This atheist prefers mysteries over believing whatever someone says just so I have an answer.
Urea was the first organic compound to be made in the lab, and that was in 1828. I think you are a bit behind the times.
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That at least is unassailable. Likewise my faith in the Other within is safe. It is only the relationship between that and what - if anything - shapes the cosmos that is newly unsettled. Rationally I have felt they were unrelated or else only distantly. Pressed for a status report that would still be it. But the jury wants more time.
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Are theists free of mysteries?! God himself is a mystery. The scriptures are full of mystery. Having been there I can testify that nothing gets easier moving from atheism to theism.
Also for t.aquaticus if your atheism is full of mysteries how can you be so confident there is no God behind your mysteries?
Whew! Glad to hear it. I like this dance. I really must read The Master and His Emissary mustn’t I? Although, conservative as I am, it does overreach from the reviews. It ain’t an equal antithesis to the current synthesis; it ain’t falsifiable.
He would agree with you. While he has much to say which is as rational as you could hope for, iit is in the service of drawing to your attention to a less articulate though wiser mental faculty. Both are important and essential to maintain our humanity.
When it comes to cosmology and evolution, you said, “It seems like we know how all of us got here and how our world exists—”
“—without God’s help.”
Whoa, wait, stop. Hit the brakes. That final clause is hugely problematic. How do you suppose we reached that conclusion? For example, how does the science of biological evolution lead to concluding that it happened without God’s help? That does not necessarily follow at all. There is a massive leap in logic being made there, one that is worth exposing to critical scrutiny (because there is actually no adverse impact on theism).
“How can I justify my belief in God,” you asked, “when my very existence is a product of natural phenomena?” I will begin by acknowledging that your existence is, indeed, the product of natural phenomena—not just the biology of human reproduction (you were born to parents) but also human evolution (the human species arose from ape-like ancestors). However, identifying natural processes does not somehow rule out God’s involvement. As Keith Miller explained (2004), science is limited to the investigation of natural entities and forces, which we call methodological naturalism. “Science restricts itself to proximate causes,” he said, “and the confirmation or denial of ultimate causes”—like God—“is beyond its capacity. Science does not deny the existence of a Creator—it is simply silent on the existence or action of God.” [1]
In other words, the results of scientific inquiry should not corrode or somehow negatively impact the Christian faith because science, by its very nature, is incapable of making pronouncements about anything beyond the natural world—which, by definition, is precisely the realm of the transcendent creator. If you are having doubts about God’s existence, scientific knowledge and understanding should not be the cause. If it is, then you’re doing it wrong (as the saying goes).
Footnotes:
[1] Keith B. Miller, “Evolutionary Theory and Continuous Creation,” Divinity School Publishing, issue no. 11, November 8, 2004. For an informative, compelling, and balanced discussion on methodological naturalism being the basis of science, read Jim Stump’s contribution on pages 106–111 in Kenneth Keathley, J. B. Stump, and Joe Aguirre, eds., Old-Earth or Evolutionary Creation: Discussing Origins with Reasons to Believe and BioLogos (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2017).
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Nature has no need for God’s help.
It lacks nothing. The empirical limitations of science are irrelevant to rationally extended, eternal, infinite uniformitarianism. [There is no gap for God to fill. There never is, is there.] The ultimate cause is part of that and shows not the slightest evidence of having anything more to do with nature above it: it doesn’t intervene.
Except as Jesus, Who is orthogonal to rationality.
Nature has no need for God’s help. It lacks nothing.
That’s a conclusion, not an argument. You speak as someone who has already established that nature can function apart from God. Please show your work. If nothing else, describe how you successfully controlled for natural processes that are governed by God and those that are not, listing your methodology and the results. I mean, surely your rejection of the null hypothesis was evidence-based and can be independently reproduced.
The empirical limitations of science are irrelevant to rationally extended, eternal, infinite uniformitarianism.
To me, this is a word salad. It is unintelligible. If this is a short-hand reference to some previous discussion, please be advised that I neither participated nor observed.
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It’s an inescapable conclusion John. One cannot reverse engineer, deconstruct nature to God. Well one can, but not faithfully. Not rationally.
And what can’t you parse?
Science runs out, has limits to what it can test. So? Simple, parsimonious, uniformitarian rationality easily extends beyond that. Does that help?
It’s an inescapable conclusion John. One cannot reverse engineer, deconstruct nature to God.
It is a conclusion, yes. The question of whether it’s an inescapable one is quite another matter—which we may set aside for now, as your conclusion is in desperate need of an argument.
However, if you cannot control for natural processes that are governed by God and those that are not, then is it really a conclusion at all? I don’t think so. That looks more like a bare assertion, which we therefore have no reason to accept (for none was provided).
And what can’t you parse?
Well, “uniformitarian rationality” to begin with. I understand uniformitarianism and I understand rationality, but I don’t understand what mashing them together is supposed to represent.
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You’re avoiding the obvious conclusion John. No argument is necessary. Nature does all the arguing in uniformitarianism extended beyond the empirical by rationality to eternity.
I’m surprised that’s difficult to parse, but if it’s the first time you’ve encountered it I suppose that’s understandable. It’s not that you don’t understand. It’s the shock. [You see John, the thing is, God is fair. He made me a simpleton. After 65 years I became dumb enough yet to see the terrifyingly beautiful stark sufficiency of nature. Luckily the perfection of the gospel has been clarified shortly after. [The delay was a tad… scary.
Oooh, and peace John]]]
There is no shock here, and people at this site have seen this (in your words) “obvious conclusion” put out there many times.
Mr. Bauer is entirely correct to recognize it is merely a conclusion in desperate (even hopeless I would maintain) need of any argument or support, your absurd declarations of “rational certainty” notwithstanding in the least.
Even while we can only speculate and live in faith regarding the continuous dependency of all creation on the Creator, so also we can know nothing of any equally-alleged independence of creation either. … at least not from science or highly pedestalized human rationality.
[Uniformitarianism only shows that nature is not governed by any capricious deity … something that the scriptures are already at pains to point out, and in fact the regularity of creation is lifted up as a reflection - a sign even - of God’s faithfulness.]
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Gettin’ to ya eh Mervin?
Stop fighting it man.
I have no need of an argument. Uniformitarianism does it for me. Scary isn’t it?
That’s OK.
[As in all apologetics, no rationalist argument is necessary. Atheism doesn’t have to argue uphill to overwhelm a superior theistic synthesis. It’s the other way around. Strong uniformitarianism is the synthesis. There is no theist antithesis. There can’t be using rationality. Theism has nothing.
But Jesus.
He’s enough. Once His unfettered good news is realised.]
PPS I’m sure it’s out there, I’ve never encountered it. I need to get out more obviously. It seems new to John. And I worked it out for myself in the past couple of years. I’ve never encountered a Christian in all my reading and discussion for over 50 years, who mentioned it, let alone accepts it. Deals with it. Some implicitly do, without realising it. It wouldn’t bother Pete Rollins or Brian McLaren or Rob Bell or Steve Chalke in the slightest.
Perhaps. Probably not in the way you’re thinking, though.
Amen to that.
Ohhh, I do, believe me : ) Pity.
Right on. Dr. Klax has difficulty with the concept of providence (aka providential miracles), let alone their reality.
Hello Sam,
Let me start by saying that I have personally wrestled with these questions quite often. I give you credit for asking them. God is able to answer any and all questions we may have (whether or not He chooses to answer our questions to the level we want is another matter). But the Biblical God shows over and over again that He is gracious enough to bear with us in our questions, doubts, and even our unbelief. Personally, I believe this is because the nonlinear process of questions, doubts, answers, more questions, etc. produces believers with stronger and stronger faith in Him. It causes us to behold His glory more and more, to rely more on Him as we ask deeper and deeper questions. And, evidently, believers with stronger faith constitute a higher good than believers with weaker faith who never had to struggle. I could go on, but my point is: God isn’t afraid of genuine questions.
Now, I think there are a few fundamental issues with the “we don’t need God to explain everything” objection to His existence.
One of them is that it assumes a distorted view of the God of the Bible, a view that is nigh unto the infamous “God of the gaps” fallacy (“if we can’t explain it with our human knowledge, then it must have ‘been God;’ further, if we can explain it, then it ‘wasn’t God.’ ”). This is fallacious because it places God inside the realm of science as another “explanatory theory,” rather than the personal God that He has revealed Himself to be in Scripture. God is sovereign over science, not the other way around, but the God of the gaps view doesn’t allow for that possibility at all.
To put this another way, it assumes that God is a being that, if He exists, we could find inside the universe by scientific investigation. This simply doesn’t describe the Biblical God. He is not an object within the universe (I do believe that Jesus was God incarnate, but that isn’t my topic here). God created the universe, not vice versa. Can we conclude da Vinci didn’t exist because we never found Him in the Mona Lisa?
There is a related argument that some scientifically-minded atheists have used that goes something like this: “our observations of the universe are consistent with what we would see in a universe where the Biblical God doesn’t exist. Therefore, they provide evidence that the Biblical God does not exist.” But there’s a problem there. The only universe humanity has ever observed is the one that we are in. Thus, we have no basis to determine what would be observed in a universe different from ours. Is it evidence of God’s existence or non-existence that we can trace our human bodies back quite far in the past by observing extensive, natural processes? Both theists and atheists make competing claims, which is precisely the point: if we are debating in the current universe whether our observations provide evidence for or against God’s existence, then we cannot know what would happen in the “other kind” of universe with any more certainty than our original question of “does God exist?” We cannot say, “theists and atheists can’t agree on whether God exists in this universe, but they can agree about what would be observed in whatever the other kind of universe is.” So, I think this exposes a logical flaw in the atheist argument.
A second issue with the “we don’t need God to explain everything” objection is that it assumes a view of causation that is controversial at best (and, in my view, is simply incorrect). Natural phenomena could have natural and divine causes simultaneously, depending on the meaning of “cause.” To see what I mean, imagine that I am in an apple orchard gathering apples from the trees. If I cut a branch holding an apple, the branch falls to the ground. What caused the branch to fall? We could give a naturalistic explanation involving gravity, and that would be correct (to the extent that our understanding of gravity is correct). But we could also say that the cause was my desire for the apple, and that would also be correct. Perhaps you might consider the naturalistic explanation a “direct” cause and my desire for an apple an “indirect” cause, but both can still be accurately labeled “causes.” Applying this line of thinking to your question: there’s no reason to think that having a naturalistic explanation for everything in the universe (which we do not have, by the way!) would exclude the “need” for God. His causes may exist at a different, and yet equally valid (perhaps even more fundamental), ontological “level.”
The Biblical book of Job, especially chapters 38 and following, gives us a different view of God. There He is presented as the God of all nature, irrespective of the systems humans use to analyze and describe the natural world (science). Also see passages like Exodus 28:3 and 31:3. There God is given credit for human skill. The analogy is the same: naturalistic explanations and supernatural explanations do not exclude each other. There are other examples in the Bible where natural and human activity is attributed to God, too.
Thus, saying that a natural process doesn’t require “God’s help” does not square with the Biblical view of God .
One other point vis-à-vis one’s belief in science, as you seem to view that as an alternative to Christian faith (though I reiterate what a few others have said: this is a false dichotomy). A naturalistic, atheistic worldview has the burden of explaining all observations from a purely naturalistic standpoint. Without that, we can’t know how the knowledge we don’t possess might impact the knowledge we do possess. If God is the source of our knowledge, though, rather than ourselves being the source (through our scientific investigation), this problem of “we don’t know what we don’t know” doesn’t have the same, potentially fatal, flaw. For God is omniscient. He has revealed some things to us, and though He hasn’t revealed everything, we can be confident that His revelation is correct because He can “compare” it against all other knowledge before revealing it. Thus, there is a fundamental difference between knowledge that we discover for ourselves versus knowledge provided to us from an omniscient God. This has significant implications to epistemological concerns, but that is another topic.
Humans have never had, nor do they have today, the total knowledge required by naturalistic atheism (certainly our scientific knowledge is growing quickly, but it is far from complete). For however long that knowledge is incomplete, the naturalist must say, “we don’t know the answers yet, but give us more time to investigate, and we will be able to explain it someday.” This is a strong statement of faith in human ability, and one that is by no means a certainty. I don’t see that faith as being any more justifiable than the reasonable faith of so many Christians, though that might be a different discussion.
At the very least, if scientific knowledge causes you to doubt Christianity, I would ask you to apply the same level of philosophical rigor to your faith in science as you do toward faith in God. One’s doubts regarding science (really, science as a worldview) ought to be just as conspicuous as one’s doubts about religion, or more so.
Notice that my hypothetical quotation two paragraphs ago is in earnest support of scientism, the belief that scientific knowledge is the best (or only) true knowledge. It is a statement of philosophy, not science, and it is anything but “religiously neutral.” Such an unwavering faith in human ability is humanism, which stands in opposition to orthodox Christianity.
In that vein, I will recommend a book to you which speaks to many of the issues you brought up (and more). It is called “Scientism and Secularism” by J. P. Moreland. He specifically discusses your question in Chapter 10, though his arguments might not have their full force if you skip directly to that chapter.
One point about science’s attempts to explain how the universe arose from “nothing.” The “nothing” of physics is quite different from the literal “nothing” of philosophy or theology. In physics, “nothing” is just a physical nothing – a quantum vacuum (with energy, inside of spacetime, with the laws of physics in existence). All of those things are definitely “something” to a philosopher or theologian! In particular, even if science eventually discovers a “complete” physical description (emphasis: the complete description would only be physical) of all phenomena in the universe (and, again, we are probably quite far from that anyway, so this is purely hypothetical), that description would still require the laws of physics to begin the natural processes. One could still ask where the laws of physics come from. Those laws are not nothing! To think that this now-hypothetical theory of everything launches the whole universe from “nothing” is a misnomer in philosophical/theological terms. Like all forms of human knowledge, science has to start somewhere. A complete physical description of the universe and its origins does not eliminate the need for an “uncaused cause.” The physical laws cannot create themselves, so either they are self-existent or they were created from some “generator” of physical laws, whatever that entity would be. But then where did that generator come from? You see the pattern. The chain cannot proceed indefinitely into the past, for that would mean that the origin is obscured in an unsearchable infinitude – not just because we lack knowledge or tools, but unsearchable even in principle. An infinite regress of causes is no different from an explanatory standpoint than having no origin at all. Having no “prime mover” is philosophically equivalent to irrationality, which I doubt is your philosophical position, though you can correct me if I’m wrong.
So, let’s consider the other case: the case of the physical laws themselves (or some other generator of them) being the ultimate, the uncaused cause. Then the universe’s “ultimate” is an impersonal entity. However, objective moral obligation cannot arise from something impersonal; in short, one can’t do moral wrong to something that is inanimate. See, for example, John Frame’s book “Apologetics,” such as this quote on page 103: “Moral standards, therefore, presuppose absolute moral standards, which in turn presuppose the existence of an absolute personality [which Frame has already argued must be the Biblical God]. In other words, they presuppose the existence of God.” Thus, if one accepts physical laws as the necessarily unique, self-existent entity, then one must jettison objective morality. I have argued elsewhere on this forum (see the thread “Does Morality come from God, Evolution, or both?”) that I know of no one actually willing to do so.
What, then, are we left to conclude? Science may offer good theories regarding physical processes, but of course there is more to human existence than physical processes (morality, logic, etc.), so science as a worldview (scientism) meant to “explain our existence” falls dreadfully short. I am partial to Frame’s broader argument, a version of a “transcendental argument:” the existence of moral absolutes, as well as our ability to understand and use logic and rationality, require a personal, absolute being, God, to be the source. (Full development of the argument would require you to see Frame’s whole book, and this post is already long enough…)
I don’t want to leave you with the false impression, though, that God is simply a tool of theists who wish to arrive at a particular intellectual conclusion. God is not an explanatory theory – He is a person ! I encourage you to approach Him with your questions, but to approach Him as the person He has revealed Himself to be, not as an abstract theory. If you do so, you may be surprised how He shows Himself to you.
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That reminds me of the end of one of Tim Keller’s books:
During a dark time in her life, a woman in my congregation complained that she had prayed over and over, “God, help me find you,” but had gotten nowhere. A Christian friend suggested to her that she might change her prayer to, “God, come and find me. After all, you are the Good Shepherd who goes looking for the lost sheep.” She concluded when she was recounting this to me, “The only reason I can tell you this story is—he did.”
Tim Keller, The Reason for God, p.240
We do not know the details.
You’re avoiding the obvious conclusion John.
I cannot avoid a conclusion that doesn’t exist, Martin. So far the only thing you have provided is a bare assertion—which I am summarily dismissing, of course, as you have not provided any reason for anyone to even consider it or understand why you affirm it.
You see John, the thing is, God is fair. He made me a simpleton. After 65 years I became dumb enough yet to see the terrifyingly beautiful stark sufficiency of nature. Luckily the perfection of the gospel has been clarified shortly after. [The delay was a tad… scary.
You mash up the strangest pairing of words. First it was “uniformitarian rationality,” whatever that means, and now it’s “terrifyingly beautiful,” which is not a typical psychological response to beauty. It is a curious linguistic tapestry you are weaving. I’m not sure what you’re trying to say, but it’s possible that I agree with you: Nature is a humbling wonder to behold and explore, and the gospel is indeed a reassuring comfort.
Peace, Martin.