invite it in.”
You:  “That’s a ridiculous rule – who made that up?”
Me:  “The lion.  Remember, he’s not a tame lion.”
You:  “Well, as I said, there is no lion and that’s the end of the conversation.”
Me:  “Are you going to open the door then?”
You:  “No.”


          I don’t know if that conversation helps clarify my point, but please give it some thought. 

So, based on this issue, I’m going to add another phrase to the question defining our experiment.  I think this added phrase is likely to eliminate many would-be experimenters (as it probably should).  Here is my revised question:

          “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 known by those who seek Him; proof sufficient that you would live the rest of your life on His terms?





[1] Note that because the experiment can’t make any general statements about anyone other than the experimenter, I changed the final phrase in my proposed question from previous entries.  The last phrase now refers to the individual experimenter (“…can be known by those…”) rather than the more general statement (“…can be found by everyone…”).
[2] It’s a rhetorical question.  But in case you really need help, the answer is “no”!
[3] That’s a quote from one of CS Lewis’ Narnia tales.

Saturday, March 19, 2016

Put Your Ideas to the Test - #9 – The Question Part III

          We are trying to define a question that will allow us to do an experiment “on” God.  We’ve had to take a detour and cover a few issues, but it is time to go back to our “question.”  In the last entry on this topic [here], we ended with the following attempt:

          “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?”

          Although the general concept of an “experiment” may still be valid, it is probably apparent that this is not going to have many of the features that we might typically associate with a scientific experiment.  One of the biggest differences is going to be the lack of reproducibility.  When we do an experiment in science, we are supposed to be able to explain the methods with enough detail that someone else could reproduce our experiment and should be able to confirm our results.  Among the many problems we face in a spiritual experiment is the extremely personal nature of the outcome measure.  Specifically, each person is going to have a different answer to the question above and so it will be impossible to duplicate the experiment to a great extent.  We could explore trying to come up with a common answer to the experimental question, but personally I think that is a doomed effort.  Just speaking from my own experience, I know I’d answer that question differently just within my own self.  By that I mean that my young self would have answered it differently than my current self, and I doubt we’d be able to agree on a common solution!  And that’s just a sample of one!  No, I think we are stuck with the fact that this is going to be an intensely personal experiment.  This limits the generalizability of any one person’s results and presents some statistical difficulties (from a scientific perspective).  I’ll probably have to address those later. 
The end result, however, is that you can’t answer the question for me, nor I for you.  I think it is instructive to hear about the experiences of others and, for some, simply hearing the experiences of others is sufficient evidence.  But, for many, especially those with a scientific or research background, firsthand experience is the only thing that will suffice.  So, we will have to press on, recognizing the limitations we face.
We also have to recognize that God – in this case Jesus – has to agree to “play along” with this experiment.  This introduces another significant difficulty for us.  We may not know whether there is a God or not, but one thing we do know:  if there is a God, we certainly can’t read His mind!  So what happens if our answer to the question above is something that God doesn’t want to do?  Again, as with the repeatability issue, this makes our experiment depart from a scientific experiment.  We will not be able to conclude that a negative result in our experiment proves that God does not exist.  I’m not even sure how you would design an experiment to prove that God does not exist.  In reality, this is not uncommon in an experimental design, as often there are cases where an experiment can only prove the positive hypothesis, but cannot be used to prove the negative hypothesis.  I will come back to that issue when I address the statistics of this experiment.  We may not like these rules, but they are the rules nonetheless. 

I just wanted to bring these issues up before we move on.  These are honest difficulties and we can’t work around them.  However, there’s an even bigger difficulty regarding this experiment – one that is intensely personal and drastically different than anything you would ever face in a scientific experiment.  We’ll have to cover that in the next entry.

Thursday, March 10, 2016

Put Your Ideas to the Test - #8 – The Ultimate Miracle…or not!

We’ve been considering how it might be possible to do an “experiment” to expose whether God exists or not.  As we have discussed, it’s a lot more complicated than just saying “God:  make yourself obvious.”  What would be great is if we could summon a supernatural event whenever we wanted to assure and reassure ourselves that there is more to this universe than the natural world.  If every person in every time period in history had the opportunity to instantly, at their fingertips, experience a supernatural event, that would seem to solve the whole issue, wouldn’t it?  If we could summon evidence of the supernatural from wherever we might happen to be at any time of the day or night, that would be the perfect characteristic of evidence for the supernatural.  We would never have to doubt it.
Well, in my opinion, we already have exactly what I just described!  We have an event that demonstrates the supernatural, and we can summon it at will – literally.  I am talking about…free will.  As I have discussed previously, I consider free will to be evidence of the supernatural – the supernatural in us [see here].  And free will, of course, is always with us and always at our beck and call.  We can get up, go out our front door, walk to the sidewalk, and decide to go north, south, east or west – free will.  Or we can decide to go back in the house – free will.  Or we can decide a million other things – free will!  We can decide to do today something that we have never done before, something we have never even thought about before.  And we can do that whenever we want.  It is an experience that is common to every single person who has ever lived.
          To me, the human will is the most obvious part of our existence.  We observe it and feel it every moment of every day.  Therefore I suggest that free will is the answer to those who ask to see a miracle.  The spiritual world is on display every time we make a decision out of our own free will.  We want God to show himself to us every day and well, why isn’t free will the obvious, daily miracle we seek? 

          Almost all of you will say that my proposal is silly.  But why?  If free will is not enough to at least convince us of a world beyond the natural, then what possibly could?

I don’t want to belabor this point too much because I know it’s pretty much a dead end discussion.  Half of you will say “free will is an illusion, so your whole argument is baseless” and the other half will say “we’ll eventually be able to understand free will in a purely naturalistic sense – there is no supernatural component to it – it’s as natural as eating.”  There’s not much I can say against either one of those arguments – especially the latter [although I have tried!] [...and tried again].  As a result, I’ll leave it alone.  We won’t be using free will in a direct way to validate the supernatural, despite how great I think it is.  But, at the very least, please be honest and recognize that it does illustrate how nearly impossible it would be to come up with some means by which we could experience a “miracle” whenever we wished.  Our view of the world around us just won’t allow for it.  I mean, can you think of some kind of evidence that would be better than free will?

Saturday, March 5, 2016

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.