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.

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?

[On to entry #9]

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.