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.

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?”

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[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.

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.

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!