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!