Experimenting - #19 – Test Tube #2 – Entry #1

          I ended the previous entry on this topic <*here*> by saying that I think God does want to communicate with us, but He won’t be rude.  He’s not going to yell.  This goes back to the “if God is there, all he has to do is make himself obvious” discussion <*here*>.  Why doesn’t God yell?  It seems like it would be so easy if He did!

          Well, why do we yell?  We yell because we want to make sure the other person listens.  We use it for emphasis.  THIS IS A REALLY IMPORTANT POINT.  Well, really, I just used that last phrase as an example.  For those of us who grew up with the concept that capital letters indicate yelling, just seeing something written in all caps raises our blood pressure a point or two.  Yelling is often associated with anger.  Or it is associated with the feeling that you are being ignored.  We can be in a crowded place – a noisy restaurant for example – where the din is deafening, but it one person starts yelling at another person, our attention will immediately be drawn to that person.  If there is a lot of yelling, that’s usually not a good sign.  If God yelled, we’d listen!

          But, sometimes I intentionally don’t yell when I am trying to make a point.  That happens when I have the upper hand.  I don’t yell because in my mind I say something like: “well, if you don’t want to hear what I have to say, that’s your problem.”  This type of thinking, by the way, is why I’m not a great educator or parent!  Anyway, sometimes I just think of yelling as being “beneath me.”  Why should I have to yell?  You’re the one who needs to know what I already know.  That’s my pigheaded pride speaking.  I don’t think God necessarily would see it exactly the same way, but I can definitely see that yelling is beneath Him.  If there really is a God, he surely doesn’t need us; but we surely need him.  So why should he stoop to our level to yell when we are the ones who need to stop talking and listen?

          There’s another thing though.  Have you ever tried to catch a wild animal and turn it into a pet?  Growing up I always imagined I could catch a bird or a squirrel and turn it into a pet that would hang around with me.  I had a few occasions where I saw a bird that was injured and so I would try to come up to it and pick it up.  When you approach a bird like that, you don’t come up running and yelling.  You have no chance if you do that.  You approach the bird slowly and speak in low tones. You can’t make a wild animal a pet by scare tactics.  People good at this sort of thing are called “whisperers” for a reason.  Yelling is out of the question.  I think God is in a similar situation - at least the God described by Christians (the “such a” God)…He apparently wants some kind of relationship with human beings that isn’t established through intimidation.  So yes, God could yell and make you cower, but what’s the point of that?

          As a skeptic I could say sarcastically “well – isn’t that highly convenient?  You come up with a God who has reasons not to be obvious.  Isn’t the more obvious explanation to the lack of evidence for God that there simply is no God?”  This bothers me because it’s a good point.  It certainly would make everything a lot easier if we were searching for an “obvious God” rather than a “subtle God.”  We can easily rule out an obvious God – at least an obvious God who yells!  But, the point is, if we are serious about searching, we have to give the subtle God a chance.  Opening Test Tube #2 is about giving the subtle God that chance – that chance to whisper.

          Test Tube #2 is communication with God.  Most religions would call it “prayer” and I’ll use that term here, but prayer usually has a lot of elements and broad meanings to it.  What I am talking about here when I say “prayer” has three important elements:  1) go to a quiet place, 2) talk to God, and 3) listen to God.

          Actually, I would recommend Test Tube #2 to anyone, regardless of whether they believe in a god or not, regardless of whether they are seeking, and regardless of whether there actually is a god or not.  True, you could find yourself talking to a wall (if “talking to God” is the same as “talking to nothing”), but the very act of going to a quiet place for a few minutes is, in my opinion, extremely valuable for human beings.  It sounds so simple, but in practice, if you live where most people live (in or near cities) and have a life that most people have (hectic), it’s not so easy!  Let’s think about this very simple act of “going to a quiet place.”

          First of all, a quiet place is both physical and mental.  In my experience, you need both to coincide.  I’m not talking about a metaphysical experience here.  I’m just being very practical and concrete.  A quiet place is one that is free of distractions and, as much as possible, free of potential distractions.  It’s also a place where you can be totally comfortable.  I am not comfortable talking to God in the presence of others.  I am not comfortable talking to God in a situation where any human being could hear me or even see me.  I need a place that is hidden.  Safe in every way.  Places I have found in the past include a locked room or a tucked away room (basements are good for that), a walk in the woods, or, at one apartment I lived in, I found a place tucked away behind the furnace.  More recently, I find the best thing in the world is a solo cross-country drive.  But in a busy city with a busy life, I have to say that physically finding a quiet spot is just not easy.  There can be noise, of course, in a quiet spot – it just can’t be distracting.

          The mental part is even harder.  It takes a while to stop thinking about all the things you have to do.  Frequently I make sure I have some way of taking notes, so that when various issues come to mind, I can write them down.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to start praying and suddenly I remember a dozen tasks that I haven’t thought of in weeks.  Why does that happen?  Well, it’s because we never stop to be quiet for any reason, not just for prayer.  This is why I recommend a “quieting down time” for everyone.  But there’s a deeper purpose that I’m proposing here.

          The second element of prayer is to “talk to God.”  All I’m suggesting here is to talk to God in plain language and say what you think.  It could be:  “Well, here I am.  I don’t think you’re there, God, and I think this whole thing is stupid, but, well, let’s hear it.”  That would be a really good start, in my opinion.  You can say more, of course, but only if you want.  Tell Him what He needs to do to get you to believe.  If you are facing something difficult, ask Him to help you through it.  There’s nothing magical here – either God is there and has the ability to hear you, or He’s not there or is deaf.  You can talk out loud or just think these things silently.  There is no deep meditation needed.  It is simple.

          The third element of prayer is listening, and we will deal with that next time.  You could actually skip the talking and go straight to listening, but I find it is helpful if I express my own thoughts.  It’s helpful to me, anyway. 

          How much should you “pray” in this manner?  Well, at least once.  But if you want a serious attempt at this, I would make the same suggestion I made with respect to reading the Bible.  A serious attempt, to me, would be praying daily for three months.  That is actually very hard to do and I have no real basis for picking that period.  And it’s not like if you miss a day you have to “start over”.  This isn’t about gaining some kind of points with God – it’s just about making a serious attempt that I think most of us would agree is really a serious attempt.  If you’re trying to lose weight or stop smoking or change any other habit, you’ve got to go more than a few days for sure.  One month is good, but seems barely there.  A quarter of a year – a season – seems like a really good goal.  Try it.

Consciousness, Free Will and Roger Penrose

[Note:  since I first wrote this entry, I've worked on developing a new theory of consciousness and free will that starts here.]

          I just finished reading a book called “Shadows of the Mind” by Roger Penrose.  It was written in 1994, and I see he has some more recent books out now, so I might check those out.  This book had some pretty interesting sections to it and brought together a few of the thoughts I have expressed in some of my previous entries.  Therefore, I thought it would be worth discussing the ideas in this book a bit.

          First of all, I have to admit that this book was the most technically-challenging book I can ever remember reading (excluding, I suppose, various textbooks from my college courses, but I don’t remember those anymore!).  I wouldn’t say the math is extremely advanced, but I found it very very difficult to follow.  On the back of the book there is a quote from the Los Angeles Times: “Elegant…beautifully written and argued.”  I seriously doubt that the average reader would understand the middle 80% of the book.  I mean, I’m not a mathematician or physicist, but I do have a PhD in engineering so I figure I’m at least an average reader with respect to a mathematical and scientific background, and I found this to be extremely difficult to follow.

          Despite the difficulty, there are some very interesting ideas put forward.  But what I’m mostly interested in is how this book perfectly illustrates a point I often try to make about our preconceived notions.  The theme of the first half of the book has to do with whether computers (or “Turing Machines”) will ever be able to achieve human consciousness.  Ultimately, Penrose shows that humans can understand certain things about mathematics that can be “proven” to be non-computational.  Since computers can only operate on computations, then they can never achieve the same level of understanding.  I’m not sure that our non-computational understanding of mathematics is the same as consciousness (!), but the point he is trying to make is that computers will never be able to duplicate what humans can do in this particular instance.

          Penrose proposes four viewpoints regarding this issue that I would like to copy here because I think they are worth considering:

“A.  All thinking is computation; in particular, feelings of conscious awareness are evoked merely by the carrying out of appropriate computations.

B.  Awareness is a feature of the brain’s physical action; and whereas any physical action can be simulated computationally, computational simulation cannot by itself evoke awareness.

C.  Appropriate physical action of the brain evokes awareness, but the physical action cannot even be properly simulated computationally.

D.  Awareness cannot be explained by physical, computational, or any other scientific terms.”

          Penrose fully supports Option C, and the rest of the book is about defending that option.  His point is that A and B cannot be true (based on the proofs he goes through, among other things) and therefore a “new science” is needed.  The subtitle of the book is “A search for the missing science of consciousness”.  He shows that there is nothing in science that can possibly achieve some of the key aspects of consciousness, therefore we will need some new approach.  Ultimately, he suggests that this new science might be found somewhere in the mysterious connection between the quantum world and the Newtonian world and suggests this might occur in the cytoskeletons of neurons.  But this is only a vague perception of where this new science of consciousness might begin to be found.  It’s not a real suggestion of a solution – it’s just a possible direction to start looking.

          Although I fully support Option D, I do appreciate Penrose’s approach to trying to figure out a scientific answer to this issue.  What Penrose does show is that there is a fundamental difficulty in answering the problem of consciousness using current scientific understanding, but he fully expects that there will, ultimately, be a scientific explanation.

          I argued for Option D <*here*> - that was before I read Penrose’s book.  I was focusing on free will, but the issues related to consciousness are the same in this case [1].  I argued that, since science had no explanation for free will, and no clear hope of ever being able to explain free will, the logical conclusion was that there was a non-material (i.e. supernatural) explanation for free will.  What Penrose clearly illustrates is what I have pointed out elsewhere:  no amount of evidence will ever be sufficient to cause a committed materialist to allow a supernatural element into his/her thinking.  Penrose admits that Option D is a possible option in this case.  He shows that Options A and B cannot be true.  But when it comes to Option D, all he can say is “give me a chance to show you that Option C is a reasonable option.”  This is because he can’t rule out Option D – all he can do is just eliminate it on the basis of his a priori biases against any supernatural explanation for anything.  This is what I have referred to as “locking and bolting the door” with respect to belief in anything supernatural. 

          I am not at all proposing that it is wrong to diligently seek for a scientific explanation for consciousness and free will.  In fact, I’d like to explore that area in my own research (if I had the time…which doesn’t seem likely these days).  I like Penrose’s approach and his search for ideas and I, personally, think he has some pretty interesting proposals.  All I want is for the materialist to be honest.  The materialist rejects God a priori, not because of any logical argument.  And, not only that, but the materialist locks and bolts the door against any possible intrusion of anything “supernatural.”  As a result, the one thing that the materialist cannot say is “if God wanted me to believe in Him, all He would have to do is appear before me.”   As I have argued before, that is simply not true.  If you really want an honest experience with God, you will first have to unlock your committed materialism and allow for the supernatural (i.e. miracles) to at least some degree.

          There are a small minority of committed materialists – those who are called the “new atheists” – who shake their fists at God and say “if I don’t believe, it’s Your fault.”  Some of these individuals have become famous and their views make the popular media.  I don’t believe they represent the vast majority of scientists and academics.  But these extremists do make it seem as if they are giving God a chance when, in reality, they have locked Him out.  If, instead, they were honest and said “there is no God and there is no amount of evidence of any sort that will change that fact”, then I could accept their position as being logically consistent.  I must admit that I have come to believe the opposite:  “there is a God (Jesus) and no amount of evidence of any sort will change that fact.”  I have come to that conclusion based on my own experiences, some of which have convinced me of the reality of Jesus.  But I didn’t start out that way – I didn’t start out with the conviction that Jesus was real.  However, as far back as I can remember, I always did allow for the possibility of the supernatural.  I always left the door open. 

          As far as I can tell, the consciousness that Roger Penrose imagines seems fundamentally random and void of a real will.  He proposes a new science will be necessary to even create a theory of consciousness.  Yet that still leaves us far short of achieving anything resembling a will - especially a free will, responsible for its own actions.  What will that require???

[1] Actually, since writing that sentence, I've changed my mind about this statement.  I now believe that free is such a unique and different problem when compared to the problem of consciousness that the two should not be lumped together.  See here to get a sense of that line of thinking.

Experimenting - #18 – Test Tube #1 – Example #3

          We are reviewing a few examples of people “hearing” from God through the Bible.  The first example happened in the late 30s AD and the second onehappened in the late 300s AD.  Both of those experiences resulted in the conversion to Christianity of the person involved.  Now we are going to jump to 1978 and describe an experience that happened to me.  In this case, the words I “heard” didn’t result in conversion, but it did set the path of my life from a career perspective.  Again, the point here is not that the experiences themselves are necessarily compelling, but they serve as examples of the way in which God can speak to human beings using the Bible.  If you’re totally skeptical of such things, then you will remain skeptical even after reading these examples.  I can’t blame you for that.  But my goal is to encourage those of you who are skeptical to put yourself in a position of possibly experiencing these kinds of things yourself. If you’ve already decided that God doesn’t interact with human beings, and no amount of evidence of any sort will change your mind, then you’re really wasting your time reading this blog.

Example #3 – My Path to Biomedical Engineering

As I was growing up I always wanted to be…well - two things.  When I was younger, like grade school (third grade especially), I really wanted to be a doctor.  I was fascinated by anatomy and physiology.  I thought the way the human body worked was incredibly fascinating.  So I wanted to be a doctor.  But over time I also got interested in machines and electricity.  I was especially interested in Thomas Edison.  I read books about Thomas Edison and about how he had this big laboratory where he just sat around and invented things.   I thought that was the greatest thing ever.  I loved inventing things.  So I began to think to myself:  I’ll become an inventor instead of a doctor.  Besides, it seemed like you had to go to school a long time to become a doctor, so maybe being an inventor was better.  It never entered my mind that you don’t just go to school and major in “inventing”.  So when it came time to look into going to college, I was very disappointed to find that there was no major in inventing.  I began to try to figure out what inventors major in.  It seemed like mechanical engineering was close to what I was imagining when I thought of being an inventor.   I was also interested in electronics, but it seemed like mechanical engineering was the area I would want to go into.  So that was my plan.  I was going to go to college and major in mechanical engineering, graduate, and be an inventor. 

          During the summer between my junior and senior years in high school, for some reason, I picked up the “Science Year Book” to read.  The Science Year Book was a yearly supplement to the “World Book Encyclopedia” series.  There was one Science Year Book put out each year.  I started reading the articles in it.  I don’t know why, but I did.  There was an article in this particular one on prosthetic arms.  In particular, it was about myoelectrically-controlled prosthetic arms.  It totally fascinated me.  I thought it was the coolest thing ever.  The article talked about how these prosthetic arms were being developed in a new field of study called “biomedical engineering”.  I thought it sounded like a fascinating area, but I didn’t think of it as applying directly to me. 

Early in my senior year of school, we had to do a report on different careers.  I felt like I already knew about mechanical engineering, so I decided to do the report on something I didn’t know anything about.  I picked the field of biomedical engineering since it seemed kind of interesting.  I got a book from the library about biomedical engineering.  It turned out to be almost a propaganda book about biomedical engineering, with the primary purpose of trying to encourage people to go into that field.  I read through it and it was really interesting.  Biomedical engineering combined medicine and engineering and was very interesting to me.  But still at that point, I wasn’t going to change my own plans.  It seemed like too big of a step.  To me it was like changing my major – a huge decision - even though I hadn’t even started applying to colleges yet!  I didn’t know that most people change their majors at least once after they get to college.  I don’t know why I felt like it was wrong to change my plans, but I did.  Looking back now, it just seems odd. 

          As the fall went on, however, the thought began to creep in that maybe I should seriously think about majoring in biomedical engineering.  I began to pray for some kind of guidance.  I guess I was afraid that I would make a wrong decision.  Also, I think I knew even at that time that it wasn’t easy to find schools with biomedical engineering degrees.  Oregon State University, which was where I was planning to go for mechanical engineering (I lived in Oregon), didn’t necessary have a program in that area.  I wanted to stay near home – at least stay in the state of Oregon - I had no interest in going off into the wide world.  All of these things were weighing on my mind at that time.

          In the midst of my praying and thinking and stewing about this issue, I was sitting in Sunday school sometime in the fall of my senior year.  I was daydreaming and I wasn’t listening to the Sunday school teacher at all.  I was thinking about the field of biomedical engineering and what I should do and whether I should make what seemed like a huge change in the direction of my life.  I thought about how it combined all of the interests that I had had – medicine, engineering, inventing – how it kind of combined all the things I thought I was good at – all my talents…and just as I was thinking this, the Sunday School teacher was reading a verse somewhere in I Corinthians and he said that the verse showed how we should use all of our talents for God.  So just as I was saying to myself “…all my talents”, I was suddenly conscious of the fact that the Sunday school teacher was also saying those exact same words, reading from the Bible.  The coincidence of my own thoughts and the Sunday school teacher’s words made it seem to me exactly as if God were speaking directly to me.  Suddenly it was obvious – I should go into biomedical engineering – I felt that was exactly what God wanted me to do.  To me, there was no doubt about it.  From that moment on, I started looking for schools with biomedical engineering programs and I was set on that path to this day.  I am still in that field almost 40years later!

          So, that’s an example from my own personal life.  As with the other examples, it could simply have been coincidence.  All I can say is:  “you had to be there”.  For me, having someone else speak out loud my own private thoughts word-for-word for a sentence or so was hard to ignore.  I can’t expect any of you to understand how mind-boggling that was without experiencing it yourself.  There was no question about it for me – it might as well have been a lightning bolt from sky.

          Could this happen to you?  I can appreciate significant skepticism, especially if you’re pretty convinced that there is no supernatural element to the universe.  Even I, when I think back on some of my experiences (including the one I’ve just related), I think they are somewhat corny and even childish.  Isn’t a scientist above attributing simple coincidences to a supernatural being?  It seems so silly.

          I’m just looking for a moment of complete honesty here…we just think we have it all pretty well figured out and we don’t need to fit God into the mix.  But as we discussed before <*here*>, if we prevent God from speaking to us using any natural means, and we reject all supernatural means, then what is left?

          I have come to believe the following:  God really does want to communicate with us – but it’s really hard to get our attention without being rude.  And God is not going to be rude.  I made a personal rule in my own life never to interrupt someone when they are talking – I just don’t do it.  But I can tell you that sometimes that is a really difficult rule to keep because people go on and on in their ignorance and never stop to take a breath!  I feel that we are like that with God.  We go on and on and we never stop to listen.  All I can ask is that you take a breath and listen – really listen.  I know that’s hard to do.  But you might hear something surprising!

Experimenting - #17 – Test Tube #1 – Example #2

          We are reviewing a few examples of people “hearing” from God through the Bible.  Last time we reviewed an example from the Bible.  In this entry we review a famous example from the late 4^th century AD.

Example #2 – The Conversion of Augustine

Augustine of Hippo was a famous Christian leader who lived in the latter stages of the Roman Empire, living 354 – 430 AD.  He wrote a book called “Confessions” which is very famous and is primarily an autobiography of his early life [you can find the whole thing here].  In it he describes the steps of his conversion to Christianity.  As we break into the text, he is describing his struggle with letting go of his desires to live his own life on his own terms.  His life has been full of drunkenness, lust, and so on; but now he wants to change.  But he finds that he can’t.  He is trying to figure out how to believe in God, but he finds that he can’t make himself believe.  Here is what happens as he struggles mentally…

Various excerpts from Book 8 of “Confessions” by Augustine

“While I was deliberating whether I would serve the Lord my God now, as I had long purposed to do, it was I who willed and it was also I who was unwilling. In either case, it was I. I neither willed with my whole will nor was I wholly unwilling. And so I was at war with myself and torn apart by myself…Thus I was sick and tormented, reproaching myself more bitterly than ever, rolling and writhing in my chain till it should be utterly broken.

I kept saying to myself, “See, let it be done now; let it be done now.” And as I said this I all but came to a firm decision. I all but did it--yet I did not quite. Still I did not fall back to my old condition, but stood aside for a moment and drew breath. And I tried again, and lacked only a very little of reaching the resolve--and then somewhat less, and then all but touched and grasped it. Yet I still did not quite reach or touch or grasp the goal, because I hesitated to die to death and to live to life. And the worse way, to which I was habituated, was stronger in me than the better, which I had not tried. And up to the very moment in which I was to become another man, the nearer the moment approached, the greater horror did it strike in me. But it did not strike me back, nor turn me aside, but held me in suspense.

Now when deep reflection had drawn up out of the secret depths of my soul all my misery and had heaped it up before the sight of my heart, there arose a mighty storm, accompanied by a mighty rain of tears. … And, not indeed in these words, but to this effect, I cried to thee: “And thou, O Lord, how long? How long, O Lord?”

I was saying these things and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when suddenly I heard the voice of a boy or a girl I know not which--coming from the neighboring house, chanting over and over again, “Pick it up, read it; pick it up, read it.”

Immediately I ceased weeping and began most earnestly to think whether it was usual for children in some kind of game to sing such a song, but I could not remember ever having heard the like. So, damming the torrent of my tears, I got to my feet, for I could not but think that this was a divine command to open the Bible and read the first passage I should light upon.

So I quickly returned to the bench where … I had put down the apostle’s book... I snatched it up, opened it, and in silence read the paragraph on which my eyes first fell: “Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof.” I wanted to read no further, nor did I need to. For instantly, as the sentence ended, there was infused in my heart something like the light of full certainty and all the gloom of doubt vanished away.”

From that point on, as far as I can tell, Augustine never looked back.

In this case, the passage of scripture fits within an entire situation.  It is highly likely that Augustine had read that particular passage of the Bible before.  But it came in the midst of his struggle, when he was struggling with exactly the issues dealt with in the verse, that it hit him as so obvious.  And it also came after a very unlikely direction to go read the Bible, from a child singing some random song that Augustine had never heard before.  It is this collection of events, each one on its own rather pedestrian, that together resulted in Augustine’s belief.

As we saw before, these events could all be coincidences.  If you are approaching Christians beliefs, or belief in God at all, with some reasonable skepticism, then you will conclude that this event is surely coincidence.  Of course you will – because this series of events was not put together for you – it was put together for Augustine.  The point of these examples is not that you would believe because of the example but rather that it would motivate you to seek your own personal example – one that is sufficient for you to believe.  Is there any such series of events that would cause you to believe?  That is the whole point of this series of entries.  Right now we are focusing on the Bible as God’s primary means of communicating with human beings.  We saw God using the Old Testament to speakto a man from Ethiopia in the few years after Jesus’ death andresurrection.  Now we see God using a passage from the New Testament to speak directly to Augustine’s condition in such clear terms that Augustine dropped all of his remaining inhibitions at believing and served God the rest of his life.  Next we’ll review an event that happened in 1978 – to me.

Experimenting - #16 – Test Tube #1 – Example #1

          In the previous entry on this topic, I proposed reading the Bible as a means of “hearing” from God.  Now I’d like to give three examples of how this has happened in the past, with the hope that it helps you understand what I am getting at.  The first is from the Bible, and describes the experience of a man from Ethiopia, which I will describe in this entry.  In future entries, I will describe the second example, which is from the life of Augustine.  And finally I’ll describe an example my own personal experience.  I figure that pretty well spans 2000 years of hearing God speak through the Bible.  And maybe, in the future, add some other examples as well.

Example #1 – The Man from Ethiopia

As a note of context, the person named “Philip” in this story is a disciple of Jesus.  This event is described as taking place in the few years after Jesus has died and resurrected.

“…Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of the Kandake (which means “queen of the Ethiopians”). This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the Book of Isaiah the prophet. The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.”

Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked.

“How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

This is the passage of Scripture the eunuch was reading:

“He was led like a sheep to the slaughter,

    and as a lamb before its shearer is silent,

    so he did not open his mouth.

In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.

    Who can speak of his descendants?

    For his life was taken from the earth.”

The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?” Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.

As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water. What can stand in the way of my being baptized?” And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing.”

[Acts 8:26-39 (NIV)]

I know that there are some unusual things that happen to Philip in this story, but I want to put those aside for now.  Instead, I would like to focus on what happens in the story from the perspective of the man from Ethiopia.  He has traveled to Jerusalem to worship, so he must at least be highly knowledgeable of the Jewish faith.  On his way back he is reading through what I would call the Old Testament.  I think it is reasonable to presume that he has been reading through what he has of the Bible and he comes across a particular passage that he doesn’t understand.  As he is pondering this passage, some random guy comes up to him and asks him if he understands the passage he is reading.  An interesting coincidence, no doubt, as presumably it isn’t often that someone comes up to ask such a question.  And, as the story unfolds, he invites this stranger to explain the passage to him, and he does so, leading to the belief in Jesus by this Ethiopian man.

The link between this event and belief in Jesus may be lost unless you understand the particular uniqueness of the passage he “just happens” to be reading at the time.  The passage that begins “He was led like a sheep to the slaughter…” is from the book of Isaiah, the 53^rd chapter.  One of the basic tenets of Christianity is that the Old Testament contains prophesies about the coming of Jesus and describes what he will be like and what he will do.  Jews, obviously, would dispute that, although many would still consider a lot of the passages to be prophecy as well (just not about Jesus).  But the particular passage that the Ethiopian man happens to be reading is the most extensive and most obvious prophecy about Jesus in the entire Old Testament.  I would say, without a doubt, it is by far the most extensive.  If you have any question, read it for yourself – Isaiah 53:1-12.  For a Christian who understands the context of the time, the Ethiopian man’s request of “…explain [this passage in Isaiah] to me” is akin to saying “tell me about Jesus.” 

I look at it this way.  There are about 1000 chapters in the modern Old Testament, and this single chapter would be on the top of everyone’s list of passages related to Jesus Christ.  Thus, the odds were ~1/1000 that the Ethiopian man would be reading this passage.  That is, of course, ignoring whatever odds there might be that the book he is reading is the Bible rather than some other book of the time.  And what are the odds that someone would just happen to come up to him and ask him if he understood that very passage?  Pretty remote, I presume.  We (Christians) would say that God used that passage to speak directly to the Ethiopian man about Jesus and help lead him to believe.  The Ethiopian man immediately believes and it is certainly reasonable to think that his immediate acceptance of this new belief is based on his personal experience of what is an extremely unlikely coincidence.  To him it is effectively a miracle.

Now, I must say that this whole event could surely have just been coincidence.  It surely could have.  And belief in God is not determined by experiencing some event in which the odds of it happening drop below some pre-determined threshold.  The reason I am giving this example is that it shows how reading the Bible was used to “open the eyes” of this particular individual.  For the Ethiopian, this whole experience was too much – he just had to believe.  The point is not that you necessary believe his experience, or that his experience is sufficient for you to believe.  It happened 2000 years ago and you weren’t even there to see it.  The point is to understand what that kind of experience is like, and to consider what, if any, experience might be sufficient for you to change your thinking.  Remember, we claim that the same Jesus who was alive an active then is alive and active now.  As I have discussed before, if you are not open to any such experience at all, then why should God bother?  If the door is bolted from the inside, why bother with the key?

By the way, this book of Isaiah and this prophecy (along with some others in the book of Isaiah, such as Isaiah 9:6-7 that is the basis for Handel’s Messiah) has an interesting modern history.  The “Great Isaiah Scroll” is the most famous document from the Dead Sea Scrolls discovery in 1947.  A complete scroll of the book of Isaiah was part of this discovery and is dated ~300-200 BC.  At the time of the discovery, the oldest copy of the book of Isaiah was over 1000 years more recent and well after the time of Christ, which obviously called into question whether these “prophesies” might have been written after the fact.  But now we know for certain that they were not.  I would love to see that scroll someday – it is housed in a museum in Jerusalem – I think that would be pretty cool.  But, for most of us, we’ll have to settle with looking at it here: http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/isaiah

Well, hopefully these examples will be helpful.  The point is that we Christians believe that God can use passages in the Bible to uniquely address a person’s current situation in a way that is supernatural.  This is the first “test tube.”  Next we’ll look at another example of this kind of thing, this one from the life of Augustine.

Experimenting with God - #15 – Test Tube #1

          In the previous entry, I told you where I was heading with this series of entries.  I’m discussing the ways that God could make clear to us what He wants to do for us.  I suggested three avenues (three “test tubes”) <*here*>, and this entry will address the most important of those test tubes.

If you’re really seeking God, then there is at least one important thing you have to add into your life:  reading from the source.  Specifically, I’m talking about reading the Bible. 

Ugh!  Why the dusty old Bible?  Well, Christians claim that the Bible is the Word of God.  You might not agree with that claim at all, a lot of people don’t, but you can’t consider yourself an honest seeker of God without a serious attempt at reading the Bible.  Here’s my analogy:  it’s like Jack saying to Jill, “I can’t find my car keys.”  Jill says “Oh - I put them in the drawer by the sink.”  Jack says “no, I don’t think you did” and then proceeds to look everywhere except in the drawer by the sink.  That’s Jack being stubborn.  If Jack is really serious about finding his keys, he should look everywhere, and especially places where someone (like Jill) provides a clue.  It just doesn’t make sense to do otherwise.  Maybe Jill is wrong, but Jack still has to look in the drawer.

Christians may be wrong about the Bible, but you can’t ignore it and not read it.  Many Christians claim that God “speaks” to them from the Bible.  If you say you are seeking God, then it doesn’t matter how skeptical you may be of the Bible, you have to at least check it out with some seriousness. 

By seriousness, I don’t mean just blindly plopping the Bible open and reading a verse and then closing it and saying “that didn’t work.”  That’s fake seeking. 

By seriousness, I don’t mean searching on the internet to find out what other people say about the Bible.  Or searching for a list of all the contradictions in the Bible and then reading only those.  It’s fine if you do all that…but you still have to read the source!  If you’re living in any reasonably free country, then a copy of the Bible is readily available.  If you’re reading this blog, then you have access to the internet, where copies of the Bible abound.  It’s not hard to find, so that is (for most people) not an excuse.

By seriousness, I mean reading more than a few short passages here and there.  I have some detailed suggestions below about how to approach reading the Bible because, honestly, it’s hard to start on page 1 and read all the way through.  You can do that, but there are easier ways to go about it.  Obviously there are no hard and fast definitions of a “serious attempt”.  Personally, if you read about ten minutes a day for three months, I’d call that a serious attempt.

You may feel it necessary to give equal time to other religious or related documents.  I tried a “serious attempt” (according to my definition above) at reading the Quran and something I thought was called “the Atheist’s Bible” (but now I can’t figure out if that was the real title).  I found the Quran very hard to read and understand even after reading “The Cow” a couple of times, but maybe “The Cow” is not the best place to start.  And the Atheist’s Bible I found lame and boring, but maybe, since it doesn’t appear to be very popular (since I can’t find it anymore) I just didn’t pick the right atheist book.  I haven’t read the Upanishads or Sutras.  So, the end result is that I just don’t feel qualified to offer much guidance with respect to how to approach any of those books or those general beliefs.  I would welcome any thoughts on the matter, especially if you have a strong background in one of those belief systems.

The bottom line is that serious seeking requires you to search out the “source documents” whenever you can.  The Bible is the source document for Christian beliefs and claims.

Note that I’m not suggesting that you read the Bible to determine if it is true or not.  I’m suggesting you read the Bible to see if God will “speak to you” through it.  That is part of the experiment.  Remember that the experiment we are proposing is not about whether the Bible is reliable.  The experiment we are proposing is seeking to answer the question we evolved to previously <*here*>:

“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?”

We are seeking to have God/Jesus to tell us what it is that He is willing to do for us.  We are using the Bible as the starting point for that journey.

In light of all that, I’d like to offer some very practical suggestions regarding reading the Bible.  These are not prescriptive, and if you don’t feel you need any further guidance, you can stop reading right here and move on to the reading the Bible.

First – pick an easy version or translation of the Bible. If you’re going to be reading the Bible in English, then there must be a couple dozen or more versions of the Bible you could pick from.  It can be confusing!  But unless you’re a real Shakespeare buff, don’t pick the old King James version – that is very difficult for the modern reader to understand and you’ll spend more of your time battling with the language than understanding what is being said.  Personally, I most commonly use what is called the New International Version and I would recommend that as a good start.  About the only thing I would say is:  do not pick the “summaries” – like the Reader’s Digest version of the Bible.  Go to the real source.

Second – where to start?  The Christian Bible is generally organized chronologically, but that is not the easiest way to break into it.  I would strongly encourage you to start with the New Testament.  Further, I’d encourage you to start by reading the Gospel of John and then the book of Romans.  As far as “primers” on Christianity go, those are pretty good.  After that, I think the combination of the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts (they are Part I and Part II of Luke’s writings) are really good to read.  After that, if you’re still reading, I’d go back to Matthew and work through the rest of the New Testament books in order.  Again – those are just my suggestions.

Third, consistency is good – just like exercise.  I’d suggest trying to read say 10 minutes of the Bible a day.  That should be pretty easy to do.  Or read a chapter a day – that usually comprises about three paragraphs or so and shouldn’t take long.

You should write down your thoughts about what you read.  I know that is hard to do for many of you.  I find that it really helps me to focus on the point of what I just read.  So often it is pretty easy to just mindlessly read the words and two seconds after you are done, if someone asked “what was that about”, you would have no clue.  What should you write about?  Anything that comes to mind, really.  But I have some questions I often ask myself as I read something in the Bible (or any other non-fiction book, actually).  Here are some of those questions:

How is God described?  What are God’s characteristics?

How are human beings described?  What are their characteristics?

What makes sense?  What doesn’t make sense? 

Are there things that God does differently than what I would do?

Is there any practical thing that I can learn from this?

          It’s also useful to keep track of some of the themes you see.  For example, as you read through the Gospel of John, you could write down all the miracles that you see listed and maybe try to categorize them in terms to their degree of physical impossibility.  Are they like magical tricks?  Are they always some kind of healing?  Is there a purpose to the miracles or are some of them just for fun?  Something like that.  Another thing to write down are the words and phrases that Jesus uses to describe Himself.

          This will take some serious effort.  It’s not hard, but it takes some discipline.  And, especially if you really don’t like the Bible, or if you hate Christians, it can sometimes rub you the wrong way.  Maybe all you can do is write down everything you don’t like about it.  The point is, we’re making a serious attempt here to open the door to the lion outside <explanation>.

          What’s the point of this relative to our experiment?  Remember we’re looking for God to speak to us – we need to know what it is He wants to do for us.  So, the first thing we learn as we read the Bible is what kinds of things God generally does and doesn’t like, or does and doesn’t do, or does and doesn’t support.  This starts to put reasonable bounds on what we might expect God to do.  For example, in the Gospel of John, Jesus makes some pretty broad statements about what He will do for His disciples.  These statements might be quite relevant.

          Sometimes you will find that you read something and it is so directly relevant to your current personal experience that you are certain it was written there for you.  Those are passages to start taking notice of.  Is that God speaking to you?  Of course you should be skeptical of such a thing.  But, from personal experience, it can be pretty compelling when it happens. 

          The other thing that happens is that the things you read in the Bible keep popping up during the day.  It might be something you see or hear, or it might be something someone else brings up.  It may be that reading the Bible alone will identify something promised by God and this alone will be directly relevant to the experiment we are conducting.  But generally speaking I would expect you to be skeptical of these things.  They can always be just chance – just coincidence.  So that is why we are not stopping here – we’re going to need more.  But this is an important starting point – test tube #1 is opened.

Next we’ll take a look at some practical, historical situations that provide examples of God speaking in this way.  I always like to go back to practical examples to try to help understand things.

Free Will #10 - Delving back into free will with more random numbers

          I’ve been doing a lot of reading about free will lately, and I hope to be able to put together some future entries that update some of my thinking.  I think some of my earlier entries were rather naïve of, if nothing else, the historical context of the ideas I presented.  But that is the nature of learning. 

          Anyway, something came to mind recently, and I’d like to try it out.  It kind of goes back to my “Turing Numbers” <here>, but I have a few more thoughts.

          The question I asked myself was whether a random series of numbers could encode information.  I’m assuming I’m not the first person to try this, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a whole field related to this.  But I wanted to see if I could create a series of numbers that has all the characteristics of a series of random numbers, but in reality encodes a message.  And I want the “message-encoded” random series to be indistinguishable from a truly random series of numbers.

          So, here is what I came up with.  It is a series of 149 binary digits.  I present two such series below.  One of these is random (well, I just used the random number generator in Excel) and the other was created by me and encodes a simple message.  What I wonder is whether you can tell which one is which?

BOX A

1	0	1	0	1	0	1	0	0	0	1	0	1	1	1	0	1	0	1	1
0	1	0	1	1	1	1	0	1	0	1	0	1	0	0	1	1	0	1	0
1	0	1	0	1	1	0	1	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	1	0	1	1
0	0	0	1	0	1	0	1	0	1	0	1	1	0	1	0	1	1	1	0
1	0	1	0	1	0	1	1	0	0	1	0	1	0	1	0	1	0	0	1
1	0	1	1	1	0	1	0	0	1	0	1	1	0	0	1	1	1	0	1
0	0	1	0	0	1	0	0	1	0	0	1	0	0	1	1	0	1	0	0
1	0	1	0	1	1	1	1	1

1’s = 77/149 (51.7%)

BOX B

1	0	1	0	1	0	0	0	1	0	0	1	1	1	0	0	1	1	0	1
0	0	1	1	1	0	1	0	1	1	1	1	0	0	0	1	1	1	0	1
1	0	0	1	1	1	0	0	1	0	0	0	1	0	1	1	1	1	0	0
0	0	1	1	0	0	0	1	0	1	1	0	1	1	0	0	1	1	0	1
0	0	0	1	0	1	1	1	1	0	1	0	1	1	1	1	0	0	1	1
1	0	1	0	1	1	1	0	0	1	0	1	1	0	1	0	0	0	0	1
0	0	1	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	1	0	0	1	0	0	0	1	1
0	1	0	1	1	0	1	0	0

1’s = 74/149 (49.7%)

          There are certainly various statistics you can run on these two sets of numbers.  I will tell you that they are both supposed to represent a 50:50 distribution of 0’s and 1’s – a series of coin flips.  I included the total number of 1’s in each of the two boxes (below each box), and they are both close to 50%.  I did not spend a lot of time trying to work out other ways to characterize this series.  For example, I’m sure that there is a predictable distribution of the number of 1’s in a row for a truly random series, and I did not work hard to make sure that my encoded series met those criteria.  I assume that I could write a computer program to figure out those details for me.  But, the point is, I believe I could match whatever characteristics of the random number sequence you care to measure if I had a long enough series.  Thus I think, without trying to come up with a real mathematical proof, that I could match any simple random series yet still encode information.  I’d be interested if anyone can figure out which of the two series is the “encoded” one; and if so, how you figured it out.  Of course, it would be really impressive if you could figure out the encoded message, but I think you’d need a longer series to figure that out, even if I told you which one had the message.  I think that there is just not enough information to figure out the message…so I would be shocked if someone could figure out the message.  I’ll give the “answer” in my next entry.

          Who cares?  Well, I had this idea and I thought I would try it out.  It has to do with free will and how it can avoid determinism.  Specifically, I was thinking about the random (or indeterminate?) nature of some aspects of quantum mechanics.  My thought would be that maybe we think something is random when it is actually “intentional” and only appears to be random.  Is there any way for us to know the difference between the two?  In general, we think of all material things as being either determined or random.  But is it possible that some (or all??) random things are actually intentional?  By intentional, I mean that some form of “will” imposes on the event to make it happen with a specific desired outcome.  The outcome looks random to us, but it achieves an intentional outcome, not a random one.  It would have no pattern because the “will” doesn’t have a pattern (because, of course, it’s a “free will”).

          So, with my two sets of numbers, I could give one of you the way to break the code and then I could communicate with you through what appear to be random numbers to everyone else.  Is that possible?  It seems to me that, with the appropriate effort on the part of the encoder, it can be done.

          I’m going to jump way ahead for the moment, admitting that this idea is not fully thought-out.  I have been wondering how free will could effect an outcome in the brain without messing with the fundamental laws of physics.  How could an “uncaused cause” (which I believe free will is – see <here>) not mess with the nice, well-characterized, determinant laws of physics?  Well, it seems to me that the idea of information encoded in a random distribution could provide an answer or at least a clue.  If the will is directly affecting what appears to be a random particle path, yet does so without disrupting the properties of that random distribution, it could transmit information (i.e. its intention) without messing up the rest of the physical laws.  Is that possible?  Well, it came to my mind, so I thought I would put it out there.